Revisiting Johanna

 

Every time I research Johanna Falvey, my father-in-law's great-grandmother from County Kerry, I think this time I'll finally discover who her parents were. Even a year ago, my last time to wrestle with Irish documentation, I thought I was close, but ended the month without any solid record. And yet, these Falvey DNA matches keep beckoning me to try just one more time. This month is that one more time.

What I do know about Johanna mostly comes from her three decades of residence in Fort Wayne, Indiana. With her husband and three—possibly four—Irish-born children, she made a straight course from Ireland for the midwestern United States from an undisclosed port. I have yet to find any passenger records, though two different obituaries indicated that she came from County Kerry in Ireland. One, in fact, mentions that she had "several sisters and brothers" still remaining in Ireland, while another asserted that not only were there several sisters in Ireland, but one who lived in New Zealand.

When she died in 1903, her death record gave her age as seventy seven, as did her obituary. Her headstone on the other hand, chiseled in the verdict as seventy four, giving the years as 1828 through 1902, proving that even details set in cement need a copy editor. Finding Johanna in Irish records will not be a matter of an exact science.

Unfortunately for this month's quest, marriage information may not be helpful. Johanna married a man named John Kelly, a quintessentially Irish name ripe for multiple name twins. Their marriage was back in Ireland. No documents that I have been able to find provide any details on the names of Johanna's parents. And if she ever was in touch with her multiple siblings back in Ireland—or even in New Zealand—I have no record of that, not even through family letters or remembrances left by her children or grandchildren.

The only clue I have of parents' names may come from an old Irish naming tradition, in which the second son of the family was customarily named after the mother's father. Tomorrow, we'll take a closer look at Johanna and John Kelly's children, both in Indiana and in Ireland.

Finding Falveys, the Next Generation

 

When I first discovered that my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna had the maiden name Falvey, I thought I had hit the research jackpot. Surely, that was a unique name—unusual enough to grant me the keys to open that brick wall's hidden door. Then I pulled up a surname distribution map. That told me an entirely different story. In Johanna's native County Kerry, Falveys were everywhere.

Over the years—and even as recent as August of last year—I've chipped away at Johanna Falvey's story. Since after her marriage to John Kelly, she and her family were among immigrants to America long past the famine years, it was easy to trace her family's life in Fort Wayne, Indiana. But back home in Ireland? Not as much.

For this month's Twelve Most Wanted, I want to return to explore Johanna's roots. However, this time I'll try a more experimental approach. I believe Johanna's parents may have been Patrick Falvey and Anne Fleming, but I need to test that theory, both with records in Ireland, and through those records embedded in our flesh and blood, our DNA.

Tomorrow, we'll start with a brief review of who Johanna was, and what records eluded me, the last time I had attempted researching her roots. From that point, we'll explore just why Patrick Falvey and Anne Fleming might have been a reasonable choice to lead us back through time in the Falvey family history. And we'll meet some possible other siblings in that family constellation as we work our way through September.

This Blog is About a Struggle

 

Family history adventures often turn into unanswered questions:

• Why did they leave Ireland?
• Why did they move to Chicago?
• Why are they so invisible?

As much as I've tried to answer the questions I've had this month concerning Anna Flanagan from Ballyagran in County Limerick, her missing husband Stephen Malloy, and even her later years as a single mother in Chicago, it looks like I'm closing out another month without the documentation I've been struggling to find for decades. 

Don't look now, but tomorrow, I'll begin the process again with another mystery ancestor from my father-in-law's Irish heritage. This time with a guess about a possible second great-grandfather, I'll repeat the process in another Irish location in neighboring County Kerry.

Will I have better luck the next time I try this? Doubtful. This quest—and thus, this blog—is about a struggle, repeated as many times as my family has enigmatic ancestors, whether grandparents, great-grandparents, or even generations before that time. Most have stories which stretch beyond the reach of documentation, whether religious or governmental. 

This struggle, no matter how annoying, is what keeps drawing me back into the fray. With every new record set added online—hey, MyHeritage just made available Irish dog license registrations from the National Archives of Ireland, as did Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, just to give an idea of how desperate some researchers can be about finding their Irish roots—my hopes get amped up at the start of another round of searches.

If all the answers fell easily into my lap at the first try, I guess this wouldn't be such an adventure. Perhaps it would become more of a round of predictable dances with ancestral partners which, after enough iterations, would become unbearably boring.

Thankfully, that is not the case. But when the going gets rough and I can't see any answer in sight, I need to remind myself that this has always been about a struggle. It's the challenge that keeps us going.

It's Only "Classic" 'til October 1

 

Here I was, getting ready for my biweekly count and looking forward to a new ancestor to pursue at the start of next month, when I decided to sneak a peek at that ancestor's ThruLines results on Ancestry.com.

Right now, Ancestry DNA is going through a revision process, which in my view means a whole lot more clicks just to get to the same information. In other words, there are some breathless beta versions which simply deserve a click back to the original program. 

I get it that some people may find revisions informative, helpful, or just the very spark to make things exciting again. On the other hand, I use Ancestry every day, and the DNA tools several times a week. I like to find things where I put them the last time I used them.

Trying to provide feedback to Ancestry—they provided a hyperlink, which once clicked, supposedly leads to a page where such can be offered—led me only to a blank page with a perky "Ask Leaf" dialogue bubble. I declined. I didn't want to ask him anything; I wanted to tell about something.

Thankfully, Ancestry provides a button for those who wish to revert to the way things had always been—in other words, back to the classic version. When I tried that last night, though, I saw—to my dismay, I might add—that the DNA classic view will only be available until October 1.

I guess that means I'll have to put on the brakes and slow down enough to take in the scenery in this new DNA drive. The classic option is only temporarily classic. Soon it will not only become antiquated, it will be non-existent.

As is often said in October: "Boo!" (Hoo!)

Well, on to other matters. The rest of the Ancestry universe still continues to serve my quest to expand my in-laws' family tree, though not as rapidly as before I began wrestling with my father-in-law's Irish ancestors. I only managed to find forty nine additional family members to add to his tree in the past two weeks, most of whom were collateral lines or floating branches expanded in my futile attempt to follow Anna Flanagan Malloy's F.A.N. Club. Right now, my in-laws' tree has edged up to 44,318 documented relatives.

Thanks to some unexpected DNA matches—both at Ancestry.com and elsewhere—I was able to add six more individuals to my own tree. Right now, that tree is parked at 41,969 people, waiting until I turn to my dad's Polish roots in October. I'd be ecstatic if I could find some Polish DNA matches, but that is a search better taken elsewhere than my international subscription at Ancestry, unfortunately. 

Right now, with my focus on my father-in-law's roots in Ireland, we've got plenty of time to delve into yet another near-impossible immigrant story, which we'll do at the start of September. Maybe by then, I'll make my peace with the ever-changing website bells and whistles at Ancestry.

At Summer's Close

 

The weather yesterday took a turn that, in decades past, might have heralded the shift from summer to fall. Not that the last weekend of August normally signals the instant arrival of autumn—not around here in northern California. Despite the soon approaching holiday of Labor Day, which once marked the end of summer for American school children everywhere, here in my corner of the world, we are accustomed to another two months of lovely weather before the autumn rains set in. This unexpected shower in our semi-arid seasonal desert certainly changed the mood for me.

Summer, for many involved in family history, represents a chance to travel to chase after those few clues our ancestors scattered in their wake. Visits to cemeteries, or trips back to the old homestead are perfect for summertime research. It makes sense to see some genealogical societies "go dark" for the summer months, as ours does; everyone is maximizing their chance to get out and reconnect with family or old friends from places far away—a nostalgic kind of genealogy.

Soon, though, we'll be back in full swing, learning more about genealogical research techniques, and sharing stories of our "conquests" with fellow society members as we edge into autumn. What are stories without listeners? Somehow, the anticipation of telling about our research victories in the coming month makes each discovery even sweeter when we gather together again.

Still, I always hate to bid summer goodbye. A time to explore, to try new approaches, to hope for something better—or at least different—that's what summer has always been for me. 

Why Chicago?

 

One question I've always had, while researching my father-in-law's ancestral roots, was why his Irish ancestors chose Chicago as their immigration destination. After all, ports of arrival for such European immigrants were usually known to be geographically logical places like New York—and, specifically for the Irish, Boston. One well-known online periodical, A Letter From Ireland, brings up that very point in listing the most likely destinations for Irish passengers to the United States, noting heavy settlement in America's urban northeast.

Single mother Anna Flanagan Malloy, on the other hand, arrived in Chicago. How did she come to such a decision? Granted, her brother also arrived there, possibly looking for work in a city with a growing need for laborers. That said, I have yet to determine just what it was, exactly, that William Flanagan did for a living.

I took my question—why Chicago?—to the Internet to see what could be found, in hopes I'd uncover some conclusive evidence to explain why these Irish seemed to bypass the more reasonable (and easily accessible) east coast options for a trip of nearly an additional thousand miles overland.

Very likely, chain migration played a key role for some Irish immigrants, but I've yet to find the initiating family member—or former neighbor from back in County Limerick—who made the decision to try Chicago over those much easier eastern targets. Compelling reasons drawing later Irish arrivals included the expanding infrastructure in Chicago: the canals and railroads that made industrial expansion possible were often built on the backs of Irish immigrants.

There must have been an aggregate of forces remaking Chicago into the fourth largest Irish city in America by the start of the Civil War. What, among all those causes, beguiled our Flanagans to make Chicago their choice still eludes me. Reviewing what I knew of the Flanagans' F.A.N. Club did little to expand my understanding. If anything, it made me realize how invisible the poorer of those Irish immigrants may have been in those early years in Chicago—or how vitriolic the rhetoric hurled between opposing sides in those early years in Chicago.

Even checking the development of the area known as Hyde Park, once an independent township before incorporation as part of the City of Chicago, did little to reveal any details about the extended Flanagan family, some of whom had settled in or very near that area. I still cannot find census entries after 1860 for some of these descendants until the turn of the subsequent century.

Perhaps it was the city itself, through its size and rate of growth, which kept those family members invisible. Granted, their entries in census enumerations, if found, might not have been sufficient to answer the questions I had about these relatives' whereabouts and background. But it serves to point out the frustration of researching family whose history still draws a blank, despite best efforts.

Reminder From a Scrap of Paper

 

Notes written to myself show up in the most unexpected places, and at times when I least would expect them to remain pertinent. One scrap of paper, retrieved from a cranny where I was searching for something else, provided a timely reminder—yet, given the passing of time, taunted me and caused me to ponder what's left in the discovery's wake.

I had first written out the note—ironically on some scrap paper printed with the statement, "The greatest casualty is being forgotten"—during a class I was taking at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. The instructor had shared a quote gleaned from a volume of British history, which he felt was also applicable to the use of computerized research tools we were then accessing to trace our family history. I thought it was pertinent to what was unfolding in my own life and research.

The quote made such an impact on me that I later wove it into a post here at A Family Tapestry. It was a simple, straightforward observation:

Because so much less time is spent searching...for relevant material, more time can be spent assessing the meaning of the content.

And finding that note here, after spending a solid month not finding the details I had sought on Anna Flanagan Malloy's origin in County Limerick, Ireland, I realize this quote needs an addendum: the time spent searching is relational to the amount of relevant material still in existence and accessible. For those records never preserved—or the ones now facing the possibility of no longer being valued—no amount of dedicated search time will uncover their existence. We can only find what is already there to be found. The search prowess of technology is only as meaningfully valuable as the material it can surface for those wanting to know.