Documenting Daniel's Descendants

 

One of my prime reasons for documenting the descendants of collateral lines is to confirm connections to DNA cousins. In this month's research goal of determining the siblings—and, hopefully, eventually the parents—of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey, there are several possible DNA matches who might provide some guidance. That is if, however, I am able to document the line of descent for any of Johanna's possible siblings.

One such possibility would be the family of Daniel Cullinane, who married a Falvey. Daniel's wife was the woman whose distinctly Irish given name—likely Gobnait—we discussed this past weekend. She was the one who showed up in Latin baptismal records for her children with her own name listed variously as Latinized versions of the Irish Gobnait, or even Latin versions of English-language nicknames bestowed upon that Irish name.

The only sign assuring me that Gobnait—or Debora, as she appeared in some church records—was sister to our Johanna was the fact that Johanna herself was named as godmother for one of the Cullinane children. But if Gobnait and Johanna were siblings, now what? How do I proceed with tracing the descendants of Daniel Cullinane and his Falvey wife? The same difficulties plaguing anyone researching Irish roots also make their appearance as we move on to the next generation: missing census records, spotty Catholic Church records. The only positive sign was the beginning of inclusion of Catholics in civil registrations in Ireland after 1863.

It just so happened that, in perusing all my husband's DNA matches, I did find a likely Falvey cousin among his test results. This one, in particular, was said to have descended from Daniel Cullinane and Debora Falvey. In fact, the line of descent was handily outlined for me by Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool.

My appreciation of that fact, however, was short-lived: Daniel's son who was said to have been in that line of descent was someone born in 1860 by the name of Patrick. The baptismal record I had found for Daniel's son born in July of that same year was for a name recorded in Latin as Ioannes—or John in English.

True, ThruLines results, while partially based on actual DNA matches, are only as accurate as the family trees from which the suggested relationships are drawn. There may be something missing from the match's tree. Or John Cullinane's baptismal record could be for the child of a different Daniel Cullinane. Whichever way it turns out to be—and there could be other possible problems, as well—it shows me that we'll need to go back and take a second look. Or even more.