Finding What's Missing

 

Being stuck on a research question—where I've currently been left, stumped—can leave one walking in circles. It feels like I've been trying the same approaches over and over again for some of my father-in-law's Irish ancestors. While I wonder whether the brick wall isn't his great-grandparents as much as the overall Irish predicament of the mid-1800s, a nagging thought makes me consider whether I'm missing something. There's got to be an answer out there somewhere, if only I could find it.

I had thought about turning my questions over to a search engine, or to AI resources. With that idea in mind, I thought it was timely to spot Randy Seaver's post in Genea-Musings earlier this week, in which he asked ChatGPT5 about twenty record types we should be sure to include in  any thorough family history search.

Actually, I had put some question to such resources last month while struggling with John Kelly, another great-grandparent from my father-in-law's ancestry. I had wondered why the man's family seemed to dance between two different townlands, and asked Google's Gemini what significant differences there might be about the two townlands, despite their contiguous situation. The result, while not answering my genealogical questions, was informative.

Now, in my search for Anna Flanagan and her brother William from Ballyagran, I went back to a map of the area, showing both the village of Ballyagran as well as the townland where I believe I had found William in Griffith's Valuation before he left for America.

Looking at the map again, I spotted the cemetery we had visited during our family's trip to Ireland back in 2014. The map shows the name as Castletown Conyers cemetery. During our visit, we could clearly see the ruins of the church yard as we walked through the old burial ground, but had no way of knowing whether that was the original church for the Catholic parish where William and his sister Anna had once worshipped. 

While I realize I'll need to revisit questions like this once again, I took my questions to online resources to see what might pop up. Almost immediately appeared a new-to-me resource for cemeteries in Ireland. The Irish Graveyards website provided an aerial view of the compound, a map of the burials, as well as a chart of burials, including individual photographs of headstones (if still in existence).

I'll still need to search through the thirty five pages of notes for this one sizable cemetery—though obviously Anna and William were gone from the area long before their own passing—but it also occurred to me to hold on to this resource, not only for the Castletown-Conyers site, but for all other sites also available on the website. It seems like a useful resource, and another approach besides what is already available through other online cemetery websites.

Of course, I'll need to review what I've already found in searching for the Flanagans, and check that inventory to see if there are other resources I still need to add, not only from sources of documentation, but through the posts on the Flanagans that I've written in the past. It's important to build upon what we've already found, but also to explore new horizons.

Map above courtesy of Google Maps.

About Anna's Husband

 

There are some extra details to know about Anna Flanagan, our eighth of this year's Twelve Most Wanted, to help us find her roots in County Limerick in the mid-1800s. As difficult as it may be to find someone with a surname like Flanagan, at least coupled with Anna's husband's name, it might make the challenge a little less daunting.

At least, that's what I thought. Looking for the marriage records for the Catholic parish of Ballyagran, where Anna's brother William had claimed his roots, I realize that not many church records have been preserved. The listing, according to the National Library of Ireland, leaves a big gap right where I'd guess Anna and Stephen Malloy might have gotten married.

The marriage date is only a guess, based on the date of birth for the couple's only child. Catherine, presumably born in the same place where her uncle William claimed his roots, and where Stephen's farewell letter to her mother was addressed, arrived in either 1847 or 1848, depending on the dates provided by later records in the United States, where she and her mother eventually moved after her father's disappearance.

I have yet to find any marriage record, but knowing how my eyes just love the blurry digitized microfilm records, I'll probably cry over that mystery once again, just to be sure. At least we still have something to search through.

Complicating matters is another detail: just how to spell Anna's husband's surname. Whether in Ireland or in Chicago, where Anna eventually migrated, her married name was treated to multiple variations in the spelling department. Sometimes Mulloy, sometimes Malloy or even Melloy—or take away an "l" to make it even more challenging—this is clearly a case of employing wildcards for the search.

All I know for sure is that one day in February of 1849, Stephen sat down—most likely with someone who could write the letter he dictated—to send fond farewells to his wife and let know that, due to a warning he had received, he was leaving from Liverpool, bound for Boston. That was the last that Anna heard from her husband.

On the other side of this story, nearly one hundred seventy years into her future, the envelope that she saved along with that letter guided us in our travels to County Limerick, and brought us, perhaps, to the very parcel of land where she lived while awaiting word from her husband. Even if institutions were not able to preserve records about a specific ancestor, I'm grateful for our own family members who realized the importance of preserving the few details they could find among their relatives' mementos.

Meet Anna

 

There are some ancestors whose stories we fall in love with, and Anna Flanagan's story is such a one. Though I've researched her in the past—she was my father-in-law's great-grandmother—there is so much that remains a mystery still. I'm hoping a concentrated look at the details of her life will bring something more to light as we get this early jump on the eighth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

What I do know about Anna is rather basic regarding the beginning of her life. I know she was born about 1810—if we can believe the report of her age in the 1860 census following her first appearance after emigration from Ireland. There in Chicago, she was listed by her married name, Ann Mulloy, but she was not living with her husband. Rather, she was in the household of someone named William Flanagan—turned out to be her brother—and her thirteen year old only child, Catherine.

Thanks to the information etched on Anna's brother's headstone after his passing in 1893, we can be fairly certain that the Catholic parish of Ballyagran in County Limerick would be her birthplace as well as his. Unfortunately, existing baptismal and marriage records for that location do not extend back far enough to provide documentation for either of those two births from Anna's own family. And I've yet to locate her marriage record or her daughter's baptism.

Prompted by a copy of the letter sent by her husband, Stephen Mulloy, on the eve of his (possibly unexpected) departure for Boston, I did manage to confirm his name appeared in passenger records, just as he had told her he'd be doing. Whatever happened to him after that point, I have yet to discover, despite searching through multiple spelling variations in the Boston area. Nor can I find any record of Anna crossing the Atlantic in search of the man, or her daughter's passage at a later point in her childhood, as the family surmised had been the case.

Anna's story picks up just as abruptly in Chicago with the 1860 census. Through the many more-readily accessible documents from that point until her death in 1885, it is easier to glean an impression of this woman through the events in her later life shared through letters and family reports. Yet it is those early years before her emigration—and that of her two brothers—that still mystifies me. Hopefully, this year will allow us a peek into the rest of that story.

Back to the Flanagans

When plans don't seem to go as...well, as planned, it's time to move on. At the end of June, I opted to move on early to July's selection for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, John Kelly. That was an impossible choice, and I knew it—but I had hopes.

Those hopes didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, so I'm taking my cue from last month's ending and moving on to the next. With this early start, we'll be headed back to the Flanagans for August. 

My main focus for this month's feature from my Twelve Most Wanted will be Anna Flanagan. Hers was a story which beguiled me, and despite the struggles to learn more, I just love retelling what unfolded in her life. Yet there are several points at which I've confronted closed doors in the timeline of her history.

This month won't just focus on Anna, though. There is her husband, whose mysterious disappearance still begs for explanation. And her one daughter's journey across the Atlantic—with whom, if not her mother?—has yet to be documented, though the fact that she spent the rest of her life in Chicago is proof that she did make the journey from County Limerick...somehow.

Besides Anna and her daughter Catherine, there was Anna's bachelor brother William, who also ended up in Chicago, possibly with another brother. While I still haven't discovered that other brother's identity, I know his daughter also made the journey to Chicago, as well.

If it wasn't for the bachelor brother's magnificent headstone in a Chicago cemetery, I might not have discovered where the Flanagans originated. Thanks to a message etched in stone, I not only have the name of the Irish county, but thankfully the parish as well.

Head starts in research only get us so far, though. Despite being the recipient of this fortunate set of discoveries, I have much yet to learn on the Flanagans. We'll jump in tomorrow with a brief sketch of Anna Flanagan and the pertinent details of her life—at least the ones I've found so far.

Some Thoughts on "Pack Rats"

 

Pack rats—and I'm not talking about the rodent variety here—can be people prone to hoarding unnecessary items. Some avocational genealogists have been accused by family members of being guilty of that very habit, and its related downfall, inability to resist bright shiny objects. But let's think about that for a moment.

As I prepare to launch into my research topic for the coming month—the eighth of my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors for 2026—I realized I would know very little about the early years of this woman's life if it hadn't been for the propensity of her descendants to hoard such items as old letters, photos, and documents. Indeed, the very story that endears me to this woman revolves around a letter which, once received, she folded, placed back in its envelope, and carried with her for the rest of her life. It was the last word she had received from her husband before he disappeared.

Then again, it might have been near impossible to locate records back in Ireland for another of this family's ancestors, except that a pack rat descendant decided to save the little slip of paper handwritten by a priest in County Tipperary, noting the date of baptism of another relative, along with the names of his parents—maiden name for the mother, included. I have yet to find that record in its original home, either.

From letters sent home by my teenaged father-in-law during his service in the early years of World War II to letters exchanged by his great-grandparents with family and friends almost one hundred years before that point, I've gleaned much about these family members which could not otherwise have been found. Others may complain about pack rat relatives, but I for one am grateful that someone saw the value in saving "unnecessary" items.

Don't Blink

 

Now that AI for family history has become all the passion, it seems as if DNA testing has taken a back seat. Not that it has become the red-headed step-child of the genealogy world—that happened after the Golden State Killer case became the breaking story—but there aren't quite as many breathless announcements posted on the topic lately.

Given that observation, I was almost surprised to see a banner pop up on my screen when I decided to take a peek at the latest DNA results for my tests at Ancestry.com.

Really? Ancestry is investing in upgrading their DNA services? I thought no one was talking DNA anymore...

Of course I had to click the second button, "Learn more."

And then, I waited.

The screen seemed to struggle to move ahead to the next item. Finally, it gave up with a screen left blank, all except for an "Ask Leaf" in the lower right corner. I guess AI won, after all.

I blinked. And I guess I missed it. I tried looking again, starting from the beginning of my search. This time, the announcement box didn't even show up. While I'm hoping that Ancestry delved further into accuracy in predicting close family relationships—I'm just really keen on reading their white papers—I've been quite happy with what they've already provided their DNA customers. But better is always, um, better. Right?

In Early, Out Early

 

What to do when stuck on a research problem? In John Kelly's case, I'm afraid I've worn out all the alternative approaches to finding the roots of my father-in-law's great-grandfather, John Kelly. While I don't know where he was born—other than Ireland—I can say for sure that he was married in the parish of Kilcummin in County Kerry to a woman from Knockauncore named Johanna Falvey. After the birth of a few of their children (and the loss of at least one daughter), the family decided it would be best for them to migrate to America—to Fort Wayne, Indiana, specifically.

Following the trail into their future in America was certainly easier than struggling to find signs of their past in Ireland. After nearly a month of not having much to "write home" about, I've decided: since we entered this chase to find John Kelly on the early side, thanks to a peach of a research project in the previous month, we may as well close out this month's struggle early, too.

In the process of checking all the details I could find this month on John Kelly, I've noted every discrepancy between records—from the multiple years of birth extrapolated from various U.S. Census records to the varying names reported for the townlands where the family lived at the birth of each child. I've tried to see if godparents' names might guide me to clues on Kelly siblings. I've studied the Irish naming patterns to see whether that might enlighten me on possible parents' names. I've turned over every stone in the pathway, in hopes I'd find some fortunate clue somewhere—anywhere.

Nothing yet.

This may be one of those times when it's best to take a break and move on to the next of my Twelve Most Wanted for the year. John Kelly was a tough candidate. I had high hopes for breaking through that research barrier to find his family. But sometimes, setting a problem aside to give a weary brain some rest might be the best policy. John Kelly will be right where I left him, the next time we revisit this puzzle. Next week, we'll pick up with a fresh challenge.