A Johanna Sighting

 

Using whatever Catholic parish records are available to researchers online today, I've been on a hunt for any mention of the name of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey Kelly. Since this search entails finding her name in Irish records in the 1800s, I'm already at a disadvantage, due to the destruction of so many of such documents. 

Coming up empty-handed in so many of these searches, I turned to a new approach: looking for the Falvey name recorded in the mother's maiden name, or even as the name of a baptized child's godparents. Anything to find a mention that could point me back to Johanna's own family in County Kerry, Ireland. And, at last, I spotted my first Johanna sighting.

That first victory came when I was reviewing baptismal records in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin. In an entry dated August 10, 1856, I found the baptism of Mary Cullinane. I wouldn't have otherwise been looking for that surname, but since Mary's mother's maiden name happened to show up as Falvey, I had to take a look.

Mary's father was named Daniel Cullinane, and the mother identified as "Debora" Falvey. The family was listed as having been from the townland of Knockauncore. This was a promising sign, since I had already spotted several other entries linking the Falvey family to that same townland.

My next step was to finish reviewing that church entry to see who was listed as the godparents. In this case, however, there was only one name entered: Johanna Falvey. I wasn't sure why there weren't the customary two names entered for the sponsors, but nonetheless glad to have seen Johanna mentioned somewhere in records from this part of County Kerry.

With that possible relationship in mind, I then went on to find all the baptismal records for Daniel Cullinane's other children. After Mary's 1856 baptism, I located one for son Timothy in 1858, though the family was said to have been located in the townland of Clashnagarrane by then, five kilometers away. I found a nearly illegible baptism for a son whose name looked to be John Cullinane in July of 1860, also at that second townland.

Then, after a gap of nearly six years, suddenly the family was back in Knockauncore for the baptisms of Honora in 1866, Anne in 1868, Michael in 1871, and Daniel in 1874. In only one of those other children's baptisms was a Falvey included as a godparent: someone named Mary Falvey, who was the godmother for Honora.

If we could presume that the age-old tradition of only naming siblings or in-laws as a child's sponsors still held, we could conclude that Mary would be sister to both the mother, Debora, and our own Johanna, but after the years of the Great Famine, that was not necessarily always the case. We'd have to test those connections further.

However, there was something else I noticed in my survey of baptismal entries in the Falveys' home church. For some of Daniel Cullinane's children, their baptismal records noted his wife to be named Debora. But in others, the name appeared to be Guboneta, or Gobinetta. One might presume that Daniel had lost his first wife and remarried, but if we follow the baptisms in date entry, Debora makes an appearance in both the earliest and the later entries. (And, to confuse matters even further, there was one baptism in which the mother's given name was listed as Maria.)

There is a possible reason for this variance, of course, but to explain it will take a bit of time. We'll look into this matter tomorrow.