Finding the Path

 

Baptismal records for Catholic ancestors who lived in Ireland pre-famine years can be hard to find—and once found, can be hard to read. Right now, I'm on a mission to capture all the entries for Flannery family members who might have been related to Margaret Flannery, my father-in-law's great-grandmother. My hope is to find the path from her Catholic parish in County Tipperary to the townlands where her family lived.

All the Flannery records I'm searching are from the Catholic parish in Ballina, but I already know from our family's visit there in 2015 that the priest from the church in Ballina also served as a sort of circuit rider, leaving the actual town to circle through the townlands to baptize and administer other sacraments of the faith. The records he kept usually indicated the actual location of the parishioner's residence.

I began my search by setting up a table to organize all the Flannery baptismal records for the Catholic parish of Ballina. Then, I looked for each entry which included a child surnamed Flannery. I noted date of baptism, mother's maiden name (if given), name of each godparent, and residence. Children born to the same set of Flannery parents were listed together under their parents' heading.

Then, I looked to find the locations of each residence. Right now, I've located several different locations, showing me that there were a number of different townlands where Flannery kin had lived during the time frame of my search—from about 1833 through 1850.

Among the most often repeated locations in the townlands of County Tipperary was one called Ballycorrigan. Searching on townlands.ie showed me that Ballycorrigan is just east of Ballina, a reasonable walking distance to the church. John Flannery and his wife Norry Johnson lived there, as well as William Flannery and his wife Kitty Keough, and Patrick Flannery and his wife Sally Ryan.

A second place with several Flannery families was named Curraghmore. Farther still from the church in Ballina, Curraghmore was actually in the next civil parish to the east, a place called Kilmastulla—another name I've found on the baptismal records for Flannerys.

The next step for me will be to look through those baptismal records for children of possible Flannery sisters of the men already found in the records, to see if I can spot any further patterns, using traditional clustering methods like the names of godparents. My hope is that some patterns will emerge to provide suggestions as to how to cluster each of these Flannery families with possible siblings. We've tried that approach before with Margaret Flannery's husband's Tully line, although that attempt turned out to be rather inconclusive. Hopefully, something more obvious will emerge for the Flannery line next week.

Signs They Were There

 

The further I reach into old Canadian—and then Irish—records, the more I see signs not only that our Flannerys and Tullys were there, but ways that they continued to connect. Take this July 1847 baptismal record for John Flannery, son of Edmund Flannery and Margaret "Quogh" in the Roman Catholic records of Ontario, Canada. For the godparents of this son born on June 24, the priest had listed John Gorman and Margaret Tully. Tully had been the married name of Edmund's suspected sister Margaret, and Gorman is a surname spotted as neighbors of our original Denis Tully family from the 1851 census.

Denis Tully, my father-in-law's great-grandfather, had married someone named Margaret Flannery, but being that they were both immigrants to Canada West from Ireland, I needed to trace their path back to their homeland. What signs could I find that the Flannery family was there in County Tipperary as I had supposed? That was my next step.

Fortunately, there were several signs, embedded in the scrawl of religious documented in the all-but-underground Catholic church of the time. Referring to the 1851 census where we had already found them in the village of Paris in Brant County, Ontario, I knew their children's names: Patrick, Cornelius, and Michael. (Youngest son John, as we've already seen, had been born after the family arrived in Canada.)

Yet looking to baptismal records back in County Tipperary, in the area surrounding the town of Ballina, I couldn't find a record for any of these children of Edmund and Margaret. What I did find was a record naming those parents for two other children, children who apparently died in the late 1840s—and possibly became the impetus for the family's decision to migrate to Canada. Those two were Ellen, baptized in April 1843, and Edmund, baptized in 1845.

Those two baptismal records garnered a few interesting details. For Ellen, the record represented the parents as "Ned"—a possible nickname for Edmund—and gave Margaret's maiden name as Keogh, a more likely spelling for her name than the Quogh rendition in her son John's Canadian baptismal record. For Ellen's younger brother Edmund in April 1845, his parents were seemingly listed in a rush: "Edmd" for his father, with Margaret's name likely abbreviated as "Marg.," read possibly in error as Mary.

While looking at these baptismal records, I also gleaned the names of each child's sponsors, just in case those names turned out to be significant to us in our current chase for DNA cousins. For Ellen, the godparents were John Keogh, likely Margaret's brother, and Winny, a woman whose maiden name keeps appearing in family records but seems difficult to render properly: Finn? Linnel? For Edmund, the godparents were Laurence and Mary Mullins.

Sometimes, it seems that to find the key to connect the extended family constellation, we need to reach ever farther in records. I find myself in that place, working with this Flannery line, so I did a search on a collection of Irish baptismal records, limiting the results to County Tipperary and Ballina. I'll glean all the pertinent names, including sponsors, and see if I can find any patterns among the Flannery names. After all, traditional Irish naming patterns may help me make some presumed connections to compare with the distant Flannery cousins I'm working with online.

In the meantime, in perusing those County Tipperary records for Flannerys, I couldn't help but notice one marriage record which also linked to our Tully line: someone named John Tully—but not ours—marrying someone named Kitty Flannery. These two likely also followed my father-in-law's great-grandparents from Ballina to Canada, if they are the same as the John Tully family in the 1851 Canadian census. Though I haven't yet been able to figure out just how this John Tully connects to our Denis Tully—hint: he is not Denis' son by that same name, as that is our fully researched direct line—this time we'll take it from the Flannery side and see if we can connect Kitty to her relatives in County Tipperary, as well. 

Rebuilding the Tree

 

Can you build another person's family tree?

No, I didn't ask whether you could copy someone else's family tree; I said actually do the work yourself and build a tree from another family's starting point. For some of our DNA matches unlinked from any family tree data, sometimes that is our only choice: roll up our sleeves and build the tree ourselves.

Not that I'm in that exact situation. The tree I'm building now will hopefully become part of my own father-in-law's tree, but for now, I'm not quite sure, so this is an experiment. My goal is to find a connection for my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery, wife of Irish immigrant Denis Tully from Ballina in County Tipperary, Ireland.

As it so happens, finding Denis Tully's household in the 1851 Canadian census revealed some neighbors of interest: the family of a man named Edmund Flannery. As if that weren't enough of an impetus, further down the same census page I discovered another immigrant Tully man whose wife happened to be a Flannery. Family members? Perhaps we'll see in this week's brief tour of what can be found, looking both backwards and forwards on that Flannery family tree.

My first step has been to add, then detach, Edmund Flannery from Margaret Flannery's part of my father-in-law's tree. That way, he is still in my database, but not in a position which might mislead an unsuspecting researcher to copy that detail—which, for now, could just as easily be a mistake as a presumed sibling.

From there, I'm beginning to add Edmund's children to that same database, under their disconnected father's record. So far, I've only been able to add Edmund's oldest son, Patrick. Included in Patrick's line was his wife, Margaret Gorman, Canadian-born daughter of Irish immigrants whose place in that same Canadian census was only one page prior to Edmund's own household.

Patrick and Margaret's family included several daughters and one lone son, at least according to the next document where I found Patrick's growing family listed: the 1891 Canadian census. From eldest to youngest in stair-step fashion, they were Mary, Margaret, Ellen, Agnes, James, and Kate.

As I've been busy adding documentation as confirmation of the connection—and in hopes of building the tree out further, in case it garners some additional Flannery DNA connections—the facts I'm uncovering jog my memory, and I realize I've run into Patrick before. Long before, it turns out, I found him on another failed research expedition to uncover our Margaret Flannery's roots. Patrick Flannery was the unfortunate sixty three year old man found drowned in a mill race in 1895.

What's a mill race, I had wondered at the time. Thanks to some help from a reader, and an incredible stroke of good fortune in that the only year the Essex Free Press had been placed online then was for that same year—1895—I at least learned of Patrick Flannery's sad demise. Since then, of course, much more material has come online, and I have found the death record for our Patrick, informing us that his death was—thankfully—an accidental drowning and not due to foul play. And, oh, that he was born in County Tipperary, and that the reporting party, at least, was from Paris in the County of Brant, our Patrick's Canadian home. But not much more than that.

From that eldest Flannery son Patrick from the 1851 census, I'll continue the same research project for his younger brothers. Hopefully, today's much-improved access to more online records will yield me better results than the last time I attempted this same project. In the meantime, we also need to take a look backwards to see whether we can find any documentation now on those Irish-born sons of Edmund Flannery back in County Tipperary.

Friends and Flannerys

 

Does that F.A.N. Club notion really hold? Could immigrant neighbors really have been more than just friends? Was it family or just coincidence that after a trip of more than three thousand miles, Denis Tully and his wife ended up with neighbors surnamed Flannery?

It all started with an ink blot and a curious hesitance to enter the actual name of married women in the 1851 census for the village of Paris in Brant County, Ontario. There was my father-in-law's great-grandfather Denis Tully, listed with his forty three year old wife, entered simply as "Mrs." Only a few lines below that in the same census record was an entry for another family with the surname Flannery. Predictably, the wife's name was also entered as "Mrs.," but the husband's name was aggravatingly obscured by an inconvenient ink blot.

Edman, I guessed—but I could hardly be sure. What kind of name might that have been? Besides not wanting to be socially forward about women he didn't know, this enumerator apparently hadn't shined in spelling during his school years.

No matter. What I did want to know was whether Edmund—as I presumed the official had meant to write—might have been an in-law of Denis Tully. After all, Denis had married a Flannery, himself. Perhaps ink-blot Edman might have been his brother-in-law. If so, I couldn't resist the thought that Edman might lead me back to the place in County Tipperary, Ireland, where both the Tullys and the Flannerys were said to have originated.

That is still my question today, though I've since found plenty of indicators that there were other Flannerys in and near the Catholic parish of Ballina. Reason I'm revisiting this question: another DNA connection has contacted me about a possible Flannery link in Canada. We're forming a Flannery collaboration. While we are comparing notes, it might be helpful to outline what I know about this Flannery family in Brant County before stepping backwards in time to their origins in Ireland.

That 1851 census showed a household with four children, having a similar pattern to our Tullys: all born in Ireland, with the exception of the baby of the family, born after the family's arrival in Canada. In this case, the baby was John Flannery, and at the point of that enumeration year, his upcoming birthday would have made him four years of age—in other words, sometime during the year of 1852.

Along with John—and after a significant gap in ages—were his older brothers Michael (aged 15), Cornelius (aged 17), and Patrick (aged 19). I've tried tracing these sons forward in time, as well as looking for their Flannery father back in County Tipperary. Now that I've found a possible Flannery cousin to compare notes with, thanks to a referral by another DNA match, we'll spend the rest of the month seeing what can be found on the extended Flannery family. 

A Flannery Family Focus

 

Would it be possible to solve a family history mystery in the span of ten days? Could we, if we've already tackled the question twice before, manage to handle it before the close of this month? I'm not sure, but I'm willing to give it a try. After all, my planned research project for this month has fizzled out—yes, I can be a wimp that way—and I need to find something to replace it.

Into this perfect research storm steps an unsuspecting DNA match who provides the inspiration. Actually, this researcher is a genealogy friend of a friend, referred to me by another DNA match who is also working on the same line. Together, we are tackling various aspects of the trail-gone-cold of my father-in-law's immigrant great-grandparents Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery. After a volley of emails with this new-found connection, I decided I found my blogging answer: make the Flannery family line my focus for the rest of July.

Oh, we have tackled this project several times in the past. Sometimes I feel as if it were all to no avail—my immediate reaction when thinking back to the two times I've blogged about the Flannery family in 2015 and, more recently, just last August. But now that I look back to some of the posts on the Flannery family here at A Family Tapestry, I realize I did make progress. It's time to regroup and move a step beyond.

So this is it: the Flannerys will be our focus for the remainder of the month, both in County Tipperary, where they originated, and where they emigrated, a place which was once called Canada West. There are several neighboring Flannery families I've discovered in the past few times this surname has been reviewed, so tomorrow we'll take a look at those loose ends and see whether we can find a clear path forward.

Driven by D N A

 

Ever since having taken an autosomal DNA test in 2014, my family history work has been driven by DNA. Building my family tree has included the enrichment of collateral lines for each generation, thanks to the many DNA matches whose identity and connection had kept me stumped for the years before I made that cataloging decision. Now, my tree is connected in many different directions—at least as many as can possibly bring up a match with another DNA test taker in our family tree. I want to know how I relate to all these DNA cousins.

Thus, the numbers on my biweekly tally may seem over the top—but keep in mind mine is not a tree seeking solely to see "how far back" I can go. I'm looking for cousins—sometimes up to fourth and fifth cousins—not the identity of my tenth great-grandparents.

Knowing that background explanation, it isn't quite as surprising to see I added 343 thoroughly-documented distant cousins to my in-laws' family tree over the last two weeks. And the tree's total count of 36,153 doesn't seem so outlandish when put in that perspective. Besides, I've been clipping along at a similar rate now for nearly ten years, so the total size of the tree makes more sense when seen from that perspective.

Of course, that progress is also driven by both my Twelve Most Wanted research plans for the year and my behind-the-scenes follow-up on DNA matches. For instance, since my research goal this month was to focus on my father-in-law's possible relative, all my work so far centered on my in-laws' tree for July—and absolutely nothing happened to grow my own parents' family tree. (That tree still sits at 38,405, where it will stay until we begin work on my father's line in October.)

Follow-up on DNA matches adds more effort on both trees. For instance, behind the scenes this month, I've been working on a collateral line linked to a DNA match from my mother-in-law's side of the family. There's been a lot to add on that family line, thus the growth in that tree. In addition, a new connection with another side of my father-in-law's tree means collaboration with a DNA match may help propel our progress forward through mutual effort—always an encouraging outcome. These latest DNA contacts may help inspire how I round out the posts for the rest of this month, seeing how we've run out of steam in our pursuit of Hugh Stevens. We'll talk about those collaborations on Monday.

Why No Y?

 

Before we take our final leave of the Stevens quandary—the abrupt appearance and equally quick disappearance of Hugh Stevens—there's one last question I have. To put that question in shorthand, I'm wondering why there is no Y—as in Y-DNA, the genetic test which can reveal a subject's father's father's father back through time and even beyond the dates of genealogical records.

To test Hugh Stevens' supposed brother's line—that of John Stevens who immigrated to Lafayette, Indiana, in 1851—my husband took the Y-DNA test at Family Tree DNA. He tested for 111 markers, certainly far less than the 700 markers used in the most complete Y-DNA test available now, but still a sturdy indicator representing John Stevens' genetic legacy.

The result? After ten years of waiting, there are only two other men who match my husband at that 111 mark. The kicker is: neither of them is surnamed Stevens.

If I look at my husband's current matches at the next lowest level—67 markers—he has thirty two matches, but the closest of those is a genetic distance of three, not an exact match. Again, the test taker goes by a different surname. In fact, not one of those thirty two matches goes by the surname Stevens. We are not getting close here, either.

What could be the cause of this lack of results? Of course, the easiest answer could be that no one from this Stevens family has tested besides my husband. However, despite NPE possibilities—"not the parent expected"—another reason might be that there were no male descendants left to test on this patriline, other than my husband's own male cousins on the paternal side. My husband's paternal grandfather was an only son, and his father before him, though having one brother with surviving children, included a son who had no children of his own.

And that leads us back to immigrant John Stevens, the father of those two brothers. Could he have been the only surviving son of his father, as well? Or could this lack of Y-DNA matches be due to another reason—perhaps that our John Stevens wasn't really a Stevens son after all? It becomes quite a lonely planet here, when looked at through a lens like that.

No matter what the reason—only surviving Stevens patrilineal descendant or immigrant hiding under an alias—it's clear that no one else has yet tested who descends from that patriline, whatever name it turns out to be. And it's also clear that, with no further leads to answer our research questions, we need to set aside our study of John Stevens' Irish roots, likely for a very long time.

A Different Kind of Migration

 

The news has finally broken on the collaboration between Family Tree DNA and MyHeritage. Family Tree DNA is retiring their tree-building program and opting instead to have customers build their DNA-linked trees using MyHeritage's system. A blog post yesterday at MyHeritage spelled out the changes and provided step by step instructions for Family Tree DNA customers to migrate from the one tree-building option—to be phased out by early September—to the other. 

There are actually two different offers out there. One is to set up a new tree on MyHeritage by migrating from the already-existing family tree the customer may have set up at Family Tree DNA. This is a wonderful opportunity for those who aren't already MyHeritage subscribers. The other option is to simply use an already-existing tree at MyHeritage and link the FTDNA test to the person's entry in the pre-existing tree. I chose the second option.

All great news, I assure you, but not so exciting for those of us who got multiple family members involved in targeted DNA testing. While I already keep a rudimentary version of my family tree on MyHeritage, it will require quite a bit of work before all the branches are polished and in their proper places. Plus, each DNA test I administer will need to go through the same process to migrate over, properly linked, to my account at MyHeritage.

Let's just say I take my job as genealogy guinea pig seriously: I needed to write down notes on my experience and share them. Here's what I found. Though the MyHeritage blog post provided explicit instructions to walk customers through the process, if there was any place something could go wrong, I was sure to be the one to find it.

And I did. I managed to inspire a "something went wrong" message almost immediately on my first try—while adding my husband to his tree at MyHeritage. Granted, that was partially my fault. I had signed in to what I thought was his account at FTDNA and began the process when that nagging thought in the back of my mind—did I really sign in to the right account?—ground the whole thing to a halt. I wanted to go back and check, but—poof!—there went everything, including the pop-up window in which I had been working through the instructions.

When I regrouped and finally thought I had completed the whole process of linking each test taker with the appropriate box in the MyHeritage pedigree chart, I spotted what looked like a DNA icon, so I clicked on that, hoping it would provide confirmation of a successful linking. But no. All that came up was a message: "Pop-up window blocked." I couldn't tell if I had correctly completed the link or not.

After wandering around both sites for each of the tests I needed to link—complete with visits back to my email inbox to retrieve MyHeritage's two-factor notifications each time I signed in to their account—I happened to notice I had received other emails from MyHeritage. "Your account was successfully linked," the subject line proclaimed, providing the specific FTDNA kit number for each of the messages.

While it would have been nice to see that notification pop up on the actual screen at MyHeritage as I was desperately trying to poke on buttons without, seemingly, any result, at least the feedback arrived at some place where I could find it. I guess I just would have liked my immediate feedback to be a bit more, well, immediate-er.

Stevens? Stephens? Anybody?

 

In an era during which spelling mattered much less than it might today, a thirty one year old man left County Mayo in the northern reaches of Ireland, journeyed to Liverpool, England, where he obtained passage—likely on the cheapest ticket possible—to New Orleans, Louisiana. From there, he completed his journey up the Mississippi, then by its tributaries to Lafayette, on the Wabash in Indiana. According to his report recorded on his First Declaration, he arrived during the last month of 1852.

The name he gave was Stevens—Hugh Stevens—but it could just as likely have been spelled Stephens. In fact, looking at passenger records for New Orleans, I was just as likely to find entries for "H. Stephens" as for a man spelling his name as Stevens. Besides, who are we kidding here? Hugh Stevens signed his First Declaration with a mark, not a signature; he likely had no idea at all how to spell his own name.

So, taking that question one step further, I took one last peek at the records drawn up—and thankfully still in existence—back in his home location in County Mayo. For this, I first visited the website Ask About Ireland, where their search of Griffith's Valuation yielded me one solitary household in County Mayo listed under the surname Stevens: the family of Michael Stevens.

Ah, then, the question becomes: could this Michael have been the father of Hugh? Or even of his possible brother John? Looking back at John's family where he settled in Lafayette, Indiana, I can see he had three sons named James, John, and William. No Michael. Can I trust that Irish immigrant to follow the tradition of his forefathers and name his firstborn son after his own father? If so, that father wouldn't have been named Michael.

What can be learned about the parish in which that Michael Stevens was said to have lived? Griffith's Valuation showed Michael Stevens to have lived in the civil parish of Killasser. Taking that question to the search engines led me to a newsletter published for what appears to be the church parish by the same name. Still, it provides a usable description of the rural location for someone as far removed from the scene as I am, as does another entry I found on the near-defunct old RootsWeb site. Townlands.ie fills in some of the blanks about the many townlands within that civil parish, but as I'm at a loss as to where to turn next, the information is currently of no use to me.

Could that surname have turned out, rather, to be spelled Stephens? Trying this second option back at Ask About Ireland, I found thirty six entries in County Mayo, including two with the given name John. Prominent among the many given names listed were Patrick and Michael, but no James, the name of John Stevens' firstborn son. And not a one of those thirty six was named Hugh, making me wish all the more that Hugh had not disappeared—not, at least, until having fathered a firstborn son and followed the traditional Irish naming pattern to give me some help with that question.

Until I find more clues to help with this puzzle, I doubt I'll be able to move forward with this month's research question. With that, I'll fold the file up and put it back in its digital place. If any major discoveries of further records surface in Ireland—or a long-lost distant cousin and descendant of our missing Hugh Stevens decides to take a DNA test—I'll be happy to revisit this research question. But for now, it's time to move on. There are other research tasks to tackle.

Overused Cliches and Doing Things Over

 

If doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result has become a cliche—try this cataloguing of the famed "definition" attributed to a really brainy guy—then I guess I won't write any more to litter the literary landscape. That said, I still did try my hand—again—at looking for Hugh Stevens' arrival in New Orleans in December of 1852. 

And the result? This may come as a surprise, but it was the same outcome as the last time I tried to find him. Despite what he insisted to officials when he arrived in Lafayette, Indiana, Hugh Stevens' name wasn't on passenger lists in New Orleans during that supposed month of his arrival. Or that page (or two) is still missing from the records which have been saved for all these years.

I did find some near misses. Using the search mechanisms at FamilySearch.org, I filtered out all passengers born in places other than Ireland and Great Britain, but somehow managed to include all the spelling variations for the Stevens surname. The closest date of arrival I could find was for a Stephens in 1851.

Moving to Ancestry.com, their search process yielded twenty four possibilities arriving in New Orleans for the search term "H. Stevens," including spelling variations. Two of them even arrived in 1852—a promising sign that those dates weren't totally lost from the record—but they came much earlier in the year.

Despite those disappointing results, I did notice one detail that might turn out to be helpful: many of the ships arriving in New Orleans listed their point of departure as locations either in the Caribbean or in Central America. Only four of the arrivals listed came directly from Liverpool, Hugh Stevens' supposed originating point.

That said—and this will come as no surprise to you—it's time to stop doing the same thing over and over again in the hopes that this time, the result will be different. Though signs of Hugh Stevens' origin was my slated research goal for the month of July, we'll wrap up a few other futile searches on his behalf this week, and then move on to another more pressing investigation. 

Time for Comparisons

 

Now that I've got a copy of the actual First Declaration for Hugh Stevens, it's time to compare his answers to those of earlier arrival John Stevens. Since Irish immigrant John Stevens was my husband's second great-grandfather, I had made sure to get a copy of his record when we visited his newfound American home in Lafayette, Indiana, years ago. Now I'm wondering whether comparing the two Stevens men's answers will reveal anything.

Since I've written about John Stevens before, I simply turned back to that blog post to revisit the wording on John Stevens' First Declaration. For John, let's put the data in a simple outline:

• The document was dated August 4, 1851.
• He gave his age as twenty seven.
• He sailed from Liverpool in 1850.
• He arrived in New Orleans during December of 1850

From that information, we can extrapolate that John Stevens was born about 1824.

What about Hugh? Here's what the recently-received document revealed about that second Stevens immigrant to Tippecanoe County, Indiana:

• The document was dated October 10, 1854.
• He gave his age as thirty three.
• He sailed from Liverpool in 1852.
• He arrived in "Orleans" during December of 1852.

From that information about Hugh Stevens, we can assume he was born about 1821.

From birth dates that close together, one could presume that Hugh Stevens and John Stevens were brothers. After all, they both were born in County Mayo, Ireland, and both immigrated to the same rather small city in Indiana. What are the chances? But we need to be aware that they could just as easily be first cousins. Or more distant relatives. Or not related at all.

With this small set of data, there isn't much we can say at all—but we can consider it an indication of a F.A.N. Club at the very least. The similarity of travel routes, down to the same month of arrival, is a tempting indicator. That they both chose a city of barely over six thousand people to settle in can seem a compelling detail. That they both chose a destination other than the main immigration ports on the east coast—far easier for travel—is also a tempting confirmation.

Now that we have the actual dates for Hugh Stevens' arrival in New Orleans, we can take a second look at passenger records to see whether any "H. Stevens" passengers did show up in Louisiana in December of 1852. Better yet, let's take another look at a wide set of records to see whether there is any sign of a Stevens family containing both given names.

First, the Transcription

 

Years ago, I had discovered the Tippecanoe County Historical Association included a genealogical records section called the Alameda McCollough Research Library. You can be sure that every time my travels called for me to drive from Chicago through Indiana, I found a way to make a stop at that repository. Since I have no travel plans slated for that direction any time in the foreseeable future, I was ecstatic when I discovered, earlier this month, that they now can provide researchers with near-instantaneous gratification—so I ordered a copy of the First Declaration for my possible Stevens relative, Hugh.

Now that I've gotten the digitized document in hand—so to speak—let's take a look at the transcription. That, after all, will be my first step before determining what else we can discover about this Irish immigrant. Here is what the form stated.

To the Judge of the Tippecanoe Circuit court, in the State of Indiana:

Hugh Stevens, Being an Alien, and a free white person, makes the following report of himself; upon his solemn oath declares that he is aged 33 years; that he was born in the County of Mayo in Ireland, that he emigrated from Liverpool in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty two; that he arrived in the United States at the City of Orleans in the State of Louisiana in the month of December eighteen hundred and fifty two; that he owe allegiance to Victoria, Queen of Great Britain + Ireland and that it is bona fide his intention to become a citizen of the United States of America, and to renounce forever allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty whatever; and particularly to Victoria, Queen as aforesaid, of whom he is subject.

The document was completed on the tenth day of October in 1854. Hugh Stevens signed on that day with a rather weak cross, noted as "his mark."

And from then on, he simply disappeared—but we know that that can't be the rest of the story. Though the document only gives us a few clues, let's see whether they can give us any guidance.

(Not) Off the Shelf (Yet): Community: the Structure of Belonging

 

Set on top of my husband's desk this weekend was a book I hadn't seen before: Community: the Structure of Belonging, by Peter Block. This was the kind of title which demanded I read it, so I put a sticky note on the cover of that new purchase on his desk to take my place in line as next reader.

You would think that, after just having finished his doctoral studies in leadership, my husband would be thinking about taking a break from the topic, but that is apparently not the case. He had just written up his research on building community within the workplace—or, more specifically, for teams in nonprofit settings—so I could see how Peter Block's book would catch his eye. In my husband's case, he has spent years developing his own thoughts on how to take a team of employees who are (almost literally) at each other's throats and lead them through a team building process to establish shared values and develop mutual goals. So thoughts of community and a sense of belonging speak to him loudly.

Though I certainly haven't undergone as much study on the subject, community building has been something I've been musing about lately, particularly when I think about one specific organization: our county genealogical society. Like many such organizations post-Covid, ours has suffered several set-backs. It is as if we are still emerging from that cocoon of isolation, not sure how to flex our wings, even years afterwards. The book's title spoke to me, too.

While the book was originally published in 2009, an updated version was issued in 2018. Scrolling through the reviews at Amazon, I noticed the page included some excerpts from the updated version of Peter Block's book. In one passage, the author referred to the work of Robert Putnam in the earlier book, Bowling Alone, where Putnam refers to "social capital." As Block explained it, "A community’s well-being simply had to do with the quality of the relationships, the cohesion that exists among its citizens."

That community cohesion has been on my mind a lot lately. I had noticed it at work years ago in projects to bring together disparate groups for a mutual goal. When a community gels, that group can get so much accomplished.

In our own group, our county genealogical society, I believe I'm seeing the development of that same cohesion. I actually think our members became so tired of online-only meetings—despite our relief that at least, during the pandemic, we could still come together, if only virtually—that they were desperate to have face-to-face social interaction. We still hold our monthly meetings online, mainly because we've been priced out of the market for paying for a public venue, but online doesn't afford us much opportunity to feel as if we've connected with each other. We've actually had members begging for us to come up with a way to just get together—no speaker, not even an agenda, other than to see each other face to face.

Now that we've had some in-person opportunities—a potluck at the park, several morning gatherings over coffee and baked goods, monthly special interest group meetings at a local restaurant—it seems the energy has built upon itself. In these past two weeks, in the midst of an ongoing heatwave, I thought numbers would be down at two different events our society hosted. That was certainly not the case: each event had even more participation than usual. There is a synergy building here, an enthusiasm which I can only attribute to whatever that community-building concept is that Block's book refers to. We're deep in the middle of something evolving, but only now do I find a book that might explain what's happening.

Whatever it is, I'm glad to see it unfolding. It gives me pause to consider just what, moving forward, our  genealogy societies really need. It's not only a matter of offering solid programming—which we do, month after month—but it delves deeper into human needs to connect and interact, to create and mutually encourage in the process. Whatever those needs are, when we find the ways to give those needs a voice, then a venue to let it happen, that's when we'll see our societies grow again.

   

  

While We're Melting

 

The heat wave continues. While a genea-friend and I met for coffee in air-conditioned comfort, of course we complained about the roasting temperatures. But then we realized how good we had it, despite melting through week two of hundred-plus-degree weather. After all, air conditioning wasn't widespread in the United States until the late 1960s. Many of our parents grew up in homes without that luxury, and likely worked in offices or factories without it—or perhaps out in the fields under the blazing sun.

"Our ancestors had it so hard," my friend observed, considering how rough her own father's life had been. Times were different back then, yet we can hardly appreciate the magnitude of that statement because we don't even have a reference point from which to understand it.

That was also a conversation point last week during our genealogical society's special interest group meeting for members researching their Tennessee roots. Yes, I know: we're in California, but many of our members discovered a common link reaching back to pre-Civil War Tennessee, especially around Knoxville and the northeastern portion of that state. People moved when they thought life would become better for them, and many followed a similar pattern, bringing them from Tennessee to Arkansas, to Oklahoma and, once the Dust Bowl years hit, all the way out to California. It wasn't for a wonderful vacation trip to Disneyland that those folks made their long journey westward.

It's only in taking time to extract the biographical aspects of our genealogical discoveries that we begin to piece together just how difficult life must have been for our ancestors—even for our more recent relatives. Sometimes a photograph may help with the process, if it affords us a glimpse at how life really was for those ancestors. My coffee companion recited some of the details she had spotted in photographs of her parents' early years in poorer, rural regions of California.

And yet, in learning those details, perhaps it opens our eyes to the benefits of such difficulties: the skills and personal resilience developed through life's challenges. When the heat goes up, it does something to us. Perhaps it's what's left over after we've been melted down that is really what makes us what we are.

Comparing Notes

 

I've been awaiting the chance to compare the much-anticipated copy of Hugh Stevens' First Declaration with that of his possible brother, John Stevens. While I'm curious to compare notes on the two forms for the slightest clue I might have missed, during this time, I stumbled upon another aspect of this project which also called for comparing notes: the originating facility, itself.

As it turns out, a fellow member of our genealogical society had just returned from a research trip to Arkansas. The week had been filled with plans for multiple stops to check county records for those elusive ancestors we are all chasing. While some local repositories had been helpful, others were somewhat of a disappointment, especially considering the time and expense invested in a research trip of this type. My friend certainly had my sympathy.

That was before I actually went through the process of finding the resource for Hugh Stevens' immigration records. While I remembered traveling to the archival collection where I first found the Stevens records in  Lafayette, Indiana, I was delighted to discover, this time around, that the county collection can now be searched online and copies ordered and paid for in a quick and easy electronic transaction. Thus, all it took was an emailed inquiry, then an order placed and paid, and it was only minutes before I had the digitized copy in my in-box.

Granted, not all local facilities are that organized and efficient. It takes years of painstaking work to locate records, determine their historical value and make the decision to invest in preserving them in a way that provides accessibility. I'd say the Tippecanoe County Historical Association's investment in time and effort has certainly made my research efforts go more smoothly.

That said, I'm looking forward to delving into the record received for this Hugh Stevens. While there may not be any surprises contained in this one slip of a page, I'm hoping I will at least find a clue to point me back to this Irish immigrant's origin in County Mayo. And that's what we'll discuss when we return to this project in the coming week.

Initial Impressions

 

It didn't take long, after perusing what remains of records of passengers passing through the port of New Orleans in the early 1850s, to realize that many travelers preferred to identify themselves by their initials. Thus, my chances of finding the right Hugh Stevens in those records suddenly became awash with the possibility of including all travelers going by the name H. Stevens. Every Henry, Harold, and even Horatio immediately took his place alongside the Hugh Stevens I've been searching for.

Another research difficulty in finding travelers in the 1850s: point of origin was sometimes labeled—if at all—by a politically correct designation. Thus, though I've been seeking Irish immigrants arriving in New Orleans, the more likely designation would be Great Britain. Yet another smoke screen gets thrown up to disguise which one of those "H. Stevens" candidates might have been a viable selection.

A further complication, that our Hugh Stevens traveled from Liverpool, England, might tempt a lazy government official to simply record him as being from England, rather than his true residence in Ireland—if any designation was added to the record at all.

Add to that the likelihood that a surname like Stevens could just as easily have been recorded as Stephens, and you begin to see the challenges facing someone who simply wishes to find Hugh Stevens among the thousands who sailed through New Orleans and up the Mississippi.

Hopefully, the one document in which I've been able to spot Hugh Stevens will be mine to view for myself by early next week. Though I'm fairly certain all the basic details I recall about that scant piece of paper will be all that the second copy will reveal, I keep hoping for a revelation. We'll see at that point, which will determine whether my research goal for this month's Twelve Most Wanted will move forward or join the pile of hopeless lost research causes.

New Orleans, With Gaps

 

Surely, this has got to be a rule: when searching for passenger records containing the names of your ancestors, those pages will be the ones included in the section referred to as "with gaps." In the case of my husband's second great-grandfather John Stevens, his likely brother Hugh, and even John's in-laws, the Kellys, every one of their records apparently fell within that same category: the "gaps."

While I'm waiting to see the actual copy of Hugh Stevens' First Declaration, complete with reported date of arrival in New Orleans, I thought I'd revisit what's available online for digitized passenger records. While there is admittedly plenty to view, there is one caveat: many versions of the records admit that they come "with some gaps."

That, as it turned out a few years ago when I last attempted this question of immigration, was what stopped me in my tracks. It was hard enough trying to find someone with a name as common as John Stevens. I thought with the less common given name Hugh, I might have better luck. Not so, apparently.

Still, there are several resources online to guide a researcher through all the options. For those subscribers to Ancestry.com, of course there are record sets available there for New Orleans passengers from 1813 through 1963, including a 2022 update adding relative contact names, presumably for the much-later arrivals. A similar searchable list at FamilySearch.org provides a second way to search for Hugh, though it notes that "some arrival dates are not represented in the data"—a fancier way to admit, "with some gaps."

There is, admittedly, a wealth of resources for those seeking passenger records for a multitude of American ports, such as this browsable listing at the National Archives. And thankfully, Joe Beine compiled a list which includes helpful advice on filling in the gaps with other finding aids for New Orleans arrivals.

Well, that's a start. But it's also a road I've traveled before. While it's worth a try again, to see whether any record sets have indeed been updated, this may be a case of needing to look elsewhere for the information I'm seeking. After all, what I really want is to learn about Hugh's parents, back in County Mayo, Ireland.

Thinking Creatively While Waiting

 

There is nothing that frustrates me more than having to wait. In this week's case, I'm waiting to learn just how to proceed with ordering a second copy of the First Declaration signed by Hugh Stevens, some time after his arrival in Lafayette, Indiana, in the early 1850s. Yes, yes, I know: if I had gotten the record copied and carefully preserved the first time, I wouldn't have to wait a second time. Such is the story, sometimes, of genealogical guinea pigs like me—always a test case, and sometimes a messy one.

While waiting, I thought I'd try to be productive by considering how else I could solve my research problem. You see, I'm stuck with my husband's second great-grandfather, supposed Irish immigrant John Stevens, whose own First Declaration tells me he emigrated from County Mayo in Ireland, via the port of New Orleans, up the Mississippi and its tributaries to arrive in Lafayette sometime before the close of 1850. The problem is: I have no idea who his parents might have been, back in Ireland.

Come to find out there was a second Stevens man—you guessed it, Hugh Stevens—who took the same route at about the same time, only a year or two later, and I'm wondering whether John and Hugh were related. Perhaps brothers? This could lead to an end run around this Stevens brick wall, I am thinking.

While I am waiting for Hugh Stevens' own naturalization record, I'm wracking my brain for ways to find any sign of Hugh in other records. Up to this point, I've had no luck. I checked for city directories online at Ancestry, but discovered there are pitifully few records of any kind specific to Tippecanoe County, location of the city of Lafayette. Besides, the dates are long after Hugh's arrival, with the collection beginning in 1885.

Looking at quick sketches of local history, though, I find an encouraging sign: Wikipedia's entry for Lafayette indicates that "in its earliest days" the place was considered a "shipping center" on the Wabash River—a detail which has long since changed, due to soil erosion impacting the river's navigability that far north in its course. At one point, the nearby Wabash and Erie Canal work undoubtedly was a draw for immigrant labor, particularly the Irish, who also flocked to other such projects—but this, too, would be before the time of Hugh's arrival.

One final thought is to revisit the passenger records for ships arriving in New Orleans. I've checked those records in the past with little success, both for the Stevens men, and for John's Kelly in-laws. It seems our ancestors always arrived in the very gaps currently existing in the preserved records, an unfortunate scenario for researchers like me. But perhaps things have changed, or more records have been discovered. It is, while I'm still waiting, a reminder to go take a second look. Maybe this time....

The Gift of Local Resources

 

When looking for leads on ancestors, it is indeed encouraging to discover that the place they once called home now has a dedicated cadre of volunteers intent on preserving their stories. That is the gift of local people who value preserving their history: they create resources which help others do the same.

While I've heard reports from disappointed researchers, recently returned from research journeys in places without much resources, in the case of this month's project—to find Hugh Stevens in 1850s Lafayette, Indiana—I may be in luck. Tippecanoe County apparently has an ample supply of residents dedicated to preserving records dating back to the county's formation in 1826.

I've benefitted from the ongoing work of these volunteers now for decades, having personally visited the Alameda McCollough Research Library of the Tippecanoe County Historical Association, and followed up with material placed online by the Tippecanoe County Area Genealogical Society. Years ago, one of the Society's longstanding board members personally assisted me in locating the grave sites of my husband's Kelley ancestors at the historic Greenbush Cemetery, using original burial records to mark that location for our upcoming visit that year.

As it turns out, there are ongoing projects the county's volunteers are still pursuing, judging by what I've read while on the hunt to find answers to my current research question. According to an article in Lafayette Magazine, a September 1, 2014, publication of the Lafayette Journal & Courier, there's been plenty of work to assemble a thorough listing of all cemeteries in the county, versions of which can be viewed on the Society's site at Rootsweb.com, as well as the older Indiana GenWeb site.

What I am keen to see, though, is the joint project of the Society and Historical Association, called "Finding the Forgotten." This grant-funded project, launched in 2016, sought to comb through county records to glean information on pauper burials dating from the county's creation in 1826 through 1860. Though the TIPCOA website does indicate an alphabetical listing was created, only those for surnames beginning with the letter "A" are accessible. 

With our likely relative Hugh Stevens' arrival in Lafayette in the early 1850s followed so quickly by his disappearance, a likely scenario might have been death from disease contracted during his voyage from Ireland. If that were the case for such a recently-arrived immigrant, it could be likely that he was buried in a pauper's grave. I have yet to find any other records of what became of him, making a listing such as the "Finding the Forgotten" project a promising resource to check.  

More or Less, Still Moving Ahead

 

It is really hard to predict, over a biweekly period, just how much progress I've made on my family trees. Sometimes, it seems like I am flying through the records, easily finding source after source to build that line. Other times, it takes a massive struggle just to complete one relative's timeline.

I had thought this past biweekly period would have been one of the times when scores of ancestors would have been added to my in-laws' tree, but that was not the case. I did manage to support adding 220 more names to their tree, which now contains documentation on 35,810 individuals. Yes, that means I'm still moving ahead, more or less—but it was far less than I had expected. I've certainly seen busier weeks.

Part of the slow-down is due to this month's research proposal: to locate a Stevens immigrant from County Mayo, Ireland, who seemed to vanish into thin air, the minute he set foot on land in his newly adopted home in Indiana. This month will likely add up to a lot of searching with very little positive traction to move me forward.

There is, however, other activity to propel those numbers onward. Though not part of my Twelve Most Wanted goal for this month, other questions pop up. Some of those are inquiries from DNA matches—always gratefully received—which lead me to double check my work, realizing as I revisit the data that there are portions that I left undone, the last time I had wandered in that research direction.

Other occurrences tap me on the shoulder and redirect my research, even to trees I haven't selected for this month's research goal. Newly discovered obituaries, for instance, demand follow-through with addition of information to the appropriate tree, an incident in the past two weeks which led me to add another thirty six names to my own parents' tree. Though I won't be returning to work on that tree until the fall—at least, according to my research plans—that unexpected detour last week pushed that tree up to now number 38,405 relatives.

As I check ThruLines results at Ancestry for each of my monthly research goals, that process also leads to new discoveries. That became the impetus for most of my progress on my in-laws' tree in the past two weeks, as I moved from June's research goal on the Metzgers—with lots of ThruLines discoveries uncovered—to the scant few DNA matches I've found this past week as I shifted to the Stevens ancestry goal.

There are just some research goals which seem to produce an abundance of results, while others take patience and endurance while yielding precious little, other than general knowledge to enrich my understanding in future efforts. The patience, however, is certainly worth the effort, and I look forward to having a better understanding of the times when Hugh Stevens arrived in Lafayette, Indiana, in the early 1850s. What a different world that must have been than the assumptions I'd otherwise be tempted to overlay upon his immigrant story.

Hot Time With the Ol' Family Tree

 

When the temperatures skyrocket, guess what genealogists do?

We're deep in the midst of a heat wave, with hundred-plus degree weather continuing into a second week. We did emerge into the heat—yes, well after sundown—to watch the fireworks for the Fourth of July, but other than that, it appears most everyone has hunkered down indoors for the long run. And other than the usual daily routine of chores, I find myself heading back to the family tree. Like an obsessive puzzle, it draws me in to fill in the blanks.

Perhaps that is the result of being heat dazed. A DNA match to my mother-in-law's convoluted line emailed me to check on connections, leading me to descendants of a collateral line which I had somehow neglected in past reviews. Rather than engaging in my usual energetic routines, it was far easier in this heat to succumb to sitting at my desk to fill in all the blanks—adding proper documentation, of course—until the entire family was represented in my mother-in-law's line.

I don't know if anyone has done a scientific study on the correlation between rising temperatures and increased hours of usage at genealogy websites, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a bump in hours logged in at Ancestry, or MyHeritage, or FamilySearch, or whatever the preferred mode of tree-building might be.  On the streets at noon around our town this week, I've noticed there is very little traffic, prompting me to think there has been a grand exodus to the hills or the coast this past week. For those who can't leave town, is genealogy in the air conditioned comfort of home the next likely draw?

It will be interesting to see how my biweekly count fares tomorrow. That will tell the tale for at least one heat-exhausted researcher—but I wouldn't be surprised if I had plenty of company engaging in that same pastime.

Naturalization: First, the First Papers

 

In searching for more information on our immigrant Stevens ancestor in Lafayette, Indiana, let's start with the first step: the Declaration of Intention, or what is often called "first papers."

The idea of the Declaration was to formally have the immigrant state his or her intention to renounce any allegiance to the country of origin, and instead transfer that affiliation to the United States government. In order to assure that transference of allegiance, signing that Declaration became the doorway through which the immigrant stepped into a waiting room of sorts: the waiting period required before proceeding to the next step in the naturalization process.

In the case of Hugh Stevens, the possible brother of my husband's second great-grandfather John Stevens, his arrival in Indiana by 1852 meant a waiting period of two years.

What I've already observed by looking at various Declarations over the years for ancestors in various states is that the format used for that document was not a standard layout. Different time periods and different jurisdictions required different sets of information. In the case of Hugh Stevens' arrival just after John Stevens own immigration (and long before major changes to the process in 1906) tells me that, since they both filed in the same court, Hugh's record will likely contain much the same categories of information.

That an immigrant could file a Declaration of Intention in one court, then proceed to file the Petition for Naturalization in a different court—or never file one at all—is highly likely, compounding the problems with researching such material. In this case, I've already noted that Hugh filed his first papers at the Tippecanoe County courthouse, but I already know I have no guarantee of finding the rest of the paperwork at the same location.

I've already taken the first step to obtain a copy of Hugh Stevens' Declaration of Intention. While we're waiting to examine the details, we'll first explore what is now available online for Tippecanoe County. Next week, we'll revisit two websites which have provided ongoing assistance to me in my pursuit of Stevens family history.

Bring an Ancestor to the Parade

 

Got D.A.R. Patriots? Then bring an ancestor with you to the parade this Fourth of July—in the spirit of Independence Day, of course.

While I hope your day is filled with sunshine and fun with family, barbecues, safe and refreshing water sports to beat the heat, and lots of watermelon, don't forget those who got this whole process started. Whether you have gone through the official application process to acknowledge your Patriot ancestors with the Daughters or Sons of the American Revolution—or have yet to do so—you can still share their name and legacy today as you gather with family and friends.

In my case, I'm remembering my own family's Patriot, Zachariah Taliaferro. And I am learning that there are others in my family's various lines yet to recognize for their service—a project to tackle in future months. Somehow, knowing these names makes this day's celebration take on a new meaning, connecting my roots to the roots of this country.

Perhaps your ancestry does not reach that far back in this country's history, but if you had ancestors who made the journey to America, they most likely took their own part in building this country and making it into the place it now is. Remember them and wave a flag on their behalf at the parade, as well. This is a country made up of "we, the people" and we all had ancestors who made a difference in one way or another, whether at the beginning, or along the journey through our country's timeline. Happy Independence Day!

Where to Look When You Don't Know Where to Look

 

I'll admit it: when stuck with this brick wall ancestor John Stevens and his (likely) brother Hugh Stevens, I haven't the faintest idea how to proceed towards solid answers. Thankfully, I have learned that there are ways to move forward in such a stalemate. There are ways to look for answers, even when you don't really know where to look.

Before I talk about that though, truth be told, I have a second problem with the family history project I chose to work on this month. While I remember seeing Hugh Stevens' Declaration of Intention, which was originally filed at Lafayette, Indiana, if I actually purchased a copy, I have no idea where to find it. So many years ago, when I did make paper copies of records, some ended up damaged over time, and discarded. While I have since digitized John Stevens' Declaration, I have no idea where that same document was for Hugh. I'm working from memory at this point.

That clear memory, though, stayed with me: that Hugh followed the same basic route outlined by his likely relative John, from County Mayo in Ireland, to the British port of Liverpool, then to New Orleans and up north on the waterways leading from the Mississippi to Indiana. My question now is whether I can read between the lines on those two Declarations—Hugh's and John's—and find any further information on either Stevens men. But where to look next? That is where I'm stuck.

When it comes to family history questions in general, I know Cyndi's List can provide links to explore all sorts of research topics and techniques. For even more broad-based answers, I've developed the knack of putting search engines through their paces. I've also learned that it is possible to do genealogy by Wikipedia, not only for background information but also for specifics—sometimes even down to specific ancestors. And there are other, more specialized wikis which hone in on precise topics, such as the ISOGG wiki for genetic genealogy information.

But in a case such as this month's puzzle, my go-to resource is the FamilySearch wiki, and that is mostly where we'll turn for a quick refresher course to get grounded in the details of documenting immigration and naturalization on behalf of this puzzle surrounding Hugh Stevens.

If I had to rely on what is usually shared on subscription genealogy sites—those many documents which, while appreciated, are sometimes limited in scope—I would only have been in luck, had I searched for immigrants passing through, say, New York City. But filing a First Declaration in Lafayette, Indiana? Such a discovery would either have become lost in the shuffle, or not been included in the featured online collection at all. In fact, the only way I first found those two records for Hugh and John was by traveling to Lafayette and looking them up myself.

Thankfully, things have changed quite a bit since I made that trip over ten years ago. It is now possible to order a copy directly, online, for a modest fee, and I will be doing that to access a record of Hugh's arrival. But in the meantime, let's spend some time this week reviewing the history of the naturalization process as it changed over time in the United States. For that, we'll look at the articles available at the FamilySearch wiki, as well as at the source, the National Archives itself. The process of reviewing what we think we know can still be beneficial, especially when key details that we've inadvertently omitted or forgotten get brought to mind afresh. 

About Hugh

 

What I know about Hugh Stevens: nothing.

Well, that is not entirely true. I do know a few things. Those few things are not very useful, however, but a researcher has to start somewhere. This is my start.

The little I do know about Hugh Stevens is that he took the exact same route in arriving in Lafayette, Indiana, as did another Irish man by the same surname. That man was John Stevens, my husband's second great-grandfather. Oddly coincidental details about the two Stevens men make me wonder whether they might have been brothers, such as their place of origin—County Mayo, Ireland—and the route they took from Liverpool to the port of New Orleans. Even their date of travel was during the same month, only separated by a year's distance.

I found all that out by comparing notes on two slips of paper, each the Declaration of Intention or "first papers" signed to begin the naturalization process as an immigrant to the United States.

I've written about John Stevens' First Dec before—ten years ago on the eve of our trip to Ireland, in fact, posting a copy of the original—and revisited my Stevens research quandary a couple years after that. John had made his journey, according to his declaration, from his home in County Mayo to the English port city Liverpool, where he boarded a ship taking him to New Orleans. From there, he had taken another vessel up the Mississippi, then along a tributary river until he arrived at Lafayette, Indiana. 

According to the immigration record, John Stevens arrived in New Orleans in December of 1850. As I remember it, the curious detail about Hugh Stevens' First Declaration was that he, too, arrived in December, following the same route, but his arrival was a year afterwards. I can imagine the one Stevens man, John, sending a message back home to the other Stevens man, Hugh, in County Mayo, telling him it would be to his advantage to follow that same route.

Apparently, Hugh did so, for there is a document demonstrating his arrival and his specific route, but where he went after that point is still a mystery to me. That is what I'm hoping to set aside this month to discover. 

Huge Project — or Huge Mistake

 

A thought which in the malaise of midwinter seemed a good idea might not, in midsummer's sweltering heat, bear out as a productive move.

Last winter—on New Year's Day, in fact—I had pondered which project might have been the best choice for July's research efforts, the year's first attempt at pushing backwards on my father-in-law's line of Irish ancestry. In the case of immigrant ancestors like last month's exploration of Michael Metzger, and even more so for my husband's Stevens line, crossing that watery boundary to the immigrant's homeland doesn't always go as well as hoped. Especially for Irish inquiries, I am beginning to wonder whether it is possible to make any further progress at all. In the post-holiday haze, selecting a Most Wanted target for far-away July, I decided to focus on a Stevens collateral line, in hopes of making an end run around a research brick wall. In retrospect, I now see that that will, at the very least, become a huge project—or it will turn out to be a huge mistake. Now that July is here, we'll have thirty one days to decide which of the two this task will be.

The focus for July will be the supposed brother of my husband's second great-grandfather John Stevens. The man's name was Hugh Stevens, according to the one slip of paper upon which he made his brief appearance in the United States in the 1850s. After that statement, I lost any sight of him at all. Poof—gone, as if he never even existed.

The choice was whether to tackle this task at all. Hugh Stevens was a collateral line, after all. But what else did I know about his brother's origin, if not for that and a very few other records? With the decision to chase Hugh Stevens back to his supposed point of origin in County Mayo, Ireland, came the choice to broaden the search to take in more general information.

This month's project will be a series of discoveries about generic topics having much to do with how the Irish came to America. Since Hugh followed John Stevens' footsteps (so to speak) from Ireland through the port at New Orleans, I want to learn about that specific shipping route—which ships traveled that route and why. Since passenger lists for that route seem riddled with gaps in dates, I want to learn more about whether the missing records have since been preserved, and if so, where they can be accessed. On my last research attempt, guess whose arrival fell in those gaps?

While I would love to identify exactly which ship carried both Stevens men to America, even if that is no longer possible, there are far more details to pursue. Both men ended up in Lafayette, Indiana; could there have been a history of Irish men heading there in response to advertisements for laborers? Checking into local history resources may tell the tale—if not specifically about any Stevens relatives, at least this will be an effort broadening an understanding of the experience for Irish immigrants to Indiana in general.

Another avenue I have used to learn more about each of my Twelve Most Wanted has been DNA testing. However, in the Stevens case, matches—whether for autosomal connections or through Y-DNA testing—have been rare and uninformative, so while I'll keep an eye on matches during the month, this will not be an area likely to produce answers.

As always, the initial research questions will lead me in a general direction. As more clues pop up, they will hopefully lead farther still into more detail. Hopefully. I am certain there is an untold story in this Stevens line. Finding it will be the challenge.  

End of the Month Metzgers: Still a Mess

 

It's the end of the month, and what do I know better than I did thirty days ago? Hard to tell with this Metzger goal.

Last winter when I selected my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024, one of the three ancestors of my mother-in-law I chose to work on—again!—was Michael Metzger, her second great-grandfather. Since he had died in 1843, of course she had never met him. I doubt she even had any recollections of older relatives talking about his memory. All I knew what that he and his wife Apollonia had arrived in this country before 1819, when they welcomed their first American-born son, Joseph.

Where the family came from, I had no idea, thought some census records—and even an editorially-riddled history book entry on one of their sons—stated this immigrant family's homeland was Germany. Still, others asserted—with no documentation, mind you—that the Metzger family was really from Switzerland. Were they? I haven't been able to find any records of that, either, and until I do find documentation, I can't really say anything for sure, other than that other people seem to know something I don't know...yet.

In the meantime, I did learn much more about the many descendants of Michael and Apollonia, mostly for DNA purposes. At least eighty one of those descendants have tested at Ancestry.com along with my own husband, according to Ancestry's ThruLines tool. Who knows how many more are yet to be discovered as matches at the other four DNA companies where he has also tested. I am almost through checking each of those first eighty one at Ancestry, but still have a long way to go to confirm the rest of those Metzger matches.

With the close of this month's research project, I'll compose my to-do list for a future year's revisit of this Metzger question. As we move on to July, we'll shift from examining research questions concerning my mother-in-law's ancestors to delving into my father-in-law's equally mystifying Irish immigrant ancestors. Beginning tomorrow, our focus will turn to a relative who popped up on my research radar long enough to assure me he had arrived in America, then disappeared completely. For one last time, I'm going to try my best to see if anything else can be found on the man this July.

A Sense of Place

 

I just spent the night in a hundred year old hotel downtown in the city we're currently visiting. Somebody with lots of investable money and sharp business sense repurposed what would otherwise have disintegrated into a city eyesore, by providing a sense of place which combines the elegant ambience of the hotel's 1920s birthright with delightfully modern conveniences. Added bonus: the hotel was originally the brainchild of a local businesswoman, for whom the hotel was originally named, and her inspiration was carried forward in this reincarnation by respected design firm Stonehill Taylor.

You can easily glean a sense of place for this storied building in the writing of those who've stayed at this hotel perched on the well-known route of New Year's Rose Parade. Granted, recounting the history of a place—how it came into being, and who was behind the metamorphosis—is a type of handling we'd more likely expect for well-known destinations, and by entities skilled in crafting that type of public relations outreach. But what about the farm where your great-grandfather grew up? Or the shop your family managed during the Civil War? 

When we are pursuing the story of an ancestor, it helps to develop a sense of place concerning where that family member once lived and worked. Especially when the building is no longer in existence, it can be challenging to recreate the sense of place that ancestor might quickly have recognized: the sights, the sounds, even the smell of the rooms or during a special time of year.

It is now so much easier to gain access to pictures of those special family places than it was in pre-Internet times. I remember, during the earliest years of online genealogy forums, mentioning that I was traveling to Chicago to visit family, and receiving requests to drive by an ancestor's home to grab a photo to email to a forum member. Now, if you're lucky, a county governmental office might have put such files up on their website for anyone to see. Or a local historical society might have a picture in their archives.

Pictures, however, are just the start, if you want to paint the scene in a way that helps others gain that sense of place for your ancestor's home. Some agricultural records—schedules from censuses, for instance—or tax records can help gain a sense of just what that ancestor's daily routine might have included. Building from there, local history books—many which are now uploaded to Internet Archive, for instance—can give a more general sense. And don't forget the reminder of what we call the "F.A.N. Club": your ancestors' neighbors and associates may have information tucked away in archives which would tell much the same story, an ingredient you can blend in with your own family's information.

I remember older relatives sharing stories from their childhood, another glimpse into the past that, while sometimes prone to mistaken assumptions, can also be helpful in gaining that sense of place. My mother would share stories about hearing her elders mention that the floor of their Tennessee ancestors' home was only a dirt floor, for instance, or how those elders on the Florida side of the family would spend lazy summer evenings out on the front porch, droning on about politics. When I looked into the facts which I could glean from documentation, the records did support those recollections—and gave me a fuller sense of the place where those ancestors' once lived, and the sense of the lifestyle they kept.

We often focus so carefully on the details required in a pedigree chart—the complete names, dates of birth and death—and introduce the same for spouses, in the case of a family marriage. But when we're done, what else can we discover about a relative? What can we learn about those ancestors so we can bring their story to life in a memorable way and pass that story down to future generations. While the newspaper reporter's rule of thumb—the who, what, where, when, and how or why—can be helpful, I also like to rely on those five senses we all respond to. Being able to incorporate sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings to the story of the ancestor you want to remember can go a long way in bringing that ancestor's story to life. And allow it to become memorable.  

Rubber Meets Road, Genealogy Style

 

When the ripple effect of copied family trees widens, what's the end result? Well, to borrow another couple images, here's where the rubber meets the road: when I have to untangle the spaghetti bowl of DNA matches which Ancestry's ThruLines tool attributed to only one of the two Metzger brothers we've been examining.

We talked yesterday about an editorial error in a hundred year old history book which caused one Metzger brother to be mis-identified as the other brother. It really only takes a very few people posting that error online for it to multiply to unexpected proportions.

Here's an example. Since my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather was those Metzger brothers' father, Michael, I used her son's DNA test to see what matches he had for the lines of all Michael's children. There are currently eighty one Metzger matches in all for my husband. But when ThruLines breaks down the results by each specific child of Michael, there are no results showing for descendants of his youngest son Henry. However, there are twenty matches listed for descendants of Jacob.

Really? Let's take a closer look. I went through that list of Jacob's supposed descendants, one by one. Since Ancestry's ThruLines shows the breakdown, generation by generation, from jointly-shared ancestor to test-taking descendant of that collateral line, I followed the trail for each one of those twenty.

Now, according to census records, I've been able to spot ten children of Henry Metzger and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Snider: Manaleta, Laura, Michael, Thomas, Mary, Robert, Charles, William, Hugh, and Bertram—enough to help me track which of those DNA matches attributed to Jacob might actually have belonged to Henry.

And guess what? Exactly ten of our DNA matches did belong to descendants of Jacob Metzger. But ten did not; according to documentation, they were actually descendants of his brother Henry Metzger. And the list didn't get redistributed in any even manner. Taking the list of my husband's DNA Metzger matches from the top—with the highest centiMorgan count shared—the first two results should have belonged to Henry, not Jacob as listed. But then, match numbers three through nine did belong to Jacob's line. Then everything switched back to Henry with matches number ten through fifteen. Then it alternated back to Jacob's line for sixteen and seventeen, put in one more for Henry with match number eighteen, then back to Jacob for one more, and ended with number twenty switched to Henry.

Bottom line: ThruLines, as we know, is only as good as subscribers' trees are accurate, which isn't always the case. But it is a tool—and a helpful one, at that. Where the rubber meets the road with this tool is in remembering to always check your work—and everyone else's, too. You never know when a hundred year old editorial mistake may otherwise catch you unawares. 

Ripple Effect, Genealogy Style

 

Have you ever spent a lazy summer afternoon down by the lake, throwing stones into the water and watching the ripples move ever outward? That has become the inspiration for likening that effect to other observations in life, from economics and sociology to even naming episodes from television series, movies, and video games.

I see things a little bit differently. When I consider the ripple effect, my mind goes rather to genealogy and how the effect makes its appearance there. And there is no better example I can think of than the very brothers I want to discuss in today's post: Jacob and Henry Metzger.

Jacob and Henry were the two youngest sons of my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather Michael Metzger. One son was born in 1831 and the other in 1833—only you couldn't really tell which one was which, judging solely by what you could find online in other Metzger descendants' family trees.

I think I've found the root cause for the discrepancy, too: a genealogical ripple effect, thanks to an editorial error in a hundred and forty one year old history book about Perry County, Ohio. The book, History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio, included biographical sketches of some of each county's leading citizens.

For the section on Perry County, one of those sketches was supposedly about Jacob Metzger—only the one paragraph about the man included the name of his brother's wife and children. Yes, Mary Elizabeth Snider did marry a Metzger man, but the one she married was not named Jacob; her husband was Jacob's younger brother Henry. The birth date provided in the history book, incidentally, also belonged to Henry—as did the name of each child attributed to Jacob. The only reason the last two sons of Henry weren't mentioned in the book was that they were born after the book's 1883 publication date.

So, what can we find about the real Jacob Metzger? His marriage was to a woman named Martha Ann Hersberger on September 9, 1852. Together, they raised sons William, John, and Francis, and daughters Mary, Florence, and Rose, up until her death in 1878. Following that, he had a son named Brice from his subsequent marriage to another wife who died in 1890, named Lizzie Welch. By the time of the 1900 census, Jacob's household included only that last son Brice, plus third wife Mary.

A story like that might not neatly fit within one paragraph of the 1,218 pages of the History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio. Nor might one want to read of the misfortunes of this thrice-married Metzger man. But somehow his name got affixed to the story of his brother's far less tragedy-ridden life. And oddly enough, I've seen that same report echoed down through the umpteen copied family trees easily found in online genealogical websites—a ripple effect, genealogy style, thanks to what was at first simply an editorial error. 

Catching Clues from Collateral Lines

 

If it weren't for curiosity about collateral lines—the descendants of siblings of our great-greats—there would be a lot of useful information I'd miss entirely. Now that we've set aside time to explore a sibling of my mother-in-law's Metzger ancestors, I'm gathering a few encouraging clues pointing toward answers concerning those mystery relatives who had otherwise simply seemed to disappear.

Looking at Elizabeth Metzger, the youngest sister of my mother-in-law's great-grandfather Michael Metzger, we've already seen that she was married in 1852 in the same county in which she had been born: Perry County, Ohio. Digging a bit deeper into her family life, the very next census enumeration reveals the start of her eventually-large family—which included, by 1860, her three oldest children, Vincent, Cecelia, and Raymond—but it also helped tie that same Elizabeth Metzger Clouse with another Metzger relative.

In Bernard and Elizabeth Clouse's 1860 household was a fourteen year old boy named Charles "Metzgar." While Elizabeth had no brothers by that name, I wondered whether the connection between Elizabeth and Charles might have been one of aunt and nephew. After all, Elizabeth's older brother Joseph, whom we reviewed earlier this month, had a son by that name, who would have been about that age.

Charles' circumstances, by the time of the 1860 census, might have been somewhat like that of an orphaned child whose grandparents had also died: after the loss of his mother, by 1857 Charles' father had remarried. Long before that, he had lost both Metzger grandparents. Perhaps it was perceived as better for everyone if the youngest children in Joseph's family were cared for in other households. Thus, Charles showed up in Bernard and Elizabeth Clouse's household in 1860, and his siblings Henry and Catherine were raised by Elizabeth's older sisters, Joanna and Mary Ann in their unmarried brother Gregory's household.

All those would have been details missed if it hadn't been for expanding research to include collateral lines. And since it is impossible to know, ahead of time, just which important discoveries we would have missed by bypassing those collateral lines, I make the effort to pursue the lines of all siblings of direct ancestors.

There is another reason for that relentless pursuit: connecting DNA matches to the correct ancestor. In Elizabeth's case, my husband has seven DNA matches so far with her descendants. Four of those matches descend from Elizabeth's namesake daughter, and three others from daughter Cecelia. The challenge in working with those DNA matches is that both of Elizabeth's daughters married Snider men: brothers George and Richard. Because my mother-in-law also had Snider ancestors, you can see how those DNA matches become even more tangled—all the more reason to trace those collateral lines.

Speaking of collateral lines, this Metzger family had two more sons we've yet to review. We'll turn to them next as we wrap up this month's research project.