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.

Finding What's Missing

 

Being stuck on a research question—where I've currently been left, stumped—can leave one walking in circles. It feels like I've been trying the same approaches over and over again for some of my father-in-law's Irish ancestors. While I wonder whether the brick wall isn't his great-grandparents as much as the overall Irish predicament of the mid-1800s, a nagging thought makes me consider whether I'm missing something. There's got to be an answer out there somewhere, if only I could find it.

I had thought about turning my questions over to a search engine, or to AI resources. With that idea in mind, I thought it was timely to spot Randy Seaver's post in Genea-Musings earlier this week, in which he asked ChatGPT5 about twenty record types we should be sure to include in  any thorough family history search.

Actually, I had put some question to such resources last month while struggling with John Kelly, another great-grandparent from my father-in-law's ancestry. I had wondered why the man's family seemed to dance between two different townlands, and asked Google's Gemini what significant differences there might be about the two townlands, despite their contiguous situation. The result, while not answering my genealogical questions, was informative.

Now, in my search for Anna Flanagan and her brother William from Ballyagran, I went back to a map of the area, showing both the village of Ballyagran as well as the townland where I believe I had found William in Griffith's Valuation before he left for America.

Looking at the map again, I spotted the cemetery we had visited during our family's trip to Ireland back in 2014. The map shows the name as Castletown Conyers cemetery. During our visit, we could clearly see the ruins of the church yard as we walked through the old burial ground, but had no way of knowing whether that was the original church for the Catholic parish where William and his sister Anna had once worshipped. 

While I realize I'll need to revisit questions like this once again, I took my questions to online resources to see what might pop up. Almost immediately appeared a new-to-me resource for cemeteries in Ireland. The Irish Graveyards website provided an aerial view of the compound, a map of the burials, as well as a chart of burials, including individual photographs of headstones (if still in existence).

I'll still need to search through the thirty five pages of notes for this one sizable cemetery—though obviously Anna and William were gone from the area long before their own passing—but it also occurred to me to hold on to this resource, not only for the Castletown-Conyers site, but for all other sites also available on the website. It seems like a useful resource, and another approach besides what is already available through other online cemetery websites.

Of course, I'll need to review what I've already found in searching for the Flanagans, and check that inventory to see if there are other resources I still need to add, not only from sources of documentation, but through the posts on the Flanagans that I've written in the past. It's important to build upon what we've already found, but also to explore new horizons.

Map above courtesy of Google Maps.

About Anna's Husband

 

There are some extra details to know about Anna Flanagan, our eighth of this year's Twelve Most Wanted, to help us find her roots in County Limerick in the mid-1800s. As difficult as it may be to find someone with a surname like Flanagan, at least coupled with Anna's husband's name, it might make the challenge a little less daunting.

At least, that's what I thought. Looking for the marriage records for the Catholic parish of Ballyagran, where Anna's brother William had claimed his roots, I realize that not many church records have been preserved. The listing, according to the National Library of Ireland, leaves a big gap right where I'd guess Anna and Stephen Malloy might have gotten married.

The marriage date is only a guess, based on the date of birth for the couple's only child. Catherine, presumably born in the same place where her uncle William claimed his roots, and where Stephen's farewell letter to her mother was addressed, arrived in either 1847 or 1848, depending on the dates provided by later records in the United States, where she and her mother eventually moved after her father's disappearance.

I have yet to find any marriage record, but knowing how my eyes just love the blurry digitized microfilm records, I'll probably cry over that mystery once again, just to be sure. At least we still have something to search through.

Complicating matters is another detail: just how to spell Anna's husband's surname. Whether in Ireland or in Chicago, where Anna eventually migrated, her married name was treated to multiple variations in the spelling department. Sometimes Mulloy, sometimes Malloy or even Melloy—or take away an "l" to make it even more challenging—this is clearly a case of employing wildcards for the search.

All I know for sure is that one day in February of 1849, Stephen sat down—most likely with someone who could write the letter he dictated—to send fond farewells to his wife and let know that, due to a warning he had received, he was leaving from Liverpool, bound for Boston. That was the last that Anna heard from her husband.

On the other side of this story, nearly one hundred seventy years into her future, the envelope that she saved along with that letter guided us in our travels to County Limerick, and brought us, perhaps, to the very parcel of land where she lived while awaiting word from her husband. Even if institutions were not able to preserve records about a specific ancestor, I'm grateful for our own family members who realized the importance of preserving the few details they could find among their relatives' mementos.

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.

Fading Into the Future

 

There's been a volley of messages exchanged this week between myself and one DNA cousin connected to my father-in-law's Irish Flanagan roots. I'm certainly thankful for the willingness of total strangers to provide so much family information from personal experience and from the memories of their immediate family members. But I'm also awakening to the painful realization that these ephemeral memories are precariously perched on a point in a calendar which stands still for no one. Those memories are fading into the future with each approaching new day.

One Flanagan cousin has been sharing notes about the extended family on the Irish side of the equation, and telling me about the sources for these remembrances. One detail was passed along to me from the preserved memories of an eighty five year old woman; another source was a cousin moving into his nineties. These remembrances represent micro-histories of average, everyday people which, if not preserved, will someday be entirely lost. At some point, there will be no one left to ply with our endless questions about our ancestors' history.

On my side of the equation, I wasn't only asking the questions. I sent back photos and stories of what we had found on that Flanagan family from our trip to Ireland, now over ten years ago. Just to review the details for myself, thankfully I could refer back to posts made here at A Family Tapestry, as this blog has become somewhat of a research journal.

I sent this cousin the story—how grateful I am that someone in our family saw the need to preserve it over the years—of the 1849 letter sent to Anna Flanagan from her husband, Stephen Malloy, on the eve of his departure from Liverpool for Boston. I also shared our experience tracing the very address on that letter's envelope which led us to the place where, most likely, Anna stayed while awaiting news of her husband's arrival in America, and what we found when we got there to see the place for ourselves. 

Perhaps those photos will jog some memories, back in Ireland, for those who still live in that same area. I hope so, for in some cases, all we have left for some family research there is the memories of the oldest generation. And they are beginning to fade.

At the close of a month, I hate to lay aside the research project selected for the past thirty days. The "Twelve Most Wanted" project is helpful in keeping me on task in my research, as well as keeping the research moving through the entire spectrum of the family's ancestry. But thirty days—or even the bonus thirty one days for a month like July—can never truly be enough, especially as we move back through the generations, where the records become sparse and the brick walls impenetrable. I confess I may linger on this Flanagan research problem, even as we launch into a new inquiry in August.

With a Little Help From Friends

 

Lately, I've been clearing out some saved files from family history correspondence years ago. When I say years ago, I do mean that: from the 1990s. In retrospect, I'm amazed at how much we all relied on friends helping friends during those earlier years of online genealogical research. Granted, now there is so much more that is instantly accessible online. Believe me, when I pulled out a twenty-five year old record on all the steps required to order information from the National Archives, that realization was instantaneous. 

Research connections weren't just between individuals and institutions. There were many fellow researchers out there who were willing to share what knowledge they had gained during their own research struggles. Examples of such notes were among those saved in my files. Those genealogy friends' guidance was sometimes priceless during those years of limited—but gradually expanding—resources.

Now that I'm stuck on this research question about Anna Flanagan Malloy's parents' names, the dearth of Irish records from that mid-1800s time period is calling for a work-around. And talking through that research project with some friends and family may be just the answer—or at least the salve to heal my frustrations if there are no answers to be found.

Just this week, I decided to reach out to a Flanagan researcher who had been helpful in prior years. Within less than twenty four hours, this researcher replied, sending photos and writing some memories. While we are both stuck at that mid-century mark, the information shared helped me build out some collateral lines I didn't have before. Filling in these blanks may enable me to play a "what if" game regarding the Flanagan DNA matches I do have, to answer the question of whether the James Flanagan who stayed on in County Limerick was emigrating Anna's brother—or cousin.

Though most of my husband's Flanagan-related DNA matches are distant relationships, if I can connect enough of the collateral lines on the family tree, perhaps I can use the "What Are the Odds" program at DNA Painter to calculate the most probable relationship. With a little more precise information and just the right tool, I may be able to foil this Irish records stand-still, after all.

When You Can't Look Up, Look Out

 

The main research goal this month has been to find the parents of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Anna Flanagan Malloy. So far, the best I've been able to do is ponder the possibility of a sibling, James Flanagan. However, I can't be sure James was Anna's brother; he could just as well have been her cousin. The only way to confirm that would be to build that family tree upward—but I can't look upwards.

Since that is so, my only other option to looking upwards is to look outwards—to explore Anna's possible collateral lines. In this last week of the month, I'm exploring what else can be found on the line of this James Flanagan of the townland of Cappananty in County Limerick, Ireland. As best I can—keeping in mind the dearth of remaining records in that country—I'm building the lines of descent for the elder James Flanagan, born about 1814 in County Limerick.

Currently, there are seven DNA matches to my husband's test results on Ancestry.com who are possibly descended from this eldest James Flanagan. I need to identify where they fit into this possible collateral line.

Part of that quest can be accomplished through that very slim window of time when these Irish relatives' names showed up in census records in 1901 and 1911. I've already traced the son James and his mother "Bess" that way, but I'll need to branch out and see what can be found in more recent years.

Another approach will be to reach out to the DNA matches, themselves, and see if anyone has a clearer idea of the family history of their Flanagan ancestors. Sometimes, letters or Bible records or other keepsakes can shed light from a more personal aspect than I could gain from my vantage point, an ocean and a continent away from that mile-square townland of Cappananty.

And finally, I've reached out to a Flanagan contact who had exchanged emails with me in past years. While no one is getting any younger, I'm hoping there are still distant cousins left who know some of the old memories and stories from their own grandparents, shared with them years ago.

In the meantime, you know I'll be building out this potential collateral line on Ancestry ProTools' "Networks" beta offering. That tool has become a go-to resource for me so far this summer. Hopefully, it will help piece together the story of James Flanagan's descendants, as well.

Flanagan Fatigue

 

Like a door-to-door salesman, I've pounded the genealogical pavement for over three weeks now, hoping to just get my foot inside an open record collection and find my father-in-law's missing Flanagan forebears. With hardly any prospects at all in that dearth of historic Irish records, by now I'm suffering from Flanagan fatigue.

Granted, I've watched the news eagerly when spotting announcements about reconstructed Irish record sets. There's always the hope that a newly-discovered cache of duplicate records will emerge. As it is, I'm back to hunting for baptismal records on possible collateral lines and hoping a key relative will be mentioned as a godparent.

And then, there's DNA. Knowing that my husband has a few DNA matches related to that Flanagan line back in County Limerick, I thought I'd try out that recent beta offering at Ancestry ProTools, called Matches by Cluster.

Almost immediately, I noticed my downfall: the Clusters program at Ancestry is set for a minimum threshold of twenty centiMorgans. Guess who falls below that minimum...

However, there are quite a few features which I want to explore further on this tool. The enhanced shared matches tool alone has helped me piece together some unexplained DNA matches, and I need to keep working at that task to add in others who are close matches to already-identified DNA matches in both my husband's tree and my own.

As for the Clusters program itself, expanding the clusters readout to take in information on one specific cluster can be useful—although again limited to that minimum threshold of twenty centiMorgans. I may try to partner with some of my known Flanagan matches to see if their readout, above that threshold, will reveal anything about relationships that I can't see due to the slim genetic connection. After all, I did see some others among those Flanagan DNA connections who share a greater amount of genetic material with each other—just not with my husband.

Looking over at the DNA results at MyHeritage, I will update the clusters readout there and see whether there are any Flanagan DNA connections at that website. After all, there are several who have Flanagan in their family tree—but that doesn't necessarily mean their Flanagan connection is on their direct line. Re-doing the clusters there may point to a new connection.

Other than that, for this last week of the month, it will be back to drilling through what few records from the 1840s through 1860s can be found for my father-in-law's Flanagan ancestors. I'm still hopeful—though the research energy is flagging.

The Long and Short of It

 

I have always known, in researching our family history, that ours is an unusual case due to one peculiarity: we have long generations. By that, I mean that from one generation to the next, you will find a longer stretch of time than might be seen with the "average" family's shorter generations. Knowing that my own father was nearly fifty years of age by the time I was born has prepared me to not be thrown by such long spans of time when I research other lines.

Still, when I started work on my father-in-law's Flanagan line—and, in particular, the family of this Flanagan DNA match we've been eyeing this past week—I had my doubts that the match's tree had all the dates right.

Granted, looking at Anna Flanagan Malloy's own line of descent, my father-in-law's great-grandmother, we can see some long generations. If Anna was born in 1812—our guess based on second-hand verbal reports concerning her age, noted in documents—she would have been thirty six by the time her daughter Catherine was born. In turn, Catherine's daughter Agnes arrived forty years after Catherine was born. Agnes' son Frank, my father-in-law, appeared on the family scene when Agnes was thirty six. That was likewise Frank's age when my husband was born.

Still, the span of ages stretching from this DNA match's ancestor to the present generation pushes the envelope even farther. If James Flanagan was born in 1814, as the age at his passing in 1900 indicates, the 1864 arrival of his son James came when the father hit fifty years of age. Almost matching that age span was the next generation, when the younger James' son was born in 1910, forty six years later.

When I first observed the span of years between each generation in this DNA match's James Flanagan family, I felt as if there were one generation missing in that line of descent. But now that we've found the 1864 baptismal record for the second James, and done the math on the elder James' age, at least we now have documentation to back up the assertions.

All that is missing is documentation to give us an idea of how James Flanagan and Anna Flanagan Malloy would be related. If the two were siblings, then my husband and his DNA match would be third cousins once removed; if James and Anna were cousins, the relationship would be fourth cousin once removed. Frustratingly, each relationship could be borne out statistically, the closer at a twenty three percent probability, the lesser at a fifteen percent chance. Now what?

More Flanagan Sightings

 

Still in pursuit of documentation on the extended Flanagan family of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, I went looking at what few records are still available from that time period in County Limerick, Ireland. James Flanagan was listed as the ancestor of a DNA match to my husband's test at Ancestry.com, so I've been keen to piece together that family line.

It was helpful to find someone named James Flanagan listed in the property valuation rolls in the townland of Cappananty in County Limerick at about the same time as our relative William Flanagan, before William left Ireland around 1855. Finding that James once, I wanted to find more of him in Irish documents. That, of course, is difficult, considering the tragic loss of records between that time in the mid 1800s and the 1901 Irish census. But I tried.

Part of the attempt, by reason of loss of alternatives, is to trust what family members post in online trees about their own direct family line, but part of the effort is a leap of faith into the vast void, extrapolating a person's landing place in, say, 1901, after nearly fifty years of absent records. Here is what little I could find.

First of all, we've already found a James Flanagan and Elizabeth Hanrahan in Catholic baptismal records, presenting their son, also named James, for baptism on November 7, 1864. Presumably, as was traditionally the case with Catholic baptisms, the child was baptized as an infant, so likely born in that same year of 1864.

Fast forward thirty seven years, and let's see what can be found of the Flanagans in the townland of Cappananty in the 1901 census. The entire townland is transcribed in the website of the National Archives of Ireland, and by the fourth page of listings, I spot an entry for someone listed as James Flanigan. Looking at the actual document for the 1901 census, we see that James Flanigan listed as head of household, along with two older women, one of whom is listed as Bess Flanigan, his mother. 

Elizabeth?

Granted, James' claimed age as thirty five doesn't quite add up, considering our James was baptized in 1864, but with some rounding upwards, I suppose that estimate could be passable. If this was our James, seeing his mother living in his home suggests she had lost her husband by this point. Indeed, if we can rely on the family tree of our DNA match, the senior James was said to have died in 1900.

Moving on to the next census in 1911, James was in the same townland, but his family situation was different. Gone was any mention of Bess, his mother, narrowing her estimated date of death to a ten year parameter—unless she had simply moved to the home of another Flanagan child.

In her place were six additional people. First listing was for James' wife, Ellen, whom he had married five years prior to that census enumeration. Following Ellen's listing was that for what appears to be two twin daughters, Kate and Lizzie, who at that point were four years of age. Following the twins was another daughter, Mary, three years old. The youngest child in this family was the long-awaited son, also named James.

In addition to James' immediate family, there was one other relative living in the household: a sister, by the name of Anne. That, if you remember, was the name of the other child of the elder James Flanagan and Elizabeth Hanrahan, baptized on July 14, 1867, helping bolster my confidence that we have found, in 1911, the right Flanagan household linked to those baptismal records from almost fifty years prior.

There is one other reason I needed to find some sort of documentation about this James Flanagan family: the ages given. From the family tree I had found linked to that Flanagan DNA match, the generations seemed separated by a bit too long of an age span, causing some doubt. Before we move further, perhaps it would help to examine that sequence of generations, as given by the family member who had posted that tree online. We'll take some time to review that tomorrow. 

Looking for Flanagans in Town(lands)

 

Familiar Irish surnames sometimes cause me to struggle. I can't help but wonder whether I've found the right Flanagan, for instance, since the name is quite common. So I over-extend my search efforts, perhaps for no useful advantage.

Let's consider, for instance, William and James Flanagan, both of whom once lived in the Catholic parish of Ballyagran in County Limerick. The two possible townlands for their residence would be Cappananty and Cappanihane. The two townlands lie side by side just to the west of the modern road N20, exiting the road about halfway between Charleville and Croom.

Cappananty is the smaller of the two townlands, less than even one square mile in area. Cappanihane, which is just over one and a quarter square miles in size, is not much larger. Being rural areas, neither boasts a robust population. I'm hoping that would mean less of a chance of stumbling upon name twins in either place.

Taking my search to old valuation records of the time period when William and James might still be in the area, I did a basic search first for James, opening the search to all of County Limerick, just in case. Of the thirty two results in the valuation records collection at Ancestry.com, one James was in Cappananty Townland, another one was in Cappanihane Townland, and a third entry was noted as "Cappanchane."

Looking further, I realized the records were for different years. While James Flanagan appeared in Cappanihane in Griffith's Valuation—completed in County Limerick by 1853—in an earlier survey which was completed in September of 1849, there was an entry for a James Flanagan in Cappananty Townland, only a few lines away from the 7f entry we had previously found for William Flanagan. James likely moved away from the property neighboring William's, then when William relinquished his lease there, perhaps it was this same James Flanagan who moved back. Remember, after William left, Catherine Flanagan claimed the property until 1866, and sometime between then and 1868, James moved in. 

While I'm guessing the James Flanagan of the 1849 valuation and the James Flanagan of the Cappanihane entry as well as the later 1868 return to Cappananty are one and the same man, I must concede I don't have any paper trail upon which to rest my case—at least, not from property or tax records. There are, however, other places to look for any sign of who this James might have been. 

About Those Irish Naming Conventions

 

As I agonize over lost Irish records, either civil or ecclesiastical, while searching for Anna Flanagan Malloy's parents in County Limerick, I've been trawling through tax records and any other forms that could at least point to a Flanagan name and say, yes, that family was there. Granted, the search has been convoluted, tedious, and frustrating—until I straightened up from my hunched-over position at the computer screen and realized this one thought: the Irish used traditional naming conventions.

Those Irish naming patterns could very well lead me to a likely answer. I say likely, because I may never find an actual document with an official signature that says, "I told you so." But let's take a moment to think this thing out.

According to information on Irish naming conventions, a first daughter would be named after her mother's mother—in other words, the girl's maternal grandmother.

Let's think about this for a while. Here I have Anna Flanagan Malloy, my father-in-law's great-grandmother, who left Ireland sometime between 1855 and 1860 and moved to the American city of Chicago. She it was who received that letter from her husband Stephen Malloy, advising her of his impending departure for Boston in 1849—barely a year after she had given birth to their daughter Catherine.

As far as I know, Catherine was the only child born to Stephen and Anna. Granted—especially considering Anna's age when Catherine was born—there could have been older children lost during the famine. But I don't know that. And I certainly have no records to show that. Nor even any family lore to fill in such blanks.

Considering that, if we consider Catherine to be Anna's only child, that also would mean she was the first-born daughter. In turn, that would mean—if we consider traditional Irish naming patterns—that Anna's mother should also have had the name Catherine.

That would also provide us with the clue, if we find any Flanagan siblings left in Ireland, of a first-born daughter named Catherine among those other Flanagan descendants, as well.

Will the pattern hold true? I certainly can't say. But of one thing I'm sure: it may be harder to find the actual documentation reaching back to that time period than it would be to assemble family groupings of Anna's possible siblings, back in County Limerick.

I will, however, keep an eye on that possibility as I return to the drudge work of drilling through those old tax and property records, looking for nearby Flanagans calling County Limerick their home.

Considering James Flanagan

 

Could the ancestor of a DNA match lead us to the answer we've been seeking about Anna Flanagan Malloy, my father-in-law's great-grandmother? All I know about her Irish origin so far is that her brother William claimed Catholic parish Ballyagran in County Limerick as his native home, and that she received a farewell letter near that spot when her husband sailed for America.

As it turns out, the DNA match I'm considering claims an ancestor by the name of James Flanagan. That ancestor shows up in two baptismal records from that same parish of Ballyagran. In each of the baptisms, James is named as the child's father (in Latin, as Jacobo), along with Elizabeth Hanrahan as the child's mother. 

The older of the two children, a son whom they named James, was baptized on November 7, 1864. Following that birth, their daughter Anna was baptized at the same church on July 14, 1867.

It was interesting to look at the actual handwritten record, specifically to view the names of the godparents. While I'm having trouble deciphering the handwritten entry for son James' sponsors, the names of Anna's godparents nearly jumped right out at me: Ellen Gorman and William Lee. While I can see that the Gorman (or O'Gorman) surname figures in this DNA match's family tree in later generations, what I was keen to notice was the mention of someone with the surname Lee.

Lee, as you may remember, was the married name of another Flanagan relative who eventually migrated from County Limerick to Chicago in the United States. Johanna Flanagan Lee was mentioned as niece of William Flanagan, whose sister Anna was my father-in-law's great-grandmother. While I still don't know who Johanna Flanagan's parents were, it is encouraging to even find mention of another Lee family member in the vicinity of our Flanagans' origin.

Up to the point of the Great Hunger—the cause of so many making their exit from their Irish homeland—tradition had it that godparents were selected based on their relationship to the parents of the child being baptized. Thus, a child's sponsors would be either the sibling or the sibling-in-law of either parent. After the famine years, the tradition wasn't as tightly adhered to, so one can't be sure that William Lee had to be an in-law of James Flanagan or Elizabeth Hanrahan. But I'll certainly keep that possibility in mind as we look through more records in pursuit of this possible Flanagan family connection. 

Probing the Possibilities

 

When it comes to playing the genetic genealogy "what if" game, fortunately there are now some useful tools to help us probe relationship possibilities between specific DNA matches. As we focus on the possible connection between Anna Flanagan Malloy's descendant (my husband, the willing DNA test subject) and a DNA tester descended from someone named James Flanagan, there are indeed a few relationship possibilities—but there are also a few roadblocks standing between us and an answer.

Let's break down the few facts already known in this case. First, despite not yet knowing the relationship between the two test-takers, we can at least affirm that they share seventeen centiMorgans. Granted, that is not a very large amount of genetic material shared between them, but it does tell us something. If we plug that amount into the interactive updated beta version of Blaine Bettinger's Shared centiMorgan Project at DNA Painter, we see some encouraging news: there is a 23% relationship probability that the two subjects in question could be third cousins, once removed. 

For now, I'll provide a brief overview of the descendancy chart provided by the DNA match's own tree posted at Ancestry.com. This person's ancestral connection, James Flanagan, was listed with a birth year of 1814—quite close to our Anna's own supposed year of birth in 1812. According to that same match's family tree, there are two additional generations between that original James and the DNA match, whereas in our case, there are three additional generations.

In other words, comparing the two DNA matches' trees, it looks like the relationship for the two matches would be third cousins, once removed. That level of relationship, according to the Shared centiMorgan Project, would be statistically supported at the 17 cM level—an encouraging sign.

What if, instead, Anna and James Flanagan were not siblings but, say, cousins? Even a fourth cousin once removed relationship would be supported by statistical analysis, with a 15% probability. 

There are some other promising signs. One is that the property in question, that lot listed as 7f in the Valuation Office records for Capananty Townland in County Limerick, was eventually passed from William Flanagan to someone named James Flanagan. And a note in the property records indicated that the property in question was in probate by 1939—one year after that same DNA match's ancestor James Flanagan had died.

Granted, we always need to double check any family trees we find online, to prove the record for ourselves. Since there are a few details in this review which cause me some doubt, that is exactly what we'll need to do next. 

Nothing to Write Home About

 

When it comes to the grunt work of searching for family history documentation, face it: there's nothing to write home about. Grinding through records, page by page—yes, even in this high tech, easy search age—can be, well, a grind. I don't talk about it much, but this tedious searching does keep rolling on, day by day, in the background.

With today's biweekly count, it is easy to see that looking for signs of the Flanagan family in County Limerick adds up to more searching than finding. Last month's research adventure, trying to figure out my mother-in-law's ancestor Simon Rinehart, generated far more documents—and thus, individuals added to her tree—than what we'll see for this month.

Granted, I've continued the search for Rinehart ancestors in the background, despite July's stated goal of moving to my father-in-law's Flanagans; it's just that the routine of adding descendants for those Rinehart matches also belongs to the category of "nothing to write home about." However, that effort did manage to add most of the 232 new individuals included in my in-laws' family tree now. I suspect, once faced with the Flanagan brick wall, that even that halfway decent progress report will come close to a dead stand-still. We'll see in the next two weeks.

Still, my in-laws' tree now has 40,847 individuals recorded. The search is on to see whether any of those will generate notifications of DNA matches, my main goal for adding descendants to each collateral line. I have seen a couple new DNA matches linked, via Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool, to Simon Rinehart's line, thanks to continuing the grunt work following last month's research goal.

Now that I'll be working on the ancestral roots of one Flanagan DNA match during the remainder of this month, perhaps that will generate additional searches for descendants. That, however, is only dependent on whether I can find documentation for the right James Flanagan, the ancestor said to have come from the same townland in County Limerick—Cappananty—as William Flanagan and his sister Anna.

In turn, that means grinding through some digitized microfilmed records. Don't count on seeing any handy hints pop up. This will take some old-fashioned research legwork through documents originating in Ireland. Thankfully, I can now add James Flanagan using Ancestry.com's ProTools option to build him into my already-set-up Flanagan network. Tools can make the job progress so much more smoothly, and I have high hopes that there will be documents to add to this Flanagan network, soon.

Playing the "What If" Game

 

When DNA testing presents us with a possible family relationship—but doesn't explain how those two people are connected—it's time to start playing the "What If" game. Now's the time to look more closely at collateral lines connected to that brick wall ancestor. In fact, it might be appropriate to take a deep dive into that someone else's family tree—not just reviewing what a DNA match might presume is the family tree, but going so far as to do our own work in building that family tree.

In the case of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Anna Flanagan Malloy, that is exactly the tempting point where I'm standing now. I can't find any record of her parents' names, but I do have some other information. As far as collateral lines go, I already know that when Anna migrated from County Limerick, Ireland, to Chicago in the United States, at some point she was joined by her brother William. A further collateral line springs from another, as yet unnamed, Flanagan brother whose daughter Johanna also ended up in Chicago. And now, to add to the possibilities of collateral lines, I have a DNA match whose Flanagan ancestor also hails from that same townland in County Limerick—Cappananty—who was known as James Flanagan.

Before I start searching for documentation to confirm or reject this James Flanagan as a possible family connection, let's run down the property record paper trail that I discovered during my trip to Ireland a decade ago. While I wrote about my research in the Valuation Office in Dublin at the time I had found the records—I'll provide the links in this synopsis—I'll just give a quick overview here.

Basically, records used in Ireland for property taxation came in big ledgers with each resident's name in the left column. As the years moved on and changes to residences occurred, the original resident's name was lined out, and—with changes marked in a different color ink—the new resident's name was entered. Thus, going through the property ledgers provides us a house history, so to speak, as the property changed hands.

Back in 2014, I provided the photo of the ledger page where I had found a Catherine Flanagan listed, living in the same property identified as 7f that had been labeled William Flanagan's place on Griffith's Valuation in 1853. Keep in mind, that property would have been within the boundaries of the Catholic parish Ballyagran, which our William, himself, had stated was his native home.

Following the trail of that property labeled 7f through the years, here is the progression of residents' names:

• 1853: William Flanagan
• 1855: Catherine Flanagan
• 1866: Catherine's name lined out, James Flanagan entered, labeled "68."
• 1906: Property now listed as owned by James Flanagan
• 1939: Property in probate (possible date of death for James?)
• 1941: Ledger entry states property "in ruins" with tax only for land, not structures

My "What If" question: what if Catherine Flanagan were William's mother? And what if James Flanagan were a brother to William? Or what if Catherine were a sister to William and James? Or mother to James? 

There could be all sorts of permutations to that "What If" game, and a thousand ways the unsuspecting genealogist could be led down the wrong branch of the family tree. Despite the risks, though, it warrants a closer look at any documentation we can find on this James Flanagan and his family—including the results found among those DNA matches who tie my father-in-law's line to the descendants of one James Flanagan of Cappananty. 

The Gift of Collateral Lines

 

Genealogy is a process of pushing backward through the years, one generation at a time. Eventually, we run into a brick wall that impedes our research progress. Then what? 

I've found one approach to making an end run around those brick walls is to research an ancestor's collateral lines—those brothers and sisters who might have been more fortunate to have their life's story captured by documentation. Using that research technique has been more than just another process; for me, collateral lines have often become a research gift.

With this current puzzle about my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan Malloy and the siblings who traveled with her from County Limerick in Ireland to, ultimately, Chicago, one key collateral line has been Anna's brother William. He was the one who made sure to leave behind a record—carved in stone, no less—of his origin in Parish "Ballygran." Once I took the search for the Flanagan family to that very parish in Ireland, I couldn't help but notice the entry in one 1841 record book signed, in a very clear hand, as Jacobus Flanagan, pastor of Ballygran.

It is in that same parish, whether you spell it precisely as Ballygran or Ballyagran, where the ancestors of one DNA match also happened to live. The ancestor, named James Flanagan—yes, that name, too, would be Jacobus in Latin—may have been born about the same time as Anna and William.

What is further interesting is to see how the names of the next generation echo those of the families of the Flanagan relatives who left Ireland for Chicago. While traditional Irish naming patterns may have been forsaken by those emigrants who left Ireland far behind, those who remained on the home turf were more likely to keep up a tradition which, in turn, could help solve our puzzle—with an added boost from genetic genealogy.

A further point to consider is to trace the changing hands of the property we had found, whose resident was, in 1853, listed as William Flanagan. As a first step in delving into this question about possible collateral lines, we'll take some time tomorrow to review my discoveries from that Ireland trip over ten years ago.