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.