A Little Genealogy R & R

 

Since I'm traveling this weekend, I thought it would be the perfect time to take some genealogy R&R. Not that I'm taking a vacation from genealogy, as for the most part, I find building trees to be relaxing. But the tedium of grinding through page after page of handwritten baptismal records from nearly two hundred years ago has worn me down. I need a change of pace.

Tucked away in my computer's tabs is a history, a to-do list of incomplete research projects spun off from prior months' Twelve Most Wanted goals. One project which has been sitting idle since I researched my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather Lyman Jackson back in April was building out the branch of all his descendants. With thirteen children who apparently all lived to adulthood, as you can imagine, that branch has included multiple lines of descent.

Best intentions were to continue that work behind the scenes as I wrote posts for subsequent featured ancestors. But when the search for answers for those hard-to-find Irish documents for my father-in-law's line took up all my time, that behind the scenes work shrunk and shriveled until, instead of growing, it withered on that Jackson family branch.

Rather than a tedious process, I've always found building the American branches on the family tree to be rather relaxing. Over this weekend, a little rest and relaxation break with the Jacksons may be just what I need to span the time before I can return home and tackle my father-in-law's hopelessly hidden Irish roots once again.

Circling Back to D N A

 

Not finding any further documentation for the family of Patrick Falvey in County Kerry, the supposed Irish patriarch for my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey Kelly, I decided it might be time to circle back to those DNA test results once again. Of course, I'll still be searching the baptismal records of the Kilcummin Catholic parish, page by page, but one thing I noticed in that process caused me to spin off toward another focus: those local surnames.

The original couple I've been seeking to verify through documentation has been Patrick Falvey and his wife, Anna Fleming. Since the first Falvey baptismal record I found was dated in 1830, my page-by-page tour through the church records began from that point. Entry after entry, I noticed lots of Flemings, but not many Falveys. There were, of course, other common surnames liberally scattered through the records, such as Sullivan.

Seeing that, my first question was whether Falvey was a surname of someone who married into the Fleming family from another townland. Where were all the other Falveys? After all, according to some records, Falveys were plentiful in County Kerry. What I should have also wondered, however, was whether there was any way to connect the many Fleming family members I was spotting in those baptismal records to Patrick Falvey's wife.

Eventually, the years gave way to a different set of recurring surnames as others faded away in my tour through the Kilcummin baptismal records. By then, I was researching records dated during the famine years, a formidable change agent which understandably could make some family names disappear over broad swaths of the territory. However reasonable my strategy might have seemed when I began it, it was time to reach for another approach.

That's when I went back to those DNA matches descending from unknown Falvey ancestors from County Kerry. There were plenty available to choose from at all the places where my husband has tested. Choosing the best bet of the bunch, I then used Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool combined with the ProTools capability of viewing shared matches, and moved from one confirmed descendant of Patrick Falvey to all the DNA cousins matching that tester.

Bit by bit, I examined each related match, looking for linked—and robust—family trees. Eventually, I landed at two possibilities for further checking, matches who, encouragingly, still live in Ireland. Rather than seeing the Falvey surname featured prominently in those matches' trees, though, I found Flemings. Could it be that I'd find better results following the Flemings than the Falveys? After all, the Kilcummin parish seemed flush with Flemings but barely offering any entries for Falveys.

Following the winding trail from one DNA match to that person's closest cousins, I'll be checking those trees, contacting those matches, and sharing notes. Perhaps there is more to find on that maternal Fleming line than I had originally thought.

The Tedium of Double Checking

 

When a particular ancestor fails to appear in those instant-gratification computerized genealogy searches, what is left to do but go line by line, page by page through the digitized records. At least, we need to look thoroughly where we last saw the family.

So, as I find myself in a tailspin over my father-in-law's Falvey ancestors from County Kerry, I'm not only building those quick-and-dirty trees behind the scenes for DNA matches lacking their own family trees, but I'm also going back and double-checking the records.

In today's case, I took the baptismal records for the Catholic parish of Kilcummin, beginning with the eldest child I could find for Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming. From that 1830 date, I then went, page by page and noted every single baptism which involved the surname Falvey, whether for the father or the mother. 

I watched, over the years, as the names changed from frequent listings for Fleming family members and that ever-popular Irish surname, Sullivan, to an entirely different set of surnames. By the time I completed the year of 1854, what I saw made me wonder whether those Falveys had died out entirely during the famine years, or possibly all moved away. I wondered, also, if they might merely have moved to a neighboring parish, or made a more permanent move far away from Ireland entirely.

All told, I found eleven entries involving the Falvey surname before I called it quits for the day. I'll continue with the records from 1855 onward tomorrow. But I'll also need to determine where might be the next logical place to look for these Falvey family members. After all, my father-in-law's great-grandmother apparently had siblings left in County Kerry by the time of her own death—if, that is, I can believe what her obituary said.

If Jeremiah was the One

 

We may have found an Irish immigrant from County Kerry named Jeremiah Falvey who shared the same occupation as Gobnait Falvey's son Patrick Cullinane—marble polisher—but that doesn't mean we can stretch possibilities thin enough to support a connection with Gobnait's brother, the one baptized as Demetrius. And yet, another detail draws me to follow what can be found about a Jeremiah naturalized in Boston, Massachusetts.

That detail is the appearance of a Jeremiah Falvey in a family tree linked to a DNA match among my husband's results at Ancestry.com. This match is estimated to be a fourth cousin with a small centiMorgan connection, similar to other Falvey DNA connections of this generational distance I've seen. 

There is, however, one problem with that Jeremiah Falvey connection: the DNA match claims that ancestral line to have lived in Chicopee, Massachusetts, not Boston. The end result is that this pursuit is steering me clear of the Boston Falvey immigrant and towards one of the same name who settled much farther west in the state of Massachusetts. We may, in the end, discover there was no connection between those two Jeremiahs at all, despite both being from the same Irish county.

Furthermore, acting the part of a genealogical Doubting Thomas, I decided to see just how many Irish Catholic church records insisted on shying away from the use of the name Jeremiah, and instead substituting Demetrius, the name given in baptismal records for a son of my father-in-law's proposed Falvey ancestors Patrick and Anna. While a quick and dirty experiment can't explain everything, I figured if that were the tradition for transforming an Irish given name into Latin, there would have been no Catholic records for someone named Jeremiah.

Surprise. That wasn't true. There were several Jeremiahs out there, given under the hand of Irish priests in many Catholic parishes, at least according to this one quick review. There was even a marriage entry for a Jeremias Falvey in our Falveys' home parish in Kilcummin. At least in the later years of the 1800s, folks didn't shy away from using the name Jeremiah in formal records. Rather than truly being Jeremiah, that son's baptismal name Demetrius may well have been literally that: the name of our Patrick and Anna Falvey's son baptized in 1837.

So what about the Jeremiah Falvey who ended up in Massachusetts? Especially considering that he was an ancestor of a DNA match, this will be one line worth following. Building out a tree for this DNA match may point out more details allowing us to see not only how this Jeremiah connects with my father-in-law's Falvey ancestors back in County Kerry, but how his descendants cluster with other DNA matches connected to our direct family line.

. . . 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.