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.
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