I first discovered Margaret Flannery thanks to the thoughtfulness of a packrat relative. Uncle Ed, my father-in-law's older brother, had become the "keeper of the stuff," as author Denise Levenick calls it. In other words, Ed was the one who inherited all the "stuff" that his mother had kept before him—and she, in turn, had gotten it from her parents.
After Ed's passing, now years ago, several family members were sitting around his kitchen table when his widow brought out a box filled with some of that "stuff." There was, it seemed, something in there for everyone. Old keepsakes and memorabilia went to some of Ed's now-adult children who appreciated the nostalgia of times past. My husband was gifted with the World War II letters home from his own father, then serving in the Navy, to the family back in Chicago. And I, hoping for something to help with family history research, received a priceless gift: a handwritten letter from County Tipperary, Ireland, confirming the baptism of John Tully, my father-in-law's maternal grandfather.
As far as I was concerned, it was John Tully's mother who made the star appearance in that verification of his baptism. The letter identified her, complete with her maiden name: Margaret Flannery. Since then, I've explored what I could find of her family, both in Ballina, the place where the baptism was recorded, and even across the ocean in Paris, the small town in Ontario, Canada, where Margaret and her husband, Denis Tully, settled their family.
While receiving that document was an unexpected and irreplaceable gift, I have been able to trace Margaret after her arrival in Ontario—but not for long. Her earliest years in Canada unfortunately predate the available records from the local Catholic Church, as far as I and other descendants I've partnered with can tell. And I have yet to find any record of her death. Though it may not be obvious from her absence in the 1861 census that she had passed before that point, it is a given that at some point during that era, she certainly did so.
For the most part, thanks to collaboration with distant cousins in possession of labeled family photographs, I've been able to trace almost all of Margaret's children. DNA matches have guided me to build out the Flannery family tree even further. But the real key, I believe, will be to trace those collateral Flannery lines, especially considering the appearance of other Flannery families in close proximity to Margaret and Denis after they settled in Paris.
True, those could be coincidental appearances, but in a just-established town of barely one thousand people, I tend to favor such connections as a good sign. Take, for example, the appearance on the same page of the 1851 census on West River Street in Paris of both Denis and "Mrs." Tully and another family by the name of Flannery. Relatives? I've taken some time in the past to begin exploring that possibility, and we need to revisit that question once again this week.