After the Census

With the John Flannigan family in two camps following the 1900 census—and missing John, to boot—the question now is: what became of them after this point?

Hopefully, some long-lost distant relative will someday read this series and chime in with a comment to set us all straight. It appears at this point, though, that there are precious few leads to allow us to discover the full story. Perhaps owing to a rough life in the mile high city and beyond, it looks like all but two of the original children are no longer around to be counted by the time of the next census.

Out of the household of Mrs. Mary Flannigan, the first clue shows up on page sixteen of the March 13, 1905, edition of the Denver Post.  There has been no indication by obituary that Mrs. Floyd McCauley has so departed. However, the newspaper reports that Mr. Floyd McCauley has just put in for a marriage license—and records show that the ceremony did, indeed, occur on March 16, 1905. The lucky lady named is Lillian M. Kitchin. No sign whatsoever of the whereabouts of Rose, wife number one of this same Floyd McCauley. We shall, at this point, count her as presumed dead.

Unsatisfied with this conclusion, I need to look further. I find a hint on page ten of the January 12, 1901, edition of the Denver Post:

“Mrs. Floyde McCauley of Pueblo spent the holidays with her sister, Miss Grace Flanigan.”

So Rose has moved south to Pueblo, Colorado! I exhaust all search possibilities trying to find more signs of her whereabouts there. The trail ends abruptly with the discovery, courtesy of the Colorado State Archives online, that there is a death certificate for a Rose McCauley in Denver on September 29, 1901. Perhaps this isn’t our Rose. But in that age of marriage-or-die, it is unlikely that there would be a divorce before Floyd’s subsequent marriage.

What of Mary Flannigan’s other daughter, Kate? Mrs. Henry White shows in her mother’s household—albeit without her husband of five years—for the 1900 census, but there is no sign of her after that point. Searching for Kate White, there are no death records in the online records of the Colorado State Archives. Unsure whether to label her as Katherine when I’ve seen no other such mention, I check just in case, and find possibilities. But since the online Archives gives such a minimal amount of information on each entry, it would be hard to guess which record was the correct one to pursue.

I sometimes wonder, since her husband may have been from Utah, whether the two of them left Colorado and returned to his former home. Or could that Denver death record for a Henry David White on July 25, 1900, explain why Mrs. White was alone at her mother’s home during the previous month?

The Flannigan descendants still in Leadville seem to have the same problem with disappearing sisters. While Nellie Flannigan is married and mother of a young one by the year 1900, her younger sister Grace seems to also vanish into thin air after the census.

Shortly after the ink has dried on that 1900 census, it seems the only ones we are left with, conclusively, in that Flannigan family are Tom in Denver and Nellie in Leadville.

We will trace the next few years with them tomorrow.

Photographs all courtesy Flannigan descendant Connie Martel.