Old Family Stories Dislodged From Memory

 

Struggling over the Kelly family of Irish immigrants James and Mary, a vague memory dislodged from the back recesses of my memory. Family stories being the possible myths that they may be, I still want to record this one, in case I—or another distant cousin—need to follow up on it in during future research attempts.

For this memory, we'll go back to Uncle Ed, the keeper of the family "stuff" for the Stevens family. It was this couple, James and Mary Kelly, who were his and my father-in-law's second great-grandparents. Their daughter Catharine was his direct line ancestor, and he was the one who shared the family stories with me when I first began sketching out the family's ancestral lines.

The problem was that Catharine Kelly married someone named John Stevens, and their son John eventually married a woman by that same name: Catherine Kelly. When Uncle Ed first walked me through the family tree details, this became a point of confusion; I could sometimes lose track over which Catharine Kelly we were discussing.

I eventually discovered the younger Catherine Kelly came from County Kerry. As to the senior Catharine Kelly, Uncle Ed never provided a specific place of birth. He did, however, say she came from Dublin. 

Well, Dublin is a sizable city—at the time of the 1851 census, the entire County Dublin claimed 405,000 people—so if Catharine, her parents and siblings were born there, finding them might be a challenging task. But Dublin was also a key port for emigrants bound for a better future away from the devastations of the Great Famine. Could Uncle Ed have simply meant that the Kelly family sailed to America from Dublin? When I asked him, he couldn't say.

Looking at online resources now, I can find notes that the port at Dublin was among three Irish locations with the "majority of departures"—but that, according to the National Museum of Ireland, was before the 1830s, long before the Kelly family came to America. Still, Ireland's capital city could also have been the launching place for Irish immigrants to head, first, to the English port of Liverpool, another possible route for the Kellys.

Whatever the case, as I took up the last-minute research project this past weekend to find any possible baptismal records for the Kelly children, I was particularly swayed by some entries in various Catholic parishes in Dublin. Initial searches turned up several Dublin parishes, but on closer inspection, the first few produced false leads, such as a James and Mary who had daughters Bridget and Catharine—but in reverse birth order.

There is a long list of possible baptisms yet to go—piecemeal, one by one for each Kelly child—but starting the search helped me realize the one value of continuing this quest. Each baptismal entry reveals the mother's maiden name, as well as the names of sponsors, who most likely would be siblings or in-laws of either parent. These details can help extend that family tree yet another generation—if I can find a family with all children listed, record by record, in the same general area.

With at least six children to be accounted for, such a project will take far longer than the remainder of this last day of the month. With tomorrow's post, we'll not only move to another of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024, but shift from our focus on my father-in-law's ancestry to that of my own father. This final Kelly project will be duly noted and reserved to pick up once again in another research year. 

Putting the Brakes on

  

Apparently, some research projects put the brakes on progress far more than other projects. For this past month's Twelve Most Wanted project—finding the ancestral home of Irish immigrants James and Mary Kelly—progress on building my father-in-law's family tree came to an abrupt halt. Sure, I looked all over the web for a variety of online resources in search of the answer, but found very little. In the meantime, that task gobbled up the time I would otherwise have invested in building out his tree.

It is no surprise, then, to learn that I was only able to add forty eight additional relatives to my in-laws' tree in the past two weeks. That number hasn't been so low for my biweekly tallies since the beginning of this year, when I was focused on my own mother's tree. It's actually a rare fortnight that has seen any results dipping below one hundred for the time period. Still, my in-laws' tree has 36,799 documented individuals included, which is the culmination of a multi-year project in its own right.

It won't be long, though, and we'll be moving on to another research project with the coming of a new month, this time shifting our focus to my own father's side of the family tree. Before I do that, though, I'll have some concluding observations to share tomorrow about that last minute research approach I decided to try just the other day. Talk about last minute inspiration....

 

Off the Shelf: Loonshots

 

I am sometimes amused to see how my genealogy pursuits seem to mimic real life in current times. While I've been struggling to discover—if it is even possible—the origin of my father-in-law's Irish ancestors, James and Mary Kelly, I've been reading a book called Loonshots. The book comes with the subtitle, "How to nurture the crazy ideas that win wars, cure diseases, and transform industries." 

I'm not sure I'll ever be the one to cure diseases or transform industries, but one thing's sure: I often nurture crazy ideas—like pinpointing a Catholic family in Ireland with a name as impossibly common as  Kelly. Author Safi Bahcall defines a loonshot as "a neglected project, widely dismissed, its champion written off as unhinged." Yep, that would be me.

The book itself promises to talk about "a new way of thinking about the world around us." The author speaks to "any group with a mission." While I am not a group, I do have a mission—and it sometimes seems impossible.

Of course, the book delves further into the science of physics and what it can teach us about the importance of structure—rather than organizational culture—in transforming the capabilities of groups to succeed. While the business-oriented side of me sees the importance in this shift in thinking, I can't say it applies much to my genealogical pursuits. There's something about history that remains the same, despite the centuries. But I find it ironic that my book choice for this month involves thinking about one-in-a-million chances at success, and the project I had selected for myself for this month's research pretty much mirrors that.

The Kelly family? In Ireland? That may indeed be my genealogical "loonshot." With tenacity, I'll revisit this research problem again in the future. But I can't really say I'll see any more success, the next time around. Sometimes we need to be graceful about releasing some of these puzzles back into the wilds of history from whence we once found them.

Thoughts on Wild Chases

 

Despite the fact that the attempt engendered thoughts about wild goose chases—what's a goose, and why are we chasing it anyhow?—I couldn't set that Kelly research problem aside. I had to chase that Irish immigrant Kelly family back to Ireland one last time.

Using my plan yesterday, I began the exploration. Ancestry.com, for instance, has a search setup which partially accommodated my wild plan. Searching all Irish Catholic baptismal records for each of James and Mary Kelly's children, my plan was to harvest the most promising results, baptism by baptism. Then, compiling a list from each set of results, I'd scour each lengthy list for possible locations in common shared by two or more of their children. When I'd find the one location shared by all six of the children, bingo! That would be my answer. What could possibly go wrong?

It sounded like a reasonable methodology—until I realized the many pitfalls on that research pathway. Even though I was searching for one child's name at a time, it was coupled with both parents' names—but computer searches being what they are, those machine brains take things literally. For instance, I not only had to look for "James" but also the common abbreviation "Jas." Although many Irish Catholic parishes entered their records in the English language, some adhered to the more traditional Latin; thus I had to add "Iacobus" to the search. And the English letter "J" having its own peculiarities, that also meant seeking entries labeled "Jacobus" as well.

Though not as many records seemed to have trouble finding entries for a mother named Mary, there still were some hiccups there. The most logical deviation might be to find Maria instead of Mary, but there were other considerations. Having spent time in the past looking for baptismal records for babies whose mother's name was Margaret—often abbreviated "Marg"—I knew that sometimes that "Marg" might be read incorrectly and transcribed as Mary. Hence, my search expanded to include all mothers named Margaret as well as Mary, requiring visual verification of the right name.

The actual names of the children could themselves cause trouble with searches. Second-born son Thomas might have been entered by a common abbreviation, "Thos," thus requiring me to broaden those search terms once again. And, no surprise here, Catharine might have been abbreviated as well to "Cath."

There were other complications, too. Having researched such records in the past while traveling in Ireland, I had picked up a few tips there of other anomalies to watch for. Priests doing rounds in the outback, such as might happen with circuit riders in early American history, would go from house to house, baptizing newly-arrived infants—and possibly joining in the celebration afterwards. Perhaps then, the son's name might be confused for the father's name, or the daughter for the mother, resulting in the official marking of that information on a piece of scratch paper shoved in his pocket, to be forever recorded such for our "benefit."

Since I knew the difficulties facing some Catholic parishes in Ireland during the late 1820s and 1830s when James and Mary raised their family, I started searching first with their middle children. I thought that perhaps the earlier births—such as eldest son Matthew's birth about 1825—might not have been preserved in registers lasting until our day.

Then, too, I wondered whether the later births, such as baby of the family Ann's arrival in 1839, might have occurred after the Kellys left their home parish and traveled toward the British port from which they'd eventually sail. My goal, after all, was to determine where in Ireland the Kelly family had once considered their home.

But even taking that middle of the road approach didn't yield much hope of finding the answer. The usual challenges of seeking information in those two hundred year old registers are compounded by the fact that paper does eventually crumble, or sustain ink spills, or nibbles from mice, or...or...or...

I'm far from finished with this Irish version of a quixotic mission. But while I was still in the process, it did dislodge a memory from my mind about an old story that keeper of the family stuff Uncle Ed had told me. I don't know whether to trust it or not, family legends being what they are. But when we close out the month next week, I think I'll revisit it, if nothing else but for the sake of recording it to remember for future directions on how to find James and Mary Kelly the next time I try this hide and seek research game.

Last Thoughts on Hopeless Tasks

 

How do you search for a Kelly needle in an Irish Catholic haystack? Sounds like a hopeless task to me—unless I can come up with any last thoughts on the process. And, surprise, I have—but they will likely have to wait for a future attempt at finding these Kelly ancestors.

Much like researchers have realized the value of searching for clusters of family members when seeking, for instance, an unknown ancestor's will, I can see the value in designing a search which looks for not just one baptismal record, but a cluster of the entire family's baptismal records for a specific—and limited—geographic area. In other words, while I might not be able to confidently point to the baptism of one baby named Catharine Kelly—the name of my father-in-law's great-grandmother—if I could find several Kelly family members baptized in or near the same parish during the right years, that could point to the right family for me.

Because of census records and other documentation in the Kelly family's adopted home in Lafayette, Indiana, I do know the names of James and Mary Kelly's children. Their oldest—as far as I can tell—was a son named Matthew, born about 1825. He was followed by three sisters: Rose, Catharine, and Bridget, who arrived between 1827 and 1834. His brother Thomas was born in 1837, and the baby of the family, Ann, made her appearance in 1839.

Could all of them have been born in the same location in Ireland? While I have seen signs that some family members of other branches of my father-in-law's Irish heritage might have moved from one townland to another, it is far more likely that geographical changes would be minimal than widespread. What are the chances that all of them could have been baptized in the same church?

As far as I know, there is currently no search protocol to find such a cluster in one set of keystrokes, so I'll be left to the grunt work of comparing results, one baptism at a time, across the whole of the island of Ireland. But it would be a possible plan to help flush out some possible families to target for future research efforts on that Kelly family's origin. And, with not many other alternatives available to me, even an option filled with repetitive busy work may be better than giving up entirely.

Calling All Kelly Pack Rats

 

I've been thinking a lot lately about all the family history details I would never have known, if it weren't for the family's pack rats. If it weren't for the pack rats in my father-in-law's extended family, for instance, I would likely never have found confirmation—and then corroboration—of his maternal grandfather John Tully's origin in County Tipperary. Or the last sign of his maternal grandmother's missing father, Stephen Malloy. I can think of so many other instances where labels on the back of old, saved, family photographs explained connections I would otherwise not have known.

In an age when the anti-pack rat mantras crescendo to an unavoidable shriek, I can't help but wonder what will become of those bits of "trivial" paper stored in desk drawers or boxes in the closet or file folders in the attic. Those are the scraps of paper that hold the secrets to those brick wall ancestors we can't seem to trace.

Imagine, for instance, what might have been the fate—if not for family pack rats—of that last letter from Stephen Malloy, unfolded and re-read so many times by his wife that its edges frayed and shredded. Would a third- or fourth-great-grandchild hold it close and ask, "Does this spark joy?" What if the answer was no?

I keep hoping I will find someone in this Kelly line of my father-in-law who inherited a letter, or a photograph, or even a baptismal verification from back in Ireland. But then I wonder: what if that distant cousin decided it was time to declutter? Adopt a minimalist lifestyle? Follow the advice: if you haven't used this item in -- months, toss it?

I get it that life is so much more difficult when living in disorganization. That, however, doesn't necessarily mean to toss everything. Sometimes we become the keepers of irreplaceable family items, the guardians whose job it is to ensure that the next generation will one day receive what was entrusted to us.

When it comes to my father-in-law's Kelly ancestors, such keepsakes may be the only bridge to allow us to cross over to the place in Ireland which they once called their home. 

. . . And Then, We Wait . . .

 

Like the child who couldn't wait until Christmas, I tried peeking at the Kelly ThruLines results at Ancestry.com once again, in the vain hope that I would be gifted with yet another new DNA match after all my tree-building work. (Spoiler: no one was.) 

Reaching out to DNA matches can be trying. We find a likely candidate—someone who seems as consumed with family history as we are—sit down and write the not-too-convoluted note designed to be just right for enticing a response. And then, we wait. And wait.

When I think about all the discoveries I've made over the years on researching my father-in-law's Irish forebears, I realize I have made progress. But that progress has come in waves. I'm quite confident those who persist in their research of Irish ancestry have developed a patience unlike that of researchers of other ethnic origins. 

Perhaps that is due to the very waves in which genealogical evidence washes up upon our shores. Bit by bit over the years, more documentation has become available online—not all at once, but collection by collection, perhaps even location by location. Perhaps this dribbling out of information has become just as frustrating to those of Irish descent still living in their own country as it has been to the rest of us among the Irish diaspora flung far and wide around the world.

While I keep hoping for more records discoveries in Ireland—or even those elusive passenger records of Irish arrivals in New Orleans—I reach out to other Kelly researchers in hopes that someone got the word on where on the old sod their Irish ancestor once lived. Granted, by the advent of second—or third—great-grandchildren, the chances of finding someone with the "stuff" of those old family mementos becomes even more slim. But I wait.

We'll likely keep waiting—until someone discovers and releases a newly reconstructed set of Irish records to benefit us all. In the meantime, as I've done so many times before, that Kelly research folder will get tucked away for safekeeping until a new records release calls it out of its storage and back into the search limelight.

Daisy Chain, DNA Style

 

Take one DNA match—any match—and build out the collateral lines in your family tree to see where that match fits into the big picture. Then, once the relationship is pinpointed, look at the other matches you share in common with that DNA match. One by one, they fall into place in your family's picture, much like you'd weave a daisy chain, one flower at a time.

While I've nearly given up hope of completing my research quest for this month—finding the Irish origin of immigrants James and Mary Kelly of Lafayette, Indiana—I've taken to building out my father-in-law's Kelly line in hopes of finding a distant cousin who might have been the lucky one to get all the family "stuff." Hey, I'd even be happy to learn about a family legend of their origin. At least that would be a clue.

That process of adding descendants for those collateral Kelly lines is apparently paying off. As I attach records to each of James and Mary Kelly's children, then grandchildren and beyond, behind the scenes at Ancestry.com, the ThruLines tool is realizing how many of their other Kelly customers actually match up with this line. 

Last weekend when I looked—yet again for what seems like the kazillionth time—I noticed there was an additional name showing on ThruLines as a descendant of Ann Kelly, James and Mary's youngest child and sister of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Catharine Kelly Stevens. Wonderful! And I actually had that person already listed in my father-in-law's tree, someone I had added in that process of noting all the descendants of collateral Kelly lines. I just hadn't realized the person already took a DNA test.

Connecting that DNA match to the proper place in our tree, I then clicked on "Shared Matches" to see who else might be a relative in common with that Kelly line. No surprise: there were more. Thankfully. After all, searching through all one's DNA matches for a surname like Kelly can be daunting. Even looking for Ann Kelly's married surname, Doyle, doesn't make the process much easier.

Then comes the daisy chain weaving. Shared match by shared match, I find documentation to support adding that person to the correct place in that same tree, then attach the name in the tree to the report in the DNA match list. In that way, I easily connected several more names this weekend. Next, I'll let Ancestry's algorithms do their work behind the scenes to dredge up any more possibilities among their countless customers who share a Kelly surname in common with my father-in-law's family. I expect to find more results to follow up on in a few more days.

In the meantime, I've been reaching out to those DNA matches in the slight chance one of them just might be the lucky one who got all that fabled family "stuff." Who knows? Sure, maybe my efforts will pull up a null set. Yet if I don't give this a try, I'll never know. In the meantime, bit by bit, I'll weave all those Kelly daisies together into a family circle of relationships among what are, to our generation, essentially fourth cousins and beyond.

When the Party is Over

 

"The party is over," declared CNN Business last week. ABC News chimed in: Tupperware "lifts the lid" on its financial woes as it voluntarily initiated Chapter 11 proceedings on September 17. Known for its "once iconic" plastic food storage containers, developed post-World War II to "help war-weary families save money on costly food waste," the company has faced a combination of financial downturns through dwindling sales and rising costs of raw materials and shipping. 

While readers of A Family Tapestry may not be so interested in the latest financial news, those of us fascinated with family ephemera and material culture may pick out a useful strand in the theme of passing traditions once held dear by our more recent ancestors. How many of us can recall a mother or grandmother who attended a Tupperware party? Or taught us how to "burp" a Tupperware lid? While we are not talking about long-forgotten culture of our great-great-grandmothers, this, too, belongs to the collection of items of day-to-day living that are, before our eyes, passing into the heap of forgotten historic trivia.

While we are chasing those elusive brick-wall ancestors of prior centuries, we can't forget that we may be the missing link to passing along the minutiae of life familiar to the "ancestors" we, ourselves, knew personally. I'm encouraged when I see bloggers like Sheryl Lazarus intent on not only sharing the writings of her own grandmother in her blog, but delving deeper into the day-to-day details of that grandmother's life, surroundings, and culture.

Take, for instance, her focus on a devil's food cake from her grandmother's diary and an updated version, compared in her February 27, 2012, blog post in A Hundred Years Ago. Taking a magnifying glass to the details of our near ancestors' lives may be enlightening—possibly even helping us understand them a little bit more. After all, can you, for instance, name all fifty seven of Heinz's "varieties"? If your life was filled with versions of this Heinz advertisement a hundred years ago, perhaps you could. Surely your grandmother could.

These are the too-little-to-notice details which filled our near-ancestors' days, the ephemeral traces of what life was like for them. Too quickly gone, spotting such details, for the ones who lived them, would bring back memories just as surely as hearing a strain from one of the top-forty hits from your high school years might flood you with an avalanche of reminiscences.

So, yeah, while Tupperware may be having its financial woes—not to mention detractors of plastic manufacturing in general—what we are seeing before our very eyes might be the passing of an era, an institution so familiar to our own parents and grandparents that it became almost invisible for its ubiquity in their lives. While clutching a Tupperware bowl would certainly not bring back to life a cherished grandmother, we can at least vicariously live a small part of her reality through these now-fleeting tokens which once made her life's everyday routine what it was.

What's Next for 23andMe?

 

Less than two hours before our local genealogical society's monthly meeting the other night, one of the group's board members sent me a text. Linked to an article she had found regarding last Tuesday's startling resignation, en masse, of all board members of genetic testing company 23andMe, she asked, "How will this affect us?"

My answer, as usual, was, "It depends."

The sticking point is whether the (hopefully) forthcoming plan of action in response to this resignation will lead to a successful outcome for the business, of course. I'm no financial analyst—and am certainly not invested in the company, other than in using their products and advising others in interpreting their test responses—but accurately determining what is next for 23andMe can only follow more information. Lots of it.

There is far more that this organization is involved in than the direct-to-consumer DNA test kits many of us have used in building our family tree. Just perusing the 23andMe blog gives an idea of the wide circle cast by the company's mission, involving partnerships in drug development and genetic health research and education. And yet, in those many aspects of the company's development, momentum is faltering. 

The termination of one exclusive partnership with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline last year may be one difficulty faced by 23andMe's embattled CEO, but issues such as this only serve to remind us of the other challenges the company has faced over the years, and the organization's inherent survival gene which still seems to be part of its makeup. Yet the recent—and yet to be finalized—$30 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit regarding a 2023 data breach isn't helping the company's financial standing, despite most of that payout likely to be covered by insurance policies.

While 23andMe's board of directors has spent significant time in negotiations with its founding member and CEO, Anne Wojcicki—whose preference in the face of the public company's falling stock valuation is to take the company private—lack of a "fully financed" plan to do so was the impetus for the en masse resignations.  Indeed, falling stock prices—dropping well below the dollar mark following the resignation announcement—only accentuates the company's recent failure, year over year, to report a profit.

While we, as genetic genealogy enthusiasts, may appreciate the insights companies like 23andMe provide us in placing those mystery ancestors in their proper place in our pedigree charts—or even helping us better address the physical challenges bequeathed upon us by those same ancestors' health legacies—those same results we've received through their tests are beholden to the continued operation of the organization which first provided us with that information. With the pay-once but forever-access model which DNA testers now have for checking out our latest DNA matches, 23andMe's business model sorely needs a compelling way to convert to a subscription-based model, yet it has failed to do so to a sustainable level for ongoing operations.

Looking at the situation from a systems-based model, it is clear that the multiple inputs needed to sustain such a business are complex. If only we could all promise to buy multiple DNA kits for holiday gifts this year to solve those bigger issues, that would be wonderful. But worse than helping in the short run, it would likely only perpetuate the problem. Perhaps in hunkering down for the worst, those of us with that well-meaning get-around-to-it gene might consider harvesting all the information needed to get in touch with our 23andMe DNA matches now, before those overarching systems break-downs edge into an inevitable death spiral.

Who Got All the Family Stuff?

 

I keep holding on to the notion that, though we can't shove our way past the ancestral "brick wall" of our past, surely some distant cousin in the family became the keeper of the family "stuff," as Denise Levenick calls it. And in that "stuff," hopefully, is some indication where those distant relatives once called home.

For my father-in-law's second great-grandfather James Kelly, those roots are buried somewhere in Ireland, but where is still undisclosed. Though it appears the family was mostly intact after their arrival in Indiana—James had died in 1853, leaving his widow Mary to head up the household—from that list of his children, I can only find a few who had descendants of their own to pass along any family keepsakes.

James' two sons, Matthew and Thomas, though born in Ireland, may never have applied for naturalization—at least not after they arrived in Tippecanoe County, their adopted home. I can find no sign of Matthew on a current list of such applications, though there are two possible candidates for Thomas: one arriving from Ireland in 1846, and another from Great Britain in 1853. Yet, as for any descendants who might save such papers, Matthew had none, dying a bachelor in 1895. 

Thomas Kelly, on the other hand, though dying barely a month before his older brother Matthew, had several children. If the immigrating Kelly ancestors left any keepsakes to their sons, it would have been Thomas who would have been most likely to pass such treasures down to the next generation.

On the other hand, James and Mary Kelly had four daughters who traveled with them to America—and who could have been the recipients of any family mementos. Yet once again, the possible heirs would have been limited. Of those four daughters, two died young—Catharine, my father-in-law's great-grandmother, and her sister Bridget, wife of Michael Creahan.

That still leaves us with two possibilities, and yet, of those remaining two, Rose did not marry or have children of her own. Thankfully, Ann, the baby of the family, did. Whether Ann even had anything to pass down to her three sons, I do not know—but I do know that three of Ann's descendants chose to do DNA tests and are on my husband's match list. My next step will be to reach out and try to make contact with some of those distant Kelly matches on the slim chance that any of them will reply and share what they know about our mutual Kelly ancestors. 

About Face

 

What if the research direction you've chosen to pursue doesn't yield any answers? If I can't find further detail on my father-in-law's brick wall Irish immigrant Kelly ancestors, perhaps changing direction might help. Surely those Kelly siblings from the 1850s now have multiple descendants all over this country.

Pivoting about face may seem counter-intuitive, until I realize that even if our family didn't receive all those coveted keepsakes, someone in the family surely did. And it's in search of that "someone" that I'll reverse direction and look for descendants of James and Mary Kelly.

I usually make this a practice, solely because I have multiple mystery DNA matches whom I can't fit into the family tree schemata. Tracing each collateral line's descendants helps open up the possibilities for how each DNA match relates. But in this Kelly case, while I thought I had done a thorough job of this line, apparently I had neglected a few branches.

So it's back to tracing all the descendants of the siblings of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Catharine Kelly Stevens. Actually, what launched me into that search was the thought that perhaps some of Catharine's brothers could have filed for naturalization, once they settled in Lafayette, Indiana. Unfortunately, all of them died before any census records could provide a hint of when that process could have happened—if at all. The only one alive for that 1910 census immigration question was the baby of the family, Ann Kelly—by the time of that 1910 census, widow Ann Doyle. As a woman, her citizenship status at that point would have been based on her husband, so no date was entered in the census.

While there are other routes for determining application for naturalization in earlier years—another task to add to that ever-growing to-do research list—I realized there are also several blanks left in that descendancy review for Kelly collateral lines. So, instead of looking backward in time for the next few days, I'll be looking ahead from that arrival point in Indiana in the 1850s, to see if I can find anyone who just might have been the fortunate recipient of all the family mementos—hopefully someone who would be willing to share what they've discovered about their roots.  

In a Quandary

 

When it comes to researching those hard-to-find Kelly ancestors from Ireland, I'm in a quandary. I know when they arrived in Indiana—give or take a few years—and I know they sailed from Ireland, but for the way they got here or where, exactly, they were born, I can't find any trace of information. I was hopeful, in discovering one Kelly sibling's husband's obituary mentioning a route through New Orleans, that other records might bear out that statement—but nothing materialized.

What to do next? I've been wracking my brain for alternate resources to use. It occurred to me that, if in-law Michael Creahan's obituary was so chatty about his life story, perhaps the same might hold true for some of his Kelly brothers-in-law. But there was one catch to that idea: newspapers in Lafayette, Indiana, for that time period are not consistently available.

Since I hold subscriptions to three historic newspaper resources—Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive.com, and GenealogyBank—you'd think it would be easy to find those Kelly obituaries in one of the three. Think again. Each company's collection may include one or more newspapers for a specific city, but the date range may contain gaps. Or the particular newspaper company that a family might have favored may not have been in the given collection at all. Hence, my original reason for having more than one archival subscription.

There are free resources, as well, of course, especially thanks to Google, which has an extensive collection of digitized newspapers freely accessible online. However, reviewing the available titles, listed by name alphabetically, didn't reveal any possibilities for my Kelly search.

Yet, the very fact that a Find A Grave volunteer was able to find and post a copy of the 1895 obituary for Matthew Kelley shows me that the Lafayette newspapers have been preserved somewhere—but where? Of course there is the U.S. Library of Congress' Chronicling America, but though it is searchable by state as well as by name, asking for Kelley in 1895 produced over two hundred hits; there is no way to narrow the search by city.

I was aware that the Indiana State Library has holdings of their state's newspapers, including their Hoosier State Chronicles. There, I could search by date, which I tried for Matthew Kelley's obituary, but the function, which lists all the Indiana newspapers available in their collection for any given day, indicated nothing in their holdings for Lafayette for the dates following Matthew's August 17, 1895, death.

Remembering my Twelve Most Wanted project earlier this summer, searching for Hugh Stevens' naturalization record, I wondered whether the source of that answer, the Tippecanoe County Historical Association, could help with my obituary request. Sure enough, their website provides a listing of their newspaper holdings—but even there, the collection is spotty. At least the year of 1895 seems to include a full year of editions for one Lafayette newspaper, so that may be my next step, since both Matthew and his brother Thomas died in that year.

Bit by bit, I'll assemble the set of obituaries for the Kelly siblings, in hopes that someone else was just as chatty about family history as the informant for Michael Creahan's obituary in 1915. Whether those family stories are correct may be another matter, but I can't know unless I first get started with that thorough search.

When the "Big Easy" Isn't Easy

 

It isn't easy searching for ancestral names in the Big Easy's passenger lists. I already knew that from trying to find my father-in-law's great-grandfather John Stevens, who supposedly came through the port at New Orleans from Ireland. Nor did looking for any of his Kelly in-laws help pinpoint those New Orleans arrivals. Now, trying a third time with yet another collateral line—Michael Creahan, John Stevens' eventual brother-in-law—I'm not finding any better results.

According to Michael Creahan's own obituary, he had arrived in this country at the age of twenty. Though it is hard to pinpoint his actual age, based on the most realistic of documented reports, it could be said that he was born any time between 1824 and 1830.

Taking a closer look at that obituary, I noticed it doesn't actually say he arrived in New Orleans on his immigrant journey, only that he spent ten years working there—with all the rest of his years in this country spent in Lafayette, Indiana. One could presume that meant the first stop was New Orleans—and that New Orleans was the port of his arrival here—but of course, the record doesn't come out and specifically say that.

So, what do we find in the passenger records for New Orleans? Not much. In one collection found through Ancestry.com, I did find one Michael Crahan—but that Michael Crahan was eighteen at the time of his arrival in 1851. On that same passenger list was a twelve year old girl named Mary Crahan, and a twenty year old named Catherine Crahan—but no Bridget or Patrick, our Michael's family members.

In another New Orleans passenger collection index at Ancestry, since Creahan brought up no results, I searched instead for Crane, an alternate spelling which materialized so often for this month's project. There, I did find a passenger listed as "M. Creehan" on a vessel arriving in New Orleans on February 10, 1848—a very possible date. But again, with the initial rather than a full given name, there was not enough information to conclude this was our Michael. Combined with no sign of Patrick or Bridget Creahan in that listing, it is doubtful this was our Michael's arrival.

Granted, one reliable listing of all available collections of New Orleans passenger records often mentions the phrase, "with some gaps." Perhaps it is just in the cards for me to accept that dilemma: Michael Creahan, his brother Patrick and his mother Bridget Doyle Creahan, may well have taken their migrant voyage from Ireland on a sailing vessel whose data has been lost to history.

Not in 1850

 

The all-consuming question for me this week: was Michael Creahan in New Orleans by the time of the 1850 census? To expand on that in a way that might help pinpoint the right Michael Creahan, just in case there were name twins: was Michael Creahan, son of Bridget Doyle Creahan and brother of Patrick Creahan, in New Orleans in time for that 1850 census? The answer—at least as far as I can see—not in 1850.

Granted, these missing members of a collateral line in my father-in-law's Kelly-Stevens family had some research challenges embedded in their very names. We may think of the name Bridget, for instance, as rather unusual here in America, but among Irish immigrants to this continent, the name was part of their heritage and a very popular name for women in older times, only recently dropping in popularity. In fact, Ireland's Central Statistics Office offers an app which examines the popularity of given names in their country by year, with the earliest year shown being 1964, when the name Bridget was ranked eighth of all baby names recorded in Ireland for that year. All that to say looking for an Irish immigrant Bridget in a city the size of New Orleans in 1850 might be a challenge.

Then, too, Michael Creahan's surname wasn't necessarily the easiest of names to record. Depending on the accent of the speaker and the accent the ears of the recorder were tuned to, that surname might go down on paper somewhat closer to Crane than Creahan. Even in the documents which I know belonged to Michael's own family, there was a wide variety of spellings.

Despite that, it was possible to go page by page through the census records for New Orleans, or at least do a bare-bones search for all surnames sounding like Crane, using not only Ancestry.com but FamilySearch.org, in case one company's indexing process missed what the record-keeper's handwriting might have been trying to tell us.

Still, no luck. Not for Bridget. Not for her other son Patrick. And certainly not for Michael.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, to look for those three family members in the 1850 census in New Orleans. After all, that was the lead gleaned from Michael's own obituary, which placed him as having arrived in port around 1847. It could be very likely that Michael worked to save money to send to Ireland so that his family could come join him after his arrival and establishment in New Orleans. Perhaps he only achieved that goal after moving north to Lafayette, Indiana, where we found him in the 1860 census. But judging from descriptions of the tenement surroundings of the places where Irish immigrant laborers settled in New Orleans, I wonder how likely it might have been that Michael was missed entirely in the enumeration process.

There are, of course, other ways to trace these three Creahans in New Orleans. We'll take some time tomorrow to see whether our results are more promising in the passenger records for that same time period.

Brick Walls and Kellys

 

If we call those hard-to-research ancestors "brick walls," then my father-in-law's Kelly family must be a walled citadel of relatives. Demarcation of this barrier began when James and Mary Kelly left all behind and sailed for New Orleans from somewhere in Ireland.

Trying to find any clues through DNA testing has not been promising. Using my husband's DNA test as proxy for my father-in-law's genetic heritage, we are looking at a connection at the distance of third great-grandfather—not so distant as to be unreachable, but still only showing us eight possible connections to these Kelly descendants via Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool. Out of those eight, two are children of my husband's cousins, telling me nothing new.

The paper trail has been clear enough from James and Mary's children down to the present, thankfully. I have not really added many new Kelly descendants to my father-in-law's tree since beginning this month's research project, thus it is no surprise that I only added ninety one new individuals to that family tree in the past two weeks. Those have mainly come from continuation of previous months' research projects, which are always chugging away in the background. Still, the total count for the tree, after two weeks' work, is now 36,751 names.

However, of those eight DNA matches linked to James Kelly's line, there is one ThruLines suggestion which I cannot trace. Beginning at the top with James himself and moving forward in time, there is a disconnect at the level of a grandchild. I simply cannot find any documentation to identify that individual which ThruLines indicates as James' descendant.

If I can't see my way clear to the end, perhaps switching perspective and looking in the opposite direction—from the DNA match backwards in time, all the way to the ancestor during James Kelly's era—may help point out the connection. Or point out the error. Building a "quick and dirty tree," as CeCe Moore used to call it in her training sessions, may highlight the error in the Kelly connection—or perhaps help highlight how the suggested ancestor actually fit in. There have been several iterations of that original tree-building idea over the years, complete with caveats from experienced researchers. But the biggest hurdle, at least from my perspective, will be finding the time to actually do the work of building someone else's tree.

I had hoped that, building out my own take on the Kelly line—plus all the collateral lines—would prompt ThruLines to identify additional DNA connections, but that count of eight ThruLines Kelly matches has stayed set for quite some time. It's the luck of the draw if any other Kelly descendants will choose to test in the future—and that may only be augmented if James Kelly had any siblings whose descendants also survived down to the present generation.

In the meantime, this coming week it will be back to our alternate research strategy: examine the context of immigration through New Orleans for these Irish immigrants, and hope for some sign of a F.A.N. Club associated with the extended Kelly family.

Still Off the Shelf: Irish Migrants in the Canadas

 

Some books take time to absorb. Back in July, as I was closing out my search for the Flannery branch of my father-in-law's roots, I received a well-recommended book which promised to broaden my thinking on the subject of Irish immigration. Since I've been traveling this summer, I took the four hundred page book with me on trips where I knew I'd have time to read (think long flights across the continent). And Irish Migrants in the Canadas certainly did give me food for thought.

One concept behind the book was author Bruce S. Elliott's intent to examine the stories behind Irish immigrants from one specific place—County Tipperary in Ireland—during a specific time period and headed to a specific location across the Atlantic. As the foreword explains, rather than discussing that migration as an "abstract process or an aggregate phenomenon," the book's goal was to focus on actual migrants and "trace the lives of a significant number of real people—not aggregated census numbers."

Thus, the author's breakthrough work pinpointed the stories of nearly eight hundred families on their journey from Ireland to Canada and beyond. That "beyond" is key for my father-in-law's family, as is likely for many of Irish descent who not only traveled further inland in Canada, but also migrated south to the United States, as did my father-in-law's ancestors. Many researchers, I'm sure, don't consider this possibility for their American ancestors, though I noticed through Gail Dever's blog, Genealogy à la carte, that an upcoming presentation to be delivered by Canadian Kathryn Lake Hogan for the Fairfax (Virginia) Genealogical Society reveals that there is a lot to be considered with this possibility.

What I am valuing about this book is the depth of thought put into the historical context of these Irish immigrants. Though I likely will not find any mention of my father-in-law's specific ancestors (spoiler: I already peeked at the index of names), the exercise of following the author's thinking behind his research approach will be excellent for developing a sense of what is necessary to understand about any given ancestral situation.

Though this month I am far afield of those Flannery ancestors headed to Ontario, focusing instead on why the Kelly family chose to route through New Orleans to Indiana, I believe the same research discipline will yield helpful details by broadening my perspective. The book may be slow reading, but I am tagging several passages with helpful reminders of how Bruce Elliott approached his study, and contemplating how I can adapt that method to use in search of the story behind each of my ancestral immigrant families.

Wondering Why

 

There comes a time when chasing our mystery ancestors that we begin wondering why. Why, for instance, did John Stevens, my father-in-law's great-grandfather, choose the port of New Orleans as his landing place after leaving his Irish homeland? Why did John Stevens' future wife, Catharine Kelly, and the entire Kelly family, also choose to head to New Orleans? And why did his brother-in-law, Michael Creahan, future husband of Catharine's sister Bridget Kelly, also head from Ireland to New Orleans?

When it comes to wondering why, I propose a universal resolution to that state of puzzlement: search for an answer. That, in effect, was what I did: look for reasons why these Irish immigrants to the United States didn't take the usual route to New York City—or even the less expensive alternative of moving to the British colony in Canada. That search, in fact, led to a productive exploration of this alternate destination.

As I discovered, the route from Ireland to New Orleans was a choice exercised by the Irish for almost one hundred years before the famine took its toll on the population of Ireland. It turns out there were logical reasons for such a draw. For one thing—a reason too easily dismissed in our less-reverent age, perhaps—the Catholic majority of that southern American port city was a draw to the persecuted Catholics in Ireland. Then, too—especially prior to American acquisition of the territory—New Orleans was once beholden to a nation which was not British, perhaps a draw for those Irish weary of their struggle with their English overlords.

Between 1842 and 1864, according to one estimate, 110,000 Irish entered the port of New Orleans. Another estimate pegs the number at 425,000 for Irish arriving in New Orleans. No matter what the count, the influx of Irish immigrants in New Orleans made the city the number two destination in the United States for Irish arrivals, second only to New York City.

When they arrived at the port in New Orleans, many Irish chose to move on to midwestern destinations, but a good number stayed and worked where they landed, just as did Michael Creahan. This, however, was not the easiest option in the long run. Given the climate and hazards of the environment there, combined with the usual jobs taken by many Irish immigrants—working at the port, or digging canals through mosquito-infested swamps—many died of yellow fever, cholera, or malaria. In 1850, for example, one New Orleans hospital admitted 18,476 residents suffering from such diseases, of whom 11,130 were Irish immigrants.

Another possible inducement to choose New Orleans as their destination might have been the cost of getting there. As one resource put it, cotton ships from New Orleans bound for Liverpool unloaded, then "filled their holds with human ballast for the return trip." The fare—for those who actually reached their destination—was a bargain.

Discovering these details through a little bit of research into a "side topic" helped enlighten me on the reasons why the Creahans, Kellys, and Stevenses might have chosen a destination far different than the one I assumed would be a more likely choice. It doesn't, however, provide me the documentation for their arrival—a task which we still will need to face up to in the coming days. More important than the paper proof that they arrived here in America—we already see signs of that occurrence in other records—what we need is a listing of the family constellations in each party's traveling group. And—though I doubt I will find it—some nod to the townlands they once called home in their particular county in Ireland.

At this stage, pre-discovery, at least we can hope.

Tracing Michael

 

There are some Irish immigrants in my father-in-law's heritage whose age seemed to be rather fluid. When they were young, they were very, very young—but when they were old, they were ancient.

Take Michael Creahan, the husband of Bridget Kelly. Bridget was the sister of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Catharine who, like that sister, died young leaving several children behind. Depending on the record, Michael was said to have been born somewhere between 1824 and 1827, or even to have a date of birth as late as 1842, according to his death certificate—and yet his 1915 obituary states his age at passing was eighty eight. It is only because of other identifying details that we'll be able to trace Michael Creahan over time, and hopefully glean the missing details about his journey to Lafayette, Indiana.

It is a good thing that we have some clues to guide us in that paper chase. Prime among those clues was the statement in Michael's obituary that he had spent ten years working in New Orleans before proceeding up the American waterways to Indiana. It was not lost on me that that was the same route followed by Bridget Kelly's own family, as well as the route taken by the future husband of Bridget's sister Catharine, John Stevens. You can see now what had put me in mind of the F.A.N. Club concept for this extended family. 

With Michael Creahan's timeline, as given in his obituary, it might serve me well to review whatever passenger records still exist for the port of New Orleans. Arriving in America in 1847, if we can safely extrapolate from the details given in his obituary, Michael did not immediately depart for Lafayette, but remained in New Orleans to work for ten years.

It is clear from the 1860 census, where he appeared with his wife Bridget and his Indiana-born one year old daughter Ellen, that he had been in Lafayette since at least 1858. Looking ten years ahead provides us more useful details to help in tracing Michael: the 1870 census, while showing the household after the loss of his wife, includes additional family members Bridget Creahan, his eighty four year old mother, and Patrick Creahan, likely his older brother.

These additional names may help identify the right Michael Creahan in passenger records—if the family traveled together—and locate them within the mass of Irish immigrants remaining in New Orleans for the 1850 census. And if we play our F.A.N. Club cards right, perhaps that will include a turn at locating the rest of the Kelly family in New Orleans, as well—perhaps even the impossible-to-find immigrant John Stevens.

When the FAN Club Keeps Calling

 

Sorting through siblings sometimes uncovers a missing member of the family, as we saw yesterday in tracing the unexpected niece in bachelor Matthew Kelly's 1880 household. We discovered that Matthew had a sister who died as a married woman with four young children. As it turns out, though that Kelly sister, Bridget, died before the 1870 census, we can still learn a lot about her family—particularly her husband—by following his record through the rest of his own life.

There is a reason for chasing after that seemingly unrelated person. Yes, as an in-law, Bridget's husband Michael Creahan would not likely be a blood relative of the Kelly line I'm working on. However, I'm banking on that one reason for continuing the search: the possibility that, even in the family's "F.A.N. Club," we may find ourselves led to some clues about further family connections.

That F.A.N. Club premise is calling my name quite loudly right now, and for good reason. Just taking a brief look at what I could find on Michael Creahan, I may have run across some leads. Thanks to the Find A Grave volunteer who transcribed his obituary onto his memorial on that website, I learned a few details about Michael's journey to his final home in Lafayette, Indiana. That record I confirmed by finding a similar version of the May 17, 1915, obituary which was published in the Bloomington Evening World in the Indiana town where Michael's daughter had moved.

We'll talk more about Michael Creahan's obituary tomorrow, but here are some details which made me want to look further at documenting the steps along his way to America. First, the obituary mentioned that Michael Creahan was from Limerick. While the obituary didn't specify whether that meant the city of Limerick or County Limerick, it did add that Michael had left his homeland about 1847, and at that time of emigration he was twenty years of age.

Another point brought out in Michael's obituary was that, having arrived in America, he spent all but ten years living in Lafayette, Indiana. Those other ten years? That was when Michael was working in New Orleans, bringing to mind the familiar immigration route of some other members of the extended Kelly family. Could Michael have been an early arrival among his family members, sending funds back for their eventual voyages to join him in the New World? Or did Michael actually follow the path because others from among his associates and neighbors had already been that way before him?

That's why the F.A.N. Club concept is tapping me on the shoulder: family, friends, associates, or former neighbors could have influenced Michael's decision to leave home for, eventually, Lafayette, Indiana, via the route others from Ireland had taken, through New Orleans and up the river waterways of the central United States.

Michael Creahan's obituary was a tempting starting point, but there are some other details we'll look at tomorrow to see whether we can glean any further clues on what brought all these Irish immigrants to Lafayette, Indiana, by the 1850s.

When Stumped by Ancestors, Keep Searching

 

On a mission to find a family member—any family member—who could provide clues as to where the immigrant Kelly family once lived in Ireland, we've run across a puzzle: who was A. M. Crahan? We've found the children of widow Mary Kelly and her deceased husband James handily all reported in the same household for the 1860 census: sons Matthew and Thomas, plus daughters Rose and Ann. We already know the three grandchildren Mary was caring for were the children of her deceased daughter Catharine Kelly Stevens, and we were even able to spot the youngest of those grandchildren in the Kelly household for the 1880 census, long after Mary's own passing in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. But when we look more closely at the Kelly family entry in that 1880 census, we're stumped by the appearance of another relative: a thirteen year old niece named A. M. Crahan. Who was she? More importantly, who was her mother?

The plain response to such unexpected discoveries is: when stumped by ancestors, we simply need to keep searching. Hopefully, there is an answer out there. Somewhere. But it sometimes takes quite a bit of  looking before we run into the finding.

I tackled this messy question several years ago. I won't repeat all the steps in the discovery process here, as my point now is to gather all I can find on the Kelly siblings of Catharine. It is they who, if anyone would, might point the way back to their home in Ireland, wherever it was. Yet of the four siblings found in the 1860 census, we've since discovered that Matthew and Rose died unmarried. The appearance of this Crahan niece tells us that there was another Kelly sibling not listed in that 1860 household. Who was she?

A woman married before the 1860 enumeration, whoever she was, she was gone before the time of the 1870 census. Through a long series of steps, I discovered the woman's husband was named Michael Creahan, and the daughter's initials—"A. M.," as she was listed in the Kelly household for the 1880 census—stood for Anna M. Creahan. Her missing mother, who died in 1869, was the former Bridget Kelly.

So there was another Kelly sibling, showing me that it sometimes takes a lot of effort to track down all the collateral lines in a research problem. Perhaps there will be even more siblings to discover in this Kelly family. But for now, as I review this discovery, I realize that Bridget's husband Michael Creahan, himself,  might have some clues to help us in our search for more details on where the Kelly family once lived in Ireland.

When There are Too Few Matches

 

It is sometimes surprising to me to see how different the count is for DNA matches from different ancestral lines. The other day I mentioned working on my mother-in-law's Snider/Snyder line, where her ThruLines results (through her testing proxy, my husband) boast well over two hundred cousins—and then I scrolled down the list to see how many DNA matches there were for my father-in-law's second great-grandfather, James Kelly.

The result? A puny eight matches. Where were all the Kelly matches? Did no one among those descendants decide to test their DNA?

As I pore over the documentation for this Kelly family, I keep thinking there were far too few matches for the number of siblings Catharine Kelly Stevens had. Of course, I have to be doubly careful when analyzing these Kelly DNA matches, not only because the surname is such a common Irish name, but because my father-in-law actually descended from two entirely separate Kelly lines. But bearing that in mind, I still would have presumed James and Mary Kelly would have had far more descendants than they had.

Here's the overview, mostly drawn from the same 1860 census where we found the widow Mary in the household of her (presumably) oldest son, Matthew—along with her motherless grandchildren James, John Kelly, and William Stevens, found on the subsequent page. Matthew, then age thirty eight, was named in that census along with Rose, age thirty three, then Thomas, age twenty three, and finally Ann, age twenty one.

At first glance, it might be easy to assume, based on ages given, that Rose was Matthew's wife, and Ann was Thomas' wife. One could guess that Matthew and Thomas could have been brothers—but it is hard to tell what the family constellation might have been, given that there was only the most minimal of marriage information recorded for that census (whether anyone was married within the year).

With a record like the 1860 census, it takes comparing notes with other documents to construct the family's story more accurately. That there was some sort of relationship with the three Stevens boys was evident by their placement in that household, to be sure, but we'd need to look elsewhere to learn more about who, exactly, might belong in the now-deceased Catharine Kelly Stevens' collateral lines.

Fortunately, though I can't find Matthew Kelly in the 1870 census yet, he was still in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, for the 1880 census. And the 1880 census marked the starting point for recording family relationships, providing us the information that Rose was certainly not his wife; she was Matthew's sister. 

Furthermore, as we noted the other day, the youngest Stevens son, William, was also in the Kelly household in 1880, this time solidly identified as Matthew's nephew. At the time of Matthew's death a few years later, the local newspaper's report of his passing also noted his relationship to William, as we can see from the work of a Find A Grave volunteer, who posted the clipping on Matthew's memorial online. That same simple newspaper entry also confirmed that Matthew, up to the time of his death, was a bachelor.

If, like Rose in the 1860 enumeration, Ann was also an unmarried Kelly sibling, we begin to see why the number of possible descendants who could be candidates for DNA testing might be limited. And yet, that 1880 census provides us with another tantalizing clue: an additional member of the Kelly household, A. M. Crahan, identified as a niece. If she was Matthew's niece, yet not a Stevens descendant, which Kelly sibling claimed this child?

Though it gave us a start at piecing together the Kelly family constellation, that 1860 census apparently didn't reveal all the collateral lines of our Catharine Kelly Stevens. You know what that means: it's time to search for further Kelly connections.

When it's Time to Compare

 

Could a simple change of background color be all it takes to make me sit up and take notice of surroundings? 

Since I've been working on my father-in-law's Kelly ancestors, I thought I'd take a peek at the latest DNA matches via Ancestry's ThruLines tool. As I always do, I clicked on the icon for Ancestry, then chose the drop-down menu for DNA results to select ThruLines. I was on a mission to find all Kelly matches and nothing was going to get in my way.

I thought.

How is it that a little change of color on the website's display can suddenly make an oh-so-familiar screen look completely different? I clicked on ThruLines on that drop-down menu, but a different looking page came up. It was labeled "DNA Compare."

Hmmm, I thought, That's not what I was looking for. Must have clicked the wrong choice, I thought. I'll go back and try again.

That's when I saw it: the "NEW" button next to the word "Compare." 

Funny, I hadn't noticed that before—but a Google search told me the Ancestry blog had written up that "DNA Compare" on February 24, 2023. How did I miss that?

For the most part, the offerings under "DNA Compare" include "Regions"—comparing estimated ethnicity percentages with selected DNA matches—and "Ancestral Journeys," which focuses on immigrant communities' destinations or origins. In addition, for a limited time, a third comparison is made with "world class athletes," possibly a nod to this past summer's newsworthy sporting events.

While those categories were admittedly fun to peruse, I didn't find any eye-opening stunners. There was really no surprise to learn that I share similar ethnic backgrounds with those close relatives who also decided to test their DNA at Ancestry.com. Perhaps if I had been an adoptee still struggling to determine the identity of my birth parents, this might have been a useful tool. At this point, though, I'd peg such offerings as similar to what, in a previous century, might have been called "parlor games." Fun divertissement but not really useful.

On the other hand, being able to compare what our matches share with each other on a more basic level would be helpful. That, however, is the domain of a different set of offerings: the Ancestry Pro Tools. I haven't sprung for that additional cost yet, intending first to wring out all the information already available to me concerning those DNA matches. I prefer to complete the basic work first before upgrading.

Meanwhile, chasing those elusive Kelly roots may indeed call for a DNA assist, but I'll first be doing my comparisons with the basic tools available. For those whose intent in testing was to do the work in finding matches based on centiMorgan counts and large segments of shared genetic material, what's needed to complete the task is, for the most part, already there.

As I work through the matches, I'm not finding any surprises yet, but I did notice there weren't very many matches linked to this Kelly line to begin with: only eight for my father-in-law's Kelly line, compared with over two hundred matches for one of my mother-in-law's ancestral lines. Sometimes, there just aren't enough candidates out there for comparisons, no matter how impressive—or fun—the available research tools may be.

Never Really Have to Say it's Over

 

When it comes to summer, thinking it's over after passing Labor Day is so old school. Summer apparently can begin or end when the local governing body proclaims it so. Actually, if I were still a student, I'd feel robbed of my vacation if I attended class in a school district discarding that post-Labor Day tradition; one school district near me cuts summer vacation short by a full month.

The opposite is true, as well, thankfully—at least for those not bound by school schedules. Those of us who are able to travel (and include family research in our wandering ways) find the opportunity to stretch "summer vacation" into those fall months quite refreshing—and sometimes even quite a bargain.

Lately, I've been hearing the news about fellow genealogical society members returning from research trips. One member and her (now-adult) daughter just traced the memory lane winding through all the old hometowns of her Oklahoma ancestors before their emigration to California. A former student from one of my genealogy classes came up to chat after a meeting. She was so energized when she told me about all the material she gleaned while visiting several cousins back in Louisiana. Her next task: write it all down so the next generation will know these details, too.

Others I know are planning their research trips for later this month or even in October. Some local groups are organizing trips to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. One of our board members recently discovered some new details on an ancestor in Tennessee, and is making plans to travel there next month for research.

While in the past, we might have reserved our research trips for those "official" months of summer vacation—all the better for drafting "research assistants" on those family trip detours to libraries or cemeteries—now, the end of summer hardly stops us. When it comes to summer, we never really have to say it's over. As it turns out for so many of us, any time is good for a family history research trip.

Little Telltale Signs

 

Though Catharine Kelly Stevens may have died in 1858 at a young age, she left three telltale signs to help guide us to the right Kelly family in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. Those little signs were her three sons: James, John Kelly, and William. With their help, I was able to piece together the right Kelly family of Catharine's mother and remaining siblings.

It had always been a mystery to me why those three children had seemed to disappear after their mother's death. Since James was born about 1854, John Kelly in 1856, and William a little over a month prior to his mother's passing, by the time of the 1860 census, they would have been young children in need of care. They had to be somewhere, but there was no sign of them—nor their father, the widowed John Stevens, either.

It was records of Catharine's collateral lines which began to paint a picture for me of what became of her three sons. In the household of Catharine's presumed brother, Matthew Kelley, it just so happened that there were three Stevens boys in the 1860 census. It's just that, looking at that entry for Matthew Kelly and his family—including his mother Mary—the listing for the Stevens children wouldn't have been obvious without turning the page. It appears as if the household listing were complete with the line entry on Matthew's mother Mary at the end of the first page.

Note to self: always turn the page. Just in case.

With the subsequent census in 1870, the two older Stevens boys returned to live with their father John, who by then had remarried and welcomed three more children into his household. Once again, I needed to revisit the Kelly household to trace that third, missing Stevens son. It wasn't until the 1880 census when I finally found William back in Matthew Kelly's household, this time listed specifically as Matthew's nephew.

With that useful pattern of following the motherless sons of James and Mary Kelly's deceased daughter Catharine, I was able to make a few connections between John Stevens and his in-laws' family. It helps to have some confirmation that one is following the right family line, especially with a surname as common as Kelly.

Seeing that, I wondered whether piecing together a listing of the unfortunate Catharine's siblings might also provide some enlightenment on where the Kelly family may have originated. We'll take a closer look at the collateral lines in that Kelly family tree, beginning next week.

NOT Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

 

If I stare at the headstone of Catherine Kelly Stevens long enough, I can barely make out the words, "wife of John Stevens." Or perhaps that is wishful thinking. I can't even decipher any entry for her own name. Only her date of death—May 3, 1858—seems clear enough to believe.

Truthfully, I can't even say it's beyond a reasonable doubt that James and Mary Kelly's daughter Catharine was married to John Stevens, my father-in-law's great-grandfather. Records are far more sparse for Indiana's Tippecanoe County in the 1850s than in those east coast locations boasting immigrant settlers as far back as the 1600s. And what few records can be found sometimes come with irksome abnormalities.

Take the presumed marriage license for John and Catharine. The license, dated on the twenty-seventh day of December in 1853, authorized "any person empowered by law to solemnize marriage" of the named couple. However, on that same document, the groom's name is given once as John Stevenson, and three more times as John Stephenson. Is this still our man John Stevens?

If this was the correct couple, they were married a little over three months after Catharine's father James had died—a likely possibility if a widow was seeking to find promising situations for her daughters after losing her own husband. But this could as likely have been the case of two people with the same name. After all, even in a city of barely six thousand people, it could be possible for someone named Catharine Kelly to have a name twin.

Of course, even the spelling variation on Catharine's own maiden name—Kelly or Kelley—would give pause to someone nowadays, but may not have been cause for concern in a previous century. But with no other records yet available to compare, we don't have much to go on beyond family tradition and these sparse indications.

There is, however, a way beyond this tangle, and that is to employ the records we can find of Catharine's collateral lines. As it turns out, because Catharine was a young mother when she died, the records of her own children will help guide us in the process of sorting out the details on this family—first for Catharine herself, then for her parents.

Tomorrow, we'll begin reviewing what's already been found on John and Catharine's three sons, then take a look at Catharine's own siblings to see what else can be discovered about the family.

"Start With What you Know"

 

If the standard genealogical mantra is to "start with what you know," then I probably shouldn't even begin pursuing James and Mary Kelly. There is so much not known about these second great-grandparents of my father-in-law—but if I don't start somewhere, I won't start at all.

Researching this couple with the quintessential Irish surname amounts to groping about in the dark like a blind man in a back alley. Most of what I "know" is based on associations with family members of the next generation and very weak inferences. With next to zero documentation, there isn't much for me to go by. If it weren't for the help of local researchers familiar with the territory and history of Lafayette, Indiana, I wouldn't even have made as much progress as I have to this point.

Take James Kelly, for instance. There is an entry for him in the Find A Grave listings for the old Greenbush Cemetery in Lafayette—but no headstone shown to verify the name or dates. And the date given in the Find A Grave memorial as James' death—September 1, 1853—may actually be the burial date.

Fortunately for me, the Find A Grave volunteer who posted James Kelly's memorial—it was spelled there as Kelley—happens to be a very active participant in the local genealogical community in Lafayette. Though I haven't met her face to face, we have discussed this Kelly family by phone and email before one of my trips to visit Lafayette. According to the volunteer, she gleaned the information on those early Greenbush burials from the actual cemetery records, of which I believe she had a copy.

What was helpful in those conversations was the volunteer's provision of information on James' wife Mary, as well as their daughter Catharine, whose untimely death followed the birth of her third child, William Stevens. In Catharine's case, thankfully, we do have a photograph of her 1858 headstone.

Once again, information on Find A Grave is sparse for Mary Kelley: no date of birth or death given. Only thanks to the specific location of her burial plot can we determine Mary's connection to James and to Catharine Stevens: section 2, lot 118. Even then, it is an inference based on proximity—that, and family oral tradition that Catharine's parents were James and Mary.

There were, thankfully, a few other signs of proximity to help bolster such inferences about the Kelly family. Finding those, however, will mean exploring what essentially are collateral lines among these ancestors of my father-in-law. Let's take a look tomorrow.

Got Kellys?

 

Doing family history research? From Ireland? Got Kellys?

Funny, so do I. In fact, my father-in-law actually has two different Kelly families attributed to his direct line ancestors, not to mention several in-laws married to collateral lines in his tree. Let's just say there are a lot of Kellys to go around. And enough research angst to unnerve all of us.

I knew I might regret it when I selected James and Mary Kelly to pursue for my Twelve Most Wanted for this year. Perhaps that's the secret reason why I messed up and skipped right over that goal last month. August was supposed to be the month I would tackle James and Mary, but somehow I "overlooked" that detail. We'll see whether we can make up for that oversight this September.

Here's what I know about James and Mary Kelly so far. After all, I've worked on their family back in 2020, and again the next year, so at least I have some basis for launching us from their final resting place in Lafayette, Indiana, to their original homeland somewhere in Ireland.

James and Mary Kelly must have arrived in Indiana some time around 1850—but that is my best guess. I can't yet find them in the 1850 census, and by the time of the 1860 census, Mary was a widow living in her son's household in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. By 1870, she too was gone.

Searching for Kellys can be a daunting experience. Besides the fact that Kelly is such a common surname for Irish descendants, it is a name with spelling variations. Thus, in seeking James and Mary Kelly, we must also be open to seeking James and Mary Kelley.

Though my father-in-law's brother Ed, keeper of the family "stuff," was so careful to pass down the history of his family to me, when it came to this line of Kellys, he could not say where in Ireland they might have originated. Thus, in working on this task for September's version of my Twelve Most Wanted, our search will be wide open. Ever wonder just how many Kellys there might have been in Ireland?

With work like this cut out for us this month, we may be facing a daunting task. I'll be the first to admit I may find myself looking for detours—like learning far more than planned about Irish immigration, or conditions pre-famine in Ireland—to enrich my understanding in the face of a hopeless goal of seeking a Mary Kelly anywhere in Ireland.

But first, remembering the family history mantra, tomorrow we'll start with what we know. Once we get our footing firmly established, perhaps we can launch our search in a promising direction.

Change of Plans

 

Sometimes, a change of plans can happen for the nicest of surprises. Today is one of those days. I had planned to launch into a new month of research on the third of my father-in-law's mystery ancestors for this year. Then, an unexpected email landed in my in-box which I simply can't not talk about. I thought about saving this post for next weekend, but since today's a holiday anyhow, I'll let that be my excuse to celebrate a little.

If you have been following A Family Tapestry for any amount of time longer than, say, the past couple years, you probably have picked up the notion that when I started this family history journey, I knew next to nothing about my own father's side of the family. Put it simply: I knew my dad's name, and a rough estimate of his date of birth somewhere in New York City—and that was it. He wasn't too helpful about adding any information, either; his usual response to my childhood pleas—delivered in a typical New York accent—was, "Ah, you don't wanna know that."

My older siblings and cousins and I eventually got together and compared notes on our respective parents from this side of the family. Bit by bit, we were able to assemble lines from census records and other details which revealed the story of a family with a far different surname than the one I grew up with: it was Puhalski. Or Puhalaski. Or, finally back in Poland, the family's origin, Puhała.

That search took years of sharing discoveries among ourselves, but even then, I'd run into people who warned me that what my cousins and I had found was simply a case of a woman—my paternal grandmother, Sophie Laskowska—marrying two different men. That was the usual way to explain away family records with two different surnames, not the alternate—and very possible—scenario of an immigrant deciding to unofficially change his own name.

Well, along came technology—we bandy about the term "AI" now—and changed all that. Unbidden and certainly unexpectedly, I got this email yesterday about a discovery regarding a newspaper printed over a century ago. The email was from the genealogy company MyHeritage, which a few years ago had acquired a significant collection of New York newspapers and state documents. With their release this year of OldNews.com, MyHeritage was certainly equipped to help me resolve that research dilemma, but I never dreamed it possible to actually find an answer to this problem in print, certainly not in the pages of any New York newspaper.

It was MyHeritage's SuperSearch function which did the heavy lifting for me, though I hadn't even the slightest notion that they were working behind the scenes to uncover answers for me. Thus, the unexpected email brought me, unbidden, the answer I thought I would never find.

That long-awaited answer was buried in the legal notices from the June 13, 1917, edition of the Flushing Daily Times, in the midst of articles on page three concerning rallies for the Red Cross, real estate sales, classified ads, and even a cartoon strip. In essence, at a "Special Term of the Supreme Court" for Queens County (but held in Kings County) on June 12, Theodore J. Puhalski petitioned to change his name to John T. McCann. In addition, the notice included the request for the petitioner's two children to also have their surname changed for "good reasons" and that their interests "will be substantially promoted thereby."

Makes one wonder what those "good reasons" might have been. Whatever they were, they remained as much a secret as the very court incident, itself—until, at least, a smartly set up computer system aided in uncovering details I never dreamed actually existed.

Today might be a different holiday celebration for you than the event I'm celebrating. For now, I'm cheering for this unexpected discovery, definitely a genealogy happy-dance-worthy moment. Tomorrow, we'll get back to work on previously scheduled research plans. I promise.

Newspaper image above from page 3 of the Flushing Daily Times for June 13, 1917, courtesy of OldNews.com at MyHeritage.com.