Retracing Steps

 

When you don't have every detail documented for a brick wall ancestor, there is only one thing to do: retrace your steps and check for more records to fill in the blanks.

It was thanks to some random acts of genealogical kindness that baptismal records for at least two of Johanna Flanagan Lee's children were shared on Ancestry.com. I had already spotted that, not due to my own efforts, but solely because of Ancestry's hints system. I had remembered cranking through the microfilm at a FamilySearch Center in decades past for my father-in-law's Chicago ancestors, but I was pretty sure I had never done anything so tedious for the Lee branch of the Flanagan family, so I was grateful for the discovery.

Little did I know how grateful I should have been. Since I had gone through this process in the past, I assumed it would be just as easy to do so now—if not easier, thanks to modern conveniences like computerized searches through digitized records, not to mention AI assistance and Full Text Search at FamilySearch.org.

Wrong. Looking at FamilySearch yielded no easy answers, though explanations in the heading for one particular collection did remind me of vital facts about Chicago records: 

• City of Chicago marriage licenses were separated from Cook County records...but only from 1894 onward
• For each hundred names in the index, the first set is for Cook County, then followed by City records
• The female index did not begin until 1878

Most important, though, was one main, overarching, glaring detail: if you were looking for a record before July 24, 1871, your luck was out. That's when the great Chicago fire wiped out most records for the city.

Considering that Johanna Flanagan and John Lee had a child as early as 1875—at least according to their entry in the 1880 census—one could conclude that history had snatched their marriage record from the jaws of complete destruction. It could be quite likely that they'd have married closer to 1874, at least in my thinking.

Wrong—at least if we can trust the Statewide Marriage Index at the Illinois Secretary of State's website. No matter which way I searched—groom's name only, Flanagan spelled as Flanigan, searching statewide versus Cook County records only—I came up with...nothing. Not, at least, for this couple. There were certainly many other men married in the state who claimed the name John Lee.

I returned to one of the baptismal records posted by the Ancestry subscriber, this one for a son born before the oldest child showing in the 1880 census. Details attached to the record noted that the church where the baptism occurred was a congregation named Holy Family Catholic Church.

Whether there were any records digitized at FamilySearch from that congregation, I couldn't yet say, so it would be important to check for availability. At any rate, it would also help to learn more about the congregation, itself. That, as my first step, I'll save for tomorrow's post.

Finding Flanagan Collaterals

 

One of the best ways to work around ancestral brick walls is to examine the family's collateral lines. Those descendants of aunts and uncles can sometimes lead us to connections we'd otherwise miss. In the case of my father-in-law's Flanagan line, that is exactly what I'm hoping will clear up the mystery about his great-grandmother Anna Flanagan Malloy's origin in Ireland.

I've been working on this Flanagan family connection for years—in fact, ever since I first began writing daily entries in A Family Tapestry. In one of my earliest Flanagan posts, I mentioned discovering a second obituary for Anna's bachelor brother William Flanagan, in which not only was Anna's daughter Catherine mentioned as William's niece, but a second niece was named: Johanna Lee.

At that point, I hadn't yet learned just how Johanna connected to the rest of the Flanagan family, but I was glad to have discovered that link. Since then, I've worked on Johanna's tree enough to document all her descendants plus their descendants, in some cases for three or more additional generations.

There has been an additional Flanagan connection to revisit: identifying Johanna Lee's father. He may well have been the additional Flanagan man buried in an unmarked grave within William Flanagan's family plot at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chicago, the immigrants' adopted home. Or perhaps that man was Edward Flanagan, identified as godfather of one of Johanna Lee's sons, meaning a likely brother. Whether these two identities lead us to a clarified family constellation for Johanna, I can't yet be sure, but it is important to investigate this further.

In addition, there may have been a connection back in the Flanagan and Lee homeland in County Limerick, Ireland: a man by the name of James Flanagan. He, it turns out, may well have been the ancestor of a DNA match showing in my husband's test at Ancestry.com. On the other side of Johanna's family, Griffith's Valuation points to someone leasing property in a nearby townland known as William Lee, perhaps connecting us to Johanna's husband's family.

With all these leads, there will be much to follow up on in this coming week—or perhaps longer, depending on how accessible records may be for these Flanagans and their related lines.

Turning Leeward

 

A surname like Lee can be misleading. While it is prevalent in the United States, where Anna Flanagan Malloy's niece Johanna Flanagan Lee settled in Chicago, it is not only a common surname across the English-speaking world, but also an oft-encountered surname in Asian countries. Despite being such a common surname, it may be the key to determining the origin of Anna Flanagan and her siblings, back in County Limerick, Ireland. It's time to turn toward the Lee family to see if we can gain any direction in our search for the Flanagan family back in County Limerick.

Anna's niece Johanna was born a Flanagan, but after she arrived in Chicago, she married a man by the name of John Lee. Understandably, it has been challenging to trace someone by a name like that, no matter where we might be searching for him, and I've found very little on the man in his adopted home, other than mention of his name in baptismal and birth records for his children.

However, I did discover that, back in the same townland in Ireland where Anna's husband once sent her that desperate and rushed goodbye letter, there was an assessment record for someone by that same surname, Lee. That record, for a man named William Lee leasing a property owned by John Mason, the same man for whom Anna's letter was sent in care of, might just be a coincidence, but I can't help but notice that, in yesterday's search through DNA matches, I ran across someone by that same name.

If learning more about the Lee family back in the County Limerick townland of Cappanihane could help me sort out family connections for Johanna, perhaps that could also explain why so many Lee matches seem to appear in my husband's DNA results. Perhaps this is a case of intertwining family lines, generation after generation.

At any rate, since I've been stuck on the Flanagan side of the equation, maybe pursuing the collateral line of Anna's relatives will unlock a way through this brick wall ancestor's family story. We'll give this detour a try again, come next week. 

It's the Little Things that Count

 

When using DNA to connect with matches who share second great-grandparents, those distant cousins share very little genetic material in common. But when the goal is to push beyond the brick wall ancestors just one more generation, it's the little things that count. As I mentioned yesterday, third cousins can share under two hundred centiMorgans—and the number can slide far lower than that. It's that little amount that is consuming my research time lately.

Anyone who might be related to Anna Flanagan through, say, an as yet unknown sibling, would share a very small amount of genetic material with her direct descendants, indeed. With that in mind, I conducted yet another hunt to see whether I could find a potential match among the many who share as low as ten, twenty, or thirty centiMorgans with my husband.

I used the approach of creating a custom cluster on Ancestry.com, naming one specific match as my key target. Keep in mind that, though this match has the Flanagan name in her tree, I don't yet know for sure that she is related to the same Flanagan line in County Limerick, though our email discussions over the past few years have led me to believe this could be a possibility.

I created the custom cluster to have, at its lowest amount, a centiMorgan count far smaller than the usual clusters offered at Ancestry. The result of my request provided forty one matches. Oddly enough, two of that group matched my husband on his maternal side, rather than the expected paternal side. I set those two results aside and did not consider them, though I have seen some matches in the past in which the wrong side of the family had been attributed as the nexus. I also know that, reaching back that many generations among American descendants can sometimes produce other lines in which someone from the paternal side coincidentally also ended up marrying someone from my husband's maternal side.

From that point, I went one by one through the remaining thirty nine matches produced by this custom cluster request. Where I could determine through viewing each candidate's "shared matches" option which branch of my father-in-law's Irish roots might claim each candidate, I eliminated those from other branches from my search.

In the end, I was left with...nothing. None of that grouping seemed to indicate roots either linked to Flanagans or descended from the Ballyagran area of County Limerick. There was, however, a surprise: a few matches who had the surname Lee in their roots. Lee, I had found out from prior years' experience, was the married name of a niece of Anna Flanagan who had also emigrated from Ireland to the Chicago area of the United States.

While none of these Lee matches were the same as the Lee family I had researched, they also were Irish immigrants who hailed from the Chicago area, the same area where Anna Flanagan had settled, prompting me to revisit that Lee connection I had found from so long ago. We'll take a look at that tomorrow, especially because there is one issue nagging at the back of my brain: there don't seem to be any DNA matches pointing to my husband's Flanagan-Lee side of the family.

Picking up Where we Left Off

 

One of the challenges facing those of us who only have limited time available for research is batching our time in such a way that we can pick up where we last left off. When I was teaching school full time, that meant summers and winter holiday seasons provided my only "free" time for research.

Now, thankfully, I have chunks of time sandwiched into my schedule on a more regular basis—plus, we have the luxury of computer-assisted search prowess which is expanding all the time. Still, every time I set aside a research project, I need to leave myself notes for where I need to pick up, the next opportunity I have to pursue a specific ancestor.

As we enter the month of August, my formidable goal will be to massage all those incomplete Irish governmental and church records to coax them into giving up their secrets on my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan Malloy. I already know, mostly from private letters preserved by pack-rat family members, that she and her brother William originated in County Limerick. According to those family records, their Catholic parish was known as Ballyagran.

If we turn to government records from that area in the time period before the two siblings' emigration, a possible townland might be Cappananty. There, at least according to Griffith's Valuation, our William Flanagan might be the one recorded in the assessment document.

So, what do we need to find next? There, exactly one year ago, according to the recap after my last attempt at searching for the Flanagans, my plan for revisiting this research issue included

• looking for additional governmental records which may have come available online, even for the time periods long after Anna and William's departure for Chicago, to seek records of possible cousins still in Ireland
• finding additional resources in Ireland to explore for this research problem
• building out the family tree to identify other descendants of not only Anna, but her unnamed mystery Flanagan brother in Chicago—and possibly back in Ireland
• reconnecting with any Flanagan cousins contacted in past years to compare research notes since the last time we talked.

For a quick first stop, tomorrow we'll look at four DNA companies where my husband has tested to see whether any new Flanagan connections have since uploaded their results, and to review whether any old connections at Ancestry.com in particular can lead to new insights, thanks to last year's addition of the ProTools subscription.

Meet Anna

 

There are some ancestors whose stories we fall in love with, and Anna Flanagan's story is such a one. Though I've researched her in the past—she was my father-in-law's great-grandmother—there is so much that remains a mystery still. I'm hoping a concentrated look at the details of her life will bring something more to light as we get this early jump on the eighth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

What I do know about Anna is rather basic regarding the beginning of her life. I know she was born about 1810—if we can believe the report of her age in the 1860 census following her first appearance after emigration from Ireland. There in Chicago, she was listed by her married name, Ann Mulloy, but she was not living with her husband. Rather, she was in the household of someone named William Flanagan—turned out to be her brother—and her thirteen year old only child, Catherine.

Thanks to the information etched on Anna's brother's headstone after his passing in 1893, we can be fairly certain that the Catholic parish of Ballyagran in County Limerick would be her birthplace as well as his. Unfortunately, existing baptismal and marriage records for that location do not extend back far enough to provide documentation for either of those two births from Anna's own family. And I've yet to locate her marriage record or her daughter's baptism.

Prompted by a copy of the letter sent by her husband, Stephen Mulloy, on the eve of his (possibly unexpected) departure for Boston, I did manage to confirm his name appeared in passenger records, just as he had told her he'd be doing. Whatever happened to him after that point, I have yet to discover, despite searching through multiple spelling variations in the Boston area. Nor can I find any record of Anna crossing the Atlantic in search of the man, or her daughter's passage at a later point in her childhood, as the family surmised had been the case.

Anna's story picks up just as abruptly in Chicago with the 1860 census. Through the many more-readily accessible documents from that point until her death in 1885, it is easier to glean an impression of this woman through the events in her later life shared through letters and family reports. Yet it is those early years before her emigration—and that of her two brothers—that still mystifies me. Hopefully, this year will allow us a peek into the rest of that story.

Back to the Flanagans

When plans don't seem to go as...well, as planned, it's time to move on. At the end of June, I opted to move on early to July's selection for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, John Kelly. That was an impossible choice, and I knew it—but I had hopes.

Those hopes didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, so I'm taking my cue from last month's ending and moving on to the next. With this early start, we'll be headed back to the Flanagans for August. 

My main focus for this month's feature from my Twelve Most Wanted will be Anna Flanagan. Hers was a story which beguiled me, and despite the struggles to learn more, I just love retelling what unfolded in her life. Yet there are several points at which I've confronted closed doors in the timeline of her history.

This month won't just focus on Anna, though. There is her husband, whose mysterious disappearance still begs for explanation. And her one daughter's journey across the Atlantic—with whom, if not her mother?—has yet to be documented, though the fact that she spent the rest of her life in Chicago is proof that she did make the journey from County Limerick...somehow.

Besides Anna and her daughter Catherine, there was Anna's bachelor brother William, who also ended up in Chicago, possibly with another brother. While I still haven't discovered that other brother's identity, I know his daughter also made the journey to Chicago, as well.

If it wasn't for the bachelor brother's magnificent headstone in a Chicago cemetery, I might not have discovered where the Flanagans originated. Thanks to a message etched in stone, I not only have the name of the Irish county, but thankfully the parish as well.

Head starts in research only get us so far, though. Despite being the recipient of this fortunate set of discoveries, I have much yet to learn on the Flanagans. We'll jump in tomorrow with a brief sketch of Anna Flanagan and the pertinent details of her life—at least the ones I've found so far.

Maybe This will be the Year

 

At the dawning of a new year, do you ever get the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this will be the year? Sometimes, that is the case with me, but not this year. When I look through my Twelve Most Wanted for each of the past six years, I see some remaining on my list who have tenaciously clung to that "most recalcitrant" category. They refuse to be found.

Among such a list for my father-in-law's ancestors is his great-grandmother Anna Flanagan. With a compelling story—and the saved ephemera to support it—she is one ancestor who stubbornly resists being put in her place, at least in the family tree.

Since Anna Flanagan's place is on my father-in-law's matriline, how I wish he were still alive to participate in DNA testing. A mitochondrial DNA test could at least provide guidance in this quest to isolate the right Flanagan family back in County Limerick. There is, however, hope that autosomal DNA testing can provide some guidance regarding this woman who was second great-grandmother to my husband—and at least one current DNA match who is a direct descendant of a Flanagan line.

Last year has been the only time I've tried to tackle this Flanagan line. Despite that attempt, I wasn't able to resolve the question of who Anna's parents and siblings might have been—other than her unmarried brother who also migrated to Chicago as she did. However, improvement in analytical tools coupled with possible expanded record availability back in Ireland may provide the tipping point to finally enable me to find the right place in the family tree for Anna Flanagan this coming August, as the eighth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

Next Steps

 

At the close of a research project—and that end does come, no matter what the cause hastening it—I always like to provide a to-do list for the next time I tackle the topic. Especially for this Flanagan question, I'll need to keep several next steps in mind.

This month's project involved research on two fronts. On the one hand, knowing that my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Anna Flanagan Malloy, eventually settled in Chicago, this month I searched for more information on possible Flanagan relatives who also may have joined her and her brother William in emigrating from their home in County Limerick, Ireland. This work will need to be continued, especially as I uncover any more on the second front, Ireland.

That second front, thankfully, involves a precise location in County Limerick: the townland of Cappananty. It also includes some distant DNA cousins who also trace their roots back to the Flanagans in that specific townland. The drawback is that, currently, the only records available to me online are some baptismal records, valuation records, plus the 1901 and 1911 census enumerations.

As I build out the family line for James, that possible brother—or cousin—of Anna Flanagan Malloy, I'm not only working on connecting those several distant DNA matches. I'm also watching for clues in naming patterns through the generations, seeking consistency which might inform likely names for Anna's own siblings left behind. I'm also keeping my eye on news about reconstructed record sets previously assumed to be lost to time. And I'm exploring other resources for information, such as websites actually housed in Ireland. International research needs more than just an "international subscription" to an American website; sometimes the key to finding records regarding our international roots is to examine what is available in that country, itself.

I'll need to keep building out those Flanagan and Lee collateral lines, both for the Chicago immigrants and for those family members still listed in records back home in County Limerick. That alone will be plenty of work for the next time I revisit this research brick wall. And, of course, I'll continue the conversation with those DNA matches already contacted, as well as adding new matches who fit specifically into this line. Hopefully, with enough DNA cousins in the picture, we all may be able to come up with a reasonable answer to what happened to the Flanagan siblings both during and after the Great Famine.

For now, another month is almost here—and time to shift to another research project on my father-in-law's Irish roots.

Pulling Out Those Old Files

 

The Flanagan, Malloy, and Lee connection to County Limerick is one that has had me stumped for well over twenty years. That means, of course, that I have files dating back that far—notes that I've kept along this research journey to remind me of what I've already accomplished, what helped, and what still needs to be done. For the past decade, I can safely say that most of those old records have been kept online or in some digital format. But those others? Well, it was time to pull out those old file folders and take another look.

Frankly, I'm stumped on this search. I remember having one printout, faxed to me by a helpful office worker in one Chicago cemetery, which outlined just who was buried in the Flanagan family plot. I remember one of the names on that chart being Edward Flanagan, a puzzle piece I never did manage to connect with the rest of this family.

I went looking for that old Flanagan record, and found...something else. Those old file folders included notes from twenty three years ago, as well as other records gathered in preparation for my research trip to Ireland ten years ago. There were printed copies of death records and census pages and obituaries—all the stuff we are more likely to store digitally, now.

Among those records were notes about the gap in William Flanagan's story. A printout from my visit to the National Archives of Ireland, with penciled-in notes by the archivist who helped me with William's puzzle, listed his trial date for "stealing trousers and former convictions" as March 23, 1851. The trial took place in County Cork, and the sentence was indeed, as the family had insisted, transportation to Australia for a term of seven years.

Underneath that readout was a typed addition: "Convict ordered to be discharged" on May 9, 1855. The archivist added the comment, "shows up in Chicago by 1860," possibly making the note from my report during the archives visit.

That file folder I retrieved also contained a copy of William Flanagan's death certificate. Apparently, William died at 6:00 a.m. Chicago time on August 14, 1893, at the home of his niece Catherine Malloy (by then Tully), so I am fairly confident that the reporting party for that record would be Catherine, herself. In answer to the question, "How long resident in this State," she had responded that William had been in Chicago for eighteen years.

That would date William's arrival in Chicago as approximately 1875—and yet, we had already seen him listed in Chicago in the 1860 census. It's little conflicting notes like this which make me wonder whether more such discrepancies are what cause the man—and the rest of his family—to be so invisible.

However, other notes in that old Flanagan file folder remind me that, in Dublin, I had searched in governmental offices for records showing the location of possible property where the Flanagans may once have lived. At the time, I couldn't be sure my discoveries were of the right family, but now, looking back, I'm ready to reconsider. 

That change of mind is owing to one other observation. I checked my husband's DNA matches again to see who might be connected to that Flanagan side of his father's Irish roots, and was reminded of one contact who, like me, was stumped about the connection—but agreed that there definitely had to be one. Perhaps this time, we can figure out how that connection was made.

But For a Letter Saved

Here I am, grinding slowly through the microfilmed and digitized baptismal records of Flanagan descendants in 1870s Chicago. The pace is slow, despite the awesome advances in online search over the past few years. Even so, this may be no more than a dreary exercise in going through the motions; there is no guarantee I will find any more records from this family, once I move on to the 1880s. 

Thinking of this particular Flanagan line, it occurred to me that I wouldn't have been able to delve any deeper than I have into these Chicago records had it not been through one item: a letter sent in 1849 from Liverpool to County Limerick in Ireland. More to the point: but for that letter having been saved by its recipient, I would now be sorely lacking in any research direction for Anna Flanagan Malloy's roots.

How slim a thread upon which the realization of our family's history may hang. Yes, family research is indeed a case of here a little, there a little—but some of that information gathered here and there wouldn't make sense without the glue of some additional personal material. In Anna Flanagan Malloy's case, that otherwise missing glue would be the letter from her husband.

I've written before about that letter and what it revealed about Anna's possible home in Ireland. I first presented a copy of the letter in the early years of this blog, only months before our research trip to Ireland. Following that post, I added a copy of the actual envelope, which provided the location where Anna Flanagan Malloy was staying in her husband's absence. Only four years ago, I had revisited that letter once again, hoping to find anything more about Anna's husband Stephen Malloy. So far, I've drawn a blank, both about Stephen himself, as well as the Flanagan family.

The lesson that was missing from those experiences has been impressed on me as I revisit this research problem yet again: if it weren't for even having the letter to refer to, I would be hard pressed to move the search anywhere before Anna's appearance in the 1860 census in Chicago.

For those who are fortunate enough to have "packrat" relatives, that pile of hoarded papers may be just that—junk to be quickly discarded—or those papers could be the rare and precious key that links us to our family's otherwise obscured past. 

Where the Flanagan Family Worshipped

 

While we are struggling to determine more about the Flanagan family members after their arrival in Chicago, perhaps it might help to pause the search and explore what we can find on the place where the family worshipped. 

We learned from the baptismal records for three of Johanna Flanagan Lee's children that the family's church was known as Holy Family Catholic Church. Upon learning that name, you might have—as I had—presumed it was yet another of many Catholic Churches in the area. Come to find out, it was worth the effort to learn a bit about the people and places important in our ancestors' lives.

Holy Family Catholic Church was apparently the second-oldest Catholic Church in the city of Chicago. In addition, it has the claim of being one of the few buildings to survive the 1871 Chicago fire—despite the rumor that the barn of one of the church parishioners was where the fire actually started.

More to the point of our inquiry, Holy Family Catholic Church was originally a congregation comprised mostly of Irish immigrants. Eventually, the church grew to claim over twenty five thousand parishioners, so it is no surprise to learn that some estimate one third of today's Chicago Irish-American residents can trace their roots to this church. Should any family historian care to research their roots via the baptismal records from the church, they would be in great company; since the parish opened in 1857, there have been over fifty six thousand people baptized there.

The church itself, located at 1080 West Roosevelt Road, once was a parish encompassing a distance of nearly seven miles, far beyond just the downtown area. However, looking at a map of the area, I can spot some of the streets named in our search for the godparents mentioned in those baptismal records we've reviewed. And Johanna and her husband, John Lee, had moved their family to Fourteenth Street by the time of the 1880 census, still within the boundaries of the church parish.

However, whether the Lee family still lived near the church by the time of the 1881 birth of their daughter Lillian—the first of their children whose baptismal record I could not find listed in the church's index—I haven't yet been able to determine. This will, I suspect, require a second search through those listings or those of other Chicago Catholic Churches, all which will take time. The goal, as before, will still be to see what family-linked godparents might have been identified on those baptismal records—if we can find them at all.    

Our Man Flanagan

 

Chasing after clues about Edward Flanagan, the man named as godfather of Johanna Flanagan Lee's son George, has yielded very little. That he might have been Johanna's father is unlikely, given the impracticality of her father fulfilling the role of godfather for her child. But whether this Edward Flanagan could have been her brother, while a possibility, still leaves me with doubts.

Since we had found two entries for men by that name in the Chicago city directory for 1878, a logical next step was to go back and check the 1880 census once again—this time, eyeing all the different possible spelling variations. With that approach, two possibilities presented themself: twenty two year old Ed on Laurel Street, and the twenty one year old Ed on Fifteenth Street.

Ed on Laurel Street was an Irish immigrant boarding with the Sullivan family, who apparently was joined on his trans-Atlantic adventure by George Flanigan, possibly Edward's younger brother. The other Ed was living in the home of his parents, John and Elizabeth Flanagan. While this Ed's parents were born in Ireland, Ed and his older siblings were born in New Jersey, painting a far different immigration story.

Granted, either of these two young men could have been the correct identity for a godparent of John and Johanna's son, even if they weren't relatives. The baptismal traditions from the Old Country may well have been disregarded so many years after immigration. This may leave us at a loss for how to reconstruct a picture of the cluster of family members who may have immigrated together—but not so severely hobbled us as to cause us to give up the search. There may be other ways to explore this mystery.

One possible way is to take a break from genealogical pursuits and step back to absorb the history of the place where those Flanagans now called home. Since church was such an important part of Irish life, learning something about the family's new church home may provide some pointers.

For one thing, I noticed that the three baptismal records that had been shared by another Ancestry.com subscriber all focused on births from the 1870s. However, when I located the online resource to view all the baptismal records from the Lees' church in Chicago—Holy Family Catholic Church—missing from the index were all the children born after the 1870s. This would include daughter Lillian in 1881, son Edward in 1883, another son David in 1884, and daughters Deborah in 1886 and Mary Elizabeth in 1888. Each of those documents would give us more opportunities to explore whether family members were named as each child's sponsors.

While we're stuck on this pursuit, let's take some time to set aside the certificate search and learn a bit about the church in Chicago where the Lee family attended and had their first three children baptized. Then we can figure out what, if anything, changed for the Lees, once those children of the 1880s were added to the family.  

It's All in How You Spell It

 

Finding Edward Flanagan mentioned in documents related to the extended Flanagan family of my father-in-law might have been encouraging—until I tried looking for other mentions of the man's name. I suspected our man Ed might have been difficult to trace in 1880s Chicago mainly because there was no standard way to spell his surname.

Since we had last seen him—or at least someone with that same name—in the 1877 baptismal record for Johanna Flanagan Lee's son George, I thought a copy of the Chicago city directory might sort things out for us. Fortunately, there was a digitized copy of the 1878 directory online at Ancestry.com, so I took a look for our missing Edward Flanagan.

Was he there? Well, maybe. There was one listing for an Edward Flanagan, a clerk living at 47 Ray Street. But don't let out a cheer just yet. There was another clerk named Edward Flanigan living on Thirteenth Place. Fortunately for us, there were no more Edwards among the listings for the Flannagans, Flannaghans, or Flannegans who also lived in Chicago at the time.

But a Flanigan on Thirteenth Place? Hadn't we seen that street name before? That, as it turned out, was one connecting link between John Lee, father of the baptized George Aloysius Lee, and the godfather listed on his older son's baptismal record: they both had lived on the same street in Chicago. Granted, streets in Chicago could run the length of the city, so that might not tell us much. And while this Edward Flanagan was said to have worked as a clerk, not a cooper, perhaps they all could have worked for the same employer.

It was, however, encouraging to at least find a sign that there was indeed an Edward Flanagan in existence in 1880s Chicago, no matter how you spell his last name. Now all we need to do is to find out what became of him after that point.

 

Getting a Good Look at the Godparents

 

For those of the poorer Catholics born in Ireland around the time of the Great Famine, the selection of their godparents was a ritual carefully spelled out by custom. In Ireland, every godparent selected for that role was either a sibling or a sibling-in-law of one of the child's parents. Thus, getting a good look at a child's baptismal record could provide information hidden in plain sight about other members in the parents' families, all based on the godparents listed.

But what about those destitute Catholics who fled the famine? Did they keep up that baptismal tradition overseas?

We considered that question last year while exploring some of my father-in-law's Irish ancestors who migrated to Canada. The upshot of that pursuit? Apparently, proximity of near relatives lost to the convenience of near neighbors, once the family arrived in the New World. The question this year is: did the same thing happen for those who migrated to the United States? Let's begin by taking a look at the baptismal records we've found so far.

First, a newly-discovered son, James John Lee, was born in Chicago in 1874 to Johanna Flanagan and her husband John Lee. The baptismal record in July of that year showed the baby's sponsors (or godparents). Right away, we light up when we see the names: John Ponsonby and Catherine Flanagan. We're presuming the selection of Catherine might be following the old Irish tradition from back home, showing us a possible sister for Johanna, who was also a Flanagan. But let's wait until we take a closer look.

Thanks to his rather unusual surname, John Ponsonby was easily spotted in the 1880 census, taken six years after John stepped up to serve as godfather for baby James John Lee. Encouragingly, John was married to a woman named Catherine, who reported that she was born in Ireland. Their household was completed by a two year old son, whom they named—tantalizingly—Edward, same as the mystery Flanagan man I'm chasing this month.

Don't get your hopes up, however. That Catherine's maiden name was not Flanagan, as it turns out, but Fox. The proud Lee parents' connection to John Ponsonby was more likely to be either by residential location or occupational ties.

That same 1880 census showed John Ponsonby living on Thirteenth Place in Chicago, the same street where the baby's father John Lee lived, according to the 1878 city directory. Looking at those two documents also reveals the likely real reason for John Ponsonby's connection to John Lee: they both worked as coopers.

So who was Catherine Flanagan? Short answer: I don't know—yet.

As for Edward Flanagan, the one named as godfather for John and Johanna Flanagan Lee's son George Aloysius, we need to go through that same process once again. We'll see what we can find on Edward tomorrow.

It Might be up to Ed

 

When faced with brick wall ancestors—those end-of-the-line predecessors who can't seem to give up their family secrets—sometimes the only solution to the problem is to draw the research circle wider and wider. That might be just what we'll do this month, as we try to determine the Irish parents of Chicago resident Anna Flanagan Malloy through cluster research—A.K.A. the Flanagan "F.A.N. Club."

When I look at all the names connected to Anna, her brother William Flanagan, and her daughter Catherine Malloy, one name keeps popping up: a man named Edward Flanagan. Brother? Cousin? Neighbor? Or just plain ol' friendly guy? It's hard to tell without launching into a study of the cluster of names surrounding Anna and her household.

Setting up a Flanagan family network on Ancestry.com seemed a first step, but searching for Edward Flanagan in Chicago records hasn't yielded many results—so far. However, thanks to the helpfulness of another Ancestry subscriber who posted copies of baptismal records, two children of another Flanagan descendant—Johanna Flanagan Lee—showed an interesting connection.

First, for a child that I wasn't even aware of—Johanna's son James John Lee, born in July of 1874—the godparents were listed as John Ponsonby and Catherine Flanagan. Could that Catherine be yet another Flanagan relative?

For a son born in 1877, George Aloysius Lee, I spotted that recurring name: Edward Flanagan, listed as George's godfather. There he was, Edward Flanagan—but try as I might, I couldn't find him listed in any census entry at the start of the next decade. Who was this man?

One additional recollection—a detail I definitely will need to recover—was a listing of all the names buried in the family plot along with Johanna Flanagan Lee. Was that Edward Flanagan once again? I'll need to look it up in my files, as that entry certainly doesn't show among Find A Grave memorials.

While I might not know exactly who Edward Flanagan was, he certainly was rife with possibilities of key connections to our Flanagan family. Though so little is known about him at this point, it will certainly be worth our while to follow this rabbit trail. I suspect it might lead to a connection with our Flanagans, whoever they were. 

Tallying Who Made it to Chicago

 

Seeking information on the roots of a great-grandmother doesn't seem to be such a difficult project, so let me give you an illustration of where my research is stuck, when looking for my father-in-law's own great-grandmother, Anna Flanagan Malloy. I'm not quite clear on just how she made it to Chicago, but I do know she was in that city by 1860. Along with Anna was her thirteen year old daughter, Catherine Malloy. The two of them lived with forty year old William Flanagan, also an Irish immigrant, who I later discovered was Anna's brother.

The tally for the Flanagans who moved from Ireland to Chicago doesn't end there, though. Looking through old newspaper clippings saved by the family, I eventually stumbled across a funeral notice for William which not only identified Catherine as William's niece, but named another niece, as well.

That niece was named Johanna Lee. Like the others, she was born in Ireland, but by the time I had discovered her in Chicago, she was married and had several children. Who Johanna's father was, I have yet to discover, but I have seen mentions of another name linked to the Flanagan family which cause me to question whether he might be the one who was Johanna's father.

That man was named Edward Flanagan. And though I haven't had much luck tracing him in past years, perhaps this time, it will be worth my while to revisit the question. After all, besides the addition of more and more records online each year, search tool improvements via artificial intelligence and transcriptions of handwritten documents may bring us just the documents we need to find the answer to this research question.

This week, we'll look at what can be found about this Edward in Chicago records, then make the leap across the ocean to see whether there are any clusters of these names in records from the area where Anna Flanagan Malloy once lived in Ireland.  

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 Those Flanagans

 

Tracing my father-in-law's Flanagan roots in Chicago was an obvious starting point; Chicago was home to four generations of his family history. Chasing those Flanagans anywhere, however, may turn out to be a challenge.

As far as the surname Flanagan goes, the first problem we'll encounter is one of spelling. Far too many variants on the surname's spelling can make for research roadblocks. From Flanagan to Flanigan may be a change so slight as to not be noticed (except for the most ardent proofreaders), but add in variants such as Flannagan or Flanaghan and it's time to start using the wildcard asterisk in online searches. Then, too, for those Irish immigrants who, due to laws in place in times past, had no idea how to spell their own surname because they couldn't even read, who was to know if a clerk or government official spelled their name wrong?

Spelling woes aside, there is another challenge facing us in chasing my father-in-law's Flanagan forebears: the sheer number of people who share that family name.

I've always realized that Flanagan was a common surname, but I thought I'd better look for some statistics on that issue—and found out the surname isn't as common as I had thought. Still, in the United States, where my father-in-law's Flanagan ancestors immigrated, the Flanagan surname, at least a decade ago, was ranked just below the top one thousand surnames. Putting it another way, roughly one in every eight thousand people has the surname Flanagan. I guess there's not as many Flanagans here as I had assumed.

When we look at the numbers back in Ireland, it appears that—at least now—the Flanagan surname is ranked the ninety-fourth most common in the country. In other words, one out of every 572 Irish residents claims the surname Flanagan. 

To give those numbers a bit more granularity, I found a website which illustrates the spread and frequency of the surname by maps. While I am not conversant in the specifics of Poor Law Union locations—or even electoral divisions—the website Historic Stats provides maps demonstrating the distribution of the surname Flanagan in Ireland.

Just eyeballing those maps, I get the vague sense that our Flanagan immigrants may have come from one of the areas more densely populated with Flanagans, but I'm not so sure yet. But before we can get to the point of making an educated guess on that count, we need to head back to Chicago to set the record straight there on some Flanagan details.

 

The Flanagans in Chicago: What Little I Know

 

It was sometime before 1860 when Anna Flanagan Malloy arrived in Chicago from her homeland in County Limerick, Ireland. I'm not sure how she got there, or even why she chose Chicago, but there she was in the 1860 census to let me know that at least she made it.

Along with her teenaged daughter Catherine, Anna Malloy resided with a forty year old Irishman named William Flanagan, for that time period, a scandalous thought—until you realize that William was Anna's own brother.

It was William, confirmed bachelor to his dying day, who years ago gifted me with my first clue about tracing the Flanagan line. Found in an old Chicago cemetery, the monument erected to his memory proudly declared that he was a "native of Parish Ballygran" in County Limerick, Ireland. 

Parish "Ballygran," as it turned out, was actually Parish Ballyagran, lying toward the southern border of County Limerick, just above County Cork. That discovery, along with further information linking William to a niece, Johanna Flanagan Lee, brought my Flanagan count in Chicago up to four people: William, his sister Anna, her daughter Catherine, and his other niece Johanna.

There was, however, at least one other Flanagan family member in Chicago. One may have been Johanna's own father, whom I have yet to identify. Whether that father was one and the same with Edward Flanagan, whose name has popped up as I've worked on this line over the years, I can't yet say. However, I'm convinced it's time to use the network-building capabilities available at Ancestry.com to explore just who Edward was, and whether we can find anything more that would link the right Edward Flanagan to this line. 

After all, there were a lot of Flanagans in Chicago back then. Hopefully, sorting them all out will help us find the right one for this family.