If Jeremiah was the One

 

We may have found an Irish immigrant from County Kerry named Jeremiah Falvey who shared the same occupation as Gobnait Falvey's son Patrick Cullinane—marble polisher—but that doesn't mean we can stretch possibilities thin enough to support a connection with Gobnait's brother, the one baptized as Demetrius. And yet, another detail draws me to follow what can be found about a Jeremiah naturalized in Boston, Massachusetts.

That detail is the appearance of a Jeremiah Falvey in a family tree linked to a DNA match among my husband's results at Ancestry.com. This match is estimated to be a fourth cousin with a small centiMorgan connection, similar to other Falvey DNA connections of this generational distance I've seen. 

There is, however, one problem with that Jeremiah Falvey connection: the DNA match claims that ancestral line to have lived in Chicopee, Massachusetts, not Boston. The end result is that this pursuit is steering me clear of the Boston Falvey immigrant and towards one of the same name who settled much farther west in the state of Massachusetts. We may, in the end, discover there was no connection between those two Jeremiahs at all, despite both being from the same Irish county.

Furthermore, acting the part of a genealogical Doubting Thomas, I decided to see just how many Irish Catholic church records insisted on shying away from the use of the name Jeremiah, and instead substituting Demetrius, the name given in baptismal records for a son of my father-in-law's proposed Falvey ancestors Patrick and Anna. While a quick and dirty experiment can't explain everything, I figured if that were the tradition for transforming an Irish given name into Latin, there would have been no Catholic records for someone named Jeremiah.

Surprise. That wasn't true. There were several Jeremiahs out there, given under the hand of Irish priests in many Catholic parishes, at least according to this one quick review. There was even a marriage entry for a Jeremias Falvey in our Falveys' home parish in Kilcummin. At least in the later years of the 1800s, folks didn't shy away from using the name Jeremiah in formal records. Rather than truly being Jeremiah, that son's baptismal name Demetrius may well have been literally that: the name of our Patrick and Anna Falvey's son baptized in 1837.

So what about the Jeremiah Falvey who ended up in Massachusetts? Especially considering that he was an ancestor of a DNA match, this will be one line worth following. Building out a tree for this DNA match may point out more details allowing us to see not only how this Jeremiah connects with my father-in-law's Falvey ancestors back in County Kerry, but how his descendants cluster with other DNA matches connected to our direct family line.

. . . And Then, There's Demetrius

 

In tracing Irish immigrants to Boston, Massachusetts, from County Kerry, Ireland, Patrick Cullinane wasn't the only Falvey descendant who caught my eye. Yet like Patrick's own case, this other immigrant presents us with some doubts as to his connection to my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey.

Just like Johanna's possible sister, Gobnait Falvey, the problem begins with a Catholic baptismal record identifying a son by a Latin, rather than traditional Irish, given name. That name, as you've probably suspected, was Demetrius.

Demetrius, according to the record at his parents' home church of Kilcummin parish, was baptized at the very beginning of the year, January 6 of 1837. Yet, locating any other record for that son of Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming seems to lead nowhere.

Considering, as we have, the other Latin records we've found for those with decidedly Irish given names, it might come as no surprise to learn that a Demetrius of church records might more often be called Jeremiah around his own home. That, at least, is according to well-known Irish genealogist, John Grenham, who offers Jeremiah, Jerome, Darby, and Dermot as alternatives for the baptismal moniker Demetrius.

It didn't help my case to have found a naturalization record in Boston for a marble polisher named Jeremiah Falvey. According to this record, Jeremiah arrived in Boston around September of 1857. At the time of his petition for citizenship, he reported that he had been born in 1837. The only problem with that report was the month and day: June 25 instead of January 6.

Granted, I have seen many times when a date reported as "Jan" turned out to actually be "Jun" but there is no such chance for this discrepancy. Despite the chicken scratch on the ecclesiastical record, it was clear from its placement on the page that Demetrius was among the first of those infants baptized in 1837. And the naturalization record made it clear that Jeremiah had reported his birth in the month of June.

Still, I can't resist following this alternate Falvey record, especially given the occupational report. Marble workers represented a group of craftsmen whose efforts required much training. Given two possible Falvey representatives from the same county in Ireland, and considering the likelihood of chain migration where one family member follows a preceding one in leaving home to follow job recommendations at a distant location, we may have uncovered a nexus, if not between a brother of Gobnait Falvey Cullinane and her son, at least a connection to a close relative from the same community back in Ireland.

The Possibility of Patrick

I supposed I can consider it fortunate, given my problems in tying my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey to the preceding generation back in Ireland, that I've discovered a Falvey descendant among my husband's DNA matches. Don't jump to conclusions that the proof of the relationship will simply fall into our hands, though. The possibility of Patrick Cullinane being a nephew of our Johanna Falvey looks like it might be challenging to establish by documentation. 

Here's what I've found about Patrick so far. First, as far as baptismal records go: I've found nothing. Not, at least, back in the home parish in County Kerry. Not if we can rely on his date of birth being in the early 1860s.

Fortunately, Patrick does show up in archived records across the Atlantic in Boston, Massachusetts, where this immigrant showed up some time in the 1880s. That was where this marble worker's marriage to Joanna Sullivan was documented in Boston on May 15, 1890. And, unsurprisingly, Catholic Church records at the archdiocese of Boston confirmed the names and birthdates of several of the Cullinane children: Helen Nora in 1895, Johanna Josephine in 1896, Honora Catherine in 1898, Daniel Sullivan in 1900, John Francis in 1901, Leon Patrick in 1903, and Julia Agnes in 1905.

While that may look like a tidy list with ample opportunities for descendants who become DNA matches, that is simply not the case. Despite the number of children attributed to Patrick and Johanna according to church records, other names could be gleaned, if following census records or other documents.

The catch was this: Patrick had married a woman who not only had a surname—Sullivan—quite common among Irish immigrants resident in the Boston area, but who had a given name subject to shortening. If we can rely on name equivalent charts like the one provided by the FamilySearch.org wiki,  the name Johanna could be used interchangeably with Ann or Anna.

And that is precisely our problem. Apparently, there was a Patrick Cullinane living in Boston whose wife, at least according to census records, was called Anna. That couple's household included some children whose names did not line up with the baptismal records specifying Johanna Sullivan as their mother. Could this be the same couple, with nickname inserted, and a few additional children thrown into the mix? Are we looking at the same couple, farther along in the timeline? Or have we stumbled upon a case of name twins?

To complicate matters, the couple's surname was sometimes rendered as Cullinane, and at other times it appeared as Cullinan. Whether both surnames represented spelling variations for the same family, I can't tell. To confirm, I'm resorting to tedious exercises like making periodic checks in city directories, just to rule out name twins for Patrick. This may not merely be an instance of checking the possibility of Patrick being a relative of my father-in-law's Falvey family, but of confirming just which of two Patricks in Boston was actually the right man.

Getting Stuck on Sticking Points

 

Lately, I feel as if I am conducting negotiations between two parties who claim to be one and the same person. The sticking point is that these two men with different names seem to claim the same parents and the same year of birth. Yet, not being twins, that can't be possible.

The one son was baptized as John Cullinane in County Kerry, Ireland, on July 24, 1860. His baptismal record lists his father as Daniel Cullinane and his mother as Gubbenela Falvey—surely an attempt at providing a Latin version of the decidedly Irish name Gobnait. And then, poof! He disappeared from records, as far as I can find.

The other son, claiming the name Patrick Cullinane, may have been born on June 15, 1860. That, at least, is what someone thought when they reported that date for his birth. And yet, that Patrick also claimed that his parents were Daniel and "Debby"—the possible nickname for Gobnait or Gobineta (the likely Latin version mis-entered as Gubbenela).

That second Cullinane son may or may not have been the son of our Daniel Cullinane and Gobnait (or Debora) Falvey. That that detail can't easily be determined, however, means delving deeper into the identity of this particular Patrick Cullinane after his immigration from County Kerry, Ireland, to Boston, Massachusetts.

To make matters worse, Boston may have laid claim to not one but two or three men by that same name, Patrick Cullinane. And each may have married a woman who went by the same nickname as the others.

With marching orders like that, the rest of this month's search for the parents of Gobnait Falvey Cullinane—and thus her sister Johanna, my father-in-law's great-grandmother—may take some wild and crazy turns.

The Mother of Gobineta's Children

 

Tracing the descendants of Johanna Falvey's sister might seem like a great way to confirm Johanna's place in the Falvey family—at least by DNA—but there is one drawback to such a plan. That sticking point is Johanna's sister's actual name.

Johanna's sister was baptized as Gobineta, back in their homeland in County Kerry, Ireland. Her February 27, 1830, baptismal record clearly shows her parents as Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming. Thus, if we can map her connection to descendants who happen to be my husband's DNA matches, that would support the theory of this sisterhood.

There's only one problem with this plan. A name like Gobineta—actually Gobnait—doesn't translate well from the original Irish version to either Latin or English. Thus, it would be no surprise to discover that records of her children might list their mother's name as something other than Gobineta.

Take one son, named Timothy. We'd expect to see his October 7, 1858, baptismal record listing his name in its Latin version, Timotheum. But the Latin was not helpful for his mother's name. In that record, Daniel Cullinane's wife was listed as Debora Falvey, not Gobnait.

But we already knew that. Armed with a name equivalent chart, we've been forewarned to be on the lookout for aliases like Debora or Abigail. So when I followed that one Cullinane son of the next generation to his immigrant home in Boston, I wasn't stumped by the vital records bearing his name. When Timothy Cullinane of Boston decided to marry Margaret McCarthy one cold January day in 1883, it made sense to see his mother's name entered as Deborah. Likewise with his death record, recorded late in 1893 listing his mother as Abbie Falvey.

Timothy Cullinane, son of Gobnait Falvey and Daniel Cullinane, is just one example. In Timothy's case, with his early death, he was predeceased by his only child, a namesake son who died in 1891. As far as I can tell, there will be no DNA matches linked to Timothy's line.

However, Timothy was not the only Falvey descendant to immigrate to Boston. There is apparently another Cullinane brother who also chose that New England port for his move from County Kerry. He, predictably, is also causing problems with verifying his line, not the least of which sticking points is that same particular detail about his mother's name.

I've reached out to some DNA matches who appear to be this second Cullinane son's descendants. Hopefully, on the other side of this weekend, we'll be able to get a fuller picture of this other potential Falvey descendant of the woman with multiple aliases. 

These Stars Weren't so Lucky

 

No matter how stuck we might be with a research brick wall, there is always wiggle room for further exploration. Before we turn to the collateral Lee family, tomorrow, to shed any light on Anna Flanagan Malloy's origin in County Limerick, there is one other option: seeking whatever became of her husband, Stephen Malloy, after he left home abruptly to sail for Boston.

Because several records already found with that surname—whether for Anna, her daughter Catherine, or Stephen, himself—sported a number of spelling variations, I figured the asterisk would be my go-to tool for this task. Rather than searching for Malloy, then Mulloy, then Meloy, I'd simply do the whole package, once and for all, using the wild card symbol to look for M*l*y. (Spoiler: while the idea seemed sound in principle, it turned out these stars weren't so lucky.)

Apparently, as Irish surnames go, that one device opened up far too many possibilities for me to handle. Maloney, Mullarky, Mulcahey, and even McCully and Modley entered the fray. It may have seemed like a good idea when I started, but the sheer number of choices made the technique unwieldy for this case.

To complicate matters, I also found a will in Massachusetts for someone by that same name, Stephen Malloy, who married and had two children before he drew up his will in June of 1882. Even then, I'd say chances are slim that this Stephen Malloy and Anna's missing husband by that same name were one and the same, but it was an interesting discovery. Perhaps the search for whatever became of Anna's husband will be a question which never finds an answer. Of that, I'm not entirely sure yet, but one thing I do know: this search will not be one for which use of a wildcard will find a sure-fire solution.

The Nemesis: Name Twins

 

Independently building the family tree of a DNA match may seem a smart move—until, that is, we discover we have gotten swamped in the murky waters of unknown ancestries. In particular, my nemesis for this foray has been the realization that I've now been plagued with name twins. Time to move forward with caution.

My goal was to inspect Patrick, this supposed son of Daniel Cullinane and "Debora" Falvey, the supposed direct line ancestor of a DNA match. While I had found most of this couple's children baptized in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin in County Kerry, Ireland, I had not been able to locate such a record for any son named Patrick.

According to the tree posted for this line on Ancestry.com, Patrick had emigrated from his homeland bound for the United States, and showed up in records in the area around Boston. That's where I began my search.

As I mentioned yesterday, I had found Patrick's marriage record from May 15, 1890 in the city of Boston. I began tracing his descendants from that point, adding his wife and children to a floating tree I had set up on Ancestry's beta "Networks" tool. I quickly learned that Patrick's wife, though named Johanna, preferred to go by the nickname Annie. As I moved through the decades, census records enabled me to add the names of the Cullinanes' growing family.

A growing family, that is, until I realized one problem: there were apparently two families in the Boston area with parents named Patrick and Annie Cullinane. And, as you can imagine, each of those families contained some of the same children's names. My challenge was now to not take that left turn down the wrong family line.

Think about this for a moment. Patrick, born in the early 1860s according to the various ages he provided for documents, had moved to Boston from Ireland sometime before his 1890 wedding. Rather than focus on Patrick, for a moment, let's focus on the city which he adopted as his new home, and the time period in which he did so.

Ever since the first waves of Irish immigrants arrived at the port of Boston following the famine back in their homeland, Boston's population burgeoned. From 1850 to 1860, for instance, Boston's population grew by nearly fifty percent, and the phenomenal growth continued decade over decade until the turn of the next century. It's no surprise, then, to learn that people of Irish descent form the largest single ethnic group in the state of Massachusetts. By 1850 in Boston, those steadily-arriving Irish immigrants had already become the largest single ethnic group in the city.

It's easy to see, then, that name twins would be lurking in Boston's historic records. It doesn't matter whether the surname was widespread or less common. Couple that with a rather limited set of Irish given names, derived from saints and repeated through traditional naming patterns, and we still have reason to exercise research caution, even for a less-common surname like Cullinane.

I think I've found my way around this research hazard so far, but there are other challenges in piecing together this family tree. While Ancestry's ThruLines tool may have offered an explanation to lead me from the DNA match's supposed ancestor downwards through the generations, it may be prudent to return to that tried and true genealogical research advice: to begin, start with "yourself." I may just need to do that with this DNA cousin's proposed tree, in order to let the documentation lead me to the answer.  

What Happened to Elizabeth

 

Sometimes, there are family stories so horrible, so painful, that those who lived through the trauma cannot bear, even years after the fact, to pass the tale along to the next generation. I wonder whether Elizabeth Fenley's story might have been one such example.

Elizabeth was a young six years of age when her family planned a delightful summer outing. The plan was for the extended family to take the train from their home in Louisville, Kentucky, to a favorite summer vacation spot in New England: Nantucket. From there, they planned to stop in Boston before returning home at the end of the summer.

While the vacation at the seashore may have been lovely, especially for Elizabeth, her sisters, and her cousin, the short train ride to Boston didn't end quite as well. The flurry of news reports about the train derailment near Quincy, Massachusetts, included mentions of the tragic outcome for the extended Fenley family—but apparently in the rush to get the "scoop" on the story, journalists confused the many Fenley names among the casualties.

Though several newspapers across the midwest published lists of the deceased passengers, it appeared that Mrs. Oscar Fenley was listed as the grandmother, for instance, when she was actually the mother of the three Fenley daughters. The confusion was never so obvious as when the Indianapolis newspaper published—on the same date and page—two articles regarding young Elizabeth Fenley.

After stating that "Elizabeth Fenley, four years old, died at the hospital," only inches below that column, the paper reported that "Elizabeth Fenley, aged six" was not at the hospital—where space was limited due to the immense number of injuries after the crash—but at the home of one "Mrs. Carr on Hancock street." Furthermore, "the little girl is badly scalded, and the doctor says her condition is such that he does not think she can live."

While the two reports contained discrepancies on not only her condition but her age, there was only one child involved in that train wreck by the name of Elizabeth Fenley. That she did not die immediately after the crash can be corroborated by Elizabeth's Find a Grave memorial, which was dated years later. However, the 1915 date on her headstone reveals yet another tragedy for the Fenley family.

A Find a Grave volunteer posted an explanation of what had followed for Elizabeth after she survived the horrors of the Quincy train derailment. Though badly scalded on the lower half of her body—injuries which took two months to resolve before she was able to travel back home to Kentucky again—she did return to Louisville with her father, who had not been with the Fenley family for that summer excursion, but came north to be with his daughter during her two-month-long recuperation. Only after their arrival home again was a memorial service conducted for the six Fenley family members who had died.

After the November funeral, it was said that Elizabeth never fully recovered from the effects of the train wreck. Her father, then president of the National Bank of Kentucky and a board member of the United States Regional Reserve Bank, provided for her in every way he could, including arranging for private schooling in Philadelphia and New York, and attendance at Bryn Mawr. Despite all that could be done for Elizabeth, by about 1912, she had been in bad health and was said to have been "on the verge of a nervous breakdown" when she traveled to New York, seeking treatment from a "nerve specialist."

From a headline in the New York Tribune on September 15, 1915, stating "Woman Killed in 8-Story Leap," the sad story of the culmination of Elizabeth's anguish was detailed. Wearing a blue taffeta dress and a hat with an ostrich plume, which she laid at the top of the stairway before her jump, Elizabeth made her irrevocable choice.

An unnamed aunt had been the last known person to have been with Elizabeth, as Elizabeth had seen her off at the train station that very afternoon before her tragic decision. Receiving the news by telegram, Elizabeth's father Oscar Fenley "collapsed and required medical attention throughout the night." The burden of what the Tribune had noted as an "appalling" tragedy of years prior which the Fenley family had suffered through had claimed yet another victim so many years later.

So many times, when we learn of tragedies borne by our ancestors, we may telescope the events into points on a timeline, rather than see them as the ongoing burden borne by those who survived. But those who remained had to continue living life with the pain of the experience. It is experiences like those which change us, point our life's trajectory in a different direction. Though such stories may have been too painful for our ancestors to tell, that is the stuff that became their reality—and a lens through which we can only attempt to understand them by.     

Asking Questions to Find the Rest of the Story

 

It was Mary Elizabeth Carr Fenley whose sudden death in Quincy, Massachusetts, plagued me with questions. Though I only this week had found the woman's name and family constellation, it seemed odd that a woman in 1890 would have died so far from home. I had to find the rest of that story.

Seeing her name on the death register, listed for Quincy as was often done during that time period—line by line on one page for the same month and year—revealed that Mary was not the only Fenley who had died on the same day. Delving further into the records, I could see there were others with different surnames among the dead that day who had also come from Mary's home in Louisville, Kentucky.

Despite having the help of archived newspaper collections to learn more about the cause of Mary's sudden death—and that of the other Fenley family members who lost their lives in that horrific twenty four hour period—there were some challenges to piece together who was who. Newspaper reporters, as we've seen in the past, can make mistakes.

Especially considering the sheer numbers of dead and injured in the train wreck which precipitated the loss of their lives, I certainly understand how the surrounding circumstances might have mangled reporters' ability to keep lists of casualties straight. It was back to the genealogical drawing board for me, after reading as many news articles as I could find, to sketch out the true relationships of the Fenley family members involved.

Mary, herself, was widow of John Norris Fenley, and mother of traveling companion Mary Fenley Abbott, who was accompanied by her husband, William. The party also included Mary's daughter-in-law Alice Short Fenley and her daughters, Mary's grandchildren Elizabeth, Mary Catherine, and Alice. Rounding out the party was another of Mary's granddaughters, Susan Fenley, daughter of Mary's son William.

All but son-in-law William Abbott and granddaughter Elizabeth died in the Quincy train tragedy within twenty four hours of its occurrence in August that year of 1890. Even so, both William and his niece Elizabeth were badly injured, marks which they bore through the rest of their lives and which, apparently, brought the young girl Elizabeth much anguish over the remainder of her brief life.

Before answering the question of exactly how—and why—I stumbled upon this family's unbearable loss, we'll first need to take a closer look at Elizabeth's story, tomorrow.  

The Quincy Horror

 

The end of summer was drawing to a close, and nine friends and family members from Louisville, Kentucky, were wrapping up their vacation at Nantucket with a quick train ride to Boston on the appropriately named Old Colony Railroad.

Among those in the traveling party were Judge I. W. Edwards, and the wife and family of Oscar Fenley, then president of the National Bank of Kentucky, who was to join the group shortly.

While the train was en route to Boston that August in 1890, unbeknownst to the passengers—and likely, the train's engineer, as well—some section hands had been working on the tracks beyond a curve in the route. They were using what was called a "track jack" which, left in place as the train approached—having received no safety warning from the workmen—caused a derailment ejecting passengers from their seats. 

The immediate derailment caused the steam engine to rupture, sending steam into the passenger compartment, further injuring those who had not been killed upon impact. Those passengers who could assisted the injured others outside to safety, and eventually help arrived to attend to the medical emergencies.

The local hospital in nearby Quincy, Massachusetts, was overwhelmed with the amount of medical care which needed to be provided. One newspaper report remarked, "No tongue can describe the scene at the city hospital."

Meanwhile, news wire services had picked up the story, as many of the travelers were from homes hundreds of miles from Quincy. Reports of the train catastrophe kept adding to the count of dead and injured at the scene—newspapers carried the story, dubbed The Quincy Horror, across the midwest, like Erie, Pennsylvania, and Indianapolis, Indiana. Many newspapers focused their reports on victims of the crash who were residents of their own city, such as this report from Cleveland, Ohio. Continued stories updated the count of the dead. To add insult to injury, some stories revealed that pickpockets worked the scene of the crash as well, lifting watches, jewelry, and money from victims too dazed to respond.

I wouldn't have known about this train wreck in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1890 if it weren't for one detail: my search to outline the descendants of one woman from colonial Maryland. Among those many dead and injured, one family stood out in news reports for their collective losses that day: the Fenley family from Louisville, Kentucky, the very family I had been researching from my mother-in-law's colonial roots. We'll piece together that list of casualties tomorrow, and see how they fit into the family constellation.

An Obvious Option

 

If we are stuck trying to find the origin and dates of ancestor William Tilson, but then discover the man served in the American Revolution, the obvious next research option is to see whether he is listed as a Patriot at the D.A.R. website.

Sure enough, William did have a listing on the D.A.R. website—with the minor revision of an additional "l" tacked on to his surname. The D.A.R. entry showed William Tillson born in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, in 1741, the same year as the Tilson Genealogy had told us.

According to the D.A.R. file, William was listed as having provided "patriotic service" in Virginia by paying a "supply tax" in 1783. The source of that information was listed as having come from a microfilm at the Library of Virginia regarding Washington County personal property taxes. (Fortunately, that same collection is currently available through FamilySearch.org.)

There was a long list of D.A.R. members who had applied for membership on account of their descent from William Tillson. The D.A.R. website sorted the listings according to the specific child of William Tillson whom each member claimed as ancestor. Included in that long list were a few descendants of Peleg, William's son whom I also claim as my fourth great-grandfather.

As I looked over the D.A.R. list, I realized that one of the descendants of Peleg Tilson was a third cousin whom I had met online during the early days of genealogy forums. Since it is possible to purchase a copy of the application and supporting documentation (with information on living people redacted), I decided to take a look at her file.

Thankfully, the purchased file walked me through document after document tracing the way from this distant cousin back through several generations. All the documents you would expect were either copied onto the file or cited in the application. Census records, obituaries, marriage licenses—all the expected paperwork, including copies of family Bible entries—walked me back, generation by generation, until the point of Peleg's daughter Rachel's marriage to James Davis. And then, the litany of records stopped.

Of course, I had most of those records already copied into my own tree. After all, those are the types of documents which we all appreciate finding at Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. Digitized documents rock. But what about the details beyond that point? That's what I was purchasing the D.A.R. file to find.

There were other resources listed, of course. Just not what I had hoped for. Handwritten notes, most likely added by a local D.A.R. registrar, named two books as resources to guide those making a membership decision. One of the books was a 1981 publication by Pat Alderman called Tilson Grist Mill. The other was a reference book which has become stock in trade for those of us researching our Tilson roots: Mercer Vernon Tilson's The Tilson Genealogy.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suppose. But I had hoped for more guidance on just how writers like Mercer Vernon Tilson had pieced together the story on this family line. After all, his claim is that William Tilson can trace his heritage back to some of the travelers on the Mayflower. Depending on how strict the Mayflower folks are regarding documentation for membership in their organization, pointing to a book—even a book published over one hundred years ago—may not be enough to satisfy. 

Wandering William

 

If you were gifted with the most important part of your family's heritage—the family farm—would you have simply walked away from it? I'm not sure I would. There would have to be some extremely weighty extenuating circumstances to make me wander from such a legacy.

And yet, William, father of my fourth great-grandfather Peleg Tilson, apparently did just that. Why?

As we saw yesterday in the will of William's own maternal grandfather, John Murdock, not only was William handily identified by his grandfather as son of Stephen "Tillson," but in the first item listed in John Murdock's will, William was specifically given his grandfather's farm.

The farm was located, presumably, in the same county where John Murdock drew up his September 16, 1756, will: "Plimouth." While the farm was in the New England colony, however, grandson William Tilson may soon have been somewhere far distant. Here's where I need to connect the dots.

There are a few Ancestry.com subscribers who have included an unidentified printed narrative which provides the supposed explanation of the wanderings of William Tilson. I have seen this printed page in family trees in the past, but have yet to identify the source. Of course, if this is true, I'll need to locate documentation to verify each of the assertions about William's history.

According to that information, William Tilson served during the battles comprising what was called, at least in North America, the French and Indian War. He became part of Captain Josiah Thatcher's company, of the regiment led by Colonel John Thomas. By early May of 1759, less than two months after entering the service on March 29, 1759, William landed at Halifax in Nova Scotia, serving there until November 1 of that same year. He again was noted to have served in Nova Scotia beginning in 1760, from January 1 through December 18, 1761.

From that point, this unsourced report notes that William Tilson left Nova Scotia, but ultimately not to reside at his inherited property in Massachusetts, but to settle in southwest Virginia. When I have read of other men who had, subsequent to their military service, settled in locations other than their home colony, it has generally been because they personally observed the benefits of their new location due to previous military action there. Furthermore, the other ancestors I've studied who had relocated often moved with others of their company, sometimes following the officer of their unit, in peacetime just as they had done in battle.

So how did Virginia enter the equation for this New Englander? Even if William Tilson did obtain bounty land for his service in this new-to-him location, the laws of that post-war decade would have gone against him. And yet, this report states that William Tilson "migrated to the western part of Virginia" by 1763. Comparing this report with history, though, we run into problems, which we'll see tomorrow.

One Slim Link

 

It is almost cliched to hear a genealogist quip, "Where there's a will, there's a way." But that is what I'm tempted to say today. In brief, I've found a will. Only it isn't the will of the mystery fourth great-grandfather I'm seeking. It's his great-grandfather's will.

Admittedly, that's one thin link to go by. I'd still need to draw viable connections between my fourth great-grandfather and someone three generations removed from him on his direct line. 

First, let's get ourselves oriented to this family tree. My sticking point is finding any documentation on my fourth great-grandfather, Peleg Tilson, which would connect him with previous generations. According to Mercer Vernon Tilson's 1911 book, The Tilson Genealogy, Peleg was the second-born son of William and Mary (Ransom) Tilson.

Granted, a next step, since I can't find documentation for Peleg himself, would be to look for his father's will. And that is on my list of documents to pursue. But if we first pursue the line of his direct pedigree—at least according to Mercer Tilson's book, here's what we find. William, Peleg's father, was son of Stephen and Janet (often spelled Jennet) Tilson. Janet was a Murdock, born to John Murdock and Ruth Bartlett. And it is with this Bartlett surname that we start entering the confirmed territory of Mayflower descendants.

As it turns out, John Murdock's will in "Plimouth" colony, Massachusetts, was easily accessible online—thankfully. The reason for my gratitude and glee will be apparent when I share one additional detail with you: that John Murdock not only named his children in his will, but specifically singled out one grandson and identified him as son of John's son-in-law Stephen Tilson. Thus, one instance where someone put his money where his mouth was, in identifying the line of descent. In his first order of business, John Murdock gave his grandson William "Tillson" the whole farm.

I give and Bequeath unto my grandson William Tillson (the son of Stephen Tillson) the whole Farm with the Dwelling-House and all the other buildings thereon Standing...To Him his Heirs and assigns forever.

Why his grandson William didn't remain in Massachusetts, given such a legacy, is an entirely separate story. But in that one line we are gifted with a confirmed snippet of the Tilson genealogy, at least from the point of John Murdock's will in 1756.

Back to Boston

 

One plus to revisiting our family history research trail over the years is the possibility that additional documents may have been uploaded to digitized collections. This was indeed what I had discovered while grappling with my father-in-law's puzzle concerning his great-grandfather, Stephen Malloy.

Having left his home in Ireland via Liverpool in a hurry, Stephen had written to his wife Anna, telling her that he was bound for Boston. While the name of the sailing vessel matched up with passenger records I've been able to find almost two hundred years later, that was the last confirmation of what had become of him.

Family stories didn't help the research effort. According to the oral tradition passed down by the family, Stephen Malloy had made it to Boston, alright—but some time after his arrival, he was shot and killed.

That's what his descendants had said, repeating the story generation after generation with no proof to substantiate the claim. I decided to look for myself—but that was years ago. Sure enough, I found his name on the right passenger list, arriving in Boston about March 27, 1849. But what about his death? Surely someone would have made an official note of such a crime.

Back at that time, I did stumble upon a possible record. It was, however, only a transcript, as many of the records available for genealogical purposes were at the time. 

The record basically reported the death of one Stephen "Maloy" in Boston during 1850. The date looked reasonable, and since I'd already discovered the numerous spelling varieties used for Stephen's surname, an entry for "Maloy" didn't disturb me too much.

Clicking through on a second tab for the reference, labeled "source," gave me more information on this entry. It provided me with the name of the original document from which this indexed collection had been drawn—helpful information, indeed, if I wished to track down the source for myself to view anything more than a mere, possibly error-laden, transcription.

At the time I first found this entry—this was years ago—all I could do was presume this was the indicator of Stephen Malloy's demise, just as the family had insisted was his fate. Later, fortunately, the document itself was digitized, enabling me to see for myself the full story. In fact, there were several versions of the record made available, from typed transcript back to what appears to be a time-worn original version of the record itself.

Once I was able to view the actual document, I learned that, once again, our Stephen Malloy had thrown me off his track. The entry for the 1850 death was indeed for someone in Boston named Stephen "Maloy," but it was for a babe in arms aged one year and five months—hardly of an age to be husband of Anna Flanagan or father of Catherine Malloy.

The child, son of John and Elizabeth Maloy, was certainly not our Stephen. But what if the family could have been related to Stephen? After all, why did Stephen choose to migrate to Boston? He could, as did many Irish immigrants, have rather chosen the route to New York City—or chosen the more prudent expense of transportation to the British portion of North America, and head for Canada.

That Stephen's wife Anna may not have been entirely convinced of his tragic death was evident in that she, a devout Catholic, remained unmarried for the rest of her seventy three years—or, perhaps, she just never gave up hope that she'd see him again.

I, on the other hand, in revisiting this research puzzle couldn't help but take a look at all the other documents which have more recently been digitized and placed online for our benefit. While this may be a wild and crazy conjecture on my part, I couldn't help but notice that there were other records from the Boston area concerning men of the same name during that time period.

While a game of "what if" should never have any part in the final proof argument drawn up at the conclusion of a difficult ancestral search, it certainly doesn't hurt to at least consider other possibilities while we are still in search mode. And there was one possibility in particular which made me think twice.

 

Note: both search results, shown above in insets, are from Ancestry.com, as indicated by the hyperlinked text next to each example shown.     

Stephen's Side of the Story

 

How many times do we discover one useful detail about the ancestor we are pursuing, only to find the information isn't quite enough to satisfy all our questions?

Take Stephen Malloy, great-grandfather of my father-in-law. The tantalizing detail about Stephen was that my father-in-law's family actually still had in their possession a letter which he had written to his wife, Anna Flanagan Malloy, on February 20, 1849. The downside was that that letter became the first and last token of his existence which anyone in the family had of the man.

The letter, despite its abysmal handwriting and decrepit condition—chunks of paper missing from what might have been key details in the message—still provided enough clues for a modern-day genealogist to do some fact-checking.

From the surviving details, we can glean such facts as where the letter was written—in Liverpool, not in Ireland—and Stephen's plans. He was immediately to set sail for Boston aboard a ship called the "Anglo-Americanio." Spelling not being the strong suit of the letter's scribe, it would be quite reasonable to assume the ship might rather have been named the Anglo-American. In fact, one vessel bearing that name docked in Boston harbor on March 27, 1849—five weeks after the date on Stephen's letter, a reasonable travel time for that era.

The bonus detail—at least for our research goals—was discovery of someone named Stephen Molloy listed in the passenger records for that ship. According to the scanned record, Stephen was headed from Ireland to the United States at age twenty six. He claimed to be a mason, and was apparently not traveling with any discernible family members.

Despite that serendipitous finding, realizing that Stephen's age in 1849 put his year of birth approximately in 1823 did not sit well with the discovery that, according to Chicago records at the end of her life, his wife Anna was likely born around 1812. In other words, that would make Anna, mother of Stephen's daughter Catherine, eleven years older than her husband—an unlikely scenario, given that time period in Ireland.

Furthermore, looking back at the tax records for the civil parish in County Limerick where Stephen's letter was sent to his wife, while we can find the encouraging sign of one Flanagan residence nearby, there is no mention of anyone by the surname Malloy. Nor Molloy. Nor any other spelling permutation of that name.

Stephen Malloy may have been sailing from Liverpool to Boston on the Anglo-American, but where did he come from before departing for his New World destination?

Above: Header for the scanned passenger listing for the Anglo-American, arriving in Boston from Liverpool on March 27, 1849; image courtesy Ancestry.com.

Researching the Doppelgänger Family

 

At a local genealogical society meeting yesterday, I was talking with a fellow member about a research problem she was tackling. Apparently, she and other family members had traced back one line of her family to a possible tie with a key aide to George Washington. While that would make a fascinating connection, there was one problem with the story. When my friend looked more closely at the genealogical assumptions, she realized the son of that presidential aide—the man in her direct line—was listed as born two years after the aide's wife had died.

This is a problem.

We all know to keep an eye out for those genealogical gaffes. Children born long after their "parents" die are a telltale sign. But there are others, too.

I'm not entirely sure finding an ancestor alive and listed in a census record almost seven years after his death would qualify as a bona fide resurrection, but finding another Timothy Cullinane, complete with correct names for his wife and three of the four children I had in my records, certainly made me stop and take another look. Perhaps, incredibly enough, I was wrong.

Let's take a double-check of what we have found on our Timothy Cullinane, brother to the Patrick Cullinane who was ancestor of one of my husband's DNA matches. We learned from Timothy's 1883 marriage record that he married Margaret McCarthy, and that his parents were Daniel and Debora Cullinane. 

While we have, in looking at the many records for Timothy, his family, and even his brother's family, uncovered documents which recorded that Cullinane surname in many permutations—everything from the innocuous dropping of the final "e" to render Cullinan, to added vowels or chopped off syllables—we still have been able to piece together his history through to the next generation.

Double checking that next generation, we can see that eldest son Daniel had, for his May 16, 1884, birth record, a listing of parents with at least their given name listed: Timothy and Margaret. While I could not find a birth entry for second son Patrick, his death record, showing a birth in 1886, mentioned his parents' names as Timothy Cullinane and Margaret McCarthy. For daughter Margaret, while we need to rely on a digitized scan of a very faded handwritten record from Boston in 1889 listing "Maggie" Cullinane, the July 4 entry at least confirms her parents were Timothy and Margaret, though the mother's surname was missing from the record. Even the short-lived third son Timothy had, for his October 25, 1891, death an entry confirming his parents as Timothy Cullinane and Margaret McCarthy.

If we have the parents correct for all these children, and if we already have documentation showing us that Timothy Cullinane died in Boston on November 15 of 1893, why, when looking for what became of his widow and children in the 1900 U.S. Census, do I find another Boston family with almost the same details?

  

Admittedly, the surname listed was spelled "Cullane," not Cullinane, but I have seen that surname chopped up in similar manner elsewhere. While there also was one other person listed in this family—I omitted the line for a younger daughter in the household named Sarah, who was born in August of 1894, nine months after our Timothy died—the details on the rest of the family line up almost too close for comfort.

At his death in 1893, Timothy's age was given as thirty two years and three months, which would have yielded a birth in August, alright, even though the year would have been 1861—though such errors in death records are not unusual. While I don't have a date of birth for his wife, Margaret's age at their marriage was listed as the same as Timothy's, so a five month difference wouldn't be that far off. And the children? May of 1884 lines up perfectly for Daniel, and at least the year agrees for Patrick. July is spot on for Margaret, though the year misses it by one. Even baby Timothy, who died in 1891, was appropriately missing from the family constellation.

Think of all the records you've scrutinized for your own family trees. How many times have the census records reported ages a year or so off? Or spelling missing a few letters? Even the year of marriage lines right up.

The only problem: I've already found the death record for the head of the family. Not, apparently, the head of this family.

While it may seem I've belabored the point, a discovery like this points up a valid consideration. What are the chances that the ancestor you are researching has a doppelgänger family, as well? You might not need to worry about exposure to such a risk if you are researching, say, the Aktabowski family in New Jersey, but when it comes to Boston at the cusp of the twentieth century, the influx of Irish immigrants yielded that city multiple Patricks and Margarets who all claimed the same surnames. These are genealogical waters through which we must tread cautiously.

While I could argue that I've seen more than my fair share of city directories in which the widow was too timid to have herself listed as a woman living alone—forget then, I know women who do this now—I tend to doubt that our Timothy's widow Margaret would have reported her husband still alive and well for the 1900 census. 

I dunno...I may be a bit unreasonable in some of my assertions. But I wouldn't be surprised if I just stumbled upon yet another of a multitude of Irish immigrant families who chose to name their children with the same Daniel, Patrick, and Margaret pattern of this family, whoever they turned out to be.

Above image excerpted from the 1900 U.S. Census for the Boston, Massachusetts area; image courtesy Ancestry.com.

Seeking Falvey Descendants

 

It is sheer serendipity when someone who takes a DNA test happens to match up with a family line which has had our own research work stalled. If the match is close enough, and the person's own tree complete enough, it is possible to make some connections we hadn't seen before.

In the case of my husband's DNA matches who tie into our mutual Falvey line from County Kerry, Ireland, my hope to find the Falveys' way back home has not yet materialized. We've already traced the line back through several iterations of Falveys—from Indiana, from Michigan, and now, for the second go-round, from Massachusetts. Still nothing to point the way back home.

We had a possibility with the line we examined last week, that of Timothy Cullinane who settled in the Boston area. Though he and his wife, Margaret McCarthy, had at least four children, that younger generation either died young or didn't marry. Of the one child whom I could trace, though she married, I couldn't find any descendants, and thus, no further possible DNA testers.

Timothy's brother Patrick, on the other hand, already was the ancestor of one of my husband's DNA matches. Though the match wasn't close—only twenty six centiMorgans—it could have represented a relationship as close as third cousin (a stretch) or as distant as sixth cousin. Or beyond. It all came down to how much Falvey DNA from Patrick's mother any of Patrick's descendants would carry in his or her own genetic makeup.

To find an additional Falvey DNA match from this same family line, at first glance, wouldn't seem difficult. Patrick Cullinane and his wife, Johanna Sullivan, had at least eight children whom I could find. On closer scrutiny, though, finding any children of their children was a challenge.

There was one option, though. Patrick and Annie's second daughter, Helen, married a man formally known as Cornelius Francis Lyons—Frank to his friends—and they raised a family of at least five children. I am still working my way through documenting that family line, seeking other Ancestry subscribers who are working on that line and who may also have tested their DNA. I haven't found any possible candidates to approach about considering testing yet, though.

In the meantime, having repeated the same process for Patrick's brother Timothy's line, I ran into a bit of a surprise. After finding a death record for Timothy and his son before the 1900 census, what should I stumble across in that very census but a family in the same area looking suspiciously like the Timothy Cullinane family I had just been working on.

Tell me it isn't so.... 

Tracing the Cullinane Descendants

 

It was one lone segment on chromosome two—a tiny one, even, with only twenty six centiMorgans—which tied my husband with a descendant of Patrick Cullinane of Boston, Massachusetts. From ample documentation, thanks to those record-keeping Bostonians, we could determine that Patrick's parents were Daniel Cullinane of County Kerry, Ireland, and his wife of the many names, Gobinette or Debora or Abbie Falvey. From that small start, we could spot Patrick's brother who also made the immigrant journey to Massachusetts—Timothy Cullinane and his own wife, Margaret McCarthy.

That, of course, was before Timothy's untimely death from tuberculosis. Since he apparently arrived in Massachusetts after the 1880 census and died before the 1900 census, it seems we have very little to determine whether he left any descendants. After all, his funeral notice gave us no information on who survived him in 1893.

There was, however, one clue, again from those New England record-keepers: Timothy and Margaret had a son whom they named Timothy. Yet the only record I could say for certain belonged to him was his death record. Unfortunately, like his father, the junior Timothy died young. Very young. In the city of Boston in 1891, the entry for Timothy Cullinane's death showed his age as only twenty eight days, having succumbed to pneumonia.

Just to be sure I read the register entry correctly, I looked for a recording of young Timothy's birth earlier that same year, but found only a segment of a record showing a Timothy Cullinane born on September 27. Only the fact that the page was not cut off before the first few letters of the Cullinane address kept me from wondering whether I had found the wrong record. The "15 Thac" was enough for me to see it agreed with the same address in the death record,  15 Thacher Street.

At first, seeing that entry for a life so soon snuffed out—and that of a son whose father died soon after from lung complications, himself—led me to conclude this Cullinane line had no further children to carry on their father's name. How wrong I was.

It took a little bit of reverse searching to flush out a fuller picture, as my first attempt—the direct approach of finding widow Margaret Cullinane in Boston for the 1900 census—wasn't working. By reverse searching, I mean filling in all the blanks other than the supposed child's name.

When I looked for an unnamed child in the Boston area whose parents' names were Timothy Cullinane and Margaret McCarthy, then I began seeing a fuller picture of the family constellation Timothy left behind at his 1893 passing. Expanding my search beyond Ancestry.com to FamilySearch.org provided even more documents to help build out a family group sheet for this couple.

From what I was able to locate, Timothy and Margaret had at least four children. True to his Irish roots—or at least the customary Irish naming pattern—shortly after the Cullinanes' first anniversary, on May 16, 1884, they named their first-born son after Timothy's father, Daniel. Two years later, the couple welcomed a second son, whom they dutifully named Patrick, after Margaret's own father, though he was not destined to live long enough to marry or have a family of his own, succumbing to a lung malady himself in 1915 at the age of twenty nine.

A third child I found for the Cullinanes was their daughter Margaret, whose marriage only months before her brother's death provides the details to help us look for descendants with her husband's name, Edward J. Connarton.

Despite being able to find all these other records by going about the search "backwards," there was much more to learn about this family. My question is whether there are any others in this branch of the Cullinane family who, as direct descendants, might also have tested their DNA—more importantly, whether that test might lead to a match with any other branches of this extended Falvey family from County Kerry I'm seeking.

Besides this now-expanded line of descent, though, we still have Timothy's brother Patrick's family to explore, a task which we will pick up when we continue on Monday. 

Connecting the Trans-Atlantic Dots

 

What are the chances that the information we discovered in Massachusetts on brothers Timothy and Patrick Cullinane can lead us back to the land of their birth in Ireland? After all, other than a few document discrepancies, we have the names of their likely parents: Daniel Cullinane and Deborah—or Abbie—Falvey. And we've already seen from Patrick's ample paper trail around Boston that he claimed to have been born in County Kerry. That seems like a sufficient supply of facts to help us connect the trans-Atlantic dots. Right?

Of course, you already can sense that, by my asking such a question, the answer will be, ironically, more likely a "no" than a "yes." You know me well, by now.

As it turns out, we will be more successful with the trail back home when we follow the scant listings we can find on the short-lived Timothy than those for the amply-documented marble worker, Patrick. From Timothy Cullinane's 1893 death record, we can calculate that his birth occurred, back in Ireland, around 1861—possibly in August of that year. That, approximately, is what was indicated on his marriage record to Margaret McCarthy in January of 1883.

Though it was not quite the same year—nor even the right month—we can find a baptismal record back in County Kerry for a "Timotheum," legitimate son of Danielis Cullinane and Debora Falvey of Clashnagarrane, dated October 7, 1858.

 

Though we can tell nothing from the listing of the sole baptismal sponsor—apparently Daniel's sister, Mary Cullinane—we can find several other listings for these same parents in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin. An earlier baptism on August 10, 1856, for a daughter named Mary lists the same parents, although with a different townland residence: Knockauncore. Bonus discovery: the girl's sponsor was named Johanna Falvey. If that sponsor, who was Mary's mother's sister, is one and the same as our Johanna Falvey, we have made a valuable discovery, indeed.

There were, of course, other children. Some had baptismal records which included the mother's name as Debora. Others—like that of James in 1860 or Hanora "Callinan" in 1866—had an entirely different given name for that Falvey mother: Gubbenilas or Gubboneta. Fortunately, we've already located a reasonable explanation for the discrepancy: Gobnait (or its many variants) was an Irish given name, not readily translated into the required Latin of Catholic records, and thus sometimes substituted with a more "appropriate" choice by church leaders, such as Debora.

But what of the two different townlands listed? Could it be possible that there was a Daniel Cullinane living in Knockauncore, and a different Daniel in Clashnagarrane? Possibly, except that we can find one of the baptismal records in each townland including the same wife's name: Mary's record showing Debora Falvey in Knockauncore, and Timothy's own in Clashnagarrane.

That said, we are still missing one key element: any baptismal document for Patrick Cullinane, the Boston area marble worker whose descendant became the DNA match to our Johanna Falvey's second great-grandson, my husband. Based on dates, we might be able to assume that Patrick's birth record was inadvertently listed as James, as the year matches in both cases. Or we can just assume that, seeing American records matching the parents' names for both immigrant Cullinanes, Patrick's record simply got lost in the scramble to preserve aging records.

Of course, I'm not comfortable relying only on that last assumption, and certainly will be searching further. In the meantime, there is another avenue open to us. While seeing Timothy's untimely death, not long after his marriage in the Boston area, we need to realize that there were nearly ten years between his marriage and his passing. What if there were other descendants? And Patrick, his brother: what other descendants did he have? Let's take some time to explore whether there are others out there who either can collaborate with us about the connection between Patrick's and Timothy's line, or who might even be willing to take a DNA test. Perhaps some have done so, already.

Image above: the baptismal record for Timothy Cullinane, from the Irish Catholic Parish Records collection for the parish of Kilcummin in County Kerry; image via Ancestry.com.

The Other Brother

 

It is always helpful, in sorting out potential documentation to confirm we're on the right track in tracing our ancestors, to follow the trail of siblings as well as our direct line. So it goes with those DNA matches I'm tracing, in the hopes their ancestral lines will lead us back to the Irish homeland of our own umpteenth-great-grandparents.

I'm now finding myself following the trail of two brothers by the name of Cullinane, all in the hopes that their mother—of a Falvey line from County Kerry—was somehow related to my husband's second great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey Kelly. With one segment of only twenty six centiMorgans shared between them, my husband and this particular Falvey DNA match are distant cousins, indeed. The question is: are they still close enough in relationship for their respective family trees to lead us to our Johanna's own parish in County Kerry?

Looking at the first of the two Cullinane brothers yesterday, we saw the paper trail left by Timothy was not long enough to leave us many clues, but we did at least garner the fact that his mother was a Falvey. But whether her first name was Deborah or Abby, we couldn't tell; the records seemed to contradict themselves. While his brief lifespan cut short any hope of discovering more about Timothy, we will revisit his story later this week when we search for other possibilities from his family's story.

Today, though, we'll look at the other brother, Patrick, and see what can be gleaned from his personal history.

As Irish immigration trends went, Patrick was a late arrival on American shores. Born in County Kerry about 1860, we don't find him in American records until his marriage in 1890. And there, in the city of Boston on May 15, we find another occasion to interject yet one more Sullivan into the giant family hairball. On that date, Patrick took as his bride Joanna Sullivan, Irish immigrant daughter of Daniel and Ellen Sullivan.

The key to our search, though, lies in what was reported for Patrick's own parents. There, just as we saw for his brother Timothy's reports, Patrick gave the name of his father as Daniel Cullinane. For his mother, agreeing with at least one of Timothy's records, Patrick provided her name as Debby.

At this point, we need to interject a word of caution. Just as you might suspect in researching Irish arrivals in Boston, there was apparently another couple married at about the same time with similar names. That time, though, the woman's name was recorded as Annie, not Joanna. It was helpful to discover that entry, though, for in later records on our couple, Joanna often was recorded as Annie, as well.

There was one key detail that helped differentiate between the two couples: our Patrick's occupation. Fortunately, his was a line of work much more specific than, say, a laborer—or even than his brother Timothy's work as a teamster. Patrick was a marble worker.

That occupation was reported consistently in all the records I could find on Patrick and his family, protecting me from veering off in the direction of the wrong Patrick. In the next record I could find on the Cullinanes after their marriage, the 1900 census showed Patrick and, yes, "Annie" with their four daughters and—finally!—one son in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Patrick was again affiliated with that telltale profession, this time as a "marble polisher."

The 1900 census also indicated that Patrick arrived from Ireland in 1885 and was now a naturalized citizen of the United States. Checking on any naturalization records, we can find two separate documents which detail that citizenship process. From those records, we can see that Patrick reported his date of birth as June 15, 1860, and that he was born in County Kerry, Ireland. We also discover the approximate date of his arrival—May 23, 1881, thus explaining his absence from any earlier census records. We also learn that his immigration route brought him to Boston.

Helpfully, once again, to confirm we are following the right Patrick Cullinane, we can spot that telltale occupation, this time stated as "a marble worker." Patrick and his family could be followed through the decennial census through 1940, all the time remaining in Cambridge. Only a brief entry in the death notices in The Boston Daily Globe provide us the date of his passing on July 7, 1942.

The real key, in this quest to trace all these Falvey DNA matches back to their homeland, is to see whether brothers Timothy and Patrick can lead us back to any Cullinane records in County Kerry, and then, whether any of them include a mother by the name of Deborah, Debby, or even Abbie Falvey.

 

Image above: From marriages registered in the City of Boston for the year 1890, the May 15 entry of Patrick Cullinane and Joanna Sullivan; image via Ancestry.com.