Meet Johanna

 

When it comes to stories, we often think of the quaint launch into the narrative: "Once upon a time." That may work well for fairy tales, but in the tales of our family's history, we sometimes must rely on the end of the story before we can learn about the "once upon a time" beginning.

That's the way it has been for my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey. Most of what I learned about Johanna came from obituaries published in local newspapers in Fort Wayne, Indiana, far from her native home in Ireland.

However, even in the obituaries, I ran into conflicting information. Delighted to learn she had other relatives who also emigrated from County Kerry, I then was stumped by their identity. According to the May 1, 1903, edition of the Fort Wayne Sentinel, Johanna was survived by "several sisters living in Ireland and one in New Zealand." Turning to the next day's edition of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, however, I see she had "several sisters and brothers who live in Ireland."

Fortunately for all us Falvey researchers one hundred twenty-something years later, we now know it is far more likely that the Falvey connection in New Zealand was a brother, if a sibling at all. But even that will take time to puzzle out.

Slowly, I've been trawling through digitized microfilmed records preserved in Ireland, piecing together the story of the Falvey family in County Kerry. Though the specific townlands vary from record to record, it seems the documents are talking about the same family. We'll take a closer look this month at Johanna Falvey's earlier years, long before her arrival in the United States in about 1869. But even piecing that together may rely on more records stateside than across the "pond." And what is found in Ireland may need some additional conjectures as to whether they appropriately fit within Johanna's own family story.

What we know for now is that, back in Ireland, Johanna Falvey married John Kelly, and together they raised three, possibly four, of their children before deciding to move across the Atlantic for a better future. In America, the family headed for Fort Wayne, Indiana—not a typical immigrant destination, but likely in pursuit of a job, based on information already provided from relatives who had traveled there before them.

There in Fort Wayne, the couple welcomed two more sons into the family, and suffered the loss of two other children. There, after working in one of the railroad shops as a blacksmith, John Kelly died in 1892, and his wife Johanna joined him eleven years later in 1903. (Incidentally, never trust what's engraved on a headstone; always seek additional confirmation.)

From what's been preserved from the end of their story in Fort Wayne, we'll try to inch our way backwards through time to discover the earlier years of this couple in Ireland and, hopefully, to piece together names of possible close relatives in County Kerry. In the end, our goal will be to follow those lines of collateral relatives to reveal the connection with not only the DNA matches in New Zealand, but in all the other locations where Johanna Falvey's relatives eventually migrated.