Simply Search for the Surname

If I had it to do all over again—and I will, the next time we revisit this puzzle of Johanna Falvey Kelly's roots—I would have first examined all the DNA matches whose family tree simply contained the surname Falvey. Of those, my husband has a genetic link to at least twenty nine others.

Interestingly, those twenty nine others are not necessarily the same ones that popped up when I used Ancestry's ThruLines tool to connect with Johanna, my father-in-law's great-grandmother. For one thing—and a very encouraging sign—the DNA cousins from this surname group match my husband at about twice the amount of genetic material as those ThruLines candidates I had previously checked.

Does that make this tree-based group closer relatives? Not necessarily. The connections are still rather distant. Yet that might be enough to help guide me back to the precise family in the right townland and parish of County Kerry.

This tree-based group comes from Falvey immigrants who settled in a wide variety of places. One group, as we discussed yesterday, left Ireland bound for New Zealand. A very small subset, I suspect, make up those who call Australia their home, possibly leaving for that destination after first landing in New Zealand.

Another very small set of DNA matches currently live in Canada, which is not surprising, considering the economic and political dynamics of leaving Ireland simply to relocate in another part of the United Kingdom, as their ancestors must have done during the 1800s.

Those Falveys who immigrated to the United States fell into three camps. Johanna Falvey herself came with her husband and children to Fort Wayne, Indiana. There are two other DNA matches who link to that family line. Another set of Falveys—whether closely related or not, I can't yet tell—headed to Massachusetts. A third set, which I'm having more difficulty tracing, made their destination the state of Michigan.

Each set of immigrating Falveys warrants their own attention. I'll be building out their family trees on my own to verify what each DNA match asserts in their own tree. Whether each one can lead me back to parish records in County Kerry, I won't know until I trace each immigrant family back to their homeland.

That, however, will be job number one for the next time I return to this research puzzle. Now that we're at the end of the month, it's time to move on to the next of my Twelve Most Wanted. Come October, we'll shift from a focus on the Irish and begin considering the first of three paternal ancestors from Poland. 

Assessing the (Diminishing) Possibilities

 

Finding the possible link between Johanna Falvey Kelly, my father-in-law's great-grandmother who had migrated to Fort Wayne from County Kerry, and the four DNA matches I've found in New Zealand promises to be a challenge. That is not simply because of the distance between North America and the South Island of New Zealand; it's the tiny amount of genetic material that these DNA cousins actually share.

Looking at the numbers, the possibilities for a more distant relationship stretch from third cousin once removed all the way to eighth cousin or beyond. That, at least, is according to calculations from The DNA Geek regarding a match of eighteen centiMorgans. You can get a snapshot of the hopeless probabilities from the "What Are the Odds?" diagram here.

To put it briefly, the closest of the four New Zealand Falvey descendants are two matches who each have one segment of eighteen centiMorgans in common with my husband. That's it. Each of them, as well as the other two with similar genetic connections—but divided into two or more segments, rather than one unified strand—descend from one of three daughters of Norah Falvey, the supposed relative of Johanna Falvey who had emigrated from County Kerry to New Zealand.

I have not been able to locate any documentation on a Norah Falvey in the Catholic parish where I had found Johanna's marriage to John Kelly. Nor has her location come close to the other supposed sister of Johanna, whose DNA matches also connect with my husband. The closest baptismal record I could find for a Norah Falvey was for a distant parish which, though still in County Kerry, would have required a walk of several hours.

My hunch at this point is that, though those New Zealand cousins are likely Falvey connections, the nexus between their specific ancestor and the ancestor of the American Falveys would be far beyond that of siblings. While I agree that it will be helpful to map out these New Zealand cousins' connection to each other through this Norah Falvey, the most recent common ancestor may well be two or three generations beyond Johanna's as-yet unconfirmed parents.

Beyond "Down Under"

 

One of the fascinating gifts of DNA testing for genealogy is being allowed a peek at how far our genetic connections can go. In the case of my father-in-law's Falvey connections, that line not only leads this American family back to Ireland, but it also provides us a link to distant cousins "Down Under" and beyond even that.

While it was a relationship as close as my father-in-law's great-grandmother who came from County Kerry, there are now third and fourth cousins popping up as DNA matches to my husband, who serves as testing proxy for my father-in-law who has long since passed away. I've tried my best to figure out these matches, but other than those direct lines descended from that great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey Kelly, I have yet to uncover the connection between the rest.

Pulling up ThruLines at Ancestry.com, I discovered there are four specific matches who supposedly descend from a woman called Norah Falvey. She, like Johanna, was said to have been born in County Kerry. But unlike emigrating Johanna, Norah's route took her even farther away than Johanna's journey to Fort Wayne, Indiana. For Norah, her destination—and final resting place—became the old settlement of Nelson on the South Island of New Zealand.

From those four specific DNA matches, I've discovered through Ancestry's ProTools that there are more than twenty other matches affiliated with that line in New Zealand. Obviously, I've found a lot of incentive to learn who this Norah Falvey might have been. Yet, try as I might, a review this past weekend shed no light worthy of "aha" moments. I cannot find any specifics on where in County Kerry this Falvey descendant once lived—none, at least, pointing out how she connected to Johanna Falvey.

While those many matches linked to Norah don't show up as a cluster in any reports at Ancestry, that doesn't mean I can't sketch out the connections between these distant cousins. While such an exercise might not inform my original research question concerning Johanna Falvey Kelly's origins and parentage in County Kerry, I can't help but remember that one line from Johanna's own obituary: that she had one sibling who had moved to New Zealand.

Someone in New Zealand obviously could claim a genetic connection to Johanna's own family line. Whether these DNA matches connect directly to that unnamed sibling, I can't yet determine, but keeping in mind this might be a years-long research pursuit, I may as well get started sketching out the connections I can find. That, if nothing else, will be a valuable addition to the Falvey research log for whenever I do alight on those elusive telltale records.

Missing the Connection

 

As frustrating as this seems—seeing we are nearing the end of the month, and thus time to move on to yet another of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026—I am having a difficult time making the leap from my husband's DNA connections in North America to their Falvey ancestors back in Ireland. Come to think of it, even the twenty of his DNA matches in New Zealand seem to be missing any connection to the parents of our specific Johanna Falvey Kelly. I'm beginning to wonder whether that sliver of matching genetic material is actually a persistent fragment passed forward from generations long before that time period.

Needless to say, this DNA puzzle has slowed down progress in adding another generation to my father-in-law's side of the family tree. In fact, not much of anything has actually been added to that tree. In the past two weeks, I've managed to find only thirty four individuals through tracing these Falvey connections, most of them through work on DNA matches. Truth be told, many of those new names hide within a "floating branch" of my father-in-law's tree, a token way to say, despite its presence, "I'm still not sure about this one."

Still, my in-laws' tree contains 44,402 documented individuals, which I'd consider a good start. Reviewing all the DNA matches yet to link to that tree, though, there is much work ahead, whether for the Falvey line or other branches of the tree. Other than what we might discover in the last few days of this month, we will need to move on to the next month's selected research subject.

With that shift, we'll also step from my in-laws' side of the family to my own. Not that that will be an easy transition; up next will be a leap from the dearth of documents in Ireland to the challenge of navigating foreign language records in the old dominion of Prussia. The last three months of the year will be the domain of the ancestral brick walls on the paternal side of my own family.

In advance of that move, in the last two weeks, I've had the opportunity to add ten more names to my own family tree. Most of those came, thanks to a recent email received from a distant cousin on my father's side of the family who shared some resources with me. In preparation for next month's move to research my paternal ancestry, that puts me at 41,979 individuals in my own tree.

Before we make that jump, though, we do have just three more days to muddle through some observations made evident by delving into those Falvey DNA matches which still stump me.

Don't Let Gone be Forgotten

 

I mentioned last weekend that I would be traveling for the next few days. A journey to northern California's wine country, setting of a conference my husband would be attending, somehow reminded me of the importance of keeping track of the details of our own history. Sometimes, that history can be a visible, and daily, reminder of our past. Other times, it can be gone—and soon after, forgotten.

There in beautiful Santa Rosa, I couldn't help but remember one significant building which, in an instant, was gone. The building was a red-painted round barn, built in 1899 as part of the winery established by the Fountaingrove community.

On a trip to Santa Rosa in the fall of 2015, my husband and I had stayed at a hotel situated right in front of the historic building. I was clueless about what lay behind us until we checked into our second story room and opened the drapes to take in the view. There it was, up on the hill behind us: a sixteen-sided piece of local history.

Two years later, it was gone, taken out by the devastating Tubbs Fire.

It has been almost exactly nine years since that loss, not just of one historic building, but of tens of thousands of acres of homes, farms, stores, medical centers, school campuses, and other community gathering places. When those buildings are gone and the years pass, for all except those directly impacted, we tend to forget what once, but for the inferno, had been there.

That becomes a reminder to me of all the visible signs of our family history. As I wrote after the loss, "Some things just aren't there anymore." The homes where we visited our grandparents, the school where an aunt or uncle attended, the store where Dad got his first job as a teenager: all these tangible signs of our family's past ultimately disappear from the scenery. Sometimes, when we return on that nostalgic trip to see things as we remembered them, even the roads have changed so much that we can no longer find our way.

It's only when we write down these details to preserve them—or sketch out the place as it once was, or label the photographs before we forget the names our grandparents told us—that we can keep that history fresh in our minds. Better yet, so we can pass those ephemeral details on to the next generation when it is their turn to keep the memories alive.

Above: Fountaingrove Round Barn, November 2015; photograph courtesy of Chris Stevens.

Not Even From "County Cherry"

 

This month has led us in circles as we wandered through ancestral records seeking the family of Johanna Falvey Kelly, my father-in-law's great-grandmother. Even pursuing Johanna's neighbors in Fort Wayne, Indiana—who tantalizingly possessed the same surname as her maiden name—couldn't yield us any clues, despite obituary mentions of Irish roots in "County Cherry."

You know how newspapers can go. I've bemoaned editorial errors ever since I started posting family stories on this blog. In the case of this extended search for the Falvey family's roots, "County Cherry" seems actually quite quaint, despite being an editorial blunder. But, despite decoding the entry, the location information still wasn't enough to solve my problem about where the Falvey family originated.

My focus for this part of the month-long search happened to actually be a neighbor of Johanna Falvey and her husband John Kelly. Living just around the block from the Kellys' home on Hoagland Avenue where they settled after immigration happened to be not only another Kelly family, but a Falvey family, as well.

While I still can't figure out how Timothy Kelly and his family connect to John Kelly, Timothy's neighbor Daniel Falvey also beguiled me. Living next door to Timothy Kelly on Brandriff Street, Daniel and his Irish-born wife, listed in 1880 as "Dabora," headed up a household of four young, American-born children.

Since Daniel's obituary leant little help in naming any siblings or parents—other than mentioning four children and "the wife"—I thought it might be helpful to trace that wife. Looking at her entry in the 1900 census, where she appeared as Abbie, I wondered if her true name might be the same as Johanna Falvey's likely sister, Gobnait. That traditional Irish given name, as we've already learned, often was shortened to nicknames like Debby or Abbie.

Since Abbie died in 1933, I looked for her obituary. Nothing. 

Building out her own family tree, I then looked for any reports on Abbie's siblings. The 1910 obituary for one brother, John, mentioned nothing about origins, but did list his siblings. Following those siblings led me to the 1920 obituary for their sister Johanna.

That's when I stumbled upon those editorial errors. Incorrectly (though admittedly charmingly), Johanna was said to have been born in "County Cherry." In fact, one sister, Elizabeth Moran, was said to still be living in "County Cherry" at the time of Johanna Sullivan's 1920 death in Fort Wayne.

Following the concepts of cluster genealogy, I tried my hand at figuring out just where Elizabeth Moran—and by extension, her siblings Johanna and Abbie, and possibly even Abbie's husband Daniel Falvey—might have originated. After all, many immigrants from the same community might travel in a group, especially when responding to the offer of a job, or the chain migration of following another relative who had already made the move successfully.

Still, try as I might to find any entry for an Elizabeth Moran from "County Cherry"—or even County Kerry—Irish baptismal and marriage records revealed no clues for any of Daniel and Abbie's roots in  townlands near the origin of my father-in-law's Falvey forebears. The two Falvey neighbors in Fort Wayne so far show no connections other than their coincidental nearby residences.

Some Things we may Never Know

 

After finding a listing of available dates for the baptismal records in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin in County Kerry, it turns out there was more to the story. In fact, I had already used the "missing" baptismal records for the children of Daniel Cullinane and Gobnait Falvey, the suspected sister of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey. However, despite reviewing the collection I found on Ancestry.com for Kilcummin records beginning in 1859, there were no more mentions of the Falvey maiden name than I had already discovered.

Some things we may never know, I've resigned myself to thinking. I checked two different registers now, reading line by line through each collection, in case impossibly messy handwriting may have foiled the indexing process. And yet, the Falvey name had all but disappeared in the Catholic parish where they once had been found.

The same process of working my way forward in time from the baptismal dates of the other Falvey children has not worked well, either. Admittedly, I could try leaping forward a couple decades to see whether I could find those same names in the 1901 census, but I'd have no guarantee that the names I'd find would be the same people I had located after their birth over thirty years prior to that enumeration. Besides gaps in records, Ireland is riddled with name twins.

Not that I'm ready to give up on this search. Though the original inspiration to find Irish relatives had been left, courtesy of Johanna Falvey Kelly's obituary, assuring us that she had been survived by several sisters back in Ireland, I now wonder how well she had kept in touch with those family members back home. Could she have known when any of her siblings had died? Or left home, just as she did, to sail the ocean and begin anew?

There is, of course, one other alternate approach to wrestling with this riddle: I can keep reviewing my husband's DNA matches. Even there, though, there seems to be a disconnect between those Falvey arrivals in Massachusetts or Michigan and their origin back in County Kerry. Family members were not shy about sharing their origin in County Kerry, but anything more specific than that, I've yet to find.

Still, what have we got to lose with such a records impasse in Ireland? The DNA route may be worth another look-see before we close out the month and move on to another hard-to-trace ancestor.

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.

This Blog is About a Struggle

 

Family history adventures often turn into unanswered questions:

• Why did they leave Ireland?
• Why did they move to Chicago?
• Why are they so invisible?

As much as I've tried to answer the questions I've had this month concerning Anna Flanagan from Ballyagran in County Limerick, her missing husband Stephen Malloy, and even her later years as a single mother in Chicago, it looks like I'm closing out another month without the documentation I've been struggling to find for decades. 

Don't look now, but tomorrow, I'll begin the process again with another mystery ancestor from my father-in-law's Irish heritage. This time with a guess about a possible second great-grandfather, I'll repeat the process in another Irish location in neighboring County Kerry.

Will I have better luck the next time I try this? Doubtful. This quest—and thus, this blog—is about a struggle, repeated as many times as my family has enigmatic ancestors, whether grandparents, great-grandparents, or even generations before that time. Most have stories which stretch beyond the reach of documentation, whether religious or governmental. 

This struggle, no matter how annoying, is what keeps drawing me back into the fray. With every new record set added online—hey, MyHeritage just made available Irish dog license registrations from the National Archives of Ireland, as did Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, just to give an idea of how desperate some researchers can be about finding their Irish roots—my hopes get amped up at the start of another round of searches.

If all the answers fell easily into my lap at the first try, I guess this wouldn't be such an adventure. Perhaps it would become more of a round of predictable dances with ancestral partners which, after enough iterations, would become unbearably boring.

Thankfully, that is not the case. But when the going gets rough and I can't see any answer in sight, I need to remind myself that this has always been about a struggle. It's the challenge that keeps us going.

It's Only "Classic" 'til October 1

 

Here I was, getting ready for my biweekly count and looking forward to a new ancestor to pursue at the start of next month, when I decided to sneak a peek at that ancestor's ThruLines results on Ancestry.com.

Right now, Ancestry DNA is going through a revision process, which in my view means a whole lot more clicks just to get to the same information. In other words, there are some breathless beta versions which simply deserve a click back to the original program. 

I get it that some people may find revisions informative, helpful, or just the very spark to make things exciting again. On the other hand, I use Ancestry every day, and the DNA tools several times a week. I like to find things where I put them the last time I used them.

Trying to provide feedback to Ancestry—they provided a hyperlink, which once clicked, supposedly leads to a page where such can be offered—led me only to a blank page with a perky "Ask Leaf" dialogue bubble. I declined. I didn't want to ask him anything; I wanted to tell about something.

Thankfully, Ancestry provides a button for those who wish to revert to the way things had always been—in other words, back to the classic version. When I tried that last night, though, I saw—to my dismay, I might add—that the DNA classic view will only be available until October 1.

I guess that means I'll have to put on the brakes and slow down enough to take in the scenery in this new DNA drive. The classic option is only temporarily classic. Soon it will not only become antiquated, it will be non-existent.

As is often said in October: "Boo!" (Hoo!)

Well, on to other matters. The rest of the Ancestry universe still continues to serve my quest to expand my in-laws' family tree, though not as rapidly as before I began wrestling with my father-in-law's Irish ancestors. I only managed to find forty nine additional family members to add to his tree in the past two weeks, most of whom were collateral lines or floating branches expanded in my futile attempt to follow Anna Flanagan Malloy's F.A.N. Club. Right now, my in-laws' tree has edged up to 44,318 documented relatives.

Thanks to some unexpected DNA matches—both at Ancestry.com and elsewhere—I was able to add six more individuals to my own tree. Right now, that tree is parked at 41,969 people, waiting until I turn to my dad's Polish roots in October. I'd be ecstatic if I could find some Polish DNA matches, but that is a search better taken elsewhere than my international subscription at Ancestry, unfortunately. 

Right now, with my focus on my father-in-law's roots in Ireland, we've got plenty of time to delve into yet another near-impossible immigrant story, which we'll do at the start of September. Maybe by then, I'll make my peace with the ever-changing website bells and whistles at Ancestry.

At Summer's Close

 

The weather yesterday took a turn that, in decades past, might have heralded the shift from summer to fall. Not that the last weekend of August normally signals the instant arrival of autumn—not around here in northern California. Despite the soon approaching holiday of Labor Day, which once marked the end of summer for American school children everywhere, here in my corner of the world, we are accustomed to another two months of lovely weather before the autumn rains set in. This unexpected shower in our semi-arid seasonal desert certainly changed the mood for me.

Summer, for many involved in family history, represents a chance to travel to chase after those few clues our ancestors scattered in their wake. Visits to cemeteries, or trips back to the old homestead are perfect for summertime research. It makes sense to see some genealogical societies "go dark" for the summer months, as ours does; everyone is maximizing their chance to get out and reconnect with family or old friends from places far away—a nostalgic kind of genealogy.

Soon, though, we'll be back in full swing, learning more about genealogical research techniques, and sharing stories of our "conquests" with fellow society members as we edge into autumn. What are stories without listeners? Somehow, the anticipation of telling about our research victories in the coming month makes each discovery even sweeter when we gather together again.

Still, I always hate to bid summer goodbye. A time to explore, to try new approaches, to hope for something better—or at least different—that's what summer has always been for me. 

Why Chicago?

 

One question I've always had, while researching my father-in-law's ancestral roots, was why his Irish ancestors chose Chicago as their immigration destination. After all, ports of arrival for such European immigrants were usually known to be geographically logical places like New York—and, specifically for the Irish, Boston. One well-known online periodical, A Letter From Ireland, brings up that very point in listing the most likely destinations for Irish passengers to the United States, noting heavy settlement in America's urban northeast.

Single mother Anna Flanagan Malloy, on the other hand, arrived in Chicago. How did she come to such a decision? Granted, her brother also arrived there, possibly looking for work in a city with a growing need for laborers. That said, I have yet to determine just what it was, exactly, that William Flanagan did for a living.

I took my question—why Chicago?—to the Internet to see what could be found, in hopes I'd uncover some conclusive evidence to explain why these Irish seemed to bypass the more reasonable (and easily accessible) east coast options for a trip of nearly an additional thousand miles overland.

Very likely, chain migration played a key role for some Irish immigrants, but I've yet to find the initiating family member—or former neighbor from back in County Limerick—who made the decision to try Chicago over those much easier eastern targets. Compelling reasons drawing later Irish arrivals included the expanding infrastructure in Chicago: the canals and railroads that made industrial expansion possible were often built on the backs of Irish immigrants.

There must have been an aggregate of forces remaking Chicago into the fourth largest Irish city in America by the start of the Civil War. What, among all those causes, beguiled our Flanagans to make Chicago their choice still eludes me. Reviewing what I knew of the Flanagans' F.A.N. Club did little to expand my understanding. If anything, it made me realize how invisible the poorer of those Irish immigrants may have been in those early years in Chicago—or how vitriolic the rhetoric hurled between opposing sides in those early years in Chicago.

Even checking the development of the area known as Hyde Park, once an independent township before incorporation as part of the City of Chicago, did little to reveal any details about the extended Flanagan family, some of whom had settled in or very near that area. I still cannot find census entries after 1860 for some of these descendants until the turn of the subsequent century.

Perhaps it was the city itself, through its size and rate of growth, which kept those family members invisible. Granted, their entries in census enumerations, if found, might not have been sufficient to answer the questions I had about these relatives' whereabouts and background. But it serves to point out the frustration of researching family whose history still draws a blank, despite best efforts.