Probing the Possibilities

 

When it comes to playing the genetic genealogy "what if" game, fortunately there are now some useful tools to help us probe relationship possibilities between specific DNA matches. As we focus on the possible connection between Anna Flanagan Malloy's descendant (my husband, the willing DNA test subject) and a DNA tester descended from someone named James Flanagan, there are indeed a few relationship possibilities—but there are also a few roadblocks standing between us and an answer.

Let's break down the few facts already known in this case. First, despite not yet knowing the relationship between the two test-takers, we can at least affirm that they share seventeen centiMorgans. Granted, that is not a very large amount of genetic material shared between them, but it does tell us something. If we plug that amount into the interactive updated beta version of Blaine Bettinger's Shared centiMorgan Project at DNA Painter, we see some encouraging news: there is a 23% relationship probability that the two subjects in question could be third cousins, once removed. 

For now, I'll provide a brief overview of the descendancy chart provided by the DNA match's own tree posted at Ancestry.com. This person's ancestral connection, James Flanagan, was listed with a birth year of 1814—quite close to our Anna's own supposed year of birth in 1812. According to that same match's family tree, there are two additional generations between that original James and the DNA match, whereas in our case, there are three additional generations.

In other words, comparing the two DNA matches' trees, it looks like the relationship for the two matches would be third cousins, once removed. That level of relationship, according to the Shared centiMorgan Project, would be statistically supported at the 17 cM level—an encouraging sign.

What if, instead, Anna and James Flanagan were not siblings but, say, cousins? Even a fourth cousin once removed relationship would be supported by statistical analysis, with a 15% probability. 

There are some other promising signs. One is that the property in question, that lot listed as 7f in the Valuation Office records for Capananty Townland in County Limerick, was eventually passed from William Flanagan to someone named James Flanagan. And a note in the property records indicated that the property in question was in probate by 1939—one year after that same DNA match's ancestor James Flanagan had died.

Granted, we always need to double check any family trees we find online, to prove the record for ourselves. Since there are a few details in this review which cause me some doubt, that is exactly what we'll need to do next. 

Nothing to Write Home About

 

When it comes to the grunt work of searching for family history documentation, face it: there's nothing to write home about. Grinding through records, page by page—yes, even in this high tech, easy search age—can be, well, a grind. I don't talk about it much, but this tedious searching does keep rolling on, day by day, in the background.

With today's biweekly count, it is easy to see that looking for signs of the Flanagan family in County Limerick adds up to more searching than finding. Last month's research adventure, trying to figure out my mother-in-law's ancestor Simon Rinehart, generated far more documents—and thus, individuals added to her tree—than what we'll see for this month.

Granted, I've continued the search for Rinehart ancestors in the background, despite July's stated goal of moving to my father-in-law's Flanagans; it's just that the routine of adding descendants for those Rinehart matches also belongs to the category of "nothing to write home about." However, that effort did manage to add most of the 232 new individuals included in my in-laws' family tree now. I suspect, once faced with the Flanagan brick wall, that even that halfway decent progress report will come close to a dead stand-still. We'll see in the next two weeks.

Still, my in-laws' tree now has 40,847 individuals recorded. The search is on to see whether any of those will generate notifications of DNA matches, my main goal for adding descendants to each collateral line. I have seen a couple new DNA matches linked, via Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool, to Simon Rinehart's line, thanks to continuing the grunt work following last month's research goal.

Now that I'll be working on the ancestral roots of one Flanagan DNA match during the remainder of this month, perhaps that will generate additional searches for descendants. That, however, is only dependent on whether I can find documentation for the right James Flanagan, the ancestor said to have come from the same townland in County Limerick—Cappananty—as William Flanagan and his sister Anna.

In turn, that means grinding through some digitized microfilmed records. Don't count on seeing any handy hints pop up. This will take some old-fashioned research legwork through documents originating in Ireland. Thankfully, I can now add James Flanagan using Ancestry.com's ProTools option to build him into my already-set-up Flanagan network. Tools can make the job progress so much more smoothly, and I have high hopes that there will be documents to add to this Flanagan network, soon.

Genealogy Gets the Spa Treatment

 

Are you a member of The Club? You know, the one that costs $5K per year for exclusive services for the "most passionate" of genealogy researchers. If you haven't yet heard of it, well, neither had I—until last weekend when the buzz exploded onto several of the genealogy blogs I follow. Curious, I had to take a look. After all, I'd consider myself among the most passionate about genealogical research, not to mention the services which help provide the material needed to find answers about my family's roots.

Apparently, one segment of the genealogy community will soon be getting the spa treatment. For a price.

My first clue about the launch of Ancestry.com's "Club 1890" came in the form of a blog post from outside my own country: Canadian blogger John Reid, mentioning on Anglo-Celtic Connections about an analysis of the offering, posted by genealogist Amy Johnson Crow. Curious, I Googled this new offering to find out more.

As it turns out, Club 1890 had been announced at this year's RootsTech. In addition, Thomas MacEntee, long known to the genealogy community, had posted about the Ancestry offering in his blog, Genealogy Bargains, back in March, shortly after Ancestry's announcement. He has since come out with an in-depth analysis of this development in the genealogy world, posted on his blog just yesterday.

At the same time, he also distributed an article to those in the genealogy community, especially those involved in continuing the work of nonprofit genealogical societies. This emailed article provided suggestions for how genealogical societies could market their own contributions to the world of family history research in the wake of Ancestry's product launch, such as providing affordable alternatives to those wishing to learn how to find their own family's roots—at a far more accessible price point.

Whether Ancestry's new "Club" meets your every research need at precisely the right price, or you are among the vociferous many experiencing negative reactions to this product announcement, it is important to be aware of the developing changes in the world of genealogy—in other word, in the world of the genealogy community. Whether you spring for the price or not, the impact of this new product on the genealogy community may indeed affect you.   

Playing the "What If" Game

 

When DNA testing presents us with a possible family relationship—but doesn't explain how those two people are connected—it's time to start playing the "What If" game. Now's the time to look more closely at collateral lines connected to that brick wall ancestor. In fact, it might be appropriate to take a deep dive into that someone else's family tree—not just reviewing what a DNA match might presume is the family tree, but going so far as to do our own work in building that family tree.

In the case of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Anna Flanagan Malloy, that is exactly the tempting point where I'm standing now. I can't find any record of her parents' names, but I do have some other information. As far as collateral lines go, I already know that when Anna migrated from County Limerick, Ireland, to Chicago in the United States, at some point she was joined by her brother William. A further collateral line springs from another, as yet unnamed, Flanagan brother whose daughter Johanna also ended up in Chicago. And now, to add to the possibilities of collateral lines, I have a DNA match whose Flanagan ancestor also hails from that same townland in County Limerick—Cappananty—who was known as James Flanagan.

Before I start searching for documentation to confirm or reject this James Flanagan as a possible family connection, let's run down the property record paper trail that I discovered during my trip to Ireland a decade ago. While I wrote about my research in the Valuation Office in Dublin at the time I had found the records—I'll provide the links in this synopsis—I'll just give a quick overview here.

Basically, records used in Ireland for property taxation came in big ledgers with each resident's name in the left column. As the years moved on and changes to residences occurred, the original resident's name was lined out, and—with changes marked in a different color ink—the new resident's name was entered. Thus, going through the property ledgers provides us a house history, so to speak, as the property changed hands.

Back in 2014, I provided the photo of the ledger page where I had found a Catherine Flanagan listed, living in the same property identified as 7f that had been labeled William Flanagan's place on Griffith's Valuation in 1853. Keep in mind, that property would have been within the boundaries of the Catholic parish Ballyagran, which our William, himself, had stated was his native home.

Following the trail of that property labeled 7f through the years, here is the progression of residents' names:

• 1853: William Flanagan
• 1855: Catherine Flanagan
• 1866: Catherine's name lined out, James Flanagan entered, labeled "68."
• 1906: Property now listed as owned by James Flanagan
• 1939: Property in probate (possible date of death for James?)
• 1941: Ledger entry states property "in ruins" with tax only for land, not structures

My "What If" question: what if Catherine Flanagan were William's mother? And what if James Flanagan were a brother to William? Or what if Catherine were a sister to William and James? Or mother to James? 

There could be all sorts of permutations to that "What If" game, and a thousand ways the unsuspecting genealogist could be led down the wrong branch of the family tree. Despite the risks, though, it warrants a closer look at any documentation we can find on this James Flanagan and his family—including the results found among those DNA matches who tie my father-in-law's line to the descendants of one James Flanagan of Cappananty. 

The Gift of Collateral Lines

 

Genealogy is a process of pushing backward through the years, one generation at a time. Eventually, we run into a brick wall that impedes our research progress. Then what? 

I've found one approach to making an end run around those brick walls is to research an ancestor's collateral lines—those brothers and sisters who might have been more fortunate to have their life's story captured by documentation. Using that research technique has been more than just another process; for me, collateral lines have often become a research gift.

With this current puzzle about my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan Malloy and the siblings who traveled with her from County Limerick in Ireland to, ultimately, Chicago, one key collateral line has been Anna's brother William. He was the one who made sure to leave behind a record—carved in stone, no less—of his origin in Parish "Ballygran." Once I took the search for the Flanagan family to that very parish in Ireland, I couldn't help but notice the entry in one 1841 record book signed, in a very clear hand, as Jacobus Flanagan, pastor of Ballygran.

It is in that same parish, whether you spell it precisely as Ballygran or Ballyagran, where the ancestors of one DNA match also happened to live. The ancestor, named James Flanagan—yes, that name, too, would be Jacobus in Latin—may have been born about the same time as Anna and William.

What is further interesting is to see how the names of the next generation echo those of the families of the Flanagan relatives who left Ireland for Chicago. While traditional Irish naming patterns may have been forsaken by those emigrants who left Ireland far behind, those who remained on the home turf were more likely to keep up a tradition which, in turn, could help solve our puzzle—with an added boost from genetic genealogy.

A further point to consider is to trace the changing hands of the property we had found, whose resident was, in 1853, listed as William Flanagan. As a first step in delving into this question about possible collateral lines, we'll take some time tomorrow to review my discoveries from that Ireland trip over ten years ago.

The Lay of the Land

 

It may seem an abrupt jump to leave Chicago and head straight to Ireland in our quest to discover more about the extended Flanagan family of my father-in-law's roots, but there is a method to this meandering: eventually, I hope to explore some collateral lines. To do this, though, we first need to zero in on the lay of the land, back where William Flanagan and his sister Anna, deserted wife of Stephen Malloy, once lived.

Though there were many key Irish documents destroyed in political struggles of the early 1900s, there are enough left us which, combined with that precious saved personal letter to Anna, may point us in the right direction for research in the Flanagans' Irish homeland.

Stephen's letter to Anna, for instance, was addressed in care of a man named John Mason in the townland of Cappanihane. If we pull up records from Griffith's Valuation, which was completed in County Limerick in 1853, we can see, first, a John Mason listed as the holder of several plots of land in that same townland. More helpful to us, though, is the entry above that listing on the same page, where William Flanagan himself is listed on land in the townland just to the west, known as Cappananty (see line entry 7f).

In the property valuation, William's property is listed as a house, office, and garden. It is doubtful the edifice was of much value; driving by the location during our visit to Ireland, of what little we saw still standing in that area, all were modest—and decrepit—structures. But what is beautiful about that discovery is that, if you fast forward through time by visiting the Valuation Office in Dublin to consult the property records from that time onward, you can see one occupier's name lined out and replaced by another, then another, over the course of time.

The first line which replaces William Flanagan's name was that of someone named Catherine. After that point, the next name was lined out and replaced by yet another name as the property changed hands again.

Is this mention in Griffith's Valuation naming our own William Flanagan? I can't yet be sure. However, what is curious about that progression of names seen in the valuation records is that it is echoed by the ancestors named by some of my husband's DNA matches. While we have yet to figure out the Flanagan DNA connection, it may be worth our while to revisit this puzzle once again.

Pulling Out Those Old Files

 

The Flanagan, Malloy, and Lee connection to County Limerick is one that has had me stumped for well over twenty years. That means, of course, that I have files dating back that far—notes that I've kept along this research journey to remind me of what I've already accomplished, what helped, and what still needs to be done. For the past decade, I can safely say that most of those old records have been kept online or in some digital format. But those others? Well, it was time to pull out those old file folders and take another look.

Frankly, I'm stumped on this search. I remember having one printout, faxed to me by a helpful office worker in one Chicago cemetery, which outlined just who was buried in the Flanagan family plot. I remember one of the names on that chart being Edward Flanagan, a puzzle piece I never did manage to connect with the rest of this family.

I went looking for that old Flanagan record, and found...something else. Those old file folders included notes from twenty three years ago, as well as other records gathered in preparation for my research trip to Ireland ten years ago. There were printed copies of death records and census pages and obituaries—all the stuff we are more likely to store digitally, now.

Among those records were notes about the gap in William Flanagan's story. A printout from my visit to the National Archives of Ireland, with penciled-in notes by the archivist who helped me with William's puzzle, listed his trial date for "stealing trousers and former convictions" as March 23, 1851. The trial took place in County Cork, and the sentence was indeed, as the family had insisted, transportation to Australia for a term of seven years.

Underneath that readout was a typed addition: "Convict ordered to be discharged" on May 9, 1855. The archivist added the comment, "shows up in Chicago by 1860," possibly making the note from my report during the archives visit.

That file folder I retrieved also contained a copy of William Flanagan's death certificate. Apparently, William died at 6:00 a.m. Chicago time on August 14, 1893, at the home of his niece Catherine Malloy (by then Tully), so I am fairly confident that the reporting party for that record would be Catherine, herself. In answer to the question, "How long resident in this State," she had responded that William had been in Chicago for eighteen years.

That would date William's arrival in Chicago as approximately 1875—and yet, we had already seen him listed in Chicago in the 1860 census. It's little conflicting notes like this which make me wonder whether more such discrepancies are what cause the man—and the rest of his family—to be so invisible.

However, other notes in that old Flanagan file folder remind me that, in Dublin, I had searched in governmental offices for records showing the location of possible property where the Flanagans may once have lived. At the time, I couldn't be sure my discoveries were of the right family, but now, looking back, I'm ready to reconsider. 

That change of mind is owing to one other observation. I checked my husband's DNA matches again to see who might be connected to that Flanagan side of his father's Irish roots, and was reminded of one contact who, like me, was stumped about the connection—but agreed that there definitely had to be one. Perhaps this time, we can figure out how that connection was made.

But For a Letter Saved

Here I am, grinding slowly through the microfilmed and digitized baptismal records of Flanagan descendants in 1870s Chicago. The pace is slow, despite the awesome advances in online search over the past few years. Even so, this may be no more than a dreary exercise in going through the motions; there is no guarantee I will find any more records from this family, once I move on to the 1880s. 

Thinking of this particular Flanagan line, it occurred to me that I wouldn't have been able to delve any deeper than I have into these Chicago records had it not been through one item: a letter sent in 1849 from Liverpool to County Limerick in Ireland. More to the point: but for that letter having been saved by its recipient, I would now be sorely lacking in any research direction for Anna Flanagan Malloy's roots.

How slim a thread upon which the realization of our family's history may hang. Yes, family research is indeed a case of here a little, there a little—but some of that information gathered here and there wouldn't make sense without the glue of some additional personal material. In Anna Flanagan Malloy's case, that otherwise missing glue would be the letter from her husband.

I've written before about that letter and what it revealed about Anna's possible home in Ireland. I first presented a copy of the letter in the early years of this blog, only months before our research trip to Ireland. Following that post, I added a copy of the actual envelope, which provided the location where Anna Flanagan Malloy was staying in her husband's absence. Only four years ago, I had revisited that letter once again, hoping to find anything more about Anna's husband Stephen Malloy. So far, I've drawn a blank, both about Stephen himself, as well as the Flanagan family.

The lesson that was missing from those experiences has been impressed on me as I revisit this research problem yet again: if it weren't for even having the letter to refer to, I would be hard pressed to move the search anywhere before Anna's appearance in the 1860 census in Chicago.

For those who are fortunate enough to have "packrat" relatives, that pile of hoarded papers may be just that—junk to be quickly discarded—or those papers could be the rare and precious key that links us to our family's otherwise obscured past. 

Sometimes, All You Get Is an Initial

 

I may be focusing on my father-in-law's Flanagan family for July, but behind the scenes for the past two weeks, I've still been trying to build out the family tree of Simon Rinehart, last month's research project. Since I had discovered the name of several more of his children, one goal was to build out the family tree so that I'd find hooks to connect with those mystery DNA matches. Such a process can sometimes be tedious, moving from parent to child to grandchild, and on down through multiple additional generations for each line of descent. If you've worked on a family tree, you know the drill.

For some branches of the Rinehart tree, the process these past two weeks went rather smoothly, but for others, it was a difficult slog. Reviewing document after document, there were instances where the effort yielded very few additional details. Sometimes, despite hours of searching, all that is gained might only be the addition of a person's middle initial. Our tiniest battles are often hard won.

Eventually, though, that puny middle initial gets added to another tiny detail, and then another. Over the course of several searches, we see that mystery ancestor's being take shape before us in our database, and the fuller picture allows us to connect the dots on a family's composition, or point us to the answer we didn't even know we were seeking. We are conjuring up ancestors, data point by data point. Eventually, there is enough data dust accumulated for that ancestor to take shape.

I remind myself of this, every time I weary of the routine—that tap dance in front of my computer screen, reviewing census enumeration after enumeration, or digging through wills or juggling sequential tax records, looking for that elusive connection to the others we can family. For every middle initial we do find, the search brings us one step closer to an answer. It's in the incremental advance that we journey towards finding the completed family picture. 

Where the Flanagan Family Worshipped

 

While we are struggling to determine more about the Flanagan family members after their arrival in Chicago, perhaps it might help to pause the search and explore what we can find on the place where the family worshipped. 

We learned from the baptismal records for three of Johanna Flanagan Lee's children that the family's church was known as Holy Family Catholic Church. Upon learning that name, you might have—as I had—presumed it was yet another of many Catholic Churches in the area. Come to find out, it was worth the effort to learn a bit about the people and places important in our ancestors' lives.

Holy Family Catholic Church was apparently the second-oldest Catholic Church in the city of Chicago. In addition, it has the claim of being one of the few buildings to survive the 1871 Chicago fire—despite the rumor that the barn of one of the church parishioners was where the fire actually started.

More to the point of our inquiry, Holy Family Catholic Church was originally a congregation comprised mostly of Irish immigrants. Eventually, the church grew to claim over twenty five thousand parishioners, so it is no surprise to learn that some estimate one third of today's Chicago Irish-American residents can trace their roots to this church. Should any family historian care to research their roots via the baptismal records from the church, they would be in great company; since the parish opened in 1857, there have been over fifty six thousand people baptized there.

The church itself, located at 1080 West Roosevelt Road, once was a parish encompassing a distance of nearly seven miles, far beyond just the downtown area. However, looking at a map of the area, I can spot some of the streets named in our search for the godparents mentioned in those baptismal records we've reviewed. And Johanna and her husband, John Lee, had moved their family to Fourteenth Street by the time of the 1880 census, still within the boundaries of the church parish.

However, whether the Lee family still lived near the church by the time of the 1881 birth of their daughter Lillian—the first of their children whose baptismal record I could not find listed in the church's index—I haven't yet been able to determine. This will, I suspect, require a second search through those listings or those of other Chicago Catholic Churches, all which will take time. The goal, as before, will still be to see what family-linked godparents might have been identified on those baptismal records—if we can find them at all.    

Our Man Flanagan

 

Chasing after clues about Edward Flanagan, the man named as godfather of Johanna Flanagan Lee's son George, has yielded very little. That he might have been Johanna's father is unlikely, given the impracticality of her father fulfilling the role of godfather for her child. But whether this Edward Flanagan could have been her brother, while a possibility, still leaves me with doubts.

Since we had found two entries for men by that name in the Chicago city directory for 1878, a logical next step was to go back and check the 1880 census once again—this time, eyeing all the different possible spelling variations. With that approach, two possibilities presented themself: twenty two year old Ed on Laurel Street, and the twenty one year old Ed on Fifteenth Street.

Ed on Laurel Street was an Irish immigrant boarding with the Sullivan family, who apparently was joined on his trans-Atlantic adventure by George Flanigan, possibly Edward's younger brother. The other Ed was living in the home of his parents, John and Elizabeth Flanagan. While this Ed's parents were born in Ireland, Ed and his older siblings were born in New Jersey, painting a far different immigration story.

Granted, either of these two young men could have been the correct identity for a godparent of John and Johanna's son, even if they weren't relatives. The baptismal traditions from the Old Country may well have been disregarded so many years after immigration. This may leave us at a loss for how to reconstruct a picture of the cluster of family members who may have immigrated together—but not so severely hobbled us as to cause us to give up the search. There may be other ways to explore this mystery.

One possible way is to take a break from genealogical pursuits and step back to absorb the history of the place where those Flanagans now called home. Since church was such an important part of Irish life, learning something about the family's new church home may provide some pointers.

For one thing, I noticed that the three baptismal records that had been shared by another Ancestry.com subscriber all focused on births from the 1870s. However, when I located the online resource to view all the baptismal records from the Lees' church in Chicago—Holy Family Catholic Church—missing from the index were all the children born after the 1870s. This would include daughter Lillian in 1881, son Edward in 1883, another son David in 1884, and daughters Deborah in 1886 and Mary Elizabeth in 1888. Each of those documents would give us more opportunities to explore whether family members were named as each child's sponsors.

While we're stuck on this pursuit, let's take some time to set aside the certificate search and learn a bit about the church in Chicago where the Lee family attended and had their first three children baptized. Then we can figure out what, if anything, changed for the Lees, once those children of the 1880s were added to the family.  

It's All in How You Spell It

 

Finding Edward Flanagan mentioned in documents related to the extended Flanagan family of my father-in-law might have been encouraging—until I tried looking for other mentions of the man's name. I suspected our man Ed might have been difficult to trace in 1880s Chicago mainly because there was no standard way to spell his surname.

Since we had last seen him—or at least someone with that same name—in the 1877 baptismal record for Johanna Flanagan Lee's son George, I thought a copy of the Chicago city directory might sort things out for us. Fortunately, there was a digitized copy of the 1878 directory online at Ancestry.com, so I took a look for our missing Edward Flanagan.

Was he there? Well, maybe. There was one listing for an Edward Flanagan, a clerk living at 47 Ray Street. But don't let out a cheer just yet. There was another clerk named Edward Flanigan living on Thirteenth Place. Fortunately for us, there were no more Edwards among the listings for the Flannagans, Flannaghans, or Flannegans who also lived in Chicago at the time.

But a Flanigan on Thirteenth Place? Hadn't we seen that street name before? That, as it turned out, was one connecting link between John Lee, father of the baptized George Aloysius Lee, and the godfather listed on his older son's baptismal record: they both had lived on the same street in Chicago. Granted, streets in Chicago could run the length of the city, so that might not tell us much. And while this Edward Flanagan was said to have worked as a clerk, not a cooper, perhaps they all could have worked for the same employer.

It was, however, encouraging to at least find a sign that there was indeed an Edward Flanagan in existence in 1880s Chicago, no matter how you spell his last name. Now all we need to do is to find out what became of him after that point.

 

Getting a Good Look at the Godparents

 

For those of the poorer Catholics born in Ireland around the time of the Great Famine, the selection of their godparents was a ritual carefully spelled out by custom. In Ireland, every godparent selected for that role was either a sibling or a sibling-in-law of one of the child's parents. Thus, getting a good look at a child's baptismal record could provide information hidden in plain sight about other members in the parents' families, all based on the godparents listed.

But what about those destitute Catholics who fled the famine? Did they keep up that baptismal tradition overseas?

We considered that question last year while exploring some of my father-in-law's Irish ancestors who migrated to Canada. The upshot of that pursuit? Apparently, proximity of near relatives lost to the convenience of near neighbors, once the family arrived in the New World. The question this year is: did the same thing happen for those who migrated to the United States? Let's begin by taking a look at the baptismal records we've found so far.

First, a newly-discovered son, James John Lee, was born in Chicago in 1874 to Johanna Flanagan and her husband John Lee. The baptismal record in July of that year showed the baby's sponsors (or godparents). Right away, we light up when we see the names: John Ponsonby and Catherine Flanagan. We're presuming the selection of Catherine might be following the old Irish tradition from back home, showing us a possible sister for Johanna, who was also a Flanagan. But let's wait until we take a closer look.

Thanks to his rather unusual surname, John Ponsonby was easily spotted in the 1880 census, taken six years after John stepped up to serve as godfather for baby James John Lee. Encouragingly, John was married to a woman named Catherine, who reported that she was born in Ireland. Their household was completed by a two year old son, whom they named—tantalizingly—Edward, same as the mystery Flanagan man I'm chasing this month.

Don't get your hopes up, however. That Catherine's maiden name was not Flanagan, as it turns out, but Fox. The proud Lee parents' connection to John Ponsonby was more likely to be either by residential location or occupational ties.

That same 1880 census showed John Ponsonby living on Thirteenth Place in Chicago, the same street where the baby's father John Lee lived, according to the 1878 city directory. Looking at those two documents also reveals the likely real reason for John Ponsonby's connection to John Lee: they both worked as coopers.

So who was Catherine Flanagan? Short answer: I don't know—yet.

As for Edward Flanagan, the one named as godfather for John and Johanna Flanagan Lee's son George Aloysius, we need to go through that same process once again. We'll see what we can find on Edward tomorrow.

It Might be up to Ed

 

When faced with brick wall ancestors—those end-of-the-line predecessors who can't seem to give up their family secrets—sometimes the only solution to the problem is to draw the research circle wider and wider. That might be just what we'll do this month, as we try to determine the Irish parents of Chicago resident Anna Flanagan Malloy through cluster research—A.K.A. the Flanagan "F.A.N. Club."

When I look at all the names connected to Anna, her brother William Flanagan, and her daughter Catherine Malloy, one name keeps popping up: a man named Edward Flanagan. Brother? Cousin? Neighbor? Or just plain ol' friendly guy? It's hard to tell without launching into a study of the cluster of names surrounding Anna and her household.

Setting up a Flanagan family network on Ancestry.com seemed a first step, but searching for Edward Flanagan in Chicago records hasn't yielded many results—so far. However, thanks to the helpfulness of another Ancestry subscriber who posted copies of baptismal records, two children of another Flanagan descendant—Johanna Flanagan Lee—showed an interesting connection.

First, for a child that I wasn't even aware of—Johanna's son James John Lee, born in July of 1874—the godparents were listed as John Ponsonby and Catherine Flanagan. Could that Catherine be yet another Flanagan relative?

For a son born in 1877, George Aloysius Lee, I spotted that recurring name: Edward Flanagan, listed as George's godfather. There he was, Edward Flanagan—but try as I might, I couldn't find him listed in any census entry at the start of the next decade. Who was this man?

One additional recollection—a detail I definitely will need to recover—was a listing of all the names buried in the family plot along with Johanna Flanagan Lee. Was that Edward Flanagan once again? I'll need to look it up in my files, as that entry certainly doesn't show among Find A Grave memorials.

While I might not know exactly who Edward Flanagan was, he certainly was rife with possibilities of key connections to our Flanagan family. Though so little is known about him at this point, it will certainly be worth our while to follow this rabbit trail. I suspect it might lead to a connection with our Flanagans, whoever they were. 

Tallying Who Made it to Chicago

 

Seeking information on the roots of a great-grandmother doesn't seem to be such a difficult project, so let me give you an illustration of where my research is stuck, when looking for my father-in-law's own great-grandmother, Anna Flanagan Malloy. I'm not quite clear on just how she made it to Chicago, but I do know she was in that city by 1860. Along with Anna was her thirteen year old daughter, Catherine Malloy. The two of them lived with forty year old William Flanagan, also an Irish immigrant, who I later discovered was Anna's brother.

The tally for the Flanagans who moved from Ireland to Chicago doesn't end there, though. Looking through old newspaper clippings saved by the family, I eventually stumbled across a funeral notice for William which not only identified Catherine as William's niece, but named another niece, as well.

That niece was named Johanna Lee. Like the others, she was born in Ireland, but by the time I had discovered her in Chicago, she was married and had several children. Who Johanna's father was, I have yet to discover, but I have seen mentions of another name linked to the Flanagan family which cause me to question whether he might be the one who was Johanna's father.

That man was named Edward Flanagan. And though I haven't had much luck tracing him in past years, perhaps this time, it will be worth my while to revisit the question. After all, besides the addition of more and more records online each year, search tool improvements via artificial intelligence and transcriptions of handwritten documents may bring us just the documents we need to find the answer to this research question.

This week, we'll look at what can be found about this Edward in Chicago records, then make the leap across the ocean to see whether there are any clusters of these names in records from the area where Anna Flanagan Malloy once lived in Ireland.  

Six is All we Get

 

If you are looking for clues to help break through brick walls, a surefire way to overcome research roadblocks is to look to DNA. In the case of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan and her mysterious fleeing husband Stephen Malloy, however, six DNA clues is all we get. Worse, there are no guesses on the ThruLines tool as to who their parents might have been. Nobody knows, apparently—at least, nobody who has already tested their DNA.

Of those six Flanagan and Malloy DNA matches we get, however, none is a distant relative. All matches descend from Anna's only daughter Catherine, who eventually became the wife of Chicago cop John Tully. With Catherine's six children, though, the possibilities are still limited. Only three married and had children: William, Mary Monica, and Agnes, my father-in-law's mother.

From those three children came the descendants who eventually became my husband's DNA matches. But even that became a limited resource. Looking at the possibilities, I began to wonder whether using a different form of DNA testing—mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA for short—might help uncover clues about Anna Flanagan Malloy's Irish past.

Here were the possibilities. From William came his only child, one daughter whose frail constitution didn't prohibit her from having children of her own, but each of those granddaughters of William chose to become nuns, perhaps inspired by the sobering loss of their mother. Agnes, the baby of Catherine Malloy Tully's family, raised six healthy children—five sons and one intrepid daughter whose only child was a son; again, no resource for possible mtDNA testing. But Mary Monica was a different story.

Mary Monica had one of those storybook romances from that bygone era. The family's doctor, who lived down the street and was far more a part of the local community than what we experience in current times, mentioned that his brother in Ohio had unexpectedly lost his wife and mother of his two young children, a toddler daughter and infant son. Would Mary Monica consider...?

The answer was yes, and Mary Monica set out from her home in bustling Chicago to a lifetime in a far different setting, that of rural Perry County, Ohio. From that union with widower Dennis McGonagle came nine children, all with different stories to share of the lives which unfolded after that move.

Four of those six DNA matches come from that same storybook romance. Two of those four are actively researching their roots and have been in touch with me to compare notes as we struggle with that brick wall impasse of Anna Flanagan and her husband Stephen Malloy. And though he may not realize it, another DNA match is the grandson of the Tully descendant who had, in a past generation, become the designated family recipient of the original letter from Stephen to Anna on the eve of his unexplained flight from Ireland to the New World, just before his disappearance. (A poor photocopy of that original letter is all that's left to witness that original goodbye between husband and wife.)

Meanwhile, what can a researcher do? I keep watching the autosomal DNA results at each of the companies where we have tests—and hope a matrilineal descendant of Anna might be willing to take a mitochondrial DNA test.

And I keep adding to the family tree in hopes of finding more distant cousins, especially those whose roots may reach back a generation before Stephen and Anna. After all, in the past two weeks, I've documented 395 more family connections on my in-laws' tree, which now has 40,615 individuals. And though the DNA matches come dribbling in at about two or three for each biweekly period, perhaps someday, one match will make that connection we've been waiting for.    

Getting it Right

 

Genealogy has come a long way during the decades in which I've been involved. Just reviewing my old notes from the 1990s reminds me of how spoiled we researchers are, now. Still, understanding how people went about finding the details of their family history pre-Internet—and certainly pre-computing—gives us a fuller appreciation for what previous generations were able to accomplish in finding their roots.

That said, I ran across a detail this week as I began work on the Flanagan family for my Twelve Most Wanted for July, and it prompted me to see what our role should be in carrying forward the research effort: we are a part in getting it right for those who follow behind us.

I found the glitch when I reviewed my old posts on my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan Malloy. Anna, an immigrant from Ireland, was living in Chicago with her daughter Catherine and her brother William by 1860.

It turned out that William Flanagan did not make it to the turn of the century. It was the monument at his grave which gifted me with the information on how to trace the Flanagan family in Ireland—but that same monument somehow stumped another researcher from a previous time period.

During that earlier time period, a man by the name of Tom Cook took it upon himself to gather useful data that family history researchers might find handy. Among other tasks, Mr. Cook went through the cemeteries of Chicago, transcribing headstones. He compiled the information in an unpublished manuscript, which many researchers have since appreciated.

Eventually, that material came to be known as Chicago Irish Families. Subscribers to Ancestry.com may have seen the online version, a database now containing material from 1875 to 1925, although the original included material from 1831 onward.

William Flanagan's headstone transcription was included in that online version. The bulk of the transcription contained material just as I've mentioned in previous posts—except for one detail. According to the database—and, I presume, the original manuscript—William "died Aug. 14, 1898, aged 80 years."

Perhaps the headstone needed cleaning on the day that Tom Cook arrived at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery. For whatever reason, he read—or mistakenly copied—the date as 1898, but the year of William's death was actually 1893. That, of course, throws off William's year of birth as well, since only his age was given, not the year of his birth. The correct date of death is evident from a picture I had taken of the headstone years ago on a trip to Chicago.

Realizing the difference, the next step is to see if I can add the photo of William's headstone to the Find A Grave memorial that has already been posted, based on the original Cook manuscript—not to mention, add an additional photo showing the full height of the monument. Perhaps that will help future Flanagan researchers who are also looking for clues to point them in the right direction about this family's origin.

Patriot Ancestors, Present Kin, and Pyrotechnics

 

Holidays can sometimes connect us with thoughts about specific ancestors. For Independence Day last year, I mentioned bringing an ancestor to the Fourth of July parade—in memory, that is. Those of us who descend from D.A.R. Patriots can keep them in mind during holidays such as this.

For 2025, however, this holiday may be somewhat different. At least for those in my city, a tragic event in a remote northern part of our state not only wiped out the supplies on order for our own fireworks display, but may have cost the lives of several employees at the site of the original explosions and fire—a sobering realization.

Though without the usual after-dark festivities of the holiday, I already know how the day will go. I'll enjoy a morning walk before meeting a friend over coffee, then spend the afternoon and evening with family at home. Maybe, if we're lucky, the fireworks display for the minor league ball team will still be on for the weekend, and can fill in for the city's lack of pyrotechnics. Whether their program is on or cancelled, however, it helps me realize how unexpected events can shift our view of what's important and what's not.

At our genealogy society's social meeting last week, we all seemed to be on the same page with that thought. Members weren't concerned as much with getting the names and dates right—though that is important—as digging far deeper to find what really mattered to their ancestors.

We may never fully grasp such concepts, of course, but we can try. Just because an ancestor lived one hundred years ago—or, for that matter, two hundred and forty nine years ago—doesn't mean they never lived a life with the same kinds of hopes and disappointments as we do in the day to day experiences of our own lives. Patriot ancestor or present kin, we all have those moment-to-moment ups and downs of life. Being able to see our ancestors in that light has a way of bringing them to life for us, if only for the flash of a moment's glimmer of understanding.

About Those Flanagans

 

Tracing my father-in-law's Flanagan roots in Chicago was an obvious starting point; Chicago was home to four generations of his family history. Chasing those Flanagans anywhere, however, may turn out to be a challenge.

As far as the surname Flanagan goes, the first problem we'll encounter is one of spelling. Far too many variants on the surname's spelling can make for research roadblocks. From Flanagan to Flanigan may be a change so slight as to not be noticed (except for the most ardent proofreaders), but add in variants such as Flannagan or Flanaghan and it's time to start using the wildcard asterisk in online searches. Then, too, for those Irish immigrants who, due to laws in place in times past, had no idea how to spell their own surname because they couldn't even read, who was to know if a clerk or government official spelled their name wrong?

Spelling woes aside, there is another challenge facing us in chasing my father-in-law's Flanagan forebears: the sheer number of people who share that family name.

I've always realized that Flanagan was a common surname, but I thought I'd better look for some statistics on that issue—and found out the surname isn't as common as I had thought. Still, in the United States, where my father-in-law's Flanagan ancestors immigrated, the Flanagan surname, at least a decade ago, was ranked just below the top one thousand surnames. Putting it another way, roughly one in every eight thousand people has the surname Flanagan. I guess there's not as many Flanagans here as I had assumed.

When we look at the numbers back in Ireland, it appears that—at least now—the Flanagan surname is ranked the ninety-fourth most common in the country. In other words, one out of every 572 Irish residents claims the surname Flanagan. 

To give those numbers a bit more granularity, I found a website which illustrates the spread and frequency of the surname by maps. While I am not conversant in the specifics of Poor Law Union locations—or even electoral divisions—the website Historic Stats provides maps demonstrating the distribution of the surname Flanagan in Ireland.

Just eyeballing those maps, I get the vague sense that our Flanagan immigrants may have come from one of the areas more densely populated with Flanagans, but I'm not so sure yet. But before we can get to the point of making an educated guess on that count, we need to head back to Chicago to set the record straight there on some Flanagan details.

 

The Flanagans in Chicago: What Little I Know

 

It was sometime before 1860 when Anna Flanagan Malloy arrived in Chicago from her homeland in County Limerick, Ireland. I'm not sure how she got there, or even why she chose Chicago, but there she was in the 1860 census to let me know that at least she made it.

Along with her teenaged daughter Catherine, Anna Malloy resided with a forty year old Irishman named William Flanagan, for that time period, a scandalous thought—until you realize that William was Anna's own brother.

It was William, confirmed bachelor to his dying day, who years ago gifted me with my first clue about tracing the Flanagan line. Found in an old Chicago cemetery, the monument erected to his memory proudly declared that he was a "native of Parish Ballygran" in County Limerick, Ireland. 

Parish "Ballygran," as it turned out, was actually Parish Ballyagran, lying toward the southern border of County Limerick, just above County Cork. That discovery, along with further information linking William to a niece, Johanna Flanagan Lee, brought my Flanagan count in Chicago up to four people: William, his sister Anna, her daughter Catherine, and his other niece Johanna.

There was, however, at least one other Flanagan family member in Chicago. One may have been Johanna's own father, whom I have yet to identify. Whether that father was one and the same with Edward Flanagan, whose name has popped up as I've worked on this line over the years, I can't yet say. However, I'm convinced it's time to use the network-building capabilities available at Ancestry.com to explore just who Edward was, and whether we can find anything more that would link the right Edward Flanagan to this line. 

After all, there were a lot of Flanagans in Chicago back then. Hopefully, sorting them all out will help us find the right one for this family.

Headed to Ireland this Month — Digitally

 

As confident as I was last month, in battling brick wall ancestor Simon Rinehart, that the ever-expanding reach of technology would find me some answers, this month brings me a boatload of doubts about such successes. For one thing, we're bidding adieu to the well-worn research paths in Perry County, Ohio, and launching across an ocean to a country known for catastrophic loss of documentation. To compound the issues, our research target for July is a land also known for its preference in selecting the same, oft-repeated names for its many children.

For July, we're headed to Ireland—digitally, at least. With this month's research project, we shift from my mother-in-law's American ancestors to my father-in-law's Irish roots. With a family history full of stories and amply supplied with brick wall ancestors, his is a collection of emigrants' memories with not much more to go on.

Perhaps it is for this reason that, unlike others of my Twelve Most Wanted projects, this month I didn't select just one ancestor's name, but a family of ancestors: the Flanagans. I am hoping that the FAN Club approach—or cluster research—will help me sort through the family and associates of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Anna Flanagan Malloy. She is the young mother who, at home in County Limerick in 1849, received a letter from her husband who informed her of his abrupt departure for Boston.

I am thankful that Anna kept that letter for the rest of her life, passing it down to her daughter, who then passed it along to her descendants. If not for that letter, I think it would be near impossible to have traced this family. At least with the letter, I had a start. But then what? I have hardly found any guidance to trace the family back just one generation.

With this coming month, I will be tracing the possible Flanagan siblings who also emigrated from Ireland, especially one, possibly named Edward, who eventually moved to Chicago along with his sister Anna and another brother, William.

We'll start by reviewing what we found, the last time I visited this research problem, then see what can be located in documentation on each of these Irish immigrant Flanagans, both in Chicago and back in their Irish homeland.