Getting it Right

 

Genealogy has come a long way during the decades in which I've been involved. Just reviewing my old notes from the 1990s reminds me of how spoiled we researchers are, now. Still, understanding how people went about finding the details of their family history pre-Internet—and certainly pre-computing—gives us a fuller appreciation for what previous generations were able to accomplish in finding their roots.

That said, I ran across a detail this week as I began work on the Flanagan family for my Twelve Most Wanted for July, and it prompted me to see what our role should be in carrying forward the research effort: we are a part in getting it right for those who follow behind us.

I found the glitch when I reviewed my old posts on my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan Malloy. Anna, an immigrant from Ireland, was living in Chicago with her daughter Catherine and her brother William by 1860.

It turned out that William Flanagan did not make it to the turn of the century. It was the monument at his grave which gifted me with the information on how to trace the Flanagan family in Ireland—but that same monument somehow stumped another researcher from a previous time period.

During that earlier time period, a man by the name of Tom Cook took it upon himself to gather useful data that family history researchers might find handy. Among other tasks, Mr. Cook went through the cemeteries of Chicago, transcribing headstones. He compiled the information in an unpublished manuscript, which many researchers have since appreciated.

Eventually, that material came to be known as Chicago Irish Families. Subscribers to Ancestry.com may have seen the online version, a database now containing material from 1875 to 1925, although the original included material from 1831 onward.

William Flanagan's headstone transcription was included in that online version. The bulk of the transcription contained material just as I've mentioned in previous posts—except for one detail. According to the database—and, I presume, the original manuscript—William "died Aug. 14, 1898, aged 80 years."

Perhaps the headstone needed cleaning on the day that Tom Cook arrived at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery. For whatever reason, he read—or mistakenly copied—the date as 1898, but the year of William's death was actually 1893. That, of course, throws off William's year of birth as well, since only his age was given, not the year of his birth. The correct date of death is evident from a picture I had taken of the headstone years ago on a trip to Chicago.

Realizing the difference, the next step is to see if I can add the photo of William's headstone to the Find A Grave memorial that has already been posted, based on the original Cook manuscript—not to mention, add an additional photo showing the full height of the monument. Perhaps that will help future Flanagan researchers who are also looking for clues to point them in the right direction about this family's origin.

About That Other Lydia

 

Whenever we encounter conflicting assertions about a branch of our family tree, there is no route that possibly can be taken—at least, if we want a tree that reflects documented, correct information—other than to inspect all that can be found, according to each version of the "truth." In the case of that "other" Lydia, wife of Benedict Palmer of Mercer County, Ohio, that is exactly the task we need to attend to today.

Here's the assertion that got me started on this chase: a Find A Grave memorial for someone named Lydia Palmer, who was buried in Ellis Cemetery in Montezuma, Ohio, a tiny village in Mercer County that even today claims a population under two hundred people.

Nestled up against the state border with Indiana, Mercer County is on a road leading from Columbus, Ohio, to Fort Wayne, Indiana. From Perry County, where Lidia Miller lived, to Mercer County would be a trip of almost two hundred miles. If Lidia Miller, the widow of William Gordon, were indeed one and the same as Lydia Palmer, it would help to assemble records documenting the transactions that made that assertion a reality.

Let's check first to see what we can find on Lydia Palmer before her death in 1895. As early as 1860, I could find a census record for Lydia and her husband Benedict Palmer in Montezuma. The household included two daughters and five sons, with the oldest being named Jerome and the youngest, at one year of age, designated as his father's namesake, Benedict. The senior Benedict was noted to have been born in Delaware, while Lydia claimed to be an Ohio native.

The difficulty with the ages indicated for these children—Jerome listed as being twenty years of age in that census, meaning a birth year in 1840—was that "our" Lidia had given birth to her one surviving child, Adam Gordon, only a year prior to that. Not to mention, Lidia's husband, William Gordon, died at the end of 1840, certainly not in enough time for her to have remarried and brought another son to full term in the interim.

Looking for marriage information on Benedict Palmer, I did find a marriage record dated in February of 1839—the same time as our Lidia's son Adam was born—not from Mercer County where I had found the Palmers in 1860, but from Fairfield County, not far from Perry County. Benedict's wife's name, however, was listed as Catherine Hovermill.

Thinking this might have been a different Benedict, I went looking for someone by that name in Fairfield County. When I located him in the 1850 census, Benedict Palmer was indeed living in Fairfield County—but his wife's name wasn't Catherine at all. Despite the scrawl of the enumerator's handwriting—and his propensity to use abbreviations for names—the resultant entry for "Benidic" Palmer's wife looked far more like Lydia than Catherine.

It was time to branch out to more recent records—hopefully, those of the type which would include names of parents, such as death certificates. Remember that youngest son from the 1860 census, the one named after his father? I found what might—or might not—have been his death record. However, this Benedict Palmer died in Iowa, not Ohio. The informant, his wife, stated that her husband was born in Iowa, not Ohio. To complicate matters, she also reported that his father was born in Ohio—not Delaware, as we had seen from census records. 

The biggest problem, however, was that while this Benedict's death record noted his mother's name to have been Lydia, her maiden name, according to her daughter-in-law, was Barker.

Wrong Lydia? Don't be too sure. I kept looking—thankfully. Among the marriage records turning up in searches was one for a wedding performed in, of all places, Perry County, back where we had left our own Lidia Miller Gordon. On May 1, 1842, Benedict Palmer and Lydia "Gorden" stood before a Justice of the Peace, who solemnized their marriage.

To complete the tale, I'll need to look for any record of what became of Benedict's first wife, Catherine, who was evidently the mother of the oldest son, Jerome, whose burial was also noted with a Find A Grave memorial in Montezuma.

And that youngest son Benedict? Though he died in Iowa, he was indeed buried back in Montezuma—and, despite her provision of incorrect information on her husband's death certificate, so was his wife Rachel.

Thanks to an unexplained entry at Find A Grave—one which, without that documentation, seemed to make no sense at all—we now have the rest of the story, as far as Lidia Miller's life went. The birth dates for the sons of each husband, while seeming to contradict assertions about this marriage, made much more sense, once we followed through to find documentation to tell the full story.

Now, I'm left with far more to do on this month's research project. Besides documenting these discoveries for the family tree, I'll need to add the line of descent for children of Lidia's second marriage. Then, because those descendants may mean additional discoveries among perplexing DNA matches, I'll need to pursue that angle, as well—all before the close of this month, if all goes well.

What if That was All Wrong?

 

The month-long chase to discover the parents of Lidia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother who seemed to materialize out of nowhere, is almost over. Only four more days remain to work on this month's selection for my Twelve Most Wanted, but while I feel I've made headway on this brick wall puzzle, I haven't come to any solid conclusion.

I feel good about the progress I've made—especially the discovery of DNA matches linking to Jonathan Miller, a Perry County, Ohio, neighbor whose descendants may be telling a story I couldn't find through the traditional paper route. There is, however, one nagging question: what if that discovery—and all the documentation it led me to—turns out to be all wrong? What if Lidia Miller's story was far different than what we've discussed so far?

There's a good reason for asking—perhaps one you have noticed too, if you followed the links I've included with this month's posts. Notice the 1840 burial information for Lidia's husband, William Gordon, as presented by the volunteer posting his memorial on Find A Grave. As is often done by these volunteers, memorials are linked with those of family members, a helpful gesture—as long as the connections are correct. In this case, I'm not so sure the information is right, but I can't just not check it out. 

William Gordon's memorial has the usual listings for his parents, children, and siblings—and in William's case, his half-siblings, as well. As is often the case, volunteers also link a memorial with the burial information on a spouse. However, in William's case, information supposedly about his wife Lidia was cross referenced with the burial information of someone named Lydia Palmer.

This Lydia was born about the same year our Lidia's birth was estimated to be: 1820. That's where the similarity ends. Lydia Palmer was the wife of someone named Benedict Palmer, and she was buried with him in 1895, not in Perry County, the location where we'd expect to find Lidia in Ohio, but in Mercer County, a county halfway across the state on the Indiana border.

True, it could be possible that our Lidia, widowed with a young child in the early years of Ohio's statehood, might have sought out an eligible bachelor to fill her departed husband's shoes—but I can't just take anyone's word for it, not even that of a dedicated Find A Grave volunteer. This brings up a possibility that we need to take our due diligence to inspect for ourselves.

Notes From Long Ago

 

Sometimes, the old trumps the new. In the case of reading nineteenth century headstones, I'd take a seventy-two year old transcription any day, so when I found just that, I sat down for a good read.

My question lately has been, "Where was Lidia Miller Gordon buried?" It was not with her Catholic husband and in-laws, apparently. When I discovered a number of Miller family members buried in a humble, farmland-based burial ground in Perry County's Reading Township, I thought I'd take a look around.

While Find A Grave has photos of many of the still-legible headstones in the Binkley Cemetery—like Lidia's possible brother, Jonathan Miller—the earliest burials have suffered the ravages of time, weather, and unkind trespassers. Fortunately, while I was looking online at FamilySearch.org/labs for any documents to resolve my research dilemma about Lidia, one search result produced a transcription of Binkley Cemetery headstones.

The beauty of this discovery was that, though they are mere typewritten transcriptions of the engraved headstones, they represent work done in 1953—a full seventy two years ago. Granted, 1953 is a long time after the first burials occurred in that cemetery in 1810, but it is still a vantage point much earlier than our present day.

I thought I'd take a look, line by line, page by page. Job number one was to keep an eye out for any mention of Lidia Miller Gordon, my mother-in-law's brick wall second great-grandmother. There were indeed a number of Millers recorded in that transcription, so now that I've created a Miller Network through my Ancestry ProTools, I'll be careful to add those entries into the appropriate places as I build out the Miller Network. Every bit of detail helps.

The FamilySearch entry continued for several pages. While organized alphabetically by surname, it appeared to cluster information pertaining to family plots. Thus, I could find the cluster for Jonathan Miller's family, and, just below that on the same page, a grouping for Michael Miller's family, another family which might be considered relatives to Lidia. In addition, there was a set of burials listed for the Dupler family, likely a connection to Jonathan Miller's wife Catherine, who was herself born a Dupler.

No matter how helpful it was to find this seventy two year old cemetery transcription, there was one detail missing: any sign of a burial for Lidia Miller, wife of William Gordon.

Taking a Cue From the Cemetery

 

Sometimes, assumptions can sneak up on us. That was what was fixin' to fool me in this process of seeking Lidia Miller, the young mother who died in 1840. Unable to find any further information on her, I reached outward to the rest of her possible family relations in search of clues to solve Lidia's riddle.

Lidia's husband, William Gordon, died at the end of the same year in which he had lost Lidia: on Christmas Eve in 1840. As would be expected for a member of the Gordon family, William was buried in the Catholic Cemetery in nearby Somerset, a village within the Reading Township where we had found him listed in the 1840 census. Likewise for William and Lidia's baby, also named William—and, unsurprisingly, so were William's own parents, the senior William and his second wife, Mary Cain Gordon. From that, a natural assumption would be to take a cue from these burials and assume that younger William's wife Lidia would be buried in the same cemetery.

Wrong.

Well, at least it seems to be a wrong assumption. I can't find Lidia's final resting place, as of this point. But what I did find was surprising—surprising enough, that is, to make me doubt the connection between Lidia and her supposed Miller relatives, Jonathan and his wife, the former Catherine Dupler. You see, with all the family burials at Holy Trinity Cemetery, it was easy to assume that Lidia would also be Catholic. Perhaps she wasn't.

Now that we've found Jonathan Miller, a possible brother or cousin to Lidia, according to DNA matches, I followed him to his final resting place, a cemetery in New Reading called simply Binkley Cemetery. With a name like that, it would be easy to assume this was just a family's private burial grounds within their farm property. Perhaps that might have been true at one point. However, Find A Grave now notes over one hundred seventy memorials posted for this cemetery, with burial dates ranging from the namesake ancestor Johann Jacob Binckley's burial in 1810 through the most recent burial noted in 1947.

Not surprisingly, included with several of those burials in the Binkley Cemetery were headstones for the Miller surname. Perhaps seeing a couple by the name of Binkley—Samuel and Elizabeth—residing in Jonathan's household in the 1860 census may have been my first hint, though at the time I discovered that, I hadn't yet made any connection between the two families.

In addition to Jonathan and his family, however, the Binkley Cemetery's burials included another Miller family, that of Michael Miller and his wife Mary. Mary, if we can rely on the notes posted on her Find A Grave memorial, was born a Binkley.

Michael, according to the age given on his headstone, was likely born in 1812. That year of birth would put Michael too young to have been Lidia's father. Considering Jonathan Miller's burial in the same small cemetery and the fact that Binkley family members once lived in Jonathan's home, I'd consider that a suggestion that Michael and Jonathan might have been brothers.

That makes one useful cue gleaned from this burial discovery. But the final clue I gained from discovering this burial spot was the reminder that at least Jonathan and Michael Miller were not practicing Catholics. If Lidia turns out to have been their sister, despite her marriage to a Catholic resident of the same township, that means I would have to look elsewhere to find those useful documents we rely on for genealogical information prior to itemized census records and civil birth records.

Whether such records are still in existence—or even whether I can discover what faith these families adhered to—remains a big question. The consistency of Catholic baptismal records has certainly been a benefit to me in researching this Gordon family's past. Stepping outside the faith may leave me with no recorded options at all. 

"Start With What you Know"

 

If the standard genealogical mantra is to "start with what you know," then I probably shouldn't even begin pursuing James and Mary Kelly. There is so much not known about these second great-grandparents of my father-in-law—but if I don't start somewhere, I won't start at all.

Researching this couple with the quintessential Irish surname amounts to groping about in the dark like a blind man in a back alley. Most of what I "know" is based on associations with family members of the next generation and very weak inferences. With next to zero documentation, there isn't much for me to go by. If it weren't for the help of local researchers familiar with the territory and history of Lafayette, Indiana, I wouldn't even have made as much progress as I have to this point.

Take James Kelly, for instance. There is an entry for him in the Find A Grave listings for the old Greenbush Cemetery in Lafayette—but no headstone shown to verify the name or dates. And the date given in the Find A Grave memorial as James' death—September 1, 1853—may actually be the burial date.

Fortunately for me, the Find A Grave volunteer who posted James Kelly's memorial—it was spelled there as Kelley—happens to be a very active participant in the local genealogical community in Lafayette. Though I haven't met her face to face, we have discussed this Kelly family by phone and email before one of my trips to visit Lafayette. According to the volunteer, she gleaned the information on those early Greenbush burials from the actual cemetery records, of which I believe she had a copy.

What was helpful in those conversations was the volunteer's provision of information on James' wife Mary, as well as their daughter Catharine, whose untimely death followed the birth of her third child, William Stevens. In Catharine's case, thankfully, we do have a photograph of her 1858 headstone.

Once again, information on Find A Grave is sparse for Mary Kelley: no date of birth or death given. Only thanks to the specific location of her burial plot can we determine Mary's connection to James and to Catharine Stevens: section 2, lot 118. Even then, it is an inference based on proximity—that, and family oral tradition that Catharine's parents were James and Mary.

There were, thankfully, a few other signs of proximity to help bolster such inferences about the Kelly family. Finding those, however, will mean exploring what essentially are collateral lines among these ancestors of my father-in-law. Let's take a look tomorrow.

Finding a Final Resting Place

 

While I've finally discovered that Aunt Rose died toward the end of 1937, that certainly doesn't mean that is the end of her story—not, at least, for family history research purposes. There are far too many gaps left in her story. Among them is that tiny detail of finding her final resting place.

There is nothing I've found online that confirms where that resting place might have been. Now that I've finally located the date of her death—not to mention, that key detail of what surname her burial records might have listed—I can begin that next research process.

Not finding any obituary for Aunt Rose, though she was survived not only by her third husband, Julius Hassinger, but by her younger brother, I had some searching still to do. While a copy of a New York State death index revealed the date of her death, I'm curious to see what was recorded for the names of Rose's parents—not to mention, discovering who the reporting party might have been. I doubt her third husband, to whom she was married for only three years, would have been able to correctly answer such questions—though her brother, my secretive paternal grandfather, might have been, if he'd be willing to break silence on his origins just this once.

Discovering what was surely the mangled married name of Rose's mother led me to one cemetery where Rose might have been buried, if she didn't have plans to be buried with Julius Hassinger, her current husband. That cemetery was the beautiful and historic Woodlawn Cemetery located in the northern portion of the Bronx, part of New York City. That was the cemetery, according to death records, where Rose laid her mother to rest after Anna's tragic demise in 1921, although searches through Find a Grave with several spelling variations yielded no results from the memorials posted there.

The Find a Grave memorials do include an entry—however, without any headstone photograph—for Rose's second husband, George Kober, and note an inscription stating "Husband of Rose." I can click a handy button at Find a Grave and request that a photo be taken, but I will first need to provide a burial location before sending that request. Since the only map of the cemetery I can find online dates back to 1912, that hardly helps. I will need to call the cemetery on a nice, quiet day midweek, when the office isn't quite so busy.

Still, though I can't find any mention of Rose herself in the Woodlawn entries at Find a Grave, I did notice that George's father, the senior George W. Kober, was also buried at Woodlawn. I'm hoping this detail indicates a family burial plot, in which case, I will ask for the names of everyone buried at that location, including Rose's mother Anna. Who knows what additional ways Anna's Polish surname might have been mangled in American records.

Finding this final resting place for both Rose and her mother Anna will help me gather those last few details I've been lacking. Perhaps that will provide a key to open the door for future searches. After all, this may be the last stop in the story of the end of their lives, but in genealogy, we are always working backwards in time. The answers from the end of the story may well be the information I need to unlock doors on the details of their life prior to their arrival in New York City.

The Last of the Family

 

When the last of the family is gone, then what? Have we preserved their stories?

I'm wrapping up the burial records for Johanna Flanagan Lee's extended family, including her cousin Catherine Malloy Tully's in-laws. All found their final resting place in three family plots at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Chicago. What first started me on this chase was the discovery that Johanna herself had been buried with her uncle, William Flanagan, and an assortment of other relatives in William's family plot. I pulled out the records I had received from the cemetery to ensure that my online tree reflected all these same details.

These sparse records required some corroboration, for the table I received for each family plot may have outlined the name on each burial, plus the date in which that person was buried, but it lacked any further information. For that, I had to cross check with each person's death record. For that, I had transcribed the certificate number plus the date of death, the person's age, and location of passing onto the chart I received from the office.

In the case of this third burial plot, it was indeed purchased by the last of the Tully family, the youngest brother, William. William Earl Tully was the only one in his immediate family who was born in Canada; all the rest had been born in County Tipperary before the family left Ireland. As had all his older siblings, William's final move in that emigration route was from the place where the family had settled in Paris, Ontario, across the border into the city of Chicago in the United States.

The William Tully family plot in Section 17 of Mount Olivet contained seven of his family members. Of William's eight children, only two were buried elsewhere. Oldest son John Felix, dying at age five in 1880, was buried to the north of Chicago in Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Evanston. And next-to-youngest daughter Edna, the only one of William's children to marry, was buried in another cemetery in the Chicago area after having raised a family of her own. The rest of William's children, along with his wife Sarah, were buried in his family plot at Mount Olivet.

Looking at the ages of some of his children at their death gives an inkling of how hard life must have been for this immigrant family. After the loss of their firstborn John, William and Sarah buried two of their children in 1889—three days apart, in fact. Four year old Leroy F. Tully was buried on July 14, followed quickly by his nine year old sister Catherine. Small wonder her death report recorded her name as Kitty; she was a mere child at her passing.

Three years later, the Tully family would repeat the same scenario, losing yet another four year old child, William's namesake son. The child's 1892 burial was followed in 1896 by William's own death at the age of forty six. Only a few years later, his daughter Mary, though living to adulthood, died toward the end of 1902.

William's widow Sarah and their remaining daughters, Margaret and Esther, stayed together in their East  93rd Street residence through the following decades until Margaret's passing in 1936 and her mother's death in 1941. Last of the family to join the others was daughter Esther, whose 1972 burial completed the burials in the William Tully family plot at Mount Olivet.

Unlike the family burial plot of Johanna's unmarried uncle William Flanagan, this final Tully plot represented most of the children in one of the Tully families I've been researching in Chicago. A more traditional result—definitely one making research far easier for me—the records represented what became of the last of the Tully family in Chicago.   

All in the Family Plot

 

One of the customs of bygone days which has since helped family history researchers is the use of family burial plots. Whereas now, you might find a husband and wife buried together, when I researched my father-in-law's Chicago ancestors, I've found family plots which might include up to eight burials.

This is what had initiated my search for Edward Flanigan as a possible relative for Johanna Lee earlier this month. Edward—whoever he was—had been buried in the family plot of William Flanagan, Johanna's uncle. Years ago, when I had inquired about all the burials in the family plot at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Chicago, not only did I learn that about William's family plot, but I learned that there were two others such family plots. We'll discuss who was buried in one of those plots today, then look at the other family plot on Monday.

Johanna's cousin Catherine, whose mother was a Flanagan, had herself married an Irish immigrant by the name of John Tully. He and his family had arrived in Chicago by way of Ontario, Canada, and this second family plot apparently was purchased by John's brother Patrick. In fact, the four members of Patrick's household who can be found in the 1900 census all were eventually buried in Patrick's family plot.

Patrick was himself buried there in April of 1909, and his name topped the list sent to me so many years ago by the helpful employee of the cemetery office. Hist listing was followed by his son George Tully, who died just over a year later, in May of 1910. Another son, listed by the cemetery as Bert J. Tully, was actually named Hurlbert—at least, best I can decipher from some pretty miserable handwriting on the various documents which included that full name. His burial followed much later, in 1914.

However, it took delving into Patrick's family history—and emigration path—to confirm the identity of the others on that list from the cemetery office. 

There were two burials for members of a Hogan family. John Hogan, who died in 1894, was actually the first to be buried in this Tully family plot. A woman whose name was listed as Bridget Hogan died during the next year, and was also buried in this Tully plot.

At first glance, one might assume these were husband and wife, but that does not turn out to be correct. The Hogan family had been neighbors of the Tully family back in Ontario, where they all showed up in the 1861 census for Canada West. By that time, Bridget was the widowed mother of John, whose sister Mary later married Patrick Tully. Bridget, dying in 1895 in Chicago, was buried alongside her son John, who had been the first family member buried in this plot, having died the previous year. Bridget's daughter Mary joined them much later, in 1914, the same year as her son Bert.

It was this Bert Tully who provided the key to the other two family members buried in this Tully plot. One was a burial labeled with the name, Mary R. Tully. Being the second person in that family plot with the given name of Mary, this might have seemed confusing. Whoever this person was, she was buried there on August 12, 1912. Taking a close look at her death record revealed that the information was recorded incorrectly for both the child and her mother, with both given names listed as "Centa." 

The child, dying at just over one month of age, turned out to have a younger sister. This sister, Ruth, lived for ninety three years and outlived two husbands. It was Ruth's first husband, and father of her children, who was the key to figuring out just who claimed that final name in the cemetery listing. Joseph A. Franzen was buried at Mount Olivet on March 4, 1959, making his the last of eight burials in the Patrick Tully family plot. 

Pending Further Developments

 

In the search for the Johanna Lee connection to previous generations of the Flanagan family, we may be stuck in what one of my previous professors used to term the "milling about" stage. Going round and round, searching for more information, while simultaneously smothered with the sense that we've already come this way before: that's the milling about stage. And I'm in it.

It may take a while to determine whether there is any death record attached to the burial of the man in William Flanagan's family plot called Edward Flanagan. Though he was buried at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in the middle of 1904, I can locate no death record for him in the Chicago area. Searching for others called by that same name has, so far, yielded no helpful information. Looking for George Flanagan, the likely sibling of the one Edward Flanagan I did locate in an early census record, may be an option, but that, too, may turn out to need as much luck as a shot in the dark.

In the meantime, along with that burial readout from the helpful employee at the cemetery office, I have two other such listings for family plots at the same cemetery. This might be a good time to review what information is already available to me on the extended family—and, if such details are not already uploaded to Find A Grave, add what I can to the records there.

Tomorrow, we'll begin with the eight burials in a family burial plot not far from Johanna's grave, related to the in-laws of her cousin Catherine Malloy Tully whose mother was born a Flanagan. Following that, on Monday, we'll look at yet another nearby family burial plot which I received almost ten years after the first inquiries. Perhaps that review will serve to redirect us in our hapless search for more information on those Flanagan roots of Johanna, Catherine, and their Aunt Anna and Uncle William—not to mention any unknown other Flanagan family members still waiting to be discovered.

News From the Lost and Found Department

 

Persistence sometimes wins the day. It did, at least today, for that missing Chicago burial record for one Edward Flanigan.

I finally got enough time to dumpster dive into a plastic storage bin filled with old genealogy documents. Included in this mash-up were copies of old death records for my mother-in-law's Ohio lines and several lines for my father-in-law. Thankfully, that included the readout sent to me by a kindly worker at the office now overseeing the records for Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois.

I was pretty sure I had remembered the details correctly. What I hadn't remembered was just how long ago it was that I received the record. This paper came about owing to an early morning phone call in June of 2005. Yes, from almost twenty years ago, giving you an idea as to why it was stashed in a storage bin full of papers instead of digitally stored with my family tree records.

That exchange was partly calculated and partly thanks to the kindness of the office worker who took my call. I deliberately placed my long distance call on a quiet weekday morning—Chicago's time zone, not mine—in the hopes that the harried worker who answered the phone might not feel pressure of demands from multiple duties, such as weekend visitors inquiring about burial locations.

I did indeed connect with a helpful employee. For my inquiry, I was rewarded with a printout of all the people buried in the family plot for two families connected with Johanna Flanagan Lee. Apparently, the woman who helped me actually mailed the records, for each page shows the trifold mark of having been tucked into a business envelop.

As I recalled, Johanna Lee was indeed buried in the same plot as her uncle, William Flanagan, whose impressive 1893 monument first alerted me to the Flanagan family's origin in County Limerick, Ireland.

Along with Johanna, the Flanagan plot included three other people. One was likely a nine-day-old infant whose name was entered at the cemetery as William J. Tully, but whose death record contained the name John W. Tully. Another burial was for William P. Tully, son of Johanna's cousin Catherine, the woman who, as an infant, saw her mother take off in pursuit of that suddenly-emigrating husband who had headed to Boston. 

Apparently, none of these three had markers indicating the location of their burial. I have their date of burial, from the plot readout mailed to me by the cemetery office. I have the death certificate number and date of death for each of them, as at that time, such information was accessible online. And I know that all of them were buried in Lot S 313 Block of Section 15 at the Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Chicago.

There was one more person buried in that same family plot, and this was the one I was hoping I had remembered correctly. This was Edward Flanigan, spelled exactly that way on the cemetery's records, with a burial date listed as June 24 of 1904.

That Edward Flanigan was buried in Chicago, I can vouch--at least, according to the record from the cemetery. But where he had died is an entirely different matter. Back at that time—2005—when many records weren't yet accessible online, I had been using a local researcher to personally retrieve documents for me. I had done business with this woman for quite some time and found her to be reliable. She focused on researching records at the Illinois Archives.

Here's the problem we encountered: there was no certificate listed, according to the state archives. No official record for Edward Flanigan's death. Did that mean he had died elsewhere?

The Mount Olivet record indicated his burial occurred on June 24, 1904. If this Edward were living in the Chicago area, like the two I had found in yesterday's cursory search, I doubt he would have been the latter discovery in the 1900 census, as I'd expect he would have been buried with his wife. If the earlier discovery—the young twenty-something single man boarding with the Sullivans—perhaps he had moved elsewhere for better employment by the time of the 1900 census and upon his death, his family returned him to Chicago for burial.

These, of course, are only guesses. There is no memorial marker at the grave site. I have no corresponding obituaries to help clear up this muddled picture.

One possible next step might be to contact the cemetery again and see if there might be any corresponding documentation indicating where the man had died. If it weren't for the many questions I already have about Johanna Flanagan Lee, buried alongside this mystery Edward, I would probably have let this puzzle go. But any detail regarding a brick wall ancestor could be the very clue needed to unravel the mystery. Collateral lines can collapse brick walls.

Apple's Church Cemetery

 

Sometimes, a walk through the old church cemetery does wonders for filling in blanks in the family tree. Now that I've discovered what might have been the church and hometown connection for my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather, Mathias Ambrose, that is exactly what I wish I could do now. Unfortunately, since I am in California and the church in question is in Maryland, that is not a visit I'll be doing any time soon. Still, that doesn't stop me from taking a virtual walk through the cemetery.

Since we learned yesterday that Mathias Ambrose had at least two daughters baptized at a place called Apple's Church, I pulled up the church's cemetery entry on Find A Grave. Though the entry was listed for Apples United Church of Christ, I already knew from learning about the church's history that the location had served as a meeting house for more than one denomination—hence the previous designation as Apples Lutheran and Reformed Church.

In the mid 1700s, apparently there weren't enough settlers to establish one specific church, and since there were likely not many ministers of either denomination in the sparsely-settled region of western Maryland then, the school trustees set up an arrangement whereby two different denominations would alternate use of the school building which had recently been established, thanks to a deed from local property owner Peter Apple. Since that time over two hundred years ago, other denominations have claimed use of that location, and even the cemetery is sometimes known by the alternate name of Apples Reformed Church Cemetery.

Regardless of the name, the question burning in my mind was: were there any Ambrose relatives buried in that cemetery? I put Find A Grave to the test with that search query, and was rewarded with six names:

• Anna Catharina Kempff Ambrose, who died in 1807
• Elizabeth Ambrose, who died in 1795
• Captain Jacob Ambrose senior, who died in 1779
• Maria Catherine Spohn Ambrose, who died in 1780
• Maria Elisabeth Willheit Ambrose, who died in 1732
• Mathias Ambrose, who died in 1784.

Curiosity got the best of me, and I had to cross-check those names with the Ambrose website to see whether any were close relatives of our Mathias Ambrose. Of course, the one by that same name who died in 1784 couldn't have been our Mathias, as we already discussed his will in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, dated 1804. Elizabeth, too, had the same name as our Mathias' daughter—and my mother-in-law's direct line ancestor, her second great-grandmother who died in Ohio—so perhaps this one, who died so young, might have been whom our Elizabeth was named after.

Bit by bit, this exploration—thanks to a virtual walk through a cemetery in Maryland—painted a picture of the family constellation for our Mathias Ambrose's relatives. Most importantly, though, it gave me confidence that this was the location where our Mathias had settled before moving to Pennsylvania in his later years.

What About Walter?

 

We've been searching for ways to discover the names of any unidentified daughters of Ohio settler William Ijams this week. As we work our way through the Ijams women who were married in Fairfield County, Ohio, in the early 1800s, we've narrowed down our list of possibilities to two: one named Rebecca, and the other named Mary. Rebecca, as we discovered yesterday, was likely the daughter of William Ijams' brother Thomas Plummer Ijams, who had migrated with William to Ohio at the turn of the century. But what about Mary? Was the woman who married Walter Teal in 1804 a possible daughter of William Ijams?

Going back to one source we had used in the past few weeks, Harry Wright Newman's Anne Arundel Gentry, I looked through the listing of children for the two brothers who had migrated with William Ijams to Ohio. Thomas Plummer Ijams apparently did not have a daughter named Mary, so we won't be snared again with yesterday's problem. While the other brother who joined them in Ohio—named Isaac—did have a daughter named Mary, Newman's book identified her husband as Joseph Ijams, her cousin who was a son of William. So we can continue to search for the answer to our question about William's unnamed daughters knowing that we've already eliminated the other possibilities.

But what about Walter? Would this marriage indeed be that of one of William Ijams' daughters? By process of elimination, that might seem so—unless there were other Ijams family members in the migration party which we don't yet know about. Let's see what we can discover about Walter.

Not much, it appears, at least from records I can find so far. Walter Teal does appear in the 1830 census, still in Fairfield County, Ohio, along with a family of unnamed sons and daughters—plus the wife whom we can assume was still Mary. It appears Walter was there to stay in Fairfield County, for just two years after his November 29, 1804, marriage to Mary Ijams, he, along with Arthur Teal, both "assignees of Edward Teal," laid down money on a parcel of land there.

While I can't find much more about Walter than those details, we could presume that Walter was related to Arthur and Edward Teal, the two other men mentioned in the land transaction. Searching further using those names, I discovered that Arthur was son of Edward, who happened to be a Revolutionary War Patriot (spelled "Teel" in DAR records). 

Though Edward's burial site is no longer known, a memorial was dedicated to his memory at a nearby cemetery, the Stevenson Ruffner Cemetery, calling to mind two other surnames affiliated with the Ijams name. Edward Teal's memorial is close to that of his identified son, Arthur Teal, at that cemetery—though no word can be found on the one we are looking for, Walter. A newspaper article shared by a Find A Grave volunteer does mention some of the names I've seen among the friends and family of the three Ijams brothers, but it did not include any mention of Walter, nor the identity of his wife Mary.

There are, of course, other sources which affirm the names of two other possible daughters of William Ijams. I hesitate to grab those without documentation, but perhaps it would be worth our while to examine what others have asserted about these missing Ijams women.

Of Grave Concern

 

One of the first concerns I had when I began the search for Sarah Howard Ijams, my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother, was the lack of tangible documentation of her brief life. Not only was I unable to find paperwork acknowledging her existence by name, but I couldn't even find her grave.

Obviously, a woman who was said to have been born in 1796 would, by now, be dead. But where was she buried?

In mulling over that question—especially since there was no memorial handily posted at Find A Grave—I recalled an old resource I had found online, thankfully saving the link to that web page. The resource was a combined list of headstones and burial records noted over the decades for the crumbling remains in the old section of Saint Joseph Cemetery in Somerset, Ohio. Since so many of my mother-in-law's ancestors were of the Catholic faith, I thought I'd look for Sarah there. Unfortunately, she wasn't included in that listing.

Sarah's first child, after her marriage to John Jay Jackson, was a daughter whom the couple named Elizabeth—likely after Sarah's own mother, Elizabeth Howard Ijams. The girl unfortunately died in 1842, barely in her twenties. Confirming my guess that the family might have been Catholic, I found her Find a Grave memorial. She had been buried in the Holy Trinity Cemetery in Somerset, Ohio. The headstone, thankfully still legible, indicated that Elizabeth was daughter of "JJ and SH Jackson," which likely was John Jay and Sarah Howard Jackson. But there was no indication that she was buried near her mother, who had supposedly died there in 1829.

Since Elizabeth's mother had died thirteen years before her own burial, could Sarah have been buried with her father? I checked the Stevenson Ruffner Cemetery back in Fairfield County, Ohio, where William Ijams had been buried in 1816. Unfortunately, his own headstone has badly sunken into the ground, though at least it shows his name. But no other memorials listed at that cemetery in Find A Grave show up for Sarah Jackson.

It is extremely doubtful that there were any alternate reasons why Sarah dropped out of the scene at the Jackson household in 1829. Though her husband, John Jay Jackson, remarried in Perry County on August 28, 1829, to Mary Grate, it would be highly doubtful that that event had been preceded by a divorce. Yet, looking at John Jay Jackson's own burial location in the off chance that his first wife had been included in the family plot, I saw no indication of such an arrangement.

With no leads from burial records, we still can turn to other records to indirectly verify Sarah's key life events. Our task now turns to locating any mention of her name in the records of her relatives.

When her father, William Ijams, died in early 1816, his will was filed in Lancaster, county seat for Fairfield County, Ohio, where the family had settled after leaving Maryland. But did that will mention the names of all his children? For the sons, yes. But the daughters—however many of them there may have been—were only mentioned in the collective.

In the will's final item, William gave his personal property to be divided equally "between my daughters," possibly indicating there were only two. However, an earlier item in the will directed that property be sold and the proceeds divided "among my daughters," a word more likely used for groups of three or more. At any rate, daughter Sarah most likely would have been included in that group, pointing me to pursue further records at the Fairfield County courthouse. When the books were settled by the executors to her father's will, surely someone had to detail the legatees' receipts by name. We'll see what we can find there next.

Not the Details We Were Expecting

 

It is exciting—at long last—to find ourselves on the brink of the big reveal, examining the evidence we had been seeking, knowing that finally, we can obtain the confirmation of our research hypothesis. In our case this week, though, the elation of finding the record was quickly followed by the deflation of realizing these were not the details we were expecting.

We've been on a long search lately, trying to find a Murdock sibling whose records might divulge the family's origin in Ireland. It seems each sibling leads us farther away from our goal. Even though it was exciting to discover there were two more sisters to follow, along with the several Murdock brothers we had already found, tracing younger sister Sarah Murdock Nolan has not been an easy task.

We are currently searching for Sarah seven hundred miles from the Murdock siblings' adopted American home in Lafayette, Indiana, wondering whether the Sarah Nolan in Wichita, Kansas, is really the Sarah we are looking for. The signs so far seemed promising—names, birth years and locations in the 1880 census agreed with our last sighting of the Nolan family back in 1860.

There is, however, one slight problem: this Sarah was listed as a widow in the 1880 census, so we don't really know if this was Sarah, wife of John, or another Sarah. One approach was to follow the trail of each of the children to see whether any subsequent documentation mentioned their father's name.

I started this new search with James Nolan, the oldest child, which led me to a memorial showing a small, cracked headstone for a man by that name who died young at thirty nine years of age. Included was a note by a volunteer stating that James was "on stone with Sarah and John J. Nolan." That prompted me to search for another memorial at the same cemetery—Calvary Cemetery, Wichita's oldest Catholic cemetery—to confirm those were the names of James' parents.

Sure enough, the information pointed to ages that seemed reasonably older than James' 1853 year of birth. On this other, significantly larger headstone, Sarah Nolan's age was given as sixty five, and John's was listed as fifty eight.

There was, however, one stumbling block with this discovery. While the 1880 census had shown our Sarah as a widow—no sign of a husband's name included in that household—John Nolan's entry on that headstone indicated his year of death was 1882. Where was John in the 1880 census?

I have observed, in researching other families during this time period, that women who were divorced or separated from their husband would sometimes take the socially easier route of just claiming they were widowed. Perhaps this was the case with this Sarah in Wichita. The next question would be: where was John for the last two years of his life? Really, the bigger question would be: was this the same Sarah on the headstone the same as the one I had found in the 1880 census? And would this John and Sarah be one and the same as the couple who lived in Indiana, back in 1860?

Nothing is ever easy. In fact, family history research can be quite messy. In first spotting James, rather than his parents John and Sarah, I searched for some other records to confirm I had the right son. In the process, I stumbled upon a sad explanation which ran its course through three editions of the local newspaper. In talking about those reports tomorrow, we'll see what else can be gleaned about this Nolan family in the process. 

George and Mary Ann — Two Missing Pieces of the Nolan Story

 

Could it be possible that a widow, with seven children in tow, would think it a well-advised move to relocate seven hundred miles away from family in the 1870s? That's the question I have to grapple with as I ponder the disappearance of Sarah, one of the recently-discovered Murdock sisters, after her sighting in the 1860 census in Lafayette, Indiana.

Lafayette had become home for the Murdock siblings after their emigration from their native Ireland. I first learned about the family when Eliza Murdock became second wife to my husband's second great-grandfather, John Stevens. In the few rare times in which Eliza appeared in local newspaper reports, it was usually in the same breath as a mention of one or more of her business-savvy brothers.

It wasn't until the untimely death of Eliza's brother John that I learned there were two other sisters. I'm currently in the process of tracing each of those two siblings and—wouldn't you know it?!—losing track of the younger one almost right away.

Sarah was mentioned in her brother John Murdock's 1874 will as the wife of John Nolan. Unfortunately, the will didn't mention where Sarah was living at the time. As we've already discovered, while there was a John Nolan listed in the 1870 census for the Lafayette area, that man did not appear to be head of the family we're seeking. While I did find a Sarah Nolan in the 1880 census, she was living seven hundred miles away from Lafayette in Sedgwick County, Kansas, in the vicinity of Wichita.

While the 1860 census had listed the Nolan children as James, Mary Ann, John, and George, we've already noticed that missing from the possible 1880 census were Mary Ann and George. True, by then, those two children could have been married or living on their own—but what if something else had happened to them? 

I took that possibility as a prompt to go exploring. After all, not only were Mary Ann and George missing, but their father John was not listed in that possible 1880 household, either. That was my opportunity to explore scenarios, beginning back at Lafayette.

The first name I searched for was George Nolan. Call me a research chicken, but looking for John or Mary can introduce too many false leads. Coupled with a surname like Nolan, the names were too common; I thought searching for George might give me an edge over the other two names.

All I could find in Lafayette was a Find A Grave entry for someone named George Nolan. It was not a promising entry. Unlike the memorials we genealogists like to find on that website—complete with clear photograph of the headstone—this one had no pictures whatsoever. Worse, there was no date of birth given, only the date of death: 22 February 1872. This was not turning out to be a likely match.

Before giving up on Lafayette searches, though, I needed to go through the paces with the other two Nolan names. Though there was a John Nolan listed for the same cemetery, the dates indicated someone younger than Sarah's husband. But when I looked up Mary Ann Nolan at Find A Grave, there was an entry for someone buried in the same cemetery. 

Once again, the memorial contained no photographs, and there was no date of birth. This Mary A. Nolan had died in 1871, just over seven months prior to George's death. Still, without a date of birth or even photographs of the headstones, I thought there was not enough information available to pursue the possibility—until I spotted one familiar detail.

Each of the memorials I viewed listed the location of the burial. Each of the two had been buried in Saint Patrick's addition, section one, lot ten. It sounded very much like this George and Mary belonged in one family's plot. That was a promising indicator, but not quite the detail which convinced me that these two were likely Murdock descendants.

What clinched it for me was that I recalled having seen that burial location before, but I couldn't remember where. Sure that it was for someone else in the extended Murdock family, I went back through my notes, checking every Find A Grave memorial I had added to my research log to see what their plot locations were.

I found my answer when I reached the entries for Sarah Murdock Nolan's oldest sister Ellen. Recall that Ellen was the one who married Thomas "Megarry"—eventually spelled McGarry—and had the successful young son named in John Murdock's will as his uncle's favorite nephew.

As it turned out, Ellen, her husband Thomas, and their son Thomas were all buried in that same family plot: Saint Patrick's addition, section one, lot ten. Of course, I couldn't just stop with that set of helpful records; I had to see if anyone else was listed in the same family plot. Looking further, I also found another entry for someone named Sabina McGarry—another namesake of her maternal grandmother, Sabina Kelly Murdock, the three sisters' mother.

With that exploration of Saint Mary's Cemetery via Find a Grave, I feel confident I resolved the issue of the missing children of John and Sarah Nolan: George and Mary Ann died young while in Lafayette, Indiana, before the rest of the family moved westward to Wichita.

But what about their father? There was no sign of John Nolan in that family plot, back in Lafayette. And, as I had noted yesterday, it would seem an unlikely move for Sarah, as a widow, to choose to move so far away from family in that era of time.

The next step, then, will be to find any sign of Sarah's husband John Nolan in Kansas, any time after the 1874 birth of their possible youngest child in Indiana.

Behind Every Stone, a Story

 

Yesterday, a local cemetery association celebrated their 150th anniversary by inviting the community to participate in a "History Hunt." Along with several local lineage societies, our genealogical society members explored headstones dating back to 1861—a time reaching back almost to the state's admission to the Union.

Official presentations commemorated that theme of the long-standing presence of this cemetery in the community, so it was no surprise that I began to realize what a treasure trove of personal stories were represented by the headstones in that small cemetery.

Granted, there are other cemeteries with far more historic, or long-standing memorials. Traveling back east, I've found it quite easy to locate headstones from the 1700s. One of my teenaged delights in New York was to drive to an old whaling village on the tip of Long Island and wander the cemetery in search of burials of people born in the 1600s. Travels to Europe, for instance, can yield dates even farther removed.

No matter how close or far away the cemetery, though, one thought hit me during yesterday's ceremony. Each one of the headstones visible in that small cemetery represented someone's story. Regardless of how long ago the headstone was laid, or how brief or elongated the dash between the dates engraved thereon, each stone stands for a person with a life. Intricate, complicated, full of relationships and bursting with meaning, each little dash between the dates represents the story lived by someone.

Wouldn't it be something to harvest those stories and collect them in a book, someone mused.

Yes. Yes, it would. And what a collection that would be.

A Rant About Really Old Newspapers

 

Why can't archived newspaper collections contain the complete holdings of a given newspaper? What's up with gaps in publication dates? Why does the very date I want happen to fall in the cracks of those missing editions? And more to the point, what do you do when you are researching a name as common as Martin Williams, and run into not one but two conflicting reports about death—but can't locate the original report to provide confirmation? 

Here's the situation. One helpful Find A Grave volunteer indicated there was a Martin Williams buried in Elk Point Cemetery, South Dakota, after his supposed death in 1882. A record of the order for a headstone for this Civil War veteran reported "M. M. Williams" had died on April 1, 1897, and sent the completed marker to the same Elk Point Cemetery.

As if to clear the air on this research dilemma, yet another Find A Grave volunteer transcribed an obituary for a Martin M. Williams who had died in nearby Hand County, South Dakota, but was buried at Elk Point Cemetery on February 3, 1896.

If all three of these entries were concerning the same Martin M. Williams, which date was correct? My tendency was to go with the newspaper report, but we all know how easily editorial errors can slip into newsprint.

The solution? Find the actual newspaper edition to see for myself. That, however, is easier planned than executed. The trouble with archived newspaper collections is that no one repository seems to have the entire breadth of a publication's history.

My first stop was to check Chronicling America, the U.S. Library of Congress collection of newspapers published across the nation throughout its history. Using the website's search engine, I could locate the publication in question easily enough—I was looking for The Pioneer Press, printed in the city of Miller, county seat of Hand County, South Dakota.

The problem was, I couldn't isolate the specific edition identified by the Find A Grave volunteer, printed on February 6, 1896. Smart me: I thought I'd experiment with using the website's advanced search function, but it told me the one thing I've become accustomed to discovering.

That date was not in the Library of Congress collection.

I could, of course, go one by one through each of the companies I subscribe to for archived newspapers—not to mention the resources for accessing newspapers for free—but I've done that before and know how frustrating it can be. So I cut to the chase and brought my question to Google—the search engine, not the newspaper collection. No more navigating gaps in collections for me.

As it turned out, GenealogyBank provided my answer, confirming the wording of the text added to Martin Williams' Find A Grave memorial. In addition, I found a "Card of Thanks" inserted below Martin Williams' obituary, signed by Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Beggs, stating

We tender our sincere thanks to the many friends who have so kindly rendered assistance and extended their sympathy during the last sickness of our beloved husband and father.

The one regrettable detail in finding Martin Williams' obituary—and confirming it with the digitized image of the original publication—was to see the list of his survivors. According to the Pioneer Press, Martin Williams left "a second wife, a son and daughter to mourn his loss." While the article never mentions the son's name, nor Martin's wife's name—that, supposedly, would be improper to do during that era—it does inform us that the daughter was a "Mrs. Beggs of Chicago."

Whoever that "Mrs. Beggs of Chicago" turns out to be, she becomes the key to confirming whether this Martin Williams was one and the same as the father of Eugene Williams, maternal grandfather of our Maude Williams Woodworth.

 

After the Ask

 

Sometimes, all you have to do is ask.

In the case of my latest wanderings through the Bright Shiny Objects of Maude Woodworth Bean's ancestors, I discovered her maternal grandfather, Eugene Williams, had served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Though he was born in New York state and migrated to Wisconsin—and despite being discharged at the end of the war in Mobile, Alabama—he eventually settled in southern California.

Eugene's details of service were easy to find, thanks to the records digitized at Ancestry.com. One detail that I would have liked to see, though, was a photo of his headstone, but Find A Grave, the go-to source for such items, did not include one. 

Yet.

Thankfully, Find A Grave has a provision in which a researcher can request that a photo be uploaded to a current memorial. If there is a Find A Grave volunteer in the area—and where there are, many are quite dedicated to their mission—someone will claim the request and follow through when able.

In the past, I have made a few such requests. Some, in out-of-the-way places, understandably have gone unanswered. Others, such as a request I made for a photo of a headstone in a mountainous region of western Canada—during the winter, no less—was understandably answered with a note to wait until the spring thaws were over.

In the case of the Eugene Williams memorial, it was last week while I was researching the man when it occurred to me to ask. The Find A Grave website has streamlined the process. Just by clicking on the tab for photos on his memorial brought me to a page where I could click on a button labeled "request photo."

Click. Easy as that. In less than twenty four hours, a Find A Grave volunteer indicated that he had claimed the request, and last night I received an email indicating the photo was uploaded to Eugene Williams' Find A Grave memorial.

Of course, I logged on to the site to thank the volunteer profusely—I really do appreciate the help, especially when I am not able to travel to the area—but going through the process reminded me of another detail. Not only did the photos tab at Find A Grave enable me to easily request a photo for a memorial, but there was another tab there that was just as easily clickable: the tab labeled "Add Photos." 

That's the tab which reminds me about the photos I've long had, but still need to digitize and upload, myself. That's a goal to add to my to-do list for upcoming projects in the very near future. Some, in fact, relate to family members from Maude Woodworth Bean's own family, the family whose photos we've rescued from a local antique shop. There is, after all, no time like the present—and no presents like the ones which save us time.

Detour to Chicago

 

While it may be no surprise to discover that one's Irish ancestors ended up in such a place as Chicago, it may seem an abrupt detour, in the process of unfolding the story of Anna Flanagan Malloy, to suddenly be jerked across thousands of miles to consider one William Flanagan living in Chicago. However, in order for you to fully appreciate my joy in finding a William of such a surname in the tiny townland of Cappananty in County Limerick, Ireland, requires us to temporarily zoom forward in our story's timeline.

My first clue that there was anyone named William Flanagan associated with Anna Malloy came in the form of a headstone. Not in Ireland, but in Chicago. An impressive monument for a supposedly single man—and likely a mere immigrant laborer at that—William Flanagan's 1893 memorial directed one's eyes heavenward, but it was what was written on the plaque itself which caught my attention: 

Wm Flanagan

Native of

Parish Ballygran

Co. Limerick Ireland

Died

Aug. 14 1893

Aged

80 years.

Other than the omission of one solitary letter—an additional "a" belonging in the Catholic parish name of Ballyagran—William Flanagan's headstone in Chicago was an immensely helpful discovery in pinpointing the place for us to eventually visit during our travels to Ireland. But it also led to other confirmations.

Locating William in the 1860 census meant discovering that he, a single man, lived with a woman—at least according to the barely legible scrawl of the enumerator of that Chicago district—by the name of Ann Mulloy. Better yet, this "Ann" had a daughter with her named Catherine, by then of an age calculated to yield a birth year of 1847, close enough to suit our purposes. All three residents of this household were born in Ireland. 

Though the 1860 census included no explanation of relationship between members of the same residence, I know from research into subsequent years that Ann—Anna—and William were siblings. The verification, itself, was indirect, but sufficient. The 1885 death record for Anna carried the handwritten note that she was "Mother of Mrs. John Tully," the now-grown daughter Catherine who had been left fatherless at her dad's disappearance in 1849. And William Flanagan's own death notice, published in the Chicago Tribune that August 15, 1893, mentioned that same "Mrs. John Tully," daughter of Anna Flanagan Malloy, as "his niece."

Add those together, and we get William as brother of Anna. But the Flanagan siblings were in Chicago, and Anna's original goal was to trace her husband, Stephen Malloy, to his destination in Boston. Why the thousand-mile discrepancy?

We'll need to return to the Flanagans' old home in County Limerick to revisit that question. This time, we'll trace the story from Stephen's side of the puzzle.

Above: Photograph of portion of the headstone for William Flanagan, buried at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Cook County, Illinois, United States.