When the "Big Easy" Isn't Easy

 

It isn't easy searching for ancestral names in the Big Easy's passenger lists. I already knew that from trying to find my father-in-law's great-grandfather John Stevens, who supposedly came through the port at New Orleans from Ireland. Nor did looking for any of his Kelly in-laws help pinpoint those New Orleans arrivals. Now, trying a third time with yet another collateral line—Michael Creahan, John Stevens' eventual brother-in-law—I'm not finding any better results.

According to Michael Creahan's own obituary, he had arrived in this country at the age of twenty. Though it is hard to pinpoint his actual age, based on the most realistic of documented reports, it could be said that he was born any time between 1824 and 1830.

Taking a closer look at that obituary, I noticed it doesn't actually say he arrived in New Orleans on his immigrant journey, only that he spent ten years working there—with all the rest of his years in this country spent in Lafayette, Indiana. One could presume that meant the first stop was New Orleans—and that New Orleans was the port of his arrival here—but of course, the record doesn't come out and specifically say that.

So, what do we find in the passenger records for New Orleans? Not much. In one collection found through Ancestry.com, I did find one Michael Crahan—but that Michael Crahan was eighteen at the time of his arrival in 1851. On that same passenger list was a twelve year old girl named Mary Crahan, and a twenty year old named Catherine Crahan—but no Bridget or Patrick, our Michael's family members.

In another New Orleans passenger collection index at Ancestry, since Creahan brought up no results, I searched instead for Crane, an alternate spelling which materialized so often for this month's project. There, I did find a passenger listed as "M. Creehan" on a vessel arriving in New Orleans on February 10, 1848—a very possible date. But again, with the initial rather than a full given name, there was not enough information to conclude this was our Michael. Combined with no sign of Patrick or Bridget Creahan in that listing, it is doubtful this was our Michael's arrival.

Granted, one reliable listing of all available collections of New Orleans passenger records often mentions the phrase, "with some gaps." Perhaps it is just in the cards for me to accept that dilemma: Michael Creahan, his brother Patrick and his mother Bridget Doyle Creahan, may well have taken their migrant voyage from Ireland on a sailing vessel whose data has been lost to history.

Not in 1850

 

The all-consuming question for me this week: was Michael Creahan in New Orleans by the time of the 1850 census? To expand on that in a way that might help pinpoint the right Michael Creahan, just in case there were name twins: was Michael Creahan, son of Bridget Doyle Creahan and brother of Patrick Creahan, in New Orleans in time for that 1850 census? The answer—at least as far as I can see—not in 1850.

Granted, these missing members of a collateral line in my father-in-law's Kelly-Stevens family had some research challenges embedded in their very names. We may think of the name Bridget, for instance, as rather unusual here in America, but among Irish immigrants to this continent, the name was part of their heritage and a very popular name for women in older times, only recently dropping in popularity. In fact, Ireland's Central Statistics Office offers an app which examines the popularity of given names in their country by year, with the earliest year shown being 1964, when the name Bridget was ranked eighth of all baby names recorded in Ireland for that year. All that to say looking for an Irish immigrant Bridget in a city the size of New Orleans in 1850 might be a challenge.

Then, too, Michael Creahan's surname wasn't necessarily the easiest of names to record. Depending on the accent of the speaker and the accent the ears of the recorder were tuned to, that surname might go down on paper somewhat closer to Crane than Creahan. Even in the documents which I know belonged to Michael's own family, there was a wide variety of spellings.

Despite that, it was possible to go page by page through the census records for New Orleans, or at least do a bare-bones search for all surnames sounding like Crane, using not only Ancestry.com but FamilySearch.org, in case one company's indexing process missed what the record-keeper's handwriting might have been trying to tell us.

Still, no luck. Not for Bridget. Not for her other son Patrick. And certainly not for Michael.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, to look for those three family members in the 1850 census in New Orleans. After all, that was the lead gleaned from Michael's own obituary, which placed him as having arrived in port around 1847. It could be very likely that Michael worked to save money to send to Ireland so that his family could come join him after his arrival and establishment in New Orleans. Perhaps he only achieved that goal after moving north to Lafayette, Indiana, where we found him in the 1860 census. But judging from descriptions of the tenement surroundings of the places where Irish immigrant laborers settled in New Orleans, I wonder how likely it might have been that Michael was missed entirely in the enumeration process.

There are, of course, other ways to trace these three Creahans in New Orleans. We'll take some time tomorrow to see whether our results are more promising in the passenger records for that same time period.

Wondering Why

 

There comes a time when chasing our mystery ancestors that we begin wondering why. Why, for instance, did John Stevens, my father-in-law's great-grandfather, choose the port of New Orleans as his landing place after leaving his Irish homeland? Why did John Stevens' future wife, Catharine Kelly, and the entire Kelly family, also choose to head to New Orleans? And why did his brother-in-law, Michael Creahan, future husband of Catharine's sister Bridget Kelly, also head from Ireland to New Orleans?

When it comes to wondering why, I propose a universal resolution to that state of puzzlement: search for an answer. That, in effect, was what I did: look for reasons why these Irish immigrants to the United States didn't take the usual route to New York City—or even the less expensive alternative of moving to the British colony in Canada. That search, in fact, led to a productive exploration of this alternate destination.

As I discovered, the route from Ireland to New Orleans was a choice exercised by the Irish for almost one hundred years before the famine took its toll on the population of Ireland. It turns out there were logical reasons for such a draw. For one thing—a reason too easily dismissed in our less-reverent age, perhaps—the Catholic majority of that southern American port city was a draw to the persecuted Catholics in Ireland. Then, too—especially prior to American acquisition of the territory—New Orleans was once beholden to a nation which was not British, perhaps a draw for those Irish weary of their struggle with their English overlords.

Between 1842 and 1864, according to one estimate, 110,000 Irish entered the port of New Orleans. Another estimate pegs the number at 425,000 for Irish arriving in New Orleans. No matter what the count, the influx of Irish immigrants in New Orleans made the city the number two destination in the United States for Irish arrivals, second only to New York City.

When they arrived at the port in New Orleans, many Irish chose to move on to midwestern destinations, but a good number stayed and worked where they landed, just as did Michael Creahan. This, however, was not the easiest option in the long run. Given the climate and hazards of the environment there, combined with the usual jobs taken by many Irish immigrants—working at the port, or digging canals through mosquito-infested swamps—many died of yellow fever, cholera, or malaria. In 1850, for example, one New Orleans hospital admitted 18,476 residents suffering from such diseases, of whom 11,130 were Irish immigrants.

Another possible inducement to choose New Orleans as their destination might have been the cost of getting there. As one resource put it, cotton ships from New Orleans bound for Liverpool unloaded, then "filled their holds with human ballast for the return trip." The fare—for those who actually reached their destination—was a bargain.

Discovering these details through a little bit of research into a "side topic" helped enlighten me on the reasons why the Creahans, Kellys, and Stevenses might have chosen a destination far different than the one I assumed would be a more likely choice. It doesn't, however, provide me the documentation for their arrival—a task which we still will need to face up to in the coming days. More important than the paper proof that they arrived here in America—we already see signs of that occurrence in other records—what we need is a listing of the family constellations in each party's traveling group. And—though I doubt I will find it—some nod to the townlands they once called home in their particular county in Ireland.

At this stage, pre-discovery, at least we can hope.

Tracing Michael

 

There are some Irish immigrants in my father-in-law's heritage whose age seemed to be rather fluid. When they were young, they were very, very young—but when they were old, they were ancient.

Take Michael Creahan, the husband of Bridget Kelly. Bridget was the sister of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Catharine who, like that sister, died young leaving several children behind. Depending on the record, Michael was said to have been born somewhere between 1824 and 1827, or even to have a date of birth as late as 1842, according to his death certificate—and yet his 1915 obituary states his age at passing was eighty eight. It is only because of other identifying details that we'll be able to trace Michael Creahan over time, and hopefully glean the missing details about his journey to Lafayette, Indiana.

It is a good thing that we have some clues to guide us in that paper chase. Prime among those clues was the statement in Michael's obituary that he had spent ten years working in New Orleans before proceeding up the American waterways to Indiana. It was not lost on me that that was the same route followed by Bridget Kelly's own family, as well as the route taken by the future husband of Bridget's sister Catharine, John Stevens. You can see now what had put me in mind of the F.A.N. Club concept for this extended family. 

With Michael Creahan's timeline, as given in his obituary, it might serve me well to review whatever passenger records still exist for the port of New Orleans. Arriving in America in 1847, if we can safely extrapolate from the details given in his obituary, Michael did not immediately depart for Lafayette, but remained in New Orleans to work for ten years.

It is clear from the 1860 census, where he appeared with his wife Bridget and his Indiana-born one year old daughter Ellen, that he had been in Lafayette since at least 1858. Looking ten years ahead provides us more useful details to help in tracing Michael: the 1870 census, while showing the household after the loss of his wife, includes additional family members Bridget Creahan, his eighty four year old mother, and Patrick Creahan, likely his older brother.

These additional names may help identify the right Michael Creahan in passenger records—if the family traveled together—and locate them within the mass of Irish immigrants remaining in New Orleans for the 1850 census. And if we play our F.A.N. Club cards right, perhaps that will include a turn at locating the rest of the Kelly family in New Orleans, as well—perhaps even the impossible-to-find immigrant John Stevens.

When the FAN Club Keeps Calling

 

Sorting through siblings sometimes uncovers a missing member of the family, as we saw yesterday in tracing the unexpected niece in bachelor Matthew Kelly's 1880 household. We discovered that Matthew had a sister who died as a married woman with four young children. As it turns out, though that Kelly sister, Bridget, died before the 1870 census, we can still learn a lot about her family—particularly her husband—by following his record through the rest of his own life.

There is a reason for chasing after that seemingly unrelated person. Yes, as an in-law, Bridget's husband Michael Creahan would not likely be a blood relative of the Kelly line I'm working on. However, I'm banking on that one reason for continuing the search: the possibility that, even in the family's "F.A.N. Club," we may find ourselves led to some clues about further family connections.

That F.A.N. Club premise is calling my name quite loudly right now, and for good reason. Just taking a brief look at what I could find on Michael Creahan, I may have run across some leads. Thanks to the Find A Grave volunteer who transcribed his obituary onto his memorial on that website, I learned a few details about Michael's journey to his final home in Lafayette, Indiana. That record I confirmed by finding a similar version of the May 17, 1915, obituary which was published in the Bloomington Evening World in the Indiana town where Michael's daughter had moved.

We'll talk more about Michael Creahan's obituary tomorrow, but here are some details which made me want to look further at documenting the steps along his way to America. First, the obituary mentioned that Michael Creahan was from Limerick. While the obituary didn't specify whether that meant the city of Limerick or County Limerick, it did add that Michael had left his homeland about 1847, and at that time of emigration he was twenty years of age.

Another point brought out in Michael's obituary was that, having arrived in America, he spent all but ten years living in Lafayette, Indiana. Those other ten years? That was when Michael was working in New Orleans, bringing to mind the familiar immigration route of some other members of the extended Kelly family. Could Michael have been an early arrival among his family members, sending funds back for their eventual voyages to join him in the New World? Or did Michael actually follow the path because others from among his associates and neighbors had already been that way before him?

That's why the F.A.N. Club concept is tapping me on the shoulder: family, friends, associates, or former neighbors could have influenced Michael's decision to leave home for, eventually, Lafayette, Indiana, via the route others from Ireland had taken, through New Orleans and up the river waterways of the central United States.

Michael Creahan's obituary was a tempting starting point, but there are some other details we'll look at tomorrow to see whether we can glean any further clues on what brought all these Irish immigrants to Lafayette, Indiana, by the 1850s.

When Stumped by Ancestors, Keep Searching

 

On a mission to find a family member—any family member—who could provide clues as to where the immigrant Kelly family once lived in Ireland, we've run across a puzzle: who was A. M. Crahan? We've found the children of widow Mary Kelly and her deceased husband James handily all reported in the same household for the 1860 census: sons Matthew and Thomas, plus daughters Rose and Ann. We already know the three grandchildren Mary was caring for were the children of her deceased daughter Catharine Kelly Stevens, and we were even able to spot the youngest of those grandchildren in the Kelly household for the 1880 census, long after Mary's own passing in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. But when we look more closely at the Kelly family entry in that 1880 census, we're stumped by the appearance of another relative: a thirteen year old niece named A. M. Crahan. Who was she? More importantly, who was her mother?

The plain response to such unexpected discoveries is: when stumped by ancestors, we simply need to keep searching. Hopefully, there is an answer out there. Somewhere. But it sometimes takes quite a bit of  looking before we run into the finding.

I tackled this messy question several years ago. I won't repeat all the steps in the discovery process here, as my point now is to gather all I can find on the Kelly siblings of Catharine. It is they who, if anyone would, might point the way back to their home in Ireland, wherever it was. Yet of the four siblings found in the 1860 census, we've since discovered that Matthew and Rose died unmarried. The appearance of this Crahan niece tells us that there was another Kelly sibling not listed in that 1860 household. Who was she?

A woman married before the 1860 enumeration, whoever she was, she was gone before the time of the 1870 census. Through a long series of steps, I discovered the woman's husband was named Michael Creahan, and the daughter's initials—"A. M.," as she was listed in the Kelly household for the 1880 census—stood for Anna M. Creahan. Her missing mother, who died in 1869, was the former Bridget Kelly.

So there was another Kelly sibling, showing me that it sometimes takes a lot of effort to track down all the collateral lines in a research problem. Perhaps there will be even more siblings to discover in this Kelly family. But for now, as I review this discovery, I realize that Bridget's husband Michael Creahan, himself,  might have some clues to help us in our search for more details on where the Kelly family once lived in Ireland.