Another Tully Graduation

Just a year before Agnes Tully Stevens’ older sister Lily graduated from Saint Anne’s School in south Chicago, another Tully girl graduated from a public school in the same city. Her name, according to the graduation program for the school she attended, was Marie M. Tully.

While I am pretty confident in the thoroughness of my research on the extended Chicago Tully family, when I come across a document such as this, carefully tucked among Agnes Tully Stevens’ personal papers, I begin to lose that confidence.

I’ve had inklings that there was this other branch of our Tully family out there. I’ve seen indications from brief mentions, disconcertingly disconnected from any other documentation. Whoever that family was, they descended from another of the Tully brothers than the ones I already know about.

Beside John, the father of Agnes and Lily, I know of his brothers Patrick and William. That generation of the Tully family was rounded out with two sisters, Johanna and Margaret—though of course, their children would bear those Tully sisters’ married names. So who would provide that Tully surname for this Marie? Did John, Patrick and William have another brother with them in Chicago?

Whoever this Marie Tully was, as an eighth grade graduate in 1894, she would most likely have been born around 1880. Yet, with no birth record that I can locate from current online resources—and facing that twenty-year gap without census records—this particular Tully child remains an enigma to me. Once I discover any further documentation on her identity, though, it will serve to simultaneously open an entire new branch of the extended family to me for more research.

And it all will have started from a simple listing on a graduation program.

Programme:

Song—Ho! For the Woods, -   -   -      Class

Address of Welcome, -   -   -   -   -   -   Charles F. Gridley

Piano Duett, -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -  Maude A. Schank

                                                            Ruby W. Jones

Violin Solo, -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -     Maude A. Moon

Recitation, -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -       Matilda Gibson

Facts and Figures, -   -   -   -   -   -      Agnes T. Reilly

Song—Die Nachtigall; -   -   -   -         Jeanie McKinley

                                                            Lena Durley

                                                            Maude A. Moon

Drill, -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -       Girls

Piano Solo—Tanzweise, -   -   -   -       Edith A. DeWolfe

Drill, -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -       Boys

Class History, -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -      Marie M. Tully

Fifteen Years Hence, -   -   -   -   -        Lillie G. Robb

Valedictory, -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -         Jeanie C. McKinlay

Award of Diplomas and Medals

Song—Night, -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -       Class