About John and Kitty

 

If one approach to circumventing a research brick wall fails us, we always have other routes to explore. That may be my positive attitude showing, but what do we have to lose for trying?

While exploring the connection between my father-in-law's great-grandparents Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery and a different Tully couple by the name of Dennis and Margaret, the scant material we could find in the immigrants' adopted home in Ontario, Canada, was too inconclusive to provide us a next research step. Granted, there still is that DNA connection with descendants of that other Dennis and Margaret, but it will take more digging and further documentary resources to reach any conclusion.

In the meantime, there was yet another loose end begging us to explore its connection with the extended Tully family from the Ballina Catholic church parish in northern County Tipperary: John Tully and Kitty Flannery. We had explored the possibility that they had emigrated at about the same time, and to the same place, as my father-in-law's great-grandparents—although we were hampered by the quirk of the enumerator of the 1851 Canadian census in Brant County of what was once known as "Canada West." His impeccable manners refused to allow him to inquire as to the given name of the married women on his route, thus rendering John Tully's wife's identity as simply "Mrs."

Though we ran into some difficulties in confirming whether the same named family was the one showing up across the border in Detroit, Michigan, for the U. S. 1870 census, I've since located a few documents which should help confirm the identities. First, though, let's arrange these new discoveries in a timeline to gain an ordered perspective.

Back in the County Tipperary Catholic parish, Ballina, where we first found the letters confirming my father-in-law's relatives, I have since found a marriage record for John Tully and Kitty Flannery, dated February 23, 1841. At the very least, it can bestow us a reasonable estimate as to John's latest possible date of birth, assuming he was at least twenty at the time of his marriage.

As we've already mentioned, their child was baptised a year later, showing us now that daughter Mary was their firstborn. Her baptism on March 10, 1842, was followed by that of daughter Judy on April 15, 1844, and son "Patt." on July 20, 1846.

What we can now add to the mix is a birth record on March 20, 1856, for a daughter entered into the baptismal record in Ingersoll, Oxford County, Ontario—on that same route leading from where Denis and Margaret Flannery Tully had settled in Paris, through where the other Dennis and Margaret lived, and on to the U.S. border at Michigan.

This daughter, baptised "Brigid Tulley," was the key to finding John Tully's family in the 1861 Canadian census. This time, the family—if, indeed, it was the correct one—could be found listed among the residents of the tiny village of Saint Marys in Perth County, Ontario.

Once again, the unfortunate Bridget had her name's spelling mangled—she was entered as "Bridgeit"—but the other individuals in the household sported ages which almost all aligned with the John Tully family we had found back in Paris in Brant County's 1851 census. The only outlier was Kitty, who this time not only was transformed from the "Mrs." of Paris and the "Kitty" of County Tipperary, but as "Cathrin" emerged as slightly younger than the forty six years we'd have expected, given her entry in 1851.

That said, the census score card now yielded us these approximate years of birth:

John in 1814

Kitty in 1819 or 1821

Margaret in 1849 or 1851

Michael in 1853

Bridget in 1856

Earlier this week, we had moved our research focus to Detroit, suspecting that the family had once again migrated across borders. This was not an unusual move for the extended Tully family, for my father-in-law's family had several personal papers from relatives who had followed the same path from Ireland to Canada to the midwest United States—some even beyond Detroit to Chicago or the Dakota territory.

As for that 1870 census entry we had found, though, I wasn't entirely sure. That is where we took that left turn to follow a Margaret Tully Baxter's line backward through Ontario once again—leading to the other Dennis and Margaret, of our DNA matches, which we had explored.

One detail, though, tells me there was more than one Margaret Tully living in Detroit, if only by association to her sister Bridget. Here's why. Included with some of the U.S. census enumerations was something called a mortality schedule. This list provided the names and dates of death for those in the vicinity who had died in the year leading up to the census. 

For the 1870 mortality schedule, there was an entry for a fourteen year old Canadian-born girl named Bridget Tully. The schedule indicates that the time frame of the report included the year ending June first of 1870, showing us that Bridget's month of death was March of that same year. Furthermore, this specific schedule was for the eighth ward of Detroit. Looking back to the 1870 census where we found our possible John and Kitty Tully, we see they also were listed as living in the eighth ward, making it likely that the deceased teen was their own Bridget Tully.

With that discovery, we can be more confident that the John and "Mrs." Tully in the 1851 census, back in Brant County, Ontario, were indeed our John and Kitty. We also are redirected, in the matter of their daughter Margaret, away from the woman of the same name we had traced back to the other Dennis and Margaret Tully, and will need to discover what became of this Margaret, daughter of John and Kitty. Finally, it would be helpful to complete the search for John and Kitty themselves, as what became of them following their appearance in the American 1870 census is unclear. We need to look for them not only in future census records, but in any indication of their final resting place.

In steering clear of mistaking one Tully relative for another of a similar date—I won't even get into the issue of the other Dennis and Margaret's daughter, also named Bridget—we now can safely say we know that one additional couple from those old Ballina church records also made the voyage from County Tipperary during those horrible famine years, making their new home, at least temporarily, in "Canada West" before moving onward once again.

Wild Thoughts

 

You can just about sit back and watch this thought unravel.

Here we are in the month of August, tackling yet another brick wall ancestor from the list of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2021. It is the siblings of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery Tully I'm in pursuit of. Given that the godparents listed on the baptismal records for the children of Margaret Flannery and Denis Tully must either be his or her siblings or in-laws, we've found a double-dip with the naming of sponsors John Tully and Kitty Flannery. Only...tracking them from that point onward becomes difficult.

As it turns out, John and Kitty were married, and had three children baptised in their home church in Ballina, County Tipperary. After that point, Margaret and Denis emigrated to Canada—and possibly, so did John and Kitty. Only I couldn't tell; the 1851 census for the place where they settled—Paris in Brant County, Ontario—labeled the wives as "Mrs."

The idea to trace John and Kitty and their children onward seemed to lead to yet another home—this time in Detroit, Michigan—before I lost track of John and Kitty once again. However, at last sighting, that family had children Margaret and Michael in the 1870 census. My thought was to trace each of the children into their future to see whether their death certificate would provide the names of their parents, giving us a thumbs up or thumbs down on whether we had located the right John Tully family or not.

Son Michael, at least in this Detroit household, was born in Canada about 1853. Someone matching that name and year of birth did die on December 28, 1921, in Detroit—but he was a single man. Not only that, but he was a man without family close by, apparently, for the informant on his death certificate was the doctor who performed the surgery which led to his demise. Seeing that, it is no surprise to discover, for the required lines on parents' identification, Michael's father was listed simply as "Tully" and his mother, "unknown."

Still, I decided to follow through and see whether Michael could have been buried in a family plot. After all, his death record indicated he was buried at Mount Olivet. Looking for his memorial there on Find A Grave, though, was not helpful, for the photo of the simple stone indicated a birth year of 1861, not 1853. Furthermore, the headstone listed only the initials "M. J." rather than a given name. Searching the cemetery for any other Tully listings gave no useful results.

Although following Michael's trail did not lead us to answers, what about his sister Margaret? In searching for a Margaret Tully in death records in the Detroit area, I used Michiganology—formerly known as Seeking Michigan—which performs searches for previous names, such as maiden names, as well as the more straightforward searches for current name. Since I didn't know whether Margaret had married, this was necessary, and did lead to a possibility.

The only death certificate I could find, in the vicinity of Detroit, was for a Margaret Baxter, wife of Henry, who died on Christmas day in 1935. The death certificate handily provided the name of her husband—Henry—for further research. For my main purpose in locating the record, it did tell me the names of her parents—but it was not the information I was hoping for.

This Margaret was listed as daughter of Dennis Tully and a woman by the name of Margaret Hurley, with both parents born in Ireland. This Margaret was said to have been born in Watford, Ontario—handily for immigrants, on a straight path from Paris, Ontario, to the state of Michigan across the international border.

The date of Margaret's birth, however, was not the 1849 estimate we had extrapolated from the 1861 census in the household of our John and "Mrs." Tully. Her date of birth had been given as November 25, 1875—not even close to the date we first observed.

Hold your horses about the discrepancy of her parents' identity, though, for in researching this Margaret Tully Baxter, there were two unusual details that gave me some wild thoughts. The first was that déjà vu feeling telling me I've seen that name before—even paired with that set of parents. The second was a detail which I only stumbled upon, once I looked up this Margaret's memorial on Find A Grave.

The volunteer who posted Margaret's information was helpfully thorough in placing a copy of the woman's obituary on the memorial. Going the extra mile, the volunteer also alerted me to a discrepancy: the Margaret who married Henry Baxter on May 8, 1889, most certainly could not have been a child born in 1875. And she wasn't. In the actual marriage record, "Maggie" provided her age as twenty three, yielding a year of birth closer to 1866—still not the 1849 of our John Tully's census entry, but certainly not 1875.

More important, though, was the discovery that, in this marriage record at least, this Margaret claimed her father's name was indeed John Tully. And the "Mrs." to go along with that John? Mary McGuire. While the witness to the marriage was conveniently someone named Michael Tully—her brother?—there are too many frayed ends to tie this story together and fasten it to our Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery.

And yet...

The reason the names of the couple Dennis Tully and Margaret Hurley sounded so familiar to me is that, in searching for my Denis and Margaret, I often ran into other trees containing those names. More than that, my husband has a Tully DNA match whose founding immigrant ancestors were named Dennis Tully and Margaret Hurley. In the past, I've always dismissed that as a case of errors in a paper trail, but the DNA match gives pause to reconsider. The fourteen year age discrepancy between our Denis Tully and his neighbor John Tully in the Canadian 1851 census could have indicated a cousin relationship between them, or an uncle to nephew. With a forty to fifty centiMorgan connection with this DNA match, we could be considering a third or fourth cousin connection—or as distant as an eighth cousin relationship, according to the Shared cM Project at DNA Painter. 

No matter how close or distant that connection may have been, stumbling upon this Margaret Tully Baxter—whoever she was—may help guide me back to another clue for the Tully family constellation in County Tipperary, Ireland, where the story started.  

Nice Thought . . .

 

A research project—at least for me—begins with a question. My goal is to find an answer to that question. The right answer, of course, would be a nice touch. In the case of tracing the lines related to my father-in-law's Irish ancestors Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery, it apparently also involves pursuing a twisted course.

Last week, we began inspecting the Irish Catholic baptismal records for the children of Denis and Margaret Tully in hopes of discovering, through their choice of godparents, the names of their own siblings. While that doesn't yet provide us with the names of their parents, it is at least a step in the right direction. 

From that effort, we learned that among the possibilities, there might be siblings named John Tully and Kitty Flannery. What was interesting to learn was that, following the route of Denis Tully and his family from County Tipperary in Ireland to the County of Brant in present-day Ontario, Canada, another family showed up in the 1851 census with some similarities in name and ages.

Tracing that family of John Tully, his incompletely labeled wife "Mrs." and their Irish-born daughter Mary beyond that Canadian 1851 census could lead us to further information to either confirm or reject the hypothesis that they were one and the same as the John and Kitty Tully in the parish of Ballina, back in Ireland. That, at least, was my thought.

As my father-in-law's Tully ancestors were wont to do, this Tully family did not seem to stay long in one place. By the time of the 1861 census in Brant County, our Denis was still living in the same location in the village of Paris, but gone were John Tully and his family. While there were possible matches in other locations in Canada, one likelihood was that John and Kitty may have been one of the first among the Tully family to migrate yet again, this time to the United States.

As it happened, there was a Tully family somewhat fitting the description, living in Detroit, Michigan, at the time of the 1870 U.S. census. With the head of the family named John, born about the same year as that indicated in the 1851 Canadian census, the household also included a wife by the name of Catherine—of which the diminutive "Kitty" would be a logical nickname. In addition, there was in that Detroit household a daughter named Margaret, who had been born in Canada about 1851—not quite the 1849 suggested by the Canadian census, but reasonably close.

Unfortunately, gone was the older sister Mary, who by then could have been married—or deceased. In her place was a younger child, this time a son by the name of Michael, born about 1853.

With this mixed bag of results, it seemed too inconclusive to tie together the three record sets concerning John and Kitty Tully, though I wasn't yet willing to concede that I was following a false lead.

My thinking at this point is to trace what can be found of this John and Catherine Tully in Detroit, their daughter Margaret and this new entry of a son named Michael, to see if any subsequent records might reveal more of their identities. Parents' names listed on the death record of either child—Margaret or Michael—could provide conclusive evidence, if we are on the right track. Otherwise, well, it's always helpful to know we've tested a hypothesis and the answer is "no."  

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. 

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.

Before Eloise Disappeared

Given all indications provided us by the pedestrian records genealogists typically rely upon, Eloise Lyon had a fairly routine childhood, growing up in rural Indiana. Sure, hers was a lifetime spanning the Great Depression and a world war, but other than that, indications—at least on paper—were that she had a stable household, growing up in an average American community.

Eloise's dad, Waldo Emerson Lyon, had been born a few years before the turn of the century, and until the time of his marriage to Bessie Mullennix—William F. Riley's great-granddaughter—he had lived in the same place where he had been born, Blackford County, Indiana. After their 1913 wedding in Muncie, the newlyweds settled in New Castle, then a small town of fourteen thousand residents, where Waldo obtained work as a machinist, and Bessie gave birth to their firstborn in 1918, a son they called Harry.

By the time Eloise arrived, two months after the 1920 census was taken, the Lyon family was still in New Castle. Likewise during the arrival of Eloise's younger brother Robert and, apparently, a child who did not survive, who had been born in between those two births. It was only upon the 1926 arrival of the Lyon family's youngest—a daughter they named Nina Lucille—that we have any reference point upon which to pin the family's move from Indiana to Detroit, Michigan.

Perhaps it was for the sake of a job for Waldo that the family moved from their native Indiana to the rapidly growing Detroit. How the family fared, once the effects of the depression became severe, is hard to tell, though the 1940 census showed that they had moved by then to a suburb of Detroit. Waldo was employed as a tool and die maker, and his oldest son joined him as an apprentice in the same line of work.

There, the regular snapshot of life in the Lyon family ended, except for the occasional digitized record of marriages and moves. Soon after that 1940 census, apprentice Harry felt confident enough in his success at work to marry Doris Renshaw, who had moved to the Detroit area with her mother and stepfather from Ohio. Eloise's younger brother Robert was of an age to serve in the military during World War II, and set aside his opportunity to marry and have a family until long after the end of the war—long after even their baby sister Nina had married.

By that point—perhaps because the family had followed Robert west during his military service?—almost everyone in the Lyon family had moved to California. Robert had settled there, and his two sons were born there. Though older brother Harry had married in Michigan, he and his wife eventually settled in California, as well. Baby sister Nina was married there. And nine years after her husband had died, Bessie, the mother of them all, passed away in 1969 in southern California.

For each of these events, documentation was available to substantiate each location. I have found records for Waldo, for Bessie, and for their children Harry, Robert, and Nina. But what about Eloise? The Lyon child who was born two years before the ill-fated infant whose untimely death hit the family seemed to have disappeared from the record after her mention in the 1940 census, back in Michigan.

If it weren't for the fact that Eloise had applied for Social Security benefits, I wouldn't have guessed that she had moved from Michigan. I certainly wouldn't have guessed that she moved in the opposite direction from the rest of her California-bound family.

But if I have the right Eloise Lyon, her Social Security record showed her last benefit was mailed to a location in the zip code 10025. If zip codes are basically the same now as they were in the 1980s at the point of her passing, hers would lead us to the west side of the northern reaches of Central Park, almost up to West 111th Street and Morningside Park on the island of Manhattan.

How did Eloise end up in New York City?

Whatever Became of the Children

The words in George McClellan's will sounded so removed from the situation when he labeled the children he had in common with his second wife as "her children." It was as if he wanted to give the impression that Celestia's children were those she brought into the 1861 marriage with the Florida man. And yet, he was sure to make provision for them in his will, as well as for the widow of his five and a half years' second marriage.

Granted, the youngest of those children was born barely six weeks before her father's death on October 19, 1866. This daughter, named Celestia after her mother, joined her older brother, George Edmund McClellan, named after his father. A third child, Celestia's oldest, had died in 1863 in infancy. Despite any impression left by George's choosing of that particular phrase in his will, "her children," we can look back on the records of the time and see clearly that those were McClellan children, too.

When the widowed Celestia finally made her break from the inhospitable Wellborn, Florida, where George's children from his first marriage had undoubtedly made life in that small town unbearable for her, she brought the two youngest McClellan children with her, along with their half-brother from her subsequent marriage to John Grant. This, coupled with Celestia's somewhat unusual name, made it fairly easy to trace her whereabouts after that unfortunate Florida episode in her life.

So we see that, by the time of the 1880 census, Celestia McClellan Grant was indeed situated in Indiana, along with the by-then sixteen year old son George McClellan and his fourteen year old sister Celestia. Twenty years from that point, however, the two McClellan children had surely left home. What became of them then?

Since they, just as much as the children of George's first wife Sidnah Tison, were McClellan descendants, I wanted to know what became of this missing—and often maligned—part of my family. Besides, we now have the know-how to trace those loose ends, so that's exactly what I did.

George, as it turned out, was the easier of the two McClellan children to trace. Within ten years of that 1880 census, he had found a wife in Macomb County, Michigan—no doubt through connections with his maternal grandmother or an aunt or uncle back in Celestia's hometown. The younger George McClellan's bride was Sarah Millicent Axtell, daughter of Ephraim and Fannie Morris Axtell.

By the time of the 1900 census, George had returned to Warsaw, Indiana, with his wife and children, which, by the time of the 1910 census, included two sons and three daughters.

Though George died in Warsaw, Indiana, on the last day of 1928—with his wife following in 1939—I was able to trace most of his children through to their own passing in the latter part of the twentieth century. Most stayed in Indiana—one even remaining in Warsaw—and one moved back to Michigan. One I couldn't locate in later life.

Celestia's daughter, also named Celestia, somehow found her way back from Indiana to Florida. Though I had difficulty finding her after she left her mother's home, by the time of the 1910 census, she was married to a doctor named Urban Sinclair Bird and was residing in Tampa. She had married him when she was in her forties, and the census indicated that she had no children, so I presume there wasn't any previous marriage, though I can locate no record to confirm or deny that.

Though no relation of mine, the elder Celestia's youngest child—DeSoto Grant—had at least two children and ultimately ended up in California, not far from where I live. He died in 1944.

George and Celestia, the children of George and Celestia, became an omitted part of the McClellan family, their mother Celestia's legacy as that second wife who left town—thankfully—with "her children." I can't help but wonder whether any of Celestia's grandchildren ever knew the story of her few years in Wellborn, her interaction with the Suwannee County probate judges, or the estate that she—and "her children"—once inherited.

The Michigan Connection

There are some times when we think we have identified details about the right person in our family tree—but not enough to be sure beyond a doubt that we have figured out the right connection. So it was with George Edmund McClellan's frustrating widow Celestia, the one who nearly took the money and ran, after his passing in Wellborn, Florida, in 1866.

You'd think a name like Celestia R. Holman would be rare enough to not suffer the genealogist's plague of two possible candidates for the same identity. Yet, trying to discover just where George's widow originated, I ran into not one, but two Celestia Holmans of about the same age. One showed up in the 1850 census in Chautauqua County, New York. The other one was living in the household of someone named Rhodolphus Richards in Macomb County, Michigan.

If you think a name as unusual as Rhodolphus Richards would merit a fast pass to my answer, think again. Rhodolphus was about as difficult to find in other records as was Celestia.

There was one other detail that piqued my curiosity. Rhodolphus, it turned out, had a wife named Aurilla. And, as we had already observed from Celestia's 1904 death certificate, Celestia's mother happened to be named Orrilla.

What were the chances? Could Aurilla Richards be Orrilla Grover? Looking at that 1850 census, Aurilla Richards was forty six years of age, a quite reasonable twenty nine years older than Celestia.

There was another reason I thought this scenario might be possible—and no, it wasn't mere wishful thinking. In researching Celestia's stated parents, I discovered her father, Levi Sawyer Holman, had died young, in 1834. Certainly, his equally young widow would need to marry again.

Researching further, I discovered the origin of Celestia's middle name—Relief—which she no doubt received, thanks to her paternal grandmother, Relief Sawyer.

Finding an online source for marriage records of the time—and then hoping they contained the appropriate information on the bride's former name—was a nice thought, but an impractical task, considering not only the many possible spelling permutations involved in an Aurilla Holman/Rhodolphus Richards marriage, but also the lack of knowledge of which state in which to locate the marriage records. After all, if Aurilla Richards was really Orrilla Grover, she could have married her husband in any of the states leading to Michigan from their origin in New England.

Where there isn't a direct route to our answer, there are side roads leading to more clues. One, for instance, involved one of the Richards children also listed in that 1850 census, the Richards' six year old daughter, also named Aurilla. It turns out, the younger Aurilla married well, earning both her husband as well as herself a brief biography in one of those local history books. The biography chose to use the spelling of Orrilla, and listed her parents as Rodolphus and Orrilla, encasing the name Holman in parentheses as if to indicate it was the elder Orrilla's maiden name.

But if that left enough doubt in the air, thankfully another discovery helped quell concerns. When Orrilla Richards died in 1894 at the age of ninety, her headstone helpfully included this information:

Orrilla Grover Richards
Oct. 4, 1803—Mar. 5, 1894

Underneath her entry was that of her second husband, Rodolphus S. Richards, confirming for us the connection between Celestia's mother and this Orrilla Richards. 

While I am not sure how a fairly successful farmer in Michigan would have the means to send his step-daughter to the first college in the country to accept women as students—let alone have the connections to marry off said step-daughter to a well-to-do widower in Florida—at least now I know how Celestia connected to the place she called home as a girl. Whether we ever uncover the story of how she met George McClellan in Florida, I don't know, but at least we now have a clue what drew her back to the midwest from the disaster following her married years in Florida.

Locked Out

Hmmmm...as if being in a holding pattern, waiting for the funeral of a sibling to be planned and subsequently coming down with the flu isn't enough...you'd think hauling my miserable self out of bed for a few minutes to write a sorry excuse for a post would at least go smoothly. After all, what was I going to write? That I am still having problems locating Thirza Browne's father—let alone his parents?

Thanks to a fluke of technology, apparently, I can't even access my account at Ancestry.com to refer to the few details I've parked there in a private, unsearchable tree which I use for my genealogical sandbox. And no, it isn't because I failed to renew my account. What I'm wondering is if my antiquated user name—assigned to me during those halcyon days when Rootsweb used to be its own entity—is the sticking point.

All that, however, will have to be resolved later in the morning, not in the wee hours when my far west time zone works against me. Everything—even a Utah-based company—runs on east coast time.

There are, however, other resources, all which will have to be considered without the ability to refer back to the research I've already done on the family. Online tools are great—but only when they're accessible.

That search effort, however, didn't yield much. I tried FamilySearch, looking for a Timothy and Caroline Brown or Browne who might have lived—or died—in Kent County, Michigan, home of Grand Rapids, the place where the photograph I found was originally taken. I tried burial records via Find A Grave, but the only Caroline I found was someone married to a William, not a Timothy. Checking out Seeking Michigan wouldn't work, because the dates are too recent for tracking down my mystery Brownes.

Sometimes, it just helps to know when to quit. I'm getting the clue that now would be an opportune time.

Brown, Browne —Tomayto, Tomahto

It doesn't help, when researching a family's history, when even the family members can't be sure which way to spell their own surname. Especially with a name like Brown. How hard can that be?

In the case we brought up yesterday, the size of the original photograph leads me to believe it was actually a carte de visite. It measures approximately two and a half by a little over four inches, much smaller than the cabinet cards which supplanted that earlier format.

If so, that dates the picture to approximately the 1860s. That, if it is indeed a picture belonging in Thirza Cole's photograph collection, would be a reasonable time to place her grandparents—if we can trust her father's 1880 report that he was born about 1848. If Thirza's father Thomas Browne was the oldest child of this parents, that might put the unknown couple's dates of birth around the mid 1820s. Perhaps they would look that "seasoned" by the time this photo was taken.

Or not. That's a lot of ifs.

There's one other thing. Perhaps you already noticed it yesterday. The front of the photograph bears the words, "Jackson,"—presumably the studio's name—and "Grand Rapids, Mich."

In 1880, Thomas Browne reported his birth being in Illinois, not Michigan. His daughters' subsequent own reports of where their father was born do indeed vary from enumeration to enumeration, but they never seem to settle on Michigan as the reported location.

A cursory glance at records in Grand Rapids for that time period didn't seem to reveal much information linked to that name, either.

But there's one constant in all this. Just like all the records I've seen on Thirza's family, even on the back of this photograph, family members were undecided about which way to spell their ancestors' names.

One entry, the first, presuming from the order of appearance, gave the name in a tight, neat hand: "Grandfather + grandmother Browne." Following that entry was a scrawl much like the one causing me the grief of hesitating between the name as "Thirza" or "Thiega."

Perhaps this was the one whose handiwork we've already observed on others of Thirza's photo collection. Whoever it was, it was someone who decided the spelling should be "Timothy and Caroline Brown."