Finding the Path

 

Baptismal records for Catholic ancestors who lived in Ireland pre-famine years can be hard to find—and once found, can be hard to read. Right now, I'm on a mission to capture all the entries for Flannery family members who might have been related to Margaret Flannery, my father-in-law's great-grandmother. My hope is to find the path from her Catholic parish in County Tipperary to the townlands where her family lived.

All the Flannery records I'm searching are from the Catholic parish in Ballina, but I already know from our family's visit there in 2015 that the priest from the church in Ballina also served as a sort of circuit rider, leaving the actual town to circle through the townlands to baptize and administer other sacraments of the faith. The records he kept usually indicated the actual location of the parishioner's residence.

I began my search by setting up a table to organize all the Flannery baptismal records for the Catholic parish of Ballina. Then, I looked for each entry which included a child surnamed Flannery. I noted date of baptism, mother's maiden name (if given), name of each godparent, and residence. Children born to the same set of Flannery parents were listed together under their parents' heading.

Then, I looked to find the locations of each residence. Right now, I've located several different locations, showing me that there were a number of different townlands where Flannery kin had lived during the time frame of my search—from about 1833 through 1850.

Among the most often repeated locations in the townlands of County Tipperary was one called Ballycorrigan. Searching on townlands.ie showed me that Ballycorrigan is just east of Ballina, a reasonable walking distance to the church. John Flannery and his wife Norry Johnson lived there, as well as William Flannery and his wife Kitty Keough, and Patrick Flannery and his wife Sally Ryan.

A second place with several Flannery families was named Curraghmore. Farther still from the church in Ballina, Curraghmore was actually in the next civil parish to the east, a place called Kilmastulla—another name I've found on the baptismal records for Flannerys.

The next step for me will be to look through those baptismal records for children of possible Flannery sisters of the men already found in the records, to see if I can spot any further patterns, using traditional clustering methods like the names of godparents. My hope is that some patterns will emerge to provide suggestions as to how to cluster each of these Flannery families with possible siblings. We've tried that approach before with Margaret Flannery's husband's Tully line, although that attempt turned out to be rather inconclusive. Hopefully, something more obvious will emerge for the Flannery line next week.

Signs They Were There

 

The further I reach into old Canadian—and then Irish—records, the more I see signs not only that our Flannerys and Tullys were there, but ways that they continued to connect. Take this July 1847 baptismal record for John Flannery, son of Edmund Flannery and Margaret "Quogh" in the Roman Catholic records of Ontario, Canada. For the godparents of this son born on June 24, the priest had listed John Gorman and Margaret Tully. Tully had been the married name of Edmund's suspected sister Margaret, and Gorman is a surname spotted as neighbors of our original Denis Tully family from the 1851 census.

Denis Tully, my father-in-law's great-grandfather, had married someone named Margaret Flannery, but being that they were both immigrants to Canada West from Ireland, I needed to trace their path back to their homeland. What signs could I find that the Flannery family was there in County Tipperary as I had supposed? That was my next step.

Fortunately, there were several signs, embedded in the scrawl of religious documented in the all-but-underground Catholic church of the time. Referring to the 1851 census where we had already found them in the village of Paris in Brant County, Ontario, I knew their children's names: Patrick, Cornelius, and Michael. (Youngest son John, as we've already seen, had been born after the family arrived in Canada.)

Yet looking to baptismal records back in County Tipperary, in the area surrounding the town of Ballina, I couldn't find a record for any of these children of Edmund and Margaret. What I did find was a record naming those parents for two other children, children who apparently died in the late 1840s—and possibly became the impetus for the family's decision to migrate to Canada. Those two were Ellen, baptized in April 1843, and Edmund, baptized in 1845.

Those two baptismal records garnered a few interesting details. For Ellen, the record represented the parents as "Ned"—a possible nickname for Edmund—and gave Margaret's maiden name as Keogh, a more likely spelling for her name than the Quogh rendition in her son John's Canadian baptismal record. For Ellen's younger brother Edmund in April 1845, his parents were seemingly listed in a rush: "Edmd" for his father, with Margaret's name likely abbreviated as "Marg.," read possibly in error as Mary.

While looking at these baptismal records, I also gleaned the names of each child's sponsors, just in case those names turned out to be significant to us in our current chase for DNA cousins. For Ellen, the godparents were John Keogh, likely Margaret's brother, and Winny, a woman whose maiden name keeps appearing in family records but seems difficult to render properly: Finn? Linnel? For Edmund, the godparents were Laurence and Mary Mullins.

Sometimes, it seems that to find the key to connect the extended family constellation, we need to reach ever farther in records. I find myself in that place, working with this Flannery line, so I did a search on a collection of Irish baptismal records, limiting the results to County Tipperary and Ballina. I'll glean all the pertinent names, including sponsors, and see if I can find any patterns among the Flannery names. After all, traditional Irish naming patterns may help me make some presumed connections to compare with the distant Flannery cousins I'm working with online.

In the meantime, in perusing those County Tipperary records for Flannerys, I couldn't help but notice one marriage record which also linked to our Tully line: someone named John Tully—but not ours—marrying someone named Kitty Flannery. These two likely also followed my father-in-law's great-grandparents from Ballina to Canada, if they are the same as the John Tully family in the 1851 Canadian census. Though I haven't yet been able to figure out just how this John Tully connects to our Denis Tully—hint: he is not Denis' son by that same name, as that is our fully researched direct line—this time we'll take it from the Flannery side and see if we can connect Kitty to her relatives in County Tipperary, as well. 

Rebuilding the Tree

 

Can you build another person's family tree?

No, I didn't ask whether you could copy someone else's family tree; I said actually do the work yourself and build a tree from another family's starting point. For some of our DNA matches unlinked from any family tree data, sometimes that is our only choice: roll up our sleeves and build the tree ourselves.

Not that I'm in that exact situation. The tree I'm building now will hopefully become part of my own father-in-law's tree, but for now, I'm not quite sure, so this is an experiment. My goal is to find a connection for my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery, wife of Irish immigrant Denis Tully from Ballina in County Tipperary, Ireland.

As it so happens, finding Denis Tully's household in the 1851 Canadian census revealed some neighbors of interest: the family of a man named Edmund Flannery. As if that weren't enough of an impetus, further down the same census page I discovered another immigrant Tully man whose wife happened to be a Flannery. Family members? Perhaps we'll see in this week's brief tour of what can be found, looking both backwards and forwards on that Flannery family tree.

My first step has been to add, then detach, Edmund Flannery from Margaret Flannery's part of my father-in-law's tree. That way, he is still in my database, but not in a position which might mislead an unsuspecting researcher to copy that detail—which, for now, could just as easily be a mistake as a presumed sibling.

From there, I'm beginning to add Edmund's children to that same database, under their disconnected father's record. So far, I've only been able to add Edmund's oldest son, Patrick. Included in Patrick's line was his wife, Margaret Gorman, Canadian-born daughter of Irish immigrants whose place in that same Canadian census was only one page prior to Edmund's own household.

Patrick and Margaret's family included several daughters and one lone son, at least according to the next document where I found Patrick's growing family listed: the 1891 Canadian census. From eldest to youngest in stair-step fashion, they were Mary, Margaret, Ellen, Agnes, James, and Kate.

As I've been busy adding documentation as confirmation of the connection—and in hopes of building the tree out further, in case it garners some additional Flannery DNA connections—the facts I'm uncovering jog my memory, and I realize I've run into Patrick before. Long before, it turns out, I found him on another failed research expedition to uncover our Margaret Flannery's roots. Patrick Flannery was the unfortunate sixty three year old man found drowned in a mill race in 1895.

What's a mill race, I had wondered at the time. Thanks to some help from a reader, and an incredible stroke of good fortune in that the only year the Essex Free Press had been placed online then was for that same year—1895—I at least learned of Patrick Flannery's sad demise. Since then, of course, much more material has come online, and I have found the death record for our Patrick, informing us that his death was—thankfully—an accidental drowning and not due to foul play. And, oh, that he was born in County Tipperary, and that the reporting party, at least, was from Paris in the County of Brant, our Patrick's Canadian home. But not much more than that.

From that eldest Flannery son Patrick from the 1851 census, I'll continue the same research project for his younger brothers. Hopefully, today's much-improved access to more online records will yield me better results than the last time I attempted this same project. In the meantime, we also need to take a look backwards to see whether we can find any documentation now on those Irish-born sons of Edmund Flannery back in County Tipperary.

Friends and Flannerys

 

Does that F.A.N. Club notion really hold? Could immigrant neighbors really have been more than just friends? Was it family or just coincidence that after a trip of more than three thousand miles, Denis Tully and his wife ended up with neighbors surnamed Flannery?

It all started with an ink blot and a curious hesitance to enter the actual name of married women in the 1851 census for the village of Paris in Brant County, Ontario. There was my father-in-law's great-grandfather Denis Tully, listed with his forty three year old wife, entered simply as "Mrs." Only a few lines below that in the same census record was an entry for another family with the surname Flannery. Predictably, the wife's name was also entered as "Mrs.," but the husband's name was aggravatingly obscured by an inconvenient ink blot.

Edman, I guessed—but I could hardly be sure. What kind of name might that have been? Besides not wanting to be socially forward about women he didn't know, this enumerator apparently hadn't shined in spelling during his school years.

No matter. What I did want to know was whether Edmund—as I presumed the official had meant to write—might have been an in-law of Denis Tully. After all, Denis had married a Flannery, himself. Perhaps ink-blot Edman might have been his brother-in-law. If so, I couldn't resist the thought that Edman might lead me back to the place in County Tipperary, Ireland, where both the Tullys and the Flannerys were said to have originated.

That is still my question today, though I've since found plenty of indicators that there were other Flannerys in and near the Catholic parish of Ballina. Reason I'm revisiting this question: another DNA connection has contacted me about a possible Flannery link in Canada. We're forming a Flannery collaboration. While we are comparing notes, it might be helpful to outline what I know about this Flannery family in Brant County before stepping backwards in time to their origins in Ireland.

That 1851 census showed a household with four children, having a similar pattern to our Tullys: all born in Ireland, with the exception of the baby of the family, born after the family's arrival in Canada. In this case, the baby was John Flannery, and at the point of that enumeration year, his upcoming birthday would have made him four years of age—in other words, sometime during the year of 1852.

Along with John—and after a significant gap in ages—were his older brothers Michael (aged 15), Cornelius (aged 17), and Patrick (aged 19). I've tried tracing these sons forward in time, as well as looking for their Flannery father back in County Tipperary. Now that I've found a possible Flannery cousin to compare notes with, thanks to a referral by another DNA match, we'll spend the rest of the month seeing what can be found on the extended Flannery family. 

A Flannery Family Focus

 

Would it be possible to solve a family history mystery in the span of ten days? Could we, if we've already tackled the question twice before, manage to handle it before the close of this month? I'm not sure, but I'm willing to give it a try. After all, my planned research project for this month has fizzled out—yes, I can be a wimp that way—and I need to find something to replace it.

Into this perfect research storm steps an unsuspecting DNA match who provides the inspiration. Actually, this researcher is a genealogy friend of a friend, referred to me by another DNA match who is also working on the same line. Together, we are tackling various aspects of the trail-gone-cold of my father-in-law's immigrant great-grandparents Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery. After a volley of emails with this new-found connection, I decided I found my blogging answer: make the Flannery family line my focus for the rest of July.

Oh, we have tackled this project several times in the past. Sometimes I feel as if it were all to no avail—my immediate reaction when thinking back to the two times I've blogged about the Flannery family in 2015 and, more recently, just last August. But now that I look back to some of the posts on the Flannery family here at A Family Tapestry, I realize I did make progress. It's time to regroup and move a step beyond.

So this is it: the Flannerys will be our focus for the remainder of the month, both in County Tipperary, where they originated, and where they emigrated, a place which was once called Canada West. There are several neighboring Flannery families I've discovered in the past few times this surname has been reviewed, so tomorrow we'll take a look at those loose ends and see whether we can find a clear path forward.

Driven by D N A

 

Ever since having taken an autosomal DNA test in 2014, my family history work has been driven by DNA. Building my family tree has included the enrichment of collateral lines for each generation, thanks to the many DNA matches whose identity and connection had kept me stumped for the years before I made that cataloging decision. Now, my tree is connected in many different directions—at least as many as can possibly bring up a match with another DNA test taker in our family tree. I want to know how I relate to all these DNA cousins.

Thus, the numbers on my biweekly tally may seem over the top—but keep in mind mine is not a tree seeking solely to see "how far back" I can go. I'm looking for cousins—sometimes up to fourth and fifth cousins—not the identity of my tenth great-grandparents.

Knowing that background explanation, it isn't quite as surprising to see I added 343 thoroughly-documented distant cousins to my in-laws' family tree over the last two weeks. And the tree's total count of 36,153 doesn't seem so outlandish when put in that perspective. Besides, I've been clipping along at a similar rate now for nearly ten years, so the total size of the tree makes more sense when seen from that perspective.

Of course, that progress is also driven by both my Twelve Most Wanted research plans for the year and my behind-the-scenes follow-up on DNA matches. For instance, since my research goal this month was to focus on my father-in-law's possible relative, all my work so far centered on my in-laws' tree for July—and absolutely nothing happened to grow my own parents' family tree. (That tree still sits at 38,405, where it will stay until we begin work on my father's line in October.)

Follow-up on DNA matches adds more effort on both trees. For instance, behind the scenes this month, I've been working on a collateral line linked to a DNA match from my mother-in-law's side of the family. There's been a lot to add on that family line, thus the growth in that tree. In addition, a new connection with another side of my father-in-law's tree means collaboration with a DNA match may help propel our progress forward through mutual effort—always an encouraging outcome. These latest DNA contacts may help inspire how I round out the posts for the rest of this month, seeing how we've run out of steam in our pursuit of Hugh Stevens. We'll talk about those collaborations on Monday.

Why No Y?

 

Before we take our final leave of the Stevens quandary—the abrupt appearance and equally quick disappearance of Hugh Stevens—there's one last question I have. To put that question in shorthand, I'm wondering why there is no Y—as in Y-DNA, the genetic test which can reveal a subject's father's father's father back through time and even beyond the dates of genealogical records.

To test Hugh Stevens' supposed brother's line—that of John Stevens who immigrated to Lafayette, Indiana, in 1851—my husband took the Y-DNA test at Family Tree DNA. He tested for 111 markers, certainly far less than the 700 markers used in the most complete Y-DNA test available now, but still a sturdy indicator representing John Stevens' genetic legacy.

The result? After ten years of waiting, there are only two other men who match my husband at that 111 mark. The kicker is: neither of them is surnamed Stevens.

If I look at my husband's current matches at the next lowest level—67 markers—he has thirty two matches, but the closest of those is a genetic distance of three, not an exact match. Again, the test taker goes by a different surname. In fact, not one of those thirty two matches goes by the surname Stevens. We are not getting close here, either.

What could be the cause of this lack of results? Of course, the easiest answer could be that no one from this Stevens family has tested besides my husband. However, despite NPE possibilities—"not the parent expected"—another reason might be that there were no male descendants left to test on this patriline, other than my husband's own male cousins on the paternal side. My husband's paternal grandfather was an only son, and his father before him, though having one brother with surviving children, included a son who had no children of his own.

And that leads us back to immigrant John Stevens, the father of those two brothers. Could he have been the only surviving son of his father, as well? Or could this lack of Y-DNA matches be due to another reason—perhaps that our John Stevens wasn't really a Stevens son after all? It becomes quite a lonely planet here, when looked at through a lens like that.

No matter what the reason—only surviving Stevens patrilineal descendant or immigrant hiding under an alias—it's clear that no one else has yet tested who descends from that patriline, whatever name it turns out to be. And it's also clear that, with no further leads to answer our research questions, we need to set aside our study of John Stevens' Irish roots, likely for a very long time.