Looking for the Rest of the Story

 

There isn't always a way to find proof for the rest of the story, especially if it involves Irish ancestors during those gaping holes in official records. I tried, but those black holes of record keeping got the best of me, I'm afraid.

I was elated to find signs that perhaps Maria (more likely, Mary) Falvey and John Kerin had married, after all. Seeing both their names listed as godparents for the newborn baby of Mary's likely sister Gobnait Falvey Cullinane gave me the idea to look for a marriage record. If they had, though, it would have been between the birth of Mary's child in 1854 and the baptism of her sister's daughter in April of 1866.

Looking through online records of marriages in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin in County Kerry, my plans were quickly thwarted: according to a reliable source, both records for baptisms and marriages dropped off the face of the earth between 1859 and 1873. And what records I could find before that gaping hole did not seem to contain any entries for the couple.

Next, I pursued what I thought was a brilliant idea: check to see whether Mary and John had any children besides the one entry I had found in 1854. Despite the gap in church records, perhaps if the couple had a large family, as many did then, I could find a child born to them after the beginning of civil registrations in 1864. I headed over to irishgenealogy.ie to check, but couldn't find any likely entries, despite even using the wildcard symbol for the surname as K*r*n, since the many spelling variations led me through nine pages full of possible entries.

I won't yet give up searching for this new branch of the Falvey family, but my eyes are ready to call it quits for now. I'll save some additional attempts for another day.

Church Records Tell All

 

(...but sometimes you need to read between the lines).

It was an entry from the baptismal register of the Catholic parish of Kilcummin which caught my eye. Scanning the records from the mid-1800s for signs of my father-in-law's Falvey family, I noticed the entry for a woman named Maria Falvey. It wasn't so much her name which made me pause, however, but the words above that mention which told me there had to be a story hidden in there somewhere.

The entry was for the baptism of a child born in October of 1854. Starting out in the usual Latin, the priest noted that he had baptized a child named John, but in the place of the usual "filius legitimus" or its typical shorthand abbreviation, the entry specifically emphasized the underlined status as illegitimate. And yet, there was the father's name. Whether he had claimed that responsibility and owned up to that son, or whether everyone in that small townland of Knockauncore would have known anyhow, I can't be sure.

What the entry showed was that, married or not, John's parents were John Kerin and Maria Falvey. Alongside that notation, the sole name designated as the child's sponsor was a woman named Anna Fleming. While Irish baptismal records for that time period toward the later years of the Irish famine sometimes only included one godparent due to the devastation of that era, the naming of one godparent was also a typical statement for children born out of wedlock.

My first wonder, given the same townland as my father-in-law's Falvey family, was whether Anna Fleming was one and the same as the mother of Gobnait Falvey and her siblings—and, possibly, also my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey. In that case, this godmother for baby John Kerin—if, indeed, he was permitted to take his father's surname—would also have been his maternal grandmother, if his mother Maria were Anna Fleming Falvey's daughter.

It was quite possible that that was who this Anna Fleming was. First, Catholic records of that time period and location mentioned all women by their maiden name. Secondly, I had found an entry in Griffith's Valuation for that townland which mentioned a woman named Anne Falvey which, lacking a name of her husband, most likely indicated a widow for that tax record. Since Griffith's Valuation for County Kerry was completed about that same time—July of the previous year—it told me that Anna Fleming of the baptismal mention could likely have been the widow Falvey.

I noted that baptism in my growing list of all baptisms in Kilcummin parish which included a Falvey surname for one of the parents. While the baptismal record was not shy in telling all about the child's legal standing at birth, there was still much to read between the lines as to the identity of his mother Maria—likely Mary—and her connection to the rest of the extended Falvey family recorded in that church parish.

Continuing my line-by-line search through the parish's records, I advanced through the pages to another entry containing that same surname, Falvey. This one, in April of 1866, was for Hanora, a daughter of Daniel Cullinane (entered, according to the priest's handwriting, as Callinan). The child's mother—thankfully entered in Latin as a version closest to her Irish name, rather than some traditional substitutes—was Gubbonetta Falvey. And the godmother was listed as Maria Falvey.

According to some sources, Irish tradition had it that the godparents named at a child's baptism were to be siblings or in-laws of either parent. While that tradition was not as closely adhered to beyond the famine years, there was a good possibility that with this one line of the church record, we can claim this Maria to be sister of Gobnait Falvey and daughter of Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming. 

There was one other detail which I had missed in my original discovery of the entry for the Cullinane daughter. On returning to this record, having by then noted the earlier entry for the illegitimate birth of Maria's son, I noticed the other person named as godparent for Hanora Cullinane: John Kerin.

Whether John Kerin and Maria Falvey, as parents of their baby John in 1854, had subsequently decided to marry, I can't yet say. I haven't yet made it to the parish's marriage records—if, indeed, they are still even in existence. But reading between the lines, I can't imagine Maria's sister naming the both of them as godparents if the two of them weren't on good terms. Reading between the lines, I'd say John Kerin and Maria Falvey, at some point, had married—and possibly had more children after that point.

Continuing my line by line search through the parish records may reveal that I now have one more family to follow among the Falvey descendants, but that discovery would only have come by reading between the lines, even given an organization which took a "tell all" approach to the records they kept.

The Tedium of Line by Line

 

There is something about reading, line by line, through those Irish baptismal records in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin that makes me want to transcribe the whole lot, enter it into a spreadsheet, and feed that record into AI for analysis. As I scroll through the decades, the surnames from the 1830s give way to an entirely different set—of strangers?—but then, given another ten years, morph back to the same Falveys, Flemings, and Cullinanes I've been seeking.

As tedious as the project has been this month, I haven't yet given up on reading, page by page, through the records. I'm still looking for any entries mentioning the surname Falvey in this County Kerry parish, but by now, I've made it to the end of 1858. 

Now that the Falvey surname has reappeared in the record, it is mostly on account of Gobnait, the possible sister of Johanna Falvey, my father-in-law's great-grandmother. Knowing the variations ascribed to her given name—Abby and Debora have also appeared—I can't be confident that I've found the right relative, but the same husband's name seems to pair with hers, no matter what she was called.

Yet, there have been no other sitings for Falvey family members—with one exception. That entry, one which possibly would be accompanied by a sad story if only I could find a way to confirm it, is one I need to pause and record in these chronicles of Falveys. Whether it leads to a future DNA connection, or even a confirmation that my research is on the right track, I can't yet be sure. But I want to note it while it is fresh on my mind.

With that, tomorrow we'll look into what can be found—spoiler: not much—on a woman in the 1850s named Mary Falvey.

Catching up with Cousin Bait Messages

 

One of the indispensable aspects of researching our genealogy is the access we gain through using online services. Whether for building a family tree or puzzling over DNA matches, most services offer some way for us to directly contact those distant cousins who also are pursuing the same ancestors. Think of this messaging service as a form of "cousin bait."

While I try to connect with key researchers chasing my surnames, it is so easy for those messages on, say, Ancestry or 23andMe to get lost in the translation. Just this week, I was elated to receive a note from someone I had contacted nearly a year ago who, oops, just realized that I had written. What a gift to have received the reply, complete with photographs and a brief biography of each of the ancestors in question! I can certainly say this was one response which was worth the wait.

I realize there are many ways in which messages to researchers may not reach the person intended. Many such messaging systems depend on the subscriber keeping their (hidden) email address up to date. If a subscriber doesn't note their address change, that person won't receive my message, but the host service certainly can't do much about it.

Another reason why messages don't arrive may be because the person no longer maintains a subscription. Thankfully, in one recent case of someone with a lapsed subscription, Ancestry actually followed through and sent the message anyway. I know I'm leaving myself open to spam, but I always include my personal email address in my messages, and thankfully this recipient spotted that in my message and was able to directly contact me, despite no longer being a subscriber. 

Granted, some messages to fellow researchers, if actually answered, yield very little information. That is certainly the luck of the draw. In this week's case, I benefitted from the details I learned from this distant cousin's response. For that, I'm grateful. Each of us knows a little more about our close family from personal experience than others, such as distant cousins, would be able to know. Details gleaned from personal letters, or notes on the back of photographs are gems only close family might have—if, that is, their children and grandchildren didn't indiscriminately toss all those "old papers" and memorabilia.

Those are the details that we might only find if we reach out and connect through messages to our distant relatives whom we stumble upon while using an online genealogy service. Sure, there are many messages which remain unanswered, but it's worth it to go through the effort anyway. I do it in hopes of finding the one who knows the answers that I couldn't have found any other way.

A Little Genealogy R & R

 

Since I'm traveling this weekend, I thought it would be the perfect time to take some genealogy R&R. Not that I'm taking a vacation from genealogy, as for the most part, I find building trees to be relaxing. But the tedium of grinding through page after page of handwritten baptismal records from nearly two hundred years ago has worn me down. I need a change of pace.

Tucked away in my computer's tabs is a history, a to-do list of incomplete research projects spun off from prior months' Twelve Most Wanted goals. One project which has been sitting idle since I researched my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather Lyman Jackson back in April was building out the branch of all his descendants. With thirteen children who apparently all lived to adulthood, as you can imagine, that branch has included multiple lines of descent.

Best intentions were to continue that work behind the scenes as I wrote posts for subsequent featured ancestors. But when the search for answers for those hard-to-find Irish documents for my father-in-law's line took up all my time, that behind the scenes work shrunk and shriveled until, instead of growing, it withered on that Jackson family branch.

Rather than a tedious process, I've always found building the American branches on the family tree to be rather relaxing. Over this weekend, a little rest and relaxation break with the Jacksons may be just what I need to span the time before I can return home and tackle my father-in-law's hopelessly hidden Irish roots once again.

Circling Back to D N A

 

Not finding any further documentation for the family of Patrick Falvey in County Kerry, the supposed Irish patriarch for my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey Kelly, I decided it might be time to circle back to those DNA test results once again. Of course, I'll still be searching the baptismal records of the Kilcummin Catholic parish, page by page, but one thing I noticed in that process caused me to spin off toward another focus: those local surnames.

The original couple I've been seeking to verify through documentation has been Patrick Falvey and his wife, Anna Fleming. Since the first Falvey baptismal record I found was dated in 1830, my page-by-page tour through the church records began from that point. Entry after entry, I noticed lots of Flemings, but not many Falveys. There were, of course, other common surnames liberally scattered through the records, such as Sullivan.

Seeing that, my first question was whether Falvey was a surname of someone who married into the Fleming family from another townland. Where were all the other Falveys? After all, according to some records, Falveys were plentiful in County Kerry. What I should have also wondered, however, was whether there was any way to connect the many Fleming family members I was spotting in those baptismal records to Patrick Falvey's wife.

Eventually, the years gave way to a different set of recurring surnames as others faded away in my tour through the Kilcummin baptismal records. By then, I was researching records dated during the famine years, a formidable change agent which understandably could make some family names disappear over broad swaths of the territory. However reasonable my strategy might have seemed when I began it, it was time to reach for another approach.

That's when I went back to those DNA matches descending from unknown Falvey ancestors from County Kerry. There were plenty available to choose from at all the places where my husband has tested. Choosing the best bet of the bunch, I then used Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool combined with the ProTools capability of viewing shared matches, and moved from one confirmed descendant of Patrick Falvey to all the DNA cousins matching that tester.

Bit by bit, I examined each related match, looking for linked—and robust—family trees. Eventually, I landed at two possibilities for further checking, matches who, encouragingly, still live in Ireland. Rather than seeing the Falvey surname featured prominently in those matches' trees, though, I found Flemings. Could it be that I'd find better results following the Flemings than the Falveys? After all, the Kilcummin parish seemed flush with Flemings but barely offering any entries for Falveys.

Following the winding trail from one DNA match to that person's closest cousins, I'll be checking those trees, contacting those matches, and sharing notes. Perhaps there is more to find on that maternal Fleming line than I had originally thought.

The Tedium of Double Checking

 

When a particular ancestor fails to appear in those instant-gratification computerized genealogy searches, what is left to do but go line by line, page by page through the digitized records. At least, we need to look thoroughly where we last saw the family.

So, as I find myself in a tailspin over my father-in-law's Falvey ancestors from County Kerry, I'm not only building those quick-and-dirty trees behind the scenes for DNA matches lacking their own family trees, but I'm also going back and double-checking the records.

In today's case, I took the baptismal records for the Catholic parish of Kilcummin, beginning with the eldest child I could find for Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming. From that 1830 date, I then went, page by page and noted every single baptism which involved the surname Falvey, whether for the father or the mother. 

I watched, over the years, as the names changed from frequent listings for Fleming family members and that ever-popular Irish surname, Sullivan, to an entirely different set of surnames. By the time I completed the year of 1854, what I saw made me wonder whether those Falveys had died out entirely during the famine years, or possibly all moved away. I wondered, also, if they might merely have moved to a neighboring parish, or made a more permanent move far away from Ireland entirely.

All told, I found eleven entries involving the Falvey surname before I called it quits for the day. I'll continue with the records from 1855 onward tomorrow. But I'll also need to determine where might be the next logical place to look for these Falvey family members. After all, my father-in-law's great-grandmother apparently had siblings left in County Kerry by the time of her own death—if, that is, I can believe what her obituary said.

If Jeremiah was the One

 

We may have found an Irish immigrant from County Kerry named Jeremiah Falvey who shared the same occupation as Gobnait Falvey's son Patrick Cullinane—marble polisher—but that doesn't mean we can stretch possibilities thin enough to support a connection with Gobnait's brother, the one baptized as Demetrius. And yet, another detail draws me to follow what can be found about a Jeremiah naturalized in Boston, Massachusetts.

That detail is the appearance of a Jeremiah Falvey in a family tree linked to a DNA match among my husband's results at Ancestry.com. This match is estimated to be a fourth cousin with a small centiMorgan connection, similar to other Falvey DNA connections of this generational distance I've seen. 

There is, however, one problem with that Jeremiah Falvey connection: the DNA match claims that ancestral line to have lived in Chicopee, Massachusetts, not Boston. The end result is that this pursuit is steering me clear of the Boston Falvey immigrant and towards one of the same name who settled much farther west in the state of Massachusetts. We may, in the end, discover there was no connection between those two Jeremiahs at all, despite both being from the same Irish county.

Furthermore, acting the part of a genealogical Doubting Thomas, I decided to see just how many Irish Catholic church records insisted on shying away from the use of the name Jeremiah, and instead substituting Demetrius, the name given in baptismal records for a son of my father-in-law's proposed Falvey ancestors Patrick and Anna. While a quick and dirty experiment can't explain everything, I figured if that were the tradition for transforming an Irish given name into Latin, there would have been no Catholic records for someone named Jeremiah.

Surprise. That wasn't true. There were several Jeremiahs out there, given under the hand of Irish priests in many Catholic parishes, at least according to this one quick review. There was even a marriage entry for a Jeremias Falvey in our Falveys' home parish in Kilcummin. At least in the later years of the 1800s, folks didn't shy away from using the name Jeremiah in formal records. Rather than truly being Jeremiah, that son's baptismal name Demetrius may well have been literally that: the name of our Patrick and Anna Falvey's son baptized in 1837.

So what about the Jeremiah Falvey who ended up in Massachusetts? Especially considering that he was an ancestor of a DNA match, this will be one line worth following. Building out a tree for this DNA match may point out more details allowing us to see not only how this Jeremiah connects with my father-in-law's Falvey ancestors back in County Kerry, but how his descendants cluster with other DNA matches connected to our direct family line.

. . . And Then, There's Demetrius

 

In tracing Irish immigrants to Boston, Massachusetts, from County Kerry, Ireland, Patrick Cullinane wasn't the only Falvey descendant who caught my eye. Yet like Patrick's own case, this other immigrant presents us with some doubts as to his connection to my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey.

Just like Johanna's possible sister, Gobnait Falvey, the problem begins with a Catholic baptismal record identifying a son by a Latin, rather than traditional Irish, given name. That name, as you've probably suspected, was Demetrius.

Demetrius, according to the record at his parents' home church of Kilcummin parish, was baptized at the very beginning of the year, January 6 of 1837. Yet, locating any other record for that son of Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming seems to lead nowhere.

Considering, as we have, the other Latin records we've found for those with decidedly Irish given names, it might come as no surprise to learn that a Demetrius of church records might more often be called Jeremiah around his own home. That, at least, is according to well-known Irish genealogist, John Grenham, who offers Jeremiah, Jerome, Darby, and Dermot as alternatives for the baptismal moniker Demetrius.

It didn't help my case to have found a naturalization record in Boston for a marble polisher named Jeremiah Falvey. According to this record, Jeremiah arrived in Boston around September of 1857. At the time of his petition for citizenship, he reported that he had been born in 1837. The only problem with that report was the month and day: June 25 instead of January 6.

Granted, I have seen many times when a date reported as "Jan" turned out to actually be "Jun" but there is no such chance for this discrepancy. Despite the chicken scratch on the ecclesiastical record, it was clear from its placement on the page that Demetrius was among the first of those infants baptized in 1837. And the naturalization record made it clear that Jeremiah had reported his birth in the month of June.

Still, I can't resist following this alternate Falvey record, especially given the occupational report. Marble workers represented a group of craftsmen whose efforts required much training. Given two possible Falvey representatives from the same county in Ireland, and considering the likelihood of chain migration where one family member follows a preceding one in leaving home to follow job recommendations at a distant location, we may have uncovered a nexus, if not between a brother of Gobnait Falvey Cullinane and her son, at least a connection to a close relative from the same community back in Ireland.

The Possibility of Patrick

I supposed I can consider it fortunate, given my problems in tying my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey to the preceding generation back in Ireland, that I've discovered a Falvey descendant among my husband's DNA matches. Don't jump to conclusions that the proof of the relationship will simply fall into our hands, though. The possibility of Patrick Cullinane being a nephew of our Johanna Falvey looks like it might be challenging to establish by documentation. 

Here's what I've found about Patrick so far. First, as far as baptismal records go: I've found nothing. Not, at least, back in the home parish in County Kerry. Not if we can rely on his date of birth being in the early 1860s.

Fortunately, Patrick does show up in archived records across the Atlantic in Boston, Massachusetts, where this immigrant showed up some time in the 1880s. That was where this marble worker's marriage to Joanna Sullivan was documented in Boston on May 15, 1890. And, unsurprisingly, Catholic Church records at the archdiocese of Boston confirmed the names and birthdates of several of the Cullinane children: Helen Nora in 1895, Johanna Josephine in 1896, Honora Catherine in 1898, Daniel Sullivan in 1900, John Francis in 1901, Leon Patrick in 1903, and Julia Agnes in 1905.

While that may look like a tidy list with ample opportunities for descendants who become DNA matches, that is simply not the case. Despite the number of children attributed to Patrick and Johanna according to church records, other names could be gleaned, if following census records or other documents.

The catch was this: Patrick had married a woman who not only had a surname—Sullivan—quite common among Irish immigrants resident in the Boston area, but who had a given name subject to shortening. If we can rely on name equivalent charts like the one provided by the FamilySearch.org wiki,  the name Johanna could be used interchangeably with Ann or Anna.

And that is precisely our problem. Apparently, there was a Patrick Cullinane living in Boston whose wife, at least according to census records, was called Anna. That couple's household included some children whose names did not line up with the baptismal records specifying Johanna Sullivan as their mother. Could this be the same couple, with nickname inserted, and a few additional children thrown into the mix? Are we looking at the same couple, farther along in the timeline? Or have we stumbled upon a case of name twins?

To complicate matters, the couple's surname was sometimes rendered as Cullinane, and at other times it appeared as Cullinan. Whether both surnames represented spelling variations for the same family, I can't tell. To confirm, I'm resorting to tedious exercises like making periodic checks in city directories, just to rule out name twins for Patrick. This may not merely be an instance of checking the possibility of Patrick being a relative of my father-in-law's Falvey family, but of confirming just which of two Patricks in Boston was actually the right man.

Taking Stock of Progress

 

Every now and then—especially when I feel like I'm stuck in my research—I like to take stock of progress. Struggling with missing, incomplete, or illegible documentation does slow things down to a crawl, and it helps to have some encouragement to keep going. That is partly the reason for my biweekly counts: not for bragging rights, but for a reminder that, bit by bit, progress does happen if you keep at it.

This time, I was pretty sure the numbers would not look too encouraging. After all, right now I'm trawling through Boston city directories, trying to determine whether I'm searching for the right Patrick Cullinane (I'm concerned I'm not). But progress in the past two weeks has held steady, compared to the previous two weeks when I was wrapping up another hard-to-locate Irish ancestor.

So here's the count: fifty more names added to my father-in-law's branch of the family tree. My in-laws' tree now has 44,368 documented names in total, though it has been growing so slowly this summer while I pursue those hard-to-find Irish forebears.

Though I wish there were more Irish relatives out there to test their DNA, I guess we'll have to wait for one of those seasons best suited to sales. There were absolutely zero new DNA tests linked to my husband's results in the past two weeks. He still has 1,510 DNA matches at the estimated level of fourth cousin or closer, exactly the range I'd need to piece together the story of the many descendants of Johanna Falvey's sister Gobnait and her husband Daniel Cullinane. Thankfully, I've already found a few DNA cousins to help guide this search a bit further, something we'll attend to this coming week.

Getting Stuck on Sticking Points

 

Lately, I feel as if I am conducting negotiations between two parties who claim to be one and the same person. The sticking point is that these two men with different names seem to claim the same parents and the same year of birth. Yet, not being twins, that can't be possible.

The one son was baptized as John Cullinane in County Kerry, Ireland, on July 24, 1860. His baptismal record lists his father as Daniel Cullinane and his mother as Gubbenela Falvey—surely an attempt at providing a Latin version of the decidedly Irish name Gobnait. And then, poof! He disappeared from records, as far as I can find.

The other son, claiming the name Patrick Cullinane, may have been born on June 15, 1860. That, at least, is what someone thought when they reported that date for his birth. And yet, that Patrick also claimed that his parents were Daniel and "Debby"—the possible nickname for Gobnait or Gobineta (the likely Latin version mis-entered as Gubbenela).

That second Cullinane son may or may not have been the son of our Daniel Cullinane and Gobnait (or Debora) Falvey. That that detail can't easily be determined, however, means delving deeper into the identity of this particular Patrick Cullinane after his immigration from County Kerry, Ireland, to Boston, Massachusetts.

To make matters worse, Boston may have laid claim to not one but two or three men by that same name, Patrick Cullinane. And each may have married a woman who went by the same nickname as the others.

With marching orders like that, the rest of this month's search for the parents of Gobnait Falvey Cullinane—and thus her sister Johanna, my father-in-law's great-grandmother—may take some wild and crazy turns.

The Mother of Gobineta's Children

 

Tracing the descendants of Johanna Falvey's sister might seem like a great way to confirm Johanna's place in the Falvey family—at least by DNA—but there is one drawback to such a plan. That sticking point is Johanna's sister's actual name.

Johanna's sister was baptized as Gobineta, back in their homeland in County Kerry, Ireland. Her February 27, 1830, baptismal record clearly shows her parents as Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming. Thus, if we can map her connection to descendants who happen to be my husband's DNA matches, that would support the theory of this sisterhood.

There's only one problem with this plan. A name like Gobineta—actually Gobnait—doesn't translate well from the original Irish version to either Latin or English. Thus, it would be no surprise to discover that records of her children might list their mother's name as something other than Gobineta.

Take one son, named Timothy. We'd expect to see his October 7, 1858, baptismal record listing his name in its Latin version, Timotheum. But the Latin was not helpful for his mother's name. In that record, Daniel Cullinane's wife was listed as Debora Falvey, not Gobnait.

But we already knew that. Armed with a name equivalent chart, we've been forewarned to be on the lookout for aliases like Debora or Abigail. So when I followed that one Cullinane son of the next generation to his immigrant home in Boston, I wasn't stumped by the vital records bearing his name. When Timothy Cullinane of Boston decided to marry Margaret McCarthy one cold January day in 1883, it made sense to see his mother's name entered as Deborah. Likewise with his death record, recorded late in 1893 listing his mother as Abbie Falvey.

Timothy Cullinane, son of Gobnait Falvey and Daniel Cullinane, is just one example. In Timothy's case, with his early death, he was predeceased by his only child, a namesake son who died in 1891. As far as I can tell, there will be no DNA matches linked to Timothy's line.

However, Timothy was not the only Falvey descendant to immigrate to Boston. There is apparently another Cullinane brother who also chose that New England port for his move from County Kerry. He, predictably, is also causing problems with verifying his line, not the least of which sticking points is that same particular detail about his mother's name.

I've reached out to some DNA matches who appear to be this second Cullinane son's descendants. Hopefully, on the other side of this weekend, we'll be able to get a fuller picture of this other potential Falvey descendant of the woman with multiple aliases. 

Could Someone Have Gotten this Wrong?

 

I'm going to venture out and possibly say the unforgivable. When it comes to baptismal records, could someone have gotten the details wrong? 

I ask, because I'm having a difficult time locating the baptismal record for my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey. Sure, right now I'm riding on guesswork in estimating that her father's name might have been Patrick Falvey. I'm making that presumption based on traditional Irish naming patterns, in which the second-born son was supposed to be named after his maternal grandfather. Combining that assumption that the name would be Patrick, along with Johanna's own obituary indicating that her native home in County Kerry was somewhere near the Lakes of Killarney, has led me to Catholic records in the parish of Kilcummin.

Granted, Ireland has had a history of records lost for tragic causes, but in the case of the Kilcummin records, all appear to be intact during the time frame when other children of Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming were born. It seems odd to have missed only the records for the year when Johanna was likely born—although pinning a date to her birth has itself been a challenge.

According to subsequent records, the year of Johanna's birth has ranged from 1826 through 1830. Two census records—for 1870 and 1880, after she arrived in Fort Wayne, Indiana—pinned her birth as occurring in 1830. The 1900 census made that even more precise: November of 1829, a reasonable date, given the wiggle room of previous year-only age estimates.

Johanna's death certificate, on the other hand, reported her birth occurring in 1826. Since her age at death, according to her obituary, was given as seventy seven, the math would bear that out—but even her headstone didn't help with these calculations. Complicating matters, Johanna's youngest son, John Kelly, was born in 1876, making his mother fifty years of age at his birth.

Not that that would be impossible, but quite unlikely. And yet, turning to the baptismal records back in Kilcummin parish in County Kerry, even searching page by page through all the possible years in which she could have been born, I find nothing.

However, I did find something else. On June 1, 1827, I located a baptismal record for someone listed as Joannes Falvey, son of Patritius Falvey and Anna Fleming. Unlike many other Catholic baptismal records I've seen, the priest at the Kilcummin parish did not follow the usual format of writing the entire narrative statement out in Latin, "I baptized [name], legitimate son/daughter of [father and mother]."

Thus, by the Kilcummin record using a chart form rather than the traditional narrative, we are robbed of the chance to see the subject/verb agreement in Latin as a guide. Gone, too, would be the opportunity to read whether that was "filius" (son of) versus "filia" (daughter of). Granted, a statement like "I baptized John" (Ioannem) would not look very different than "I baptized Johanna" (Ioannam), but when reading two hundred year old chicken scratch, we need all the help we can get.

Despite squabbling over what might seem like minor details, there was another thought that occurred to me. This is not the first time I've searched for a record for an Irish ancestor named Johanna. Years ago, in searching for another Irish antecedent of my father-in-law, this time the sister of his maternal grandfather John Tully, I had run into records listing that Johanna as "Johann." Could it have been owing to faded records and impossible-to-read handwriting? Possibly. But it shows me that that name is subject to occasional slips of the pen, even resulting in daughters being recorded as sons.

Whether that "John" baptized in the Kilcummin parish was the Falveys' son or a mistaken entry for what should have been their daughter Johanna, I can't say at this point—perhaps I'll never be able to say for sure. That makes it all the more important for me to trace these possible siblings of Johanna, especially now that we've been gifted with such a perceptive tool as DNA testing.

With that, we'll begin looking at the descendants of Johanna's possible sister, Gobnait Falvey, to see if we can find any confirmation of their family connection.

Bound for Boston

 

It should be no surprise to see Irish emigrants embarking for the American city of Boston. Of all the American cities, Boston may be considered the quintessential destination, even more so than New York City, another key port for immigrants. In the case of DNA matches descending from Johanna Falvey's possible sister Gobnait, Boston apparently was their ancestral port of choice.

There are still problems with following that branch of the Falvey family from County Kerry to America. Judging by my husband's DNA matches, as he is the surrogate tester on behalf of my father-in-law, who is long since deceased, Boston is among other locations where Falvey descendants have gathered. The ever-changing name for the matches' matriarch—sometimes Debora or Debby, sometimes Abby for Abigail—still plagues me with doubts that I am following the right family line.

Hopefully, during this week as we review the various branches of the Falvey line pointed out by their descendants' telltale DNA, we can review some of the documentation and determine whether there is any reason beyond name-switching to cause us to doubt we've found the right line. A cogent negative argument is just as important as explaining why a connection is correct. There are so many ways to go astray when researching these Irish lines with such potential to stumble on name twins and other genealogical hazards.

Before we zoom in on our most likely Boston immigrant connection, though, I need to settle the issue of why I cannot find the baptismal record for Johanna, herself. That has been bothering me for a long time. Despite searching page by page through baptismal records for the Kilcummin parish where the Falvey family went to church, I have yet to find a likely document. Tomorrow, we'll take that brief detour to make some notes on possible explanations, before we move on to examine the documents in the Boston area allowing us to track the descendants of Gobnait or "Debora" Falvey.

When Irish Names get Tangled With Latin

 

It may be all well and good to learn the traditional Irish naming pattern and then determine who an ancestor's likely parents might have been. But when we go searching for that brick wall ancestor's possible siblings back in the homeland, things can get tangled quickly.

The problem lies between the Catholic tradition of memorializing saints through bestowing their names upon the family's newborns and the sticking point of recording those acts of adoration in a foreign language. 

In the case of Johanna Falvey's family back in County Kerry, that foreign language of record, at least for the Church, was Latin, while the Falveys—undoubtedly for centuries—probably conversed day to day in their native Irish tongue. Not that there weren't Irish saints, but that all records were entered by priests in Latin.

Tracing the baptismal records of Patrick and Anna Falvey's children gives us not one, but two apt illustrations. Their daughter, baptized in February of 1830, was listed in the parish record as Gobineta. When I trace the lines of Falvey DNA matches backwards in time, I can see that she must have married someone in County Kerry named Daniel Cullinane. However. if I follow the baptismal records for the Cullinanes' children, the mother's name appears alternately as variants of Gobineta or totally different names, such as Debora. Tracing one supposed DNA descendant, that name also appears as Abby. Were these three different wives of the same Daniel Cullinane?

Take this other Falvey example, Gobineta's younger brother Demetrius, baptized in January of 1837. When I try to trace his line down to the present, I find nothing. But my husband has a DNA match whose ancestor was named Jeremiah Falvey—another given name that sounds just about as Irish as Demetrius. What's going on here?

Searching for guides to how the Irish handled the sometimes awkward mismatch between what was on the record and what was used around the home when mom or dad called that child for dinner, I had to locate more than one resource. The FamilySearch wiki provided a useful chart of "Given Name Equivalents" to help me with Gobineta and Demetrius, but I had to use the "find" function to locate some details.

Gobnait, as it turns out, was the actual Irish name. Apparently, the priest recording the Falveys' daughter in the baptismal records tried to compromise, giving a Latin twist to the decidedly Irish saint's name Gobnait. From the FamilySearch wiki chart, I can see that Gobnait was used interchangeably with Abigail and Debora. Thus, in searching for Gobnait Falvey's name in subsequent records, I'll need to be prepared to look also for these alternate names.

As for Demetrius, that baptismal name was not given as an alternate for another Irish name in the wiki chart, but I did find information elsewhere. A listing of Irish given names at rootsireland.ie informed me that the traditional Irish name Darby is sometimes substituted by Demetrius—and also is considered an alternate for Dermot or Diarmuid. Those alternates, in turn, showed up in some unsourced lists on some sites on the (now very) old RootsWeb—such as here, and here, if you can stand reading despite the aggravating placement of ads—and could also be a substitute for the name Jeremiah. Or you can simply turn to a reliable source like John Grenham and glean his quick listing of some Latin to Irish equivalents to find the same information.

Thus, finding DNA matches whose pedigree leads back to someone named Jeremiah rather than Demetrius, or Debora or Abby instead of Gobnait, may not be such bad news, after all. I'd say it's time to start building out those branches and checking the documentation connecting each generations from Johanna's siblings to the present.

Examining Possibilities

 

Armed with two tenuous connections to her homeland in County Kerry, Ireland, we're off to examine the possibility that Johanna Falvey Kelly's father was named Patrick Falvey. We already know that Johanna's obituary, printed in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette the day after her May 1, 1903, death, stated that this widowed immigrant was a native of County Kerry. Although two separate obituaries offered conflicting information on the family in her homeland, we can at least say that she left several siblings behind when she and her husband decided to move their family to the U.S. city of Fort Wayne in Indiana.

Other than that—and a record from the Catholic parish of Kilcummin, affirming a marriage of Johanna Falvey of "Knocanscore" to John Kelly—I've yet to find documentation to point me correctly to that Irish homeland. This is where the guess work comes in. 

Using traditional Irish naming patterns as a guide, I surmised that Johanna's second-born son, Patrick, would represent the given name of her father. Looking for any corroboration, I did find an 1824 marriage record from the same Catholic parish for a man named Patrick Falvey, who married Anna Fleming.

Looking for documentation of any possible children of this couple, I did find a baptismal record for someone named John, baptized in June of 1827. Following that was another record, this time for a daughter named Gobnait, a traditionally Irish name, baptized in 1830. Following that was another baptism in 1835 for son Patrick, then another one two years later for Demetrius.

As far as any sign of Johanna, I found none. The time gaps between the elder Falveys' wedding in 1824 and the first baptism in 1827, then another gap between 1830 and 1835, signaled missing records or possibly stillborn births for the couple.

Setting aside the basic question of whether this couple—Patrick and Anna—were actually Johanna's parents, there were other concerns. The first involves a question of just how Catholic priests, required to keep ecclesiastical records in Latin, would handle a traditionally Irish name in their record keeping duties. This would not only impact search results for Johanna's possible sister, Gobnait, but also the brother recorded as Demetrius. Then, too, looking at the F.A.N. Club angle, Johanna had a neighbor after she moved to Fort Wayne, whose last name was the same as her maiden name—and ended up being her next door neighbor. Was there a family connection?

These are not merely idle questions. As it turns out, DNA matches linked to my husband's account trace back to those two possible siblings—if, that is, those questions can lead to substantiated answers. Hence, one reason why I am keen to create floating branches for this extended Falvey family. And the question of neighbors with the same surname who immigrated from the same homeland once again bids me to explore setting up another floating branch.

Floating Falveys

 

While I am absolutely certain that Johanna Falvey Kelly was my father-in-law's great-grandmother, I have no clue who her parents were or how she connected with the other Falvey family members in County Kerry, Ireland. I know this family line because I've done my due diligence to trace back through the generations on the short trip from my father-in-law to his father, Will Stevens, to his mother, Catherine Kelly, to her mother, Johanna Falvey. I've documented every ten years of the way from immigrant Johanna's landing place in Fort Wayne, Indiana, through to the current generation, including tracing every collateral line of all Johanna's surviving children and connecting that information with my husband's DNA matches at four different companies.

Tracing Johanna's line in the other direction, however, seems impossible. Though her obituary mentions her origin in County Kerry—and indeed, I've located a marriage record for her and John Kelly in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin—I've been unsuccessful in making progress back through time. There are, however, DNA matches signaling the possibility of Falvey siblings, or maybe cousins, for Johanna. Since it is possible to build out a tree for each of those lines, it means one thing if I hope to make any research progress: create floating branches in my father-in-law's tree and get busy confirming how those Falvey branches connect with Johanna.

Creating a floating branch for each of those DNA matches does mean I'll be building out a tree for each Falvey connection. Sure, that sounds like work. The process, however, is not as difficult—or messy—as it might seem. Granted, now on Ancestry.com, those who subscribe to ProTools have a way to do this through creating a "network" for the targeted surname in question. But even without the luxury of that subscription add-on, it is relatively easy to create a floating branch. Essentially, you add a person to your tree anywhere, then remove them from the relationship where you added that new person by "edit relationships" then remove the father, mother, or sibling from where you originally attached the suspected relative.

In other words, after adding that suspected Falvey relative, you snip him from any family connections and let him float free in your database. Then, you get to work building out that new branch until you arrive at a possible nexus where you can re-attach your mystery DNA connection.

I first learned this concept from Connie Knox on her YouTube channel, "Genealogy T.V." It's been an indispensable technique which I've used repeatedly. I've shared the technique with others in my local genealogical society and in classes I've taught. Although the technique's description may leave some people scratching their heads, when I walk them through the process, that learning light bulb fires up—learning by doing trumps all other teaching methods.

This coming week, I have several Falvey DNA matches to explore through this same "floating branch" process. They all do cluster together, though in closer examination, they clump into several distinct geographic regions, suggesting possibly descendants of Falvey siblings or cousins.

Beyond adding these Falvey floating branches, the next step will be to delve into the details—and documentation—as far back in time as I can follow each branch. Hopefully, each path will eventually converge in County Kerry in a way that will allow me to understand just how they all relate to Johanna. 

Those Falvey Forebears: What the DNA has to Say

 

There is another tale to be told about these forebears of my father-in-law's brick wall ancestor, Johanna Falvey. That is the telltale report held within these family members' DNA. With Johanna being my husband's second great-grandmother, any third cousins descended from her would still be within the range of discovery, if any of those third cousins would think to test. (Hint, hint: there are a few sales popping up lately, and if not now, surely when the holiday season arrives would be a golden opportunity.)

Even DNA matches who could point out a possible sibling for Johanna would be sterling. Granted, such descendants would then be fourth cousins, a much smaller match. But they might still be able to wave enough DNA in their representative sample to raise the Falvey banner for me to spot.

That, in fact, is what I'm on the lookout for right now. Just at Ancestry.com's DNA, my husband has eleven possible Falvey connections. Six of them descend directly from Johanna herself, and I know how each of them fits into my father-in-law's family tree. In addition to that, there are four more who descend from a possible sister who moved to New Zealand, exactly the detail we had found in Johanna's own obituary. And yet another DNA match descends from a different sister.

Using the ProTools "Shared Matches" device at Ancestry, I can then extend those eleven discoveries to see other matches connected to our Falvey cousins. So far, those who immigrated to the United States seem to center in either Massachusetts or Michigan, likely signifying a connection to the same Falvey ancestors.

To discover the connection may require me to do some tree building on floating branches, to allow me to sort out which Falvey ancestors each match points to. This, of course, will take some time—but that is what this month may be all about. We'll certainly be doing some experimenting with ways to open up the stories behind these Irish Falvey ancestors from County Kerry.

Patrick: an Assumption

 

When we have no solid information to go by in our quest to push past brick wall ancestors, we test assumptions. Based on Irish naming traditions of the 1800s, we can assume that Johanna Falvey Kelly's father would have his namesake represented by her second-born son. That child, born in Indiana shortly after the Kelly family's arrival there from Ireland, was named Patrick.

Thus with that one clue, we'll launch ourselves on an experimental journey next week to see what can be learned about one Patrick Falvey in County Kerry.

Fortunately, there were enough genealogical breadcrumbs sprinkled upon this Irish ancestral pathway to lead us to a few encouraging clues. In a marriage entry in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin, the March 2, 1859, record noted that Johanna was from the townland of Knockauncore—or, in the priest's hurried hand, "Knocanscore."

The witnesses for the ceremony were John Fitzgerald and John Fleming. Hold that thought while we jump back a generation to check on some earlier marriage records. Sure enough, there in the same Catholic parish on November 24, 1824, Patritius Falvey married Anna Fleming.

To be sure, they were not the only couple with that Falvey surname to be married during that time period. Following shortly after Patrick's November marriage entry were two other Falvey men: Hugo, marrying Maria Marmix "alias Cronin," and Daniel, marrying Maria Cotter. Both of these subsequent Falvey marriages occurred in February of the next year. We need to keep in mind that either of these alternate couples could have been Johanna's parents, if her later marriage in that same Catholic parish were any indicator of her roots.

And that is precisely the problem. While I can find baptismal records for some of Patrick Falvey's other children, there is nothing I can find for a daughter named Johanna during the time period later records suggested as her year of birth.

Because of that, I've taken to reading the parish records, line after line, to see whether indexing processes might have missed a misspelling or an illegible entry. In the meantime, there were a few other details I learned about the family of Patrick and Anna. We'll jump to those discoveries next week when we pick up the search for Johanna Falvey's roots.

If Traditions Held True

 

One encouraging detail about researching Irish ancestors was how they supposedly held to specific traditions in the naming of their children. Looking at the children of Johanna Falvey and her husband, John Kelly, could reveal much—if these Irish immigrants held to the traditions of their homeland even after their arrival in the United States.

Pulling up the 1870 U.S. census, the first enumeration in which the entire family appeared in the same American household, we see John and Johanna and four children living in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In order of their ages, those children were Timothy, Catherine, Mary, and Patrick. (Youngest son John did not make his appearance in this American document until 1880, at which point oldest son Timothy was no longer in the record, having tragically died in 1876.)

If, in the 1860s in County Kerry, Ireland, John Kelly and his wife Johanna had kept the old tradition of bestowing names on their newborn children, we could be certain that John Kelly's father was named Timothy, as that was the name he gave his oldest son. Likewise, with the arrival of his second son, we would learn that it was highly likely that Johanna's own father was named Patrick.

That, of course, is a big "if." If the parents, for whatever reason, thought it prudent to deviate from the ages-old tradition—and how would we know at this point?—that pattern would not be reliable. Or, if there were children missing from documentation, thus inserting another possible son into the family constellation, that could lead us to make a wrong assumption.

Barring such difficulties, taking this list from the 1870 census at face value would lead us to presume that Johanna Falvey Kelly's father's name should have been Patrick. With that proposal, we'll take some time this week to test out what such an assumption may reveal.

Revisiting Johanna

 

Every time I research Johanna Falvey, my father-in-law's great-grandmother from County Kerry, I think this time I'll finally discover who her parents were. Even a year ago, my last time to wrestle with Irish documentation, I thought I was close, but ended the month without any solid record. And yet, these Falvey DNA matches keep beckoning me to try just one more time. This month is that one more time.

What I do know about Johanna mostly comes from her three decades of residence in Fort Wayne, Indiana. With her husband and three—possibly four—Irish-born children, she made a straight course from Ireland for the midwestern United States from an undisclosed port. I have yet to find any passenger records, though two different obituaries indicated that she came from County Kerry in Ireland. One, in fact, mentions that she had "several sisters and brothers" still remaining in Ireland, while another asserted that not only were there several sisters in Ireland, but one who lived in New Zealand.

When she died in 1903, her death record gave her age as seventy seven, as did her obituary. Her headstone on the other hand, chiseled in the verdict as seventy four, giving the years as 1828 through 1902, proving that even details set in cement need a copy editor. Finding Johanna in Irish records will not be a matter of an exact science.

Unfortunately for this month's quest, marriage information may not be helpful. Johanna married a man named John Kelly, a quintessentially Irish name ripe for multiple name twins. Their marriage was back in Ireland. No documents that I have been able to find provide any details on the names of Johanna's parents. And if she ever was in touch with her multiple siblings back in Ireland—or even in New Zealand—I have no record of that, not even through family letters or remembrances left by her children or grandchildren.

The only clue I have of parents' names may come from an old Irish naming tradition, in which the second son of the family was customarily named after the mother's father. Tomorrow, we'll take a closer look at Johanna and John Kelly's children, both in Indiana and in Ireland.

Finding Falveys, the Next Generation

 

When I first discovered that my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna had the maiden name Falvey, I thought I had hit the research jackpot. Surely, that was a unique name—unusual enough to grant me the keys to open that brick wall's hidden door. Then I pulled up a surname distribution map. That told me an entirely different story. In Johanna's native County Kerry, Falveys were everywhere.

Over the years—and even as recent as August of last year—I've chipped away at Johanna Falvey's story. Since after her marriage to John Kelly, she and her family were among immigrants to America long past the famine years, it was easy to trace her family's life in Fort Wayne, Indiana. But back home in Ireland? Not as much.

For this month's Twelve Most Wanted, I want to return to explore Johanna's roots. However, this time I'll try a more experimental approach. I believe Johanna's parents may have been Patrick Falvey and Anne Fleming, but I need to test that theory, both with records in Ireland, and through those records embedded in our flesh and blood, our DNA.

Tomorrow, we'll start with a brief review of who Johanna was, and what records eluded me, the last time I had attempted researching her roots. From that point, we'll explore just why Patrick Falvey and Anne Fleming might have been a reasonable choice to lead us back through time in the Falvey family history. And we'll meet some possible other siblings in that family constellation as we work our way through September.