Seeking Signs of Connection

 

When two families seem like they should connect, but offer no signs of just how that could be, we begin the hunt for clues. In the case of the family of Dennis Tully and Margaret Hurley, DNA matches seem to indicate that this Dennis Tully could be related to an older man by the same name, my father-in-law's great-grandfather, husband of a different Margaret—Margaret Flannery.

Right now, I've been in the process of searching for signs of connection. The tiniest of hints is not too small to be seriously considered. Thus it was, when I discovered one tantalizing detail on the marriage record of the younger Dennis' daughter Margaret, I had to follow up on that information.

It didn't help that the only record I can access for this Margaret's wedding was a state register containing the transcription of returns for Wayne County, Michigan, during the second quarter of 1889. You'll see in a  moment why I'm regretting only having access to a handwritten transcription—and why I'm grateful that other governmental documents seem to clarify the issue for me.

Margaret Tully's marriage record—at least, according to this register—included some details which gave me pause. For one thing, though the bride's entry under the nickname Maggie wasn't too unusual, the names provided for her parents were confidence killers: John Tully and Mary McGuire. Not even close. And yet, her place of birth, listed as Watford, Canada, fit in perfectly with her parents' recent census record in Lambton County near the time of her birth.

It took a visit to other corroborating records to confirm that Maggie, bride of Henry Baxter, was indeed Margaret, daughter of Dennis Tully and Margaret Hurley. Her death record, also drawn up in Michigan, indicated that it was she who was both widow of Henry Baxter and daughter of Dennis and Margaret. To help secure the death record, I noticed the informant was named Anna Bristol, same given name as Maggie's eldest daughter—who eventually became the wife of Ward Bristol.

It was a different detail, however, which caught my eye and made me wonder about a connection with the other Tully family. Moving back to that original marriage register, the one for Maggie and Henry, the record indicated the names of the two witnesses to the ceremony. While I have no idea who Mabel Ramsey might have been, the other name—Michael Tully—could indeed be a key.

In our family's Tully line—that of the family descending from the other Denis and Margaret—there was a son whom I had missed entirely in the original process of tracing my father-in-law's line back through to Ireland. That son's name was Michael. The first notion I had that I might have missed a member of Denis' family was when I spotted Michael's surname while doing a visual sweep of the census page containing Denis' own family in 1861. There he was, another Tully on the same page, with his oldest son named exactly the same as his father, in traditional Irish fashion.

Tracing this mystery Michael Tully through documents, I eventually was convinced that I had found a missing son of our Denis and Margaret. Not long afterwards, I discovered two descendants of that Michael through Ancestry.com, started corresponding with them, and eventually asked each of them if they'd be willing to take a DNA test. Each did. And turned out to match my husband. 

Now, seeing that same name—Michael Tully—I wondered whether the witness to the Baxter wedding was a relative of Maggie. After all, our Michael had moved to Michigan, just the same as Maggie had done. And Michael—born in 1834 back in Ballina, County Tipperary, Ireland—would have been only about four years younger than Maggie's father Dennis.

Double checking the family roster for the other Dennis, just in case, I confirmed that Maggie did not have a brother named Michael. The witness to her wedding had to have been connected through some other relationship.

It all started seeming like a great confirmation of family connections, until I remembered one other detail. Michael Tully, while moving from Canada within the year after birth of his son in 1879, may have been living in Wayne County, Michigan, as early as the 1880 census, but after that, he had moved his family further on to settle in Chicago, near his other siblings. Worse, while documentation during the time period doesn't give me a clear indication that I've found the right man, an 1885 death record in Chicago for a man by the same name and approximate age reveal that this Michael Tully couldn't possibly have been the witness at Maggie Tully's 1889 wedding.

A Will, But No Way

 

If the newspaper reports at the end of life for the two successful Sullivan brothers, James and Jeremiah, neglected the opportunity to wax eloquent about the two self-made men and their Irish heritage, perhaps if we take a step backwards to the generation of their immigrant father, we might glean a bit more information about their heritage.

Timothy Sullivan, according to census records, had been born in Ireland any time between 1807 and 1813. Based on the birth dates of the two Sullivan children bridging the gap between life in County Kerry and life in Michigan, the Sullivan family could have arrived in North America no earlier than 1848, nor later than 1852.

While all those dates are devised from reports in various census records, one thing about Timothy Sullivan was sure: his eldest son, Cornelius, showed up at court in the county of Oakland, Michigan, on behalf of his mother and siblings, to present his father's will on September 9, 1871.

There were no surprises in the listing of names of the interested parties—although, given our difficulties determining Timothy's origin in County Kerry, I halfway hoped there were. Wish as I might for any clues to lead us back home to Ireland, though, this is what we learn about the family in 1871.

Gone was son John, who likely died before the 1870 census, where his name was already missing. In no particular order, the remainder of the family was listed: Timothy's widow Mary, his sons James, Timothy, Jeremiah, and the petitioner, Cornelius; and his daughters Mary and Elizabeth. No mention of any other relatives, though Timothy did specify his wish that $2,000 be set aside by his family for a charitable donation to an unspecified cause.

Cornelius, acting on behalf of his family, was appointed to settle the estate. In the process, it was determined that his father's accounts were not sufficient to satisfy the debts against them, and Cornelius was authorized to sell off his father's various properties in and around Detroit.

By August of the next year—introducing note of a procedure for which I wish we could read between the lines—Cornelius' mother, widow of the deceased Timothy, presented to the court "her written renunciation of the will of her said husband and of her election." That being given on August 31, 1872, and "duly filed," the record drops off with the turn of the page, leaving us to wonder, despite realizing we were not going to glean the details we first had come to find, what turn of events that might have signified.

Another search. Perhaps, another unproductive lead. But one we can't just not follow.

 

Going, Going, Gone

 

What can be learned about our ancestors from hundred-year-old newspaper reports? In some unfortunate instances, barely anything.

Take this example of how, in four chances to provide useful information, the local newspaper failed to say much of substance concerning the family of one of the city's well-known businessmen.

In the afternoon edition of The Detroit Times on Friday, June 7, 1912, the paper noted on its front page: "James Sullivan Ill With Appendicitis." Most of us having suffered through such an attack would probably have been better suited, had that news not been noised abroad by the local newspaper, thank you very much. But this was James Sullivan, founder of the Sullivan Packing Company of Detroit, thus apparently a successful businessman.

The article didn't provide much further information—not, at least, what a genealogical researcher might have been seeking. After the headline, the brief article shared more personal information, including that he:

was reported, Friday morning, to be resting easily after a good night in Harper hospital. He submitted to an operation for appendicitis late Thursday, and complications that ensued made his condition so serious that not even members of his family were permitted to see him.

That family, incidentally, would include his wife Catherine who, as a former Falvey, is the likely DNA connection that links my husband, through his own Falvey second great-grandmother, to descendants of this line. While I have yet to identify the most recent common Falvey ancestor in either of their trees, the only detail I'm gleaning from this series of articles on Catherine's husband James is the very public sharing of his most personal medical conditions.

That, however, was not all. There was an update in the same paper, the very next day. After the previous afternoon's cliff-hanger, The Detroit Times was quick to inform their reading public that

James Sullivan...was reported, Saturday morning, by the hospital authorities, to have passed a good night with normal temperature obtaining.

Don't breathe a sigh of relief just yet, for ten days from that brief news report, The Detroit Times cut to the chase with the abrupt headline: "James Sullivan to be Buried Wednesday." Other than the barest of details, the straightforward paragraph failed to supply those important details a family historian would be seeking, a century after the fact. The newspaper declared him to be fifty six years of age, and revealed that he had been born in Birmingham, Michigan. Giving the date for the funeral and its location—Saint Leo's Church—followed by burial at Mount Olivet, the article mentioned only that James was survived by "his widow, four daughters and three sons."

As a recap—in case their readers missed that detail about the passing of James Sullivan—on the afternoon following the funeral, The Detroit Times ran another minuscule insertion on the front page of its June 19, 1912, edition. Under the heading, "James Sullivan Buried," the article recapped the morning's events, taking care to list the names of all eight of the active pallbearers, but again saying not one word about who the bereaved family members might have been. Different times, different world. 

"A Great Expert in This Line"

 

Our Irish immigrant ancestors may have arrived on America's eastern shores, penniless and starving, but that didn't keep them from employing a native cleverness to advance their cause in the years ahead. And that may be a fortunate thing for those of us researching our roots, for the successful sometimes garner more public attention than the merely destitute.

As for our Sullivans in Detroit, any detail which could serve to connect them with their specific homeland—wherever it might have been in County Kerry—has escaped our notice. So far. But the glimmer of a hint that some of Timothy and Mary Sullivan's sons rose above their humble beginnings has me hoping for a breakthrough with a different resource: newspapers.

While the newspaper-issued obituaries and memorials of past centuries sometimes lacked for the specific details a genealogist seeks, they did, however, sometimes provide a more colorful portrait of the deceased. Perhaps as a last resort, let's look at what can be found about that Sullivan family we've been researching in Detroit, Michigan.

My first discovery of the possibility that the Sullivan sons might have achieved some success was when I found the first notice of Timothy Sullivan's fifth-born son's passing. Jeremiah, born about four years after the Sullivan family arrived in Michigan, had been the next to youngest child in the family—until baby brother Peter died as a young boy.

Jeremiah appeared in his family's household as a four year old in 1860 and, predictably, as a fourteen year old in 1870. Long before the 1880 census, though, Jeremiah and his entire family was faced with the loss of their father, as according to his will, Timothy died on September 3, 1871.

Perhaps it was such a start in adulthood that Jeremiah received from his apparently successful farming father that could explain my next encounter with Jeremiah: a notice of his own passing. It was a modest insertion in the death notices in The Detroit Free Press on Thursday, May 10, 1923, that provided a clue that Jeremiah had met with quite a bit of success in the years since his father's passing.

SULLIVAN—May 3rd, at his winter home, Sawtelle, California: Jeremiah, beloved husband of Myrtle Sullivan, son of the late Timothy and Mary Sullivan, dear brother of Timothy Sullivan, Mrs. John Gleason and the late Cornelius and James Sullivan. Funeral Friday morning from his residence....

While the listing of family members might have sufficed some researchers, one word caught my eye: "his winter home." Despite living in California myself, I had no clue where Sawtelle was, and had to attend first to my insatiable curiosity. That taken care of, the next order of research business was to learn something more about this Jeremiah. What had he devoted his life to that provided the liberty to maintain a second home more than two thousand miles from his main residence?

Further searching didn't reveal much, though I did encounter a black and white version of his likeness in a news article in that same day's edition of the newspaper. Under the heading, "Packer who Died in West, Buried Here," the only additional details provided were the accolades heaped upon the recently departed: "one of the pioneers in the meat packing industry in Michigan," and that he was associated with the Sullivan Packing company "since its incorporation."

The next day, under the "Market Notes" section of the paper, a long article reviewed Jeremiah Sullivan's business accomplishments, including that he was in "the live stock business," specializing in buying hogs from various midwestern cities and shipping to Buffalo. According to the notes in The Detroit Free Press, he was "a great expert in this line" and "one of the best known men in the live stock business in the state of Michigan."

He had worked in partnership with his brother James—husband of the Falvey connection I'm tracing—but the news mentioned that that partnership had been dissolved at the time of James' passing.

Thus, while this series of newspaper articles on Jeremiah Sullivan didn't wax as poetic as I might have hoped, when it came to the opportunity to say where his parents originated (as some other such obituaries have done in this time period), it did direct me to look one step further: to any news reporting for the other partner in this Sullivan family business, Jeremiah's older brother James.    

 

Different Records, Conflicting Realities

 

We can always hope, can't we, that the record of our ancestors' foreign-born siblings might lead us back home to the village from which they began their immigrant journey. Chances are really good, however, that no matter how hard we struggle with the possibilities to bring our Sullivans back home to Ireland, we will come up empty-handed.

There is a good reason for this: while many Irish church records have recently been digitized and posted online, there are still many more which are, so far, unaccounted for. Apparently, that includes the four Irish-born children of County Kerry residents Timothy and Mary Sullivan: Cornelius, John, Mary, and Elizabeth.

Of course, it would help to have a correctly-spelled maiden name for Mrs. Sullivan. Depending on which record we use, her maiden name was either a spelling variant of Monaghan or Minahen. Of all their Irish-born children, the only one I could find back in County Kerry might have been Elizabeth. According to the U.S. Census for 1860, Elizabeth was born around 1848. I could find one Irish baptismal record for an Elizabeth Sullivan, daughter of Timothy, baptised in August of 1847, but her mother's name was listed as Moynihan. Not quite the same.

Then, there was an Elizabeth, daughter of Timothy Sullivan, baptised in County Kerry at a date much closer in agreement with that census report—May of 1849—but while her mother's name was indeed Mary, the surname was not even close to Monaghan. It was Herlihy. Not a likely candidate, despite appearing in the parish records for Kilcummin, a locale featured in my searches for the Sullivans' shirttail relatives who later connected to my Kelly and Falvey lines.

The same story developed as I searched for those other Irish-born Sullivan offspring. Not much to find, when looking at records back in Ireland. So what about looking forward and relying on another record set to answer my question about their origin? Taking a look at the death certificates I could locate for any of Timothy and Mary Sullivan's children, I came face to face with another drawback to relying on death certificates: people say the most unpredictable things when faced with the stress of losing a loved one. The last thing anyone is thinking of, at that point, is correctly reporting the maiden name of the deceased's mother.

Case in point: these discoveries that can be found for the Sullivan descendants. The drawback in locating any information subsequent to the death of Timothy Sullivan's eldest—son Cornelius, born in County Kerry about 1842—was that he died at a fairly young age. At the time of his death in Michigan in 1877 of "d[r]opsey of the heart," his parents were named, thankfully, but his and their location of birth was simply noted as Ireland. And even though I've seen some ornate memorials placed at the grave sites of those who died during this era, Cornelius Sullivan's marker did not gush on, when it came to stating place of birth.

Looking to some of his siblings who lived to a much later age, even then the revelations are straightforward. Cornelius' brother James, the second of his siblings who were American-born, had the straightforward report of both parents—with Mary's name shown as Minahen—born in Ireland. No help there. Same for their sister Mary, in whose 1931 death certificate her mother was listed as Monaghan, but both parents were stated to be born, simply, in Ireland.

Despite the misfortune of every Sullivan, so far, following exactly the stated protocol of such reporting requirements, it always pays to look a little further. As it turned out, there were a couple other Sullivan descendants who could not restrain themselves from stating the exact origin of their Sullivan forebears. It is the little reporting errors such as these which inspire me to keep looking. And it is their continuance, in like manner, to buck the system that turns out to aggravate me no end.

Recall that while eldest Sullivan son Cornelius died at a young age, he did not die childless. We are gifted—well, at least partially—by the reports on the death certificates of two of Cornelius' own children. Keep in mind that, even though these are death certificates for Cornelius' children, each of those documents were required to also report where those decedents' father was born. Thus, we glean the following for Irish-born Cornelius from two of his children's death certificates.

From Cornelius' youngest child, son Timothy Paul Sullivan, who was not quite three years of age when his father died, we gain the following.

 

It is the little gifts like this which seem to help our research cause so much. Here, on this son's record, we gain the report that his father—the elder Timothy Sullivan's firstborn son Cornelius—was born in Killarney, Ireland.

On the other hand, with young Timothy's sister Elizabeth, we see the following about Cornelius from her 1928 death certificate:

 

Same Cornelius, different reality. Just the opposite of what was given in her brother's document, this one has her father the American-born parent—in Pontiac, Michigan—and her mother born in Ireland. So much for the "gift" of Elizabeth's brother's certificate, showing their mother being the one born in the states—in that case, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. If we find reversals like this, how certain can we be in that report about the Sullivan origin being in Killarney?

What does that say about the people those Sullivans left behind? Could the fact that Timothy Paul Sullivan himself once served as an undertaker boost our confidence to rely on his family members to uphold the career-based care he surely had to take with records, himself? Or, checking to see who the reporting party was in each case, does this tell us anything about whether women or men tend to provide more reliable answers? Or that sons would remember less about their deceased mother's origin than they might about their father? 

In looking for any records of the Sullivan family's origin, whether factually accurate or more wistfully fanciful, I can't simply accept that report about their origin being in Killarney. After all, I ran across that same situation in Johanna Falvey's own obituary. Johanna, the one who started this whole research chase, had family who declared she was from the "Lakes of Killarney"—a romantic notion, but not necessarily accurate. It may be possible that the same dynamic was operating here with this other family from County Kerry. A lot of people may have heard reports about Killarney, but hardly anyone could pinpoint with accuracy any locations with names such as Firies or Kilcummin.

There is, however, one more avenue to explore. As it turns out, some of the Sullivan children turned out to become successful businessmen in their own right. With success comes wider networks, and thus, higher possibilities of being featured in articles in newspapers—perhaps, even, meriting a wordy obituary or two. We'll take a look at what we can find on that front, tomorrow. 

Sullivans: Let's Try This Again

 

Why, considering the prevalence of a surname like Sullivan—especially coming from County Kerry—would I attempt finding the ancestors of someone with a name like that, if it wouldn't even be the line of the family I'm seeking? Because the name I am seeking—Falvey or O'Falvey—is nearly as popular, back in the Irish county of the family's origin. Remember that five-fingered fit into the genealogical glove? I'm going for a perfect ten: one hand for Sullivan, the other for Falvey. Perhaps combining two common names—and adding all facets of their specific families—I will sort the right Sullivans and Falveys from the misleading ones.

It's a descendant in this particular Sullivan-Falvey line who happens to be a DNA match through my husband's second great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey. All twenty nine puny centiMorgans this DNA match has in common with my husband fit into just one tiny segment, but it's enough to pique my interest in tracing this match's ancestry to see whether those roots lead me back to the relatives of our own Johanna Falvey from County Kerry.

While this match's Falvey ancestor was born in the United States—shortly after her family arrived in Michigan in the early 1850s—at least I have been able to glean her siblings' names as well as the same detail for her husband. It is, in fact, on account of her husband that I'm even trifling with those frustrating Sullivan kin again at all. It was their family story, you see, which mirrored Catherine Falvey's tale almost exactly—except with one helpful key: her husband James Sullivan was part of a family with several older siblings who were born not in America, but back in Ireland. Tracing that line, hopefully, will help me zero in on just the right Falvey connection, as well. So let's take a look at what we can discover about this Sullivan line, once they settled in the farm area outside Detroit, Michigan.

Catherine Falvey, born in Detroit about 1853, according to the subsequent census record in 1860, was the second-born child of immigrants Daniel and Mary Falvey. In due time, she married James Sullivan, second child born into the Sullivan family after their arrival in Detroit, but all told, sixth child of Timothy and Mary Sullivan.

Because of extensive records left behind by each of the Sullivan children, it was not hard to gather that James Sullivan's mother's maiden name was something like Monaghan—the spelling varied according to which report was given for her children's own death records. But finding any records of what became of James' father, Timothy, was more of a challenge. As you can imagine, Timothy was a popular given name to attach to that ubiquitous Sullivan surname, and the possible options for his own death record didn't leave enough information to clinch the right one.

Along with Mary Monaghan, though, Timothy Sullivan gave the world at least four children who were born in Ireland—two sons and two daughters. Their oldest they named Cornelius, born approximately 1842, thus providing us a possible clue to determine his parents' own wedding date. Following Cornelius, the couple baptised son John around 1844. After that, they welcomed in two daughters: Mary in 1846 and Elizabeth in 1848, after which point the family made arrangements to leave Ireland for a new continent.

An additional benefit of having the first four Sullivan children born in Ireland is that we can be slightly more sure that the family might have adhered to the traditional Irish naming pattern. From this, we can garner the notion that Timothy's own father might have been named Cornelius, and that his mother might have been Elizabeth. This, however, will be only modestly helpful in locating any further information on Timothy's own birth, as his age given in later census records leads us to believe he was born any time from 1802 to 1813, an era from which not many Irish baptismal records survived.

However, if we are fortunate—and that is a big if—at least one of these children of Timothy and Mary Monaghan Sullivan will appear in Irish Catholic baptismal records, leading us back to their point of origin in County Kerry. 

 

Kate's Sullivan Beau

 

When we research the relatives we've never met—those ancestors whose life story ended long before our own time—we need to take care that we don't superimpose our assumptions about everyday living upon people whose reality didn't include telephones or cars, let alone computers. When we think of alarm clocks, we need to think more along the lines of roosters or hungry cows in the barn. And when we think of weddings, we most likely need to think "arranged" more than star-crossed.

Thus, despite my dismay in discovering that the ancestor of my husband's Falvey DNA match was married to yet another Sullivan, there may be a silver lining in that surname challenge. Perhaps, just perhaps, the reason Catherine Falvey married another Michigan-born child of Irish immigrants wasn't because they fell in love in high school. Perhaps it was because Catherine's family once knew James Sullivan's family back in County Kerry, Ireland.

That, of course, would be the optimal outcome. Then, I could trace yet another Sullivan line and hope it would lead me to the townland these folks once called home. In the meantime, though, we need to paper our trail back home with solid documents to support our case.

Here's why James Sullivan's circumstances have such a tempting draw on me. For one thing, we can find him in the 1860 census records, just as we did for Catherine Falvey's family. There he was, with his seven siblings, all living with their Irish-born parents Timothy and Mary Sullivan in the former township of Greenfield, Michigan, now part of Detroit.

Unlike Catherine Falvey's family, however, not all of James' siblings were born in Michigan. For some reason, Timothy and Mary stayed in Ireland long enough to bring four of their children into the world: eldest son Cornelius, second son John, and daughters Mary and Elizabeth. It was after Elizabeth's arrival around 1848 but before the birth of their fifth child Timothy, about 1851, that we can mark the family's arrival in North America.

While having the names of four Irish-born Sullivans may help me isolate that family constellation back in Ireland, the pattern of their immigration makes me wonder yet something else: could it be that they came to Detroit specifically because they had other family or near neighbors already settled in Detroit area? Or, seeing the Falveys' own family pattern in the 1860 census—their first child after their arrival here was also born in Michigan in 1851—could it be that the Sullivans and Falveys traveled together from Ireland?

I'm eyeing research cues such as these for one unfortunate reason: though it is clear that Catherine Falvey's father was named Daniel Falvey, I've already discovered that it will be a challenge to trace him back from his adopted home in Detroit to his origin in Ireland. Though I can find news on Daniel Falvey's family in America, there is not much to go by, once we jump back to the place where life began for that earlier generation of Falveys. Once again, my hope rests on finding details about yet another Sullivan family—one which, hopefully, guided the marriage of their son to a Falvey daughter for reasons beyond our modern-day approach to weddings.  

Nooo, Not Another Sullivan!

 

As promised yesterday, our purpose today is to meet someone new in my quest to ascertain the roots of my husband's second great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey. That someone new, as I've already mentioned, was Catherine Falvey, and I found her in Detroit. 

The reason I'm interested in this particular Catherine Falvey is that somehow, one of her descendants shares a minute segment of DNA matching the exact pattern claimed by my husband. A Falvey match, I presume. My goal, if I can't trace Johanna Falvey's family line back to Ireland, is to see whether I have any better results in following the immigrant line of this other Falvey descendant. Let's take a look and see what can be found about this other Falvey family.

For one thing, unlike Johanna Falvey who was already married to John Kelly before leaving Ireland, this Catherine Falvey did not immigrate to America as an adult. Rather, she was born here to immigrant parents. She can easily be found in the 1860 census, living in Detroit along with her immigrant parents, older brother, and younger siblings. All the children in this Falvey household were born in Michigan, beginning in the early 1850s.

While it is true that I might face the same research challenges seeking the marriage record of her parents, Daniel and Mary Falvey, as I have with the other related lines I've attempted to follow back to Ireland, at least I have six additional Falvey names to pursue in hopes of at least one mention of connections back to the home country or relationships with other Falvey members.

While I will also pursue Catherine Falvey's siblings' lines for clues, our first step is to see what can be discovered about Catherine, herself. She is, after all, the direct line ancestor of the person whose DNA matches that of my husband. We'll need to rule out any unforeseen alternate family connections—after all, we need to make sure it is Falvey, and no other surname, which is the connection tying these two DNA matches together in their one shared segment. From that point, the rest of the story needs to be to examine Catherine's line to assure us that she is indeed the Falvey ancestor of the DNA match, and not another Falvey second great-grandmother—although, in that case, since it involves examining connections to living individuals, I won't be posting about that portion of my research.

So, what can be discovered about Catherine Falvey, herself? Step one is to trace her parents' household through each decennial census record I can find—all, thankfully, remaining in the Detroit area. It isn't long, though, until the expected happens. After finding Catherine in her parents' home in the 1860 and 1870 census records, she is in a new home for the 1880 census as, yes, she, too, has married. Her husband? A Michigan-born child of Irish immigrants, same as Catherine.

Though I can't yet find any marriage record, I can infer from the 1880 census that Catherine and her intended were married about 1879 in Michigan. In time, "Kate" and her husband would become proud parents of seven children, all carrying a surname which seems vaguely familiar to me, after all my attempts at taking another alternate route to discover the parents of my Johanna Falvey and her husband John Kelly: another Sullivan connection!

What is it with these Sullivans? Am I forever doomed to keep bumping into them in this research maze? They seem to be everywhere, intertwined into the life stories of both my Falveys and my Kellys. Let's hope this time, that Sullivan name leads us back home to the right destination in Ireland.

Life on the Installment Plan

Just think of this as the story of one man's life sentence on the installment plan.

John Hogue, the convicted murderer in Ontario whose life was spared in an eleventh-hour reprieve by the Canadian government, may have seen his life sentence in Canada eventually reduced to a mere ten years, but that wasn't the end of his debt to society. Apparently, there were more charges to face.

Battle Creek, Michigan, for instance, wasn't about to give up on seeing justice served in the March, 1916, safe-cracking case at the Arthur B. Mitchell Billiard Hall—although authorities even ten years later still insisted that the crook's real name was James Gordon. That little event had netted John Hogue a cool $422 on his way to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Back in 1916, it was Battle Creek's detective G. W. Colby who, in vain, had chased the suspect all the way to Toledo, Ohio, only to find he had just been released after questioning by authorities there. Now, on April 1, 1926, it was Sheriff G. W. Colby, accompanied by Calhoun County prosecutor Cortwright, who finally got his man when he traveled to Detroit to meet up with the Ontario provincial police escorting Hogue across the border. A lot had happened back in Michigan since Hogue last blew through town.

Marshall, the county seat of Calhoun County, in which Battle Creek was situated, was the scene of the trial in circuit court the morning of April 22. Since officials at the Kingston penitentiary where Hogue had been incarcerated in Canada had reported that he had been "a model prisoner," perhaps he had shown some signs of reform. In his own mind, apparently, he believed himself to be a much different man than the one who had last darkened the doors of Battle Creek, for in this case, he had "hoped for release on probation."

Authorities in Calhoun County saw otherwise for, according to that day's Marshall Evening Chronicle, Hogue was duly reminded that

the crime for which he stood charged in Calhoun County is a serious one.

Somehow, the incongruity of all that had transpired in the past ten years of Hogue's life suddenly slapped me in the face. Here, after narrowly escaping the death sentence for murder, the man has been retrieved to stand trial for a theft of less than five hundred dollars—admittedly of much more worth then than it is today, but still of no comparison to the value of a life lost—and the court chooses to remind him that the crime "is a serious one."

In the end, the judge turned out to be quite lenient, even in this "serious" case. He chose to give the minimum sentence—one year—and then was quoted in the newspaper as commenting,

With your good time you'll have to serve only about ten months. Furthermore I am going to recommend that when you are released on parole that you may live outside the state.

That, essentially, provided the green light, after serving his sentence, for Hogue to return home to live near his parents in West Virginia, "who are well to do."

What a fortunate turn of events and best-hoped-for outcome for Hogue—except for one thing. According to The Escanaba Daily Press—that spot as far away from Battle Creek as one could get and still be in Michigan—their April 1, 1926 report mentioned one other point of business:

A message today was received from Sheriff Thomas Shaugancy [sic] of Madison, Wis., indicating Stewart or Hogue is wanted there for blowing two safes in February, 1916.

If Michigan never forgets the wrongs committed against them, why would Wisconsin?

Questions Genealogists Ask Themselves

If you've been busily engaged, looking up all the details on your ancestors, you may find yourself asking only the most basic of questions—sort of like the who, what, where, and when of the proverbial newspaperman. Just the facts, ma'am.

When the stories get messy, however, the questions move from the realm of the academic to a more gut level response:

• "They did what?!"
• "What were they thinking?"

With civil engineer John Syme Hogue's story, questions took that latter left turn for me. Yes, indeed, he was a civil engineer, according to an early Michigan marriage record I found for him, dated November 27, 1915—although from accounts of his early activities, his was an engineering application of a less-civil sort.

Going back over John Hogue's family history, there was absolutely no indication that a man such as this would have taken the path he chose. There had to be a back story, I kept telling myself. But the more I looked, the less likely I was to find any dirt. Other than vague newspaper references to the possibility of his use of drugs—nothing specified—there were no clues as to what compelled him along his downward spiral.

I've mentioned that his was a family that was said to be both prominent and well-respected in his hometown of Charleston, West Virginia, and that his roots led straight back to luminaries in this country's formative years, including Chief Justice John Marshall. Lest you doubt that connection would yield any personal meaning for him, given the separation of generations, think again. In a May 10, 1942, announcement in the Society page of The Charleston Gazette, this handy detail emerged about the wedding attire of one of John Hogue's nieces:

The wedding gown is that worn by Mary Willis Ambler of Yorktown, Va., for her wedding in 1783 to Chief Justice John Marshall, and is one of the heirlooms in the Marshall House in Richmond.

You can be sure the bride, wearing her third great grandmother's wedding gown, had her photograph featured prominently alongside the three-column-long report of the occasion. Not to mention, such phrases as "old and prominent families" handily laced the article as well.

I've spent hours poring over newspaper accounts linked to family names, in hopes of finding something to reveal The Big Answer as to how and why the younger John Syme Hogue turned to a life of crime. So far, there's been nothing in print. That isn't to say I've exhausted this search trail. Perhaps, embedded in some archive or collection of papers, there will be the telltale reason. If there is one.

In the meantime, lacking any discovery via searches on John's own name, the next step is to check out his brother's name, for it was Andrew O'Beirne Hogue who played the role of savior in his condemned convict brother's turn of fortune at the critical juncture lying between the provincial Supreme Court sentence condemning him to die and the appeal for a retrial initiated by his Canadian defense attorney that March of 1917.

Above: Entry for the November 27, 1915, marriage license to wed John S. Hogue of West Virginia and Mary Crider of Ohio in Detroit, Michigan. Image courtesy Ancestry.com. Somehow, I doubt this Detroit wedding received the same fanfare as the later Society page coverage for that of his niece, back in his hometown.  

More to Love About Crowdsourcing

The genealogy community is made up of a very giving bunch of people. We’ve seen that all along—even back during those days when researchers used to submit queries for publication in real newsletters and journals. You know, the ones we used to print on paper.

As the genealogy community migrates to more digital means of both research and communication, our altruistic tendencies have made that transition as well. We’ve seen peers on genealogical forums helping each other with questions as basic as where to access local records, or as complex as isolating which child belongs to which multiple-great grandmother—and fingering which last will and testament said so. I know I’ve benefited from that kind of help; I’m sure you have, also.

So it was quite rewarding to become part of that experience once again, the other day, when Kat shared what she had discovered about online resources in Detroit for Catholic cemeteries there. Of course, I had a heyday reveling in that discovery, myself.

But the story didn’t stop there. The next logical step was to share the good news in a meaningful, practical manner, and Iggy was just the one to do it. As a Find A Grave volunteer, he figured it would be helpful to others to create a memorial for the Barkleys in Detroit, these newly-found possible Flannery descendants—even though they are not part of his own family lines—and deftly added several entries on Find A Grave.

It is all like a big chain reaction: one person helps another, who in turn helps others. As others pass the details along, we collectively make more information available to a wider circle of researchers. Sometimes, we use the organizations and structures that are already there for the using—websites like Find a Grave and online forums like Rootsweb—and sometimes, we create our own ways and places to share the information.

No matter how we do it, we are participating in one aspect of genealogical research that creates such a powerful resource: we are giving back to the community as well as benefiting from it. We are passing along the discoveries that we found useful in the hopes that others will find them just as helpful in their own research.

In the process, we amplify what is available for genealogical pursuits. In many cases, the work is done by—or through—organization. Sometimes the work is contributed through concerted effort—like the War of 1812 pension records preservation work—and sometimes the work is done by members working together from one group, like a local genealogical society. Many times, though, it is the handiwork of individuals, contributing what they can to wikis or blogs or other means of online communication.

The strength of that will to give back is what fuels the genealogical community’s viable impetus. Sure, there has been a rise in large commercial entities, willing to provide the giant machine of digitization that has brought all of us great research resources—for a price. But there is still a place for that lone individual who is willing to realize: I have what you need. Here: I’m willing to share. Much as the field of astronomy has benefited from “citizen scientists,” the world of genealogy has come a long way, thanks to this interactive ability to respond to others in our online universe of researchers with that mutual quest for ancestors.

Like Romping in a Newly-Found Playground

So I hissed and moaned about something. Again. I was having trouble navigating the genealogical research waters in new territory: Detroit, Michigan. Not that I haven’t been thumbing through the files there before. It’s just that all our family lines have been there and soon passed along to greener pastures.

Maybe Detroit is turning out to be a stop along the Irish immigrant highway—that detour to the New World that requires the weary traveler to pass through Canada before arriving at the final destination in the land of the free. It turned out to be true for another branch of our Tully line—Michael and Margaret and children, who moved from Paris, Ontario, through Detroit to their final stop in Chicago. We traced them along that route before.

This time, though, I was looking for a different Michael Tully—son of John and Catherine. And, since I stumbled across them, I’m also searching for another Michael who might turn out to be family—part of the Edmund Flannery family, also from Paris, Ontario.

I couldn’t find what became of them after their arrival in Detroit. They were there for the 1870 census. And the 1880 census. And then—what? I couldn’t find any trace of them.

Normally, my first recourse in this dilemma would be to look them up on Find A Grave. Even though Detroit is a sizeable place, I could be fairly certain that they would only show up in a Catholic cemetery. But which one? Turns out there were more than one Catholic cemetery. And none produced the results I hoped for on Find A Grave.

My next stop would be to look up the cemetery listing on Find A Grave to get more information on each specific cemetery. After that, I’d usually Google each cemetery name to find its website address—then pull up the site and hope it included search capabilities so I could look up specific burials. The self-serve approach is always appreciated. But seldom available.

After my recent attempt at that same pattern when researching descendants on our Kelly line in Denver, though, I made one discovery: sometimes urban areas spread out to include so much of the county that burial locations have to be moved to a neighboring county. Thus, in Denver, the Catholic cemetery which contained the remains of our Kelly relatives was actually in a different county—which, unbeknownst to me at the time, gave me no search results, a frustrating experience.

Perhaps, I thought, the same thing was happening to me in Detroit. I certainly wasn’t getting any promising hits for all my searching.

The moral of this story—and I’ll say this up front so it won’t get lost in any more verbiage—is to never make assumptions that a search won’t work. Just do the search. Do it! All of it. All the possibilities. And then some.

Thankfully, that is not where the story ends. This is where you can see why I am so enthusiastic about the current crowdsourcing aspect of genealogical research. I love that we can share our dilemmas, tell others what stumps us. That’s why I’m a fan of social media—and even those wood-burning clunkers like the genealogy forums of the nineties. We each get the opportunity to share what we know—and at some point, get to reap what we sow with the exchange of information with someone who knows what we need to learn.

Blog readership fits right in the middle of that realm. Do you ever notice how blogs create community? Of the different blogs you read, you’ve surely noticed the continuing conversation that goes on, right below each post. That’s why I like to encourage researchers to share what they’ve found by starting their own blog: eventually (admittedly this takes longer for some people) a distant cousin will find his or her way to your post. If not a cousin, then some kind soul who has something helpful to contribute to the conversation.

That’s why I had that kid-in-candy-shop kind of happy-dance day yesterday: reader Kat passed around the Internet candy from Detroit, and I was bouncing off the walls, merrily looking up every Flannery and Tully connection I could find on this newfound website.

Yeah, if only I had looked farther, myself. If only I had stuck to my usual best intentions. But I didn’t. And I had good reason to—past experience and all. But since I didn’t, I would have missed a great search opportunity if Kat hadn’t mentioned that link to Mount Olivet and the Mount Elliott cemetery association.

I played around with what I could find. I took that site out for a spin. A joy ride. There were plenty of Flannerys listed. Even a few Tullys. And those married daughters I couldn’t find the other day? I zeroed in on the right Mary Lynch (out of several possibilities), and found both Anna Barkley and her husband George.

Don’t think I’ll be doing everything online, though. On my to-do list for today is placing a call to the Mount Olivet cemetery (where the records for Mount Elliott are held). I want to see if any of those Flannerys are buried in what is called a family plot. Hopefully, if the person on the other end of the line is helpful and not too busy, I’ll not only make sure I’ve isolated the correct family grouping, but find out who else is buried in that same plot. Sometimes, there are surprises. At the very least, I will be able to determine that I’ve gotten the Michael Flannery who belongs to Ann, and not someone else. That alone will get me tap dancing in the right direction.

Thoughts While Wandering Around

Searching for genealogically-sound connections sometimes seems like, oh, say, being stuck inside a one-man tent that just collapsed on you in the middle of an overnight camping trip. You know you’re in there. You know what’s out there. But for the moment, all you can do is poke around until you find the opening and get yourself out.

I have to remind myself not to despair. It sometimes seems like hit after hit of results seems futile, when all point to false leads. But they don’t always lead to the wrong stuff. I can’t help but remember going through this process once before—starting from that very same Paris neighborhood in Ontario just one decade later—and ending up having a delightful lunch meeting with a new set of distant cousins, back in Chicago. It can happen again. But only if I keep plugging away at it. Even when I think it is useless.

This is me, giving myself a pep talk. I don’t do well with wandering around in circles, poking at possibilities. And that is what it feels like I’m doing.

See, this Michael Flannery I'm seeking is not showing his true colors. I found someone by this same name, back in Paris, Ontario. And then, he’s gone. Gone to Michigan, where I found a similar Michael Flannery? Who knows? It might have been merely coincidence that he lived next door, in Detroit, to someone with the very same name as the brother back in Ontario.

So I wander through his life history—at least the part the census record is willing to divulge. Once every ten years, it gives a researcher like me a snapshot of what was going on in the family life of suspected ancestors. And then, not a peep for the next ten years—if, that is, I can even find the family once again.

In Michael’s case, I couldn’t. Not after 1910. The key, of course, is to stay with the chase up ’til the bitter end. That’s when the genealogist gets the prize: the certificate that announces the name of the subject's father and mother, and where he was born. If, that is, anyone serving as the reporting party remembers to mention it. (Correctly would also be a nice touch.)

I don’t have to worry about that little detail, though, because I can’t even get to the point of finding the death certificate. That’s when I have to fan out even farther, looking for any hints connecting me back to Michael.

There is the possibility of uncovering where all his unfortunate children were buried in Detroit, Michigan. As his wife Ann had reported in the 1910 census, she had lost six of them by that point. I did go back and find some more listings online, but they were records from indices, not copies of the actual documents. Of course, the detail I’m seeking is one not included in the transcribers’ instructions: the place of burial. For Michael’s children Catherine in 1870, Maggie in 1883, Hanora and John in that same year and Michael in 1893, I can find references to their deaths. But only one includes a digitized scan of the original document—Catherine’s, from 1870—and that entry does not include any mention of the place of burial. So much for locating the family plot.

What about the two daughters for whom I found married names? Even with these, I’m struggling. I did find daughter Mary’s death record, identifying her married name as Lynch. But the index for this, while telling me of her August 22, 1947, passing, does not provide any record of where she was buried. The other sister—Johanna, who married George A. Barkley in 1911, likely a widower—remains as difficult to locate as Mary.

Even if I forget about that detail, and just try to follow them through the census record, I run into difficulties. For the very next census in 1920, I can’t find a likely candidate for Mary Lynch in Michigan. One turns out to be a single woman living in the household of her brother-in-law. The other, nicknamed Mamie, gives both parents’ place of birth as New York. Wrong.

On the other hand, at least I make some progress in tracing Johanna and her spouse in the 1920 census. They are living with his two sons, George and Russell. Coincidentally, they are living right next door to a fellow by the name of Frank Flannigan.

Suddenly this is starting to sound familiar. I look up to check the street name for their residence, and it is Russell Street in Detroit. Feeling pretty confident about those details, I flip back to the 1910 census for Michael and Ann Flannery. After all, they had had a “boarder” by the name of Frank Flanagan, whom I suspected might be Ann’s brother. And in this census, here we have a case of Michael and Ann’s married daughter and family renting from someone by the same name as that previous boarder. Both on Russell Street.

Coincidental neighbors? Or family? Either way, I’ve got to keep following this trail to build a phantom family tree. Until I can find a link back to our line in Canada—or a way to disprove the whole association—I’ve got to keep searching.

If I want to know the answer, that is…

Tracing Michael

Researching our Tully and Flannery lines from County Tipperary has provided an abundance of descendants to trace. Only sometimes, I’m not sure I’m tracking the right person.

Take Michael Flannery, whom we stumbled upon while chasing after a different Michael—Michael Tully, (possible) son of John and Catherine Flannery Tully. Along with his parents, Michael Tully had left the town where his immigrant parents had settled—Paris, Ontario—and headed for the brighter lights of Detroit, Michigan, just across the Canadian border. Apparently, Michael Flannery—the other Michael’s possible cousin and neighbor in Ontario—had done much the same thing.

The question, at this point, would be whether this Michael Flannery in Detroit was one and the same as the Michael born to Edmund and Margaret Flannery in the parish of Ballina, back in northern County Tipperary. One way to answer that question would be to check for marriage records identifying the groom’s parents’ names, but none could be found online. And I’m not going to make you (to say nothing about me!) wait long enough to send a query by mail system.

Another way to puzzle this one out would be to trace Michael Flannery forward through census records to get a sense of when he might have died, and where. Any death certificate this would lead to would likely also contain information on his parents’ names.

Michael and his wife, Ann, were in the 1870 census for Detroit, Michigan. At the point at which the census enumerator knocked on their door on the second of July, there were just two in the family to report. However, only a short while before that, Michael and Ann had been proud parents of a one year old daughter, Catherine. That was before they lost her on the second of May, that very year, to scarlet fever.

By the time of the 1880 census, the Flannery household had grown to include seven. Besides Michael and Ann, there were five children: daughters Annie, Mary, Margaret and Honora, plus son Francis right in the midst of all those sisters.

The next time I could find Michael and Ann Flannery in the U.S. Census wasn’t until 1910. Still in Detroit, Michigan, the seventy-eight year old Michael included in his family his wife Ann and daughters Anna, Helen and “Loretha.” Also in the household were two boarders, including one who sported the same surname—Flanagan—as Ann had claimed as her maiden name. Mr. Flanagan also happened to be born in Canada, where Michael and Ann had once lived. Add in for good measure that his given name was Frank—same as Ann’s child Francis, the lone son among four sisters—and one suspects this Frank Flanagan was more than just a boarder.

The sad part about this 1910 census report was Ann’s statement that she had been the mother of eleven—only five of whom had survived to that date. Besides their daughter Catherine in 1870, they had also lost a nine year old son, Michael, in 1893. Other than that, no documentation could be found online to substantiate that census report.

The question remains: what became of Michael and Ann in the 1900 census? Did they, like others, perfect that census-season disappearing act?

It may require a stretch of credibility to claim that the Flannerys decided to return to Canada for just that one year, but it turns out there was a Frank Flannery in Ontario—along with parents Michael and Ann—for the 1901 Canadian census. With the ages lining up just right for Frank between his original appearance in the U.S. Census for 1880 and this Canadian one in 1901, it is beginning to look good for this conjecture. Besides, on the very next page, who should show up but a possible member of the extended Tully family—this one named Thomas—to complete the picture. On the down side, though, Michael and Ann had ages reported that were more than ten years younger than what should have been showing for that year. But when you take the international borders out of the equation, you see that Frank's Essex County farm is only one county away from Wayne County, home of the city of Detroit, making this move much more within reason.

Whether the farm of Frank Flannery of Essex County, Ontario, was the place that claimed our Michael and Ann Flannery for the 1901 Canadian Census, they didn’t stay there for long. By the time of the 1910 U.S. census, as we saw, they were back in America.

As for what became of them after that, I’m not sure. I can find no death record online for Michael or Ann in Michigan. Nor can I see any possible matches on Find A Grave. They did have a couple married daughters that I could find—Mary, marrying someone by the name of Lynch, and Johanna, marrying someone named George A. Barkley—who may have taken in either of their aging parents in their last years. Both of these married daughters lived in Michigan, and their households would have shown resident parents for the 1920 census—if either Michael or Ann were still living. I suspect they weren’t. But the search for verification is still on.

From One Michael to Another

While I was in the Ancestry.com neighborhood, seeking whatever became of the Michael Tully, son of John and Catherine whom I had found in Detroit, that fruitless search led to yet another Michael who might have been a relative of our Irish immigrant families.

If you recall, I had traced this Tully family from County Tipperary in Ireland, over the Atlantic to a tiny village in Brant County, Ontario, called Paris. Along with John and Catherine Flannery Tully’s family, the same 1852 census page also recorded a Flannery family—which handily also contained a Michael—as well as our direct line, Denis and Margaret Flannery Tully.

Could they have all moved to Detroit together?

I mentioned, the other day, that Michael Tully had seemed to disappear after I located him in the 1880 census. My theory was that, switching tracks and looking on another database, I might find something I couldn’t find at my first research stop. And that’s exactly what happened. I moved from what I had found on Michael Tully in Ancestry.com to check what might be available on FamilySearch.org.

This time, I did locate a possible death record for Michael Tully, still in Detroit. Unfortunately, the record is contained in a collection sans photocopies, so the index only included a listing of the father’s surname. It did not include any information on the mother’s maiden name.

Great, I thought: this could be anybody. Of course a man’s father’s surname should be the same as his own! However, I settled down enough to realize that there were other clues fingering our guy:

• He was born in Canada
• His year of birth (1853) matched prior census records
• He was still listed as single

I need more substantiation before I determine that the Michael Tully who died in Detroit on 28 December, 1921, was one and the same as my Michael, son of John and Catherine Flannery Tully. I made a mental note to post a plea on an online genealogical forum for local assistance in obtaining an obituary, since this man’s headstone was not among those millions listed at Find A Grave. And then I moved on to see what else I could find.

Sometimes, I try a search trick in which I leave the main fields blank—you know, that place where we automatically fill in the person’s first and last names—but instead, complete the search box by adding in only the parents’ surnames. That idea didn’t go over so well for our Michael. While it did flush out a Tully woman whose mother’s maiden name was Flannery when I tried it on Ancestry.com, it was for someone so far afield of my data possibilities that I discarded it out of hand.

Well, almost. I’ll hang on to that one, just in case. One never knows.

I stumbled upon a refresher post on resources for Michigan death certificates online by Diane Gould Hall on her Michigan Family Trails blog, and tried my hand at trawling through all the Michigan death certs I could find at FamilySearch.org. Just in case Michael’s own parents died earlier than he, I tried poking around GENDIS, Michigan’s Genealogical Death Indexing System, but could find nothing for either John Tully or Catherine Flannery Tully.

I tried searching the GENDIS for surname only, to see if anything—anything—would come up. Nothing. Not on Tully. Not on Flannery. Then I left the decedent’s name fields blank and just entered the father’s surname.

Somewhere in the midst of all that poking around, I did flush out a result. It was for a one-year-old child who died of scarlet fever.

Her father’s name was Michael. But the surname was not Tully. It was Flannery.

Wait! Flannery? I have one of those!

And I was off, on a wild search for a Michael Flannery who now lived in Detroit, but at one time—could it have been the same one?—lived in Paris, Ontario in Canada. It could all be a coincidence. But if I could find any pattern of immigration between Paris, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan, perhaps I could reconstruct these three families whose heads of household at one time were not only neighbors, but likely siblings.

Blame it on an Ink Blot

As a sufferer of the “ooh, shiny” syndrome, I often need an alibi for the embarrassing symptoms of my malady. Today, I’ll blame it all on an ink blot.

I’ve been puzzling over how to handle tracing my Tully line back in time from Chicago to Ontario and ultimately all the way to Ireland. You certainly understand how difficult it can be, having to research names like John or Mary in a place like Ireland.

I decided my strategy would be to piggy back on the vehicle of a relative with a more unusual name. I found that name, literally, under an ink blot in the Canada West census for 1852.

There, just eighteen scant lines below my Denis Tully family in Paris, Ontario, was a Flannery family.

You may recall that I had discovered—almost accidentally—that Denis’ wife, listed as “Mrs.” in the 1852 census, was actually born Margaret Flannery. As you can imagine, any Flannery family living this close to my Tully family—especially so far from their original home—would be of great interest to me.

And it was. Except that I couldn’t read the given name of the head of that Flannery household. It looked like “Edman.” Or, possibly, that “m” was actually a “w” and the man’s name—but for the slip of a letter—could have been Edward. I couldn’t really be sure, because right in the middle of the name, census enumerator John Sinclair’s otherwise stellar handwriting was besmirched by an errant ink blot.

Without the corresponding wife’s name to serve as an alternate guide to the parents’ generation, I was left with the names of his four sons to obtain hints about how to research this family. When I took a serious look at those sons’ names—seeing the usual Irish lineup in offerings such as John and Patrick—I was about to despair of finding a way back to the Emerald Isle.

Until, that is, I found Cornelius. That, I thought, was a name I could grab and run with.

I ran in both directions—seeing, first, if I could snag any early returns from a foray into Irish documents, then reversing gears and looking forward in time, attempting to locate any descendants. While the peek into Irish records yielded some promising results, seeking more recent Canadian records left me clueless. Apparently, Cornelius Flannery is not as rare a name as I had at first presumed.

The questions occurring, thanks to that small experiment, make me wonder about the possibility that Cornelius and his Flannery kin left Canada for cities south of the border in either Detroit—as had their Tully cousin, Michael—or in Chicago, along with John Tully’s family.

In the guinea-pig spirit in which this blog was first launched, I’ll share the beginnings of my foray into hypothesis testing tomorrow, when I check the possibilities found in both those state-side locations.

Stuck in Paris

I live near a quaint downtown area, full of antique shops, outdoor cafés, blocks-long summertime farmers’ markets—a place with a lot of community cohesiveness. While it’s not the city in which I live, I love driving there for everything from a well-crafted loaf of fresh bread to a good cup of coffee with a friend.

That particular town didn’t always have such a chic ambience. In fact, the ’70s mantra the place found itself embarrassingly branded with came from the refrain from the B-side of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising: “Oh, Lord, stuck in Lodi again.”

Admittedly, back in 1969, when the song was first released, Lodi was a dumpy little agricultural community. Over time, though, things can change.

I suppose it may be just the same for the apparently maligned village of Paris in Brant County, Ontario, that we’ve been discussing. Of course, I’ve never been there, so I wouldn’t know. My interest in this village of Paris isn’t for the present, however, but for the past. Judging from the many historic photos collected for sharing on the Internet—and via books for purchase, too—this little town has a sense of place, as well.

Paris—the one in Brant County, that is—has one thing going for it, at least as far as my family history research goes. It was the home of the county’s first Catholic Church.

As you can imagine, our family’s Tully ancestors, arriving from Ireland, were quite pleased to discover that fact. While I’m not certain exactly when the Tully family arrived in Canada West—I can find no passenger records yet—I do know they were included in the1852 census. And that census record confirms that their youngest son, William, was born on Canadian soil two years prior, yielding 1850 as my best guess for their arrival.

By the year of 1850, Paris already had established its Catholic parish. According to a brief overview of the church’s history on the church’s own website, the Catholics in the region had gathered together to vote on their preferred location for that first church back in 1834. Paris had won as the selected location by one vote, thirteen to twelve. That gives you an idea of the size of that initial congregation.

By 1837, the proposed church had received the deed to its property and building commenced, with doors to the new Sacred Heart Church opening about a year later.

Thinking of all the Tully family members likely to have attended that parish well over ten years after it was established, one would presume things would have settled down to some fashion of organization to properly keep essential documents by 1850. Yet, as some distant Tully cousins with whom I’m working discovered, sometimes those earlier records have a way of vanishing.

I’ve mentioned our meeting with these third cousins, last summer during our most recent trip to Chicago. After we got together in August, one of the cousins sent me a copy of the response she had received to her inquiry about these early Tully relatives from the Sacred Heart Church in Paris. It got right to the point with an opener that was quite disappointing:

After going through many years in our early records, I find no mention of…

The letter did contain some information on a few baptismal records, but those were for later family members whose dates we already had verified from other sources. An almost apologetic close to the letter reminded us, “Very hard to read the old records.”

Where could we find any documentation for those old family records? What about “Mrs.” Denis Tully, who had to have died in Paris sometime between the 1852 census and that of 1861? And what became of her husband, Denis, whose sons had moved to the States by the time of the 1870 census? Would he, as an elderly man by that point, have moved to Chicago or Detroit with them? I find no record supporting that. My guess is that we would find him in that Paris cemetery.

Granted, online cemetery records—such as Find A Grave—are sometimes scant in the data captured for a given cemetery. In the case of Sacred Heart’s cemetery in Paris, Internment.org included a more thorough list—but even that could have been incomplete. How would I know?

Admittedly, I already have that magic slip of paper that directs me to bypass Canada and move directly to Ballina in County Tipperary, Ireland. I don’t need to be “stuck” in Paris. Before I go skipping out on the small town of Paris in Canada, though, I’d like to see if I can discover any more about the Tully family’s stay in Ontario. Family history, after all, is about so much more than just names and dates. I want to know about these ancestors’ lives.