More Flanagan Sightings

 

Still in pursuit of documentation on the extended Flanagan family of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, I went looking at what few records are still available from that time period in County Limerick, Ireland. James Flanagan was listed as the ancestor of a DNA match to my husband's test at Ancestry.com, so I've been keen to piece together that family line.

It was helpful to find someone named James Flanagan listed in the property valuation rolls in the townland of Cappananty in County Limerick at about the same time as our relative William Flanagan, before William left Ireland around 1855. Finding that James once, I wanted to find more of him in Irish documents. That, of course, is difficult, considering the tragic loss of records between that time in the mid 1800s and the 1901 Irish census. But I tried.

Part of the attempt, by reason of loss of alternatives, is to trust what family members post in online trees about their own direct family line, but part of the effort is a leap of faith into the vast void, extrapolating a person's landing place in, say, 1901, after nearly fifty years of absent records. Here is what little I could find.

First of all, we've already found a James Flanagan and Elizabeth Hanrahan in Catholic baptismal records, presenting their son, also named James, for baptism on November 7, 1864. Presumably, as was traditionally the case with Catholic baptisms, the child was baptized as an infant, so likely born in that same year of 1864.

Fast forward thirty seven years, and let's see what can be found of the Flanagans in the townland of Cappananty in the 1901 census. The entire townland is transcribed in the website of the National Archives of Ireland, and by the fourth page of listings, I spot an entry for someone listed as James Flanigan. Looking at the actual document for the 1901 census, we see that James Flanigan listed as head of household, along with two older women, one of whom is listed as Bess Flanigan, his mother. 

Elizabeth?

Granted, James' claimed age as thirty five doesn't quite add up, considering our James was baptized in 1864, but with some rounding upwards, I suppose that estimate could be passable. If this was our James, seeing his mother living in his home suggests she had lost her husband by this point. Indeed, if we can rely on the family tree of our DNA match, the senior James was said to have died in 1900.

Moving on to the next census in 1911, James was in the same townland, but his family situation was different. Gone was any mention of Bess, his mother, narrowing her estimated date of death to a ten year parameter—unless she had simply moved to the home of another Flanagan child.

In her place were six additional people. First listing was for James' wife, Ellen, whom he had married five years prior to that census enumeration. Following Ellen's listing was that for what appears to be two twin daughters, Kate and Lizzie, who at that point were four years of age. Following the twins was another daughter, Mary, three years old. The youngest child in this family was the long-awaited son, also named James.

In addition to James' immediate family, there was one other relative living in the household: a sister, by the name of Anne. That, if you remember, was the name of the other child of the elder James Flanagan and Elizabeth Hanrahan, baptized on July 14, 1867, helping bolster my confidence that we have found, in 1911, the right Flanagan household linked to those baptismal records from almost fifty years prior.

There is one other reason I needed to find some sort of documentation about this James Flanagan family: the ages given. From the family tree I had found linked to that Flanagan DNA match, the generations seemed separated by a bit too long of an age span, causing some doubt. Before we move further, perhaps it would help to examine that sequence of generations, as given by the family member who had posted that tree online. We'll take some time to review that tomorrow.