. . . And Then, There's Demetrius

 

In tracing Irish immigrants to Boston, Massachusetts, from County Kerry, Ireland, Patrick Cullinane wasn't the only Falvey descendant who caught my eye. Yet like Patrick's own case, this other immigrant presents us with some doubts as to his connection to my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey.

Just like Johanna's possible sister, Gobnait Falvey, the problem begins with a Catholic baptismal record identifying a son by a Latin, rather than traditional Irish, given name. That name, as you've probably suspected, was Demetrius.

Demetrius, according to the record at his parents' home church of Kilcummin parish, was baptized at the very beginning of the year, January 6 of 1837. Yet, locating any other record for that son of Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming seems to lead nowhere.

Considering, as we have, the other Latin records we've found for those with decidedly Irish given names, it might come as no surprise to learn that a Demetrius of church records might more often be called Jeremiah around his own home. That, at least, is according to well-known Irish genealogist, John Grenham, who offers Jeremiah, Jerome, Darby, and Dermot as alternatives for the baptismal moniker Demetrius.

It didn't help my case to have found a naturalization record in Boston for a marble polisher named Jeremiah Falvey. According to this record, Jeremiah arrived in Boston around September of 1857. At the time of his petition for citizenship, he reported that he had been born in 1837. The only problem with that report was the month and day: June 25 instead of January 6.

Granted, I have seen many times when a date reported as "Jan" turned out to actually be "Jun" but there is no such chance for this discrepancy. Despite the chicken scratch on the ecclesiastical record, it was clear from its placement on the page that Demetrius was among the first of those infants baptized in 1837. And the naturalization record made it clear that Jeremiah had reported his birth in the month of June.

Still, I can't resist following this alternate Falvey record, especially given the occupational report. Marble workers represented a group of craftsmen whose efforts required much training. Given two possible Falvey representatives from the same county in Ireland, and considering the likelihood of chain migration where one family member follows a preceding one in leaving home to follow job recommendations at a distant location, we may have uncovered a nexus, if not between a brother of Gobnait Falvey Cullinane and her son, at least a connection to a close relative from the same community back in Ireland.

The Possibility of Patrick

I supposed I can consider it fortunate, given my problems in tying my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey to the preceding generation back in Ireland, that I've discovered a Falvey descendant among my husband's DNA matches. Don't jump to conclusions that the proof of the relationship will simply fall into our hands, though. The possibility of Patrick Cullinane being a nephew of our Johanna Falvey looks like it might be challenging to establish by documentation. 

Here's what I've found about Patrick so far. First, as far as baptismal records go: I've found nothing. Not, at least, back in the home parish in County Kerry. Not if we can rely on his date of birth being in the early 1860s.

Fortunately, Patrick does show up in archived records across the Atlantic in Boston, Massachusetts, where this immigrant showed up some time in the 1880s. That was where this marble worker's marriage to Joanna Sullivan was documented in Boston on May 15, 1890. And, unsurprisingly, Catholic Church records at the archdiocese of Boston confirmed the names and birthdates of several of the Cullinane children: Helen Nora in 1895, Johanna Josephine in 1896, Honora Catherine in 1898, Daniel Sullivan in 1900, John Francis in 1901, Leon Patrick in 1903, and Julia Agnes in 1905.

While that may look like a tidy list with ample opportunities for descendants who become DNA matches, that is simply not the case. Despite the number of children attributed to Patrick and Johanna according to church records, other names could be gleaned, if following census records or other documents.

The catch was this: Patrick had married a woman who not only had a surname—Sullivan—quite common among Irish immigrants resident in the Boston area, but who had a given name subject to shortening. If we can rely on name equivalent charts like the one provided by the FamilySearch.org wiki,  the name Johanna could be used interchangeably with Ann or Anna.

And that is precisely our problem. Apparently, there was a Patrick Cullinane living in Boston whose wife, at least according to census records, was called Anna. That couple's household included some children whose names did not line up with the baptismal records specifying Johanna Sullivan as their mother. Could this be the same couple, with nickname inserted, and a few additional children thrown into the mix? Are we looking at the same couple, farther along in the timeline? Or have we stumbled upon a case of name twins?

To complicate matters, the couple's surname was sometimes rendered as Cullinane, and at other times it appeared as Cullinan. Whether both surnames represented spelling variations for the same family, I can't tell. To confirm, I'm resorting to tedious exercises like making periodic checks in city directories, just to rule out name twins for Patrick. This may not merely be an instance of checking the possibility of Patrick being a relative of my father-in-law's Falvey family, but of confirming just which of two Patricks in Boston was actually the right man.

Taking Stock of Progress

 

Every now and then—especially when I feel like I'm stuck in my research—I like to take stock of progress. Struggling with missing, incomplete, or illegible documentation does slow things down to a crawl, and it helps to have some encouragement to keep going. That is partly the reason for my biweekly counts: not for bragging rights, but for a reminder that, bit by bit, progress does happen if you keep at it.

This time, I was pretty sure the numbers would not look too encouraging. After all, right now I'm trawling through Boston city directories, trying to determine whether I'm searching for the right Patrick Cullinane (I'm concerned I'm not). But progress in the past two weeks has held steady, compared to the previous two weeks when I was wrapping up another hard-to-locate Irish ancestor.

So here's the count: fifty more names added to my father-in-law's branch of the family tree. My in-laws' tree now has 44,368 documented names in total, though it has been growing so slowly this summer while I pursue those hard-to-find Irish forebears.

Though I wish there were more Irish relatives out there to test their DNA, I guess we'll have to wait for one of those seasons best suited to sales. There were absolutely zero new DNA tests linked to my husband's results in the past two weeks. He still has 1,510 DNA matches at the estimated level of fourth cousin or closer, exactly the range I'd need to piece together the story of the many descendants of Johanna Falvey's sister Gobnait and her husband Daniel Cullinane. Thankfully, I've already found a few DNA cousins to help guide this search a bit further, something we'll attend to this coming week.

Getting Stuck on Sticking Points

 

Lately, I feel as if I am conducting negotiations between two parties who claim to be one and the same person. The sticking point is that these two men with different names seem to claim the same parents and the same year of birth. Yet, not being twins, that can't be possible.

The one son was baptized as John Cullinane in County Kerry, Ireland, on July 24, 1860. His baptismal record lists his father as Daniel Cullinane and his mother as Gubbenela Falvey—surely an attempt at providing a Latin version of the decidedly Irish name Gobnait. And then, poof! He disappeared from records, as far as I can find.

The other son, claiming the name Patrick Cullinane, may have been born on June 15, 1860. That, at least, is what someone thought when they reported that date for his birth. And yet, that Patrick also claimed that his parents were Daniel and "Debby"—the possible nickname for Gobnait or Gobineta (the likely Latin version mis-entered as Gubbenela).

That second Cullinane son may or may not have been the son of our Daniel Cullinane and Gobnait (or Debora) Falvey. That that detail can't easily be determined, however, means delving deeper into the identity of this particular Patrick Cullinane after his immigration from County Kerry, Ireland, to Boston, Massachusetts.

To make matters worse, Boston may have laid claim to not one but two or three men by that same name, Patrick Cullinane. And each may have married a woman who went by the same nickname as the others.

With marching orders like that, the rest of this month's search for the parents of Gobnait Falvey Cullinane—and thus her sister Johanna, my father-in-law's great-grandmother—may take some wild and crazy turns.

The Mother of Gobineta's Children

 

Tracing the descendants of Johanna Falvey's sister might seem like a great way to confirm Johanna's place in the Falvey family—at least by DNA—but there is one drawback to such a plan. That sticking point is Johanna's sister's actual name.

Johanna's sister was baptized as Gobineta, back in their homeland in County Kerry, Ireland. Her February 27, 1830, baptismal record clearly shows her parents as Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming. Thus, if we can map her connection to descendants who happen to be my husband's DNA matches, that would support the theory of this sisterhood.

There's only one problem with this plan. A name like Gobineta—actually Gobnait—doesn't translate well from the original Irish version to either Latin or English. Thus, it would be no surprise to discover that records of her children might list their mother's name as something other than Gobineta.

Take one son, named Timothy. We'd expect to see his October 7, 1858, baptismal record listing his name in its Latin version, Timotheum. But the Latin was not helpful for his mother's name. In that record, Daniel Cullinane's wife was listed as Debora Falvey, not Gobnait.

But we already knew that. Armed with a name equivalent chart, we've been forewarned to be on the lookout for aliases like Debora or Abigail. So when I followed that one Cullinane son of the next generation to his immigrant home in Boston, I wasn't stumped by the vital records bearing his name. When Timothy Cullinane of Boston decided to marry Margaret McCarthy one cold January day in 1883, it made sense to see his mother's name entered as Deborah. Likewise with his death record, recorded late in 1893 listing his mother as Abbie Falvey.

Timothy Cullinane, son of Gobnait Falvey and Daniel Cullinane, is just one example. In Timothy's case, with his early death, he was predeceased by his only child, a namesake son who died in 1891. As far as I can tell, there will be no DNA matches linked to Timothy's line.

However, Timothy was not the only Falvey descendant to immigrate to Boston. There is apparently another Cullinane brother who also chose that New England port for his move from County Kerry. He, predictably, is also causing problems with verifying his line, not the least of which sticking points is that same particular detail about his mother's name.

I've reached out to some DNA matches who appear to be this second Cullinane son's descendants. Hopefully, on the other side of this weekend, we'll be able to get a fuller picture of this other potential Falvey descendant of the woman with multiple aliases. 

Could Someone Have Gotten this Wrong?

 

I'm going to venture out and possibly say the unforgivable. When it comes to baptismal records, could someone have gotten the details wrong? 

I ask, because I'm having a difficult time locating the baptismal record for my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey. Sure, right now I'm riding on guesswork in estimating that her father's name might have been Patrick Falvey. I'm making that presumption based on traditional Irish naming patterns, in which the second-born son was supposed to be named after his maternal grandfather. Combining that assumption that the name would be Patrick, along with Johanna's own obituary indicating that her native home in County Kerry was somewhere near the Lakes of Killarney, has led me to Catholic records in the parish of Kilcummin.

Granted, Ireland has had a history of records lost for tragic causes, but in the case of the Kilcummin records, all appear to be intact during the time frame when other children of Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming were born. It seems odd to have missed only the records for the year when Johanna was likely born—although pinning a date to her birth has itself been a challenge.

According to subsequent records, the year of Johanna's birth has ranged from 1826 through 1830. Two census records—for 1870 and 1880, after she arrived in Fort Wayne, Indiana—pinned her birth as occurring in 1830. The 1900 census made that even more precise: November of 1829, a reasonable date, given the wiggle room of previous year-only age estimates.

Johanna's death certificate, on the other hand, reported her birth occurring in 1826. Since her age at death, according to her obituary, was given as seventy seven, the math would bear that out—but even her headstone didn't help with these calculations. Complicating matters, Johanna's youngest son, John Kelly, was born in 1876, making his mother fifty years of age at his birth.

Not that that would be impossible, but quite unlikely. And yet, turning to the baptismal records back in Kilcummin parish in County Kerry, even searching page by page through all the possible years in which she could have been born, I find nothing.

However, I did find something else. On June 1, 1827, I located a baptismal record for someone listed as Joannes Falvey, son of Patritius Falvey and Anna Fleming. Unlike many other Catholic baptismal records I've seen, the priest at the Kilcummin parish did not follow the usual format of writing the entire narrative statement out in Latin, "I baptized [name], legitimate son/daughter of [father and mother]."

Thus, by the Kilcummin record using a chart form rather than the traditional narrative, we are robbed of the chance to see the subject/verb agreement in Latin as a guide. Gone, too, would be the opportunity to read whether that was "filius" (son of) versus "filia" (daughter of). Granted, a statement like "I baptized John" (Ioannem) would not look very different than "I baptized Johanna" (Ioannam), but when reading two hundred year old chicken scratch, we need all the help we can get.

Despite squabbling over what might seem like minor details, there was another thought that occurred to me. This is not the first time I've searched for a record for an Irish ancestor named Johanna. Years ago, in searching for another Irish antecedent of my father-in-law, this time the sister of his maternal grandfather John Tully, I had run into records listing that Johanna as "Johann." Could it have been owing to faded records and impossible-to-read handwriting? Possibly. But it shows me that that name is subject to occasional slips of the pen, even resulting in daughters being recorded as sons.

Whether that "John" baptized in the Kilcummin parish was the Falveys' son or a mistaken entry for what should have been their daughter Johanna, I can't say at this point—perhaps I'll never be able to say for sure. That makes it all the more important for me to trace these possible siblings of Johanna, especially now that we've been gifted with such a perceptive tool as DNA testing.

With that, we'll begin looking at the descendants of Johanna's possible sister, Gobnait Falvey, to see if we can find any confirmation of their family connection.

Bound for Boston

 

It should be no surprise to see Irish emigrants embarking for the American city of Boston. Of all the American cities, Boston may be considered the quintessential destination, even more so than New York City, another key port for immigrants. In the case of DNA matches descending from Johanna Falvey's possible sister Gobnait, Boston apparently was their ancestral port of choice.

There are still problems with following that branch of the Falvey family from County Kerry to America. Judging by my husband's DNA matches, as he is the surrogate tester on behalf of my father-in-law, who is long since deceased, Boston is among other locations where Falvey descendants have gathered. The ever-changing name for the matches' matriarch—sometimes Debora or Debby, sometimes Abby for Abigail—still plagues me with doubts that I am following the right family line.

Hopefully, during this week as we review the various branches of the Falvey line pointed out by their descendants' telltale DNA, we can review some of the documentation and determine whether there is any reason beyond name-switching to cause us to doubt we've found the right line. A cogent negative argument is just as important as explaining why a connection is correct. There are so many ways to go astray when researching these Irish lines with such potential to stumble on name twins and other genealogical hazards.

Before we zoom in on our most likely Boston immigrant connection, though, I need to settle the issue of why I cannot find the baptismal record for Johanna, herself. That has been bothering me for a long time. Despite searching page by page through baptismal records for the Kilcummin parish where the Falvey family went to church, I have yet to find a likely document. Tomorrow, we'll take that brief detour to make some notes on possible explanations, before we move on to examine the documents in the Boston area allowing us to track the descendants of Gobnait or "Debora" Falvey.