Checking the Pattern

One standard, when researching Irish ancestors, is to check the naming pattern which was held consistently by many Irish during earlier centuries. Since I'm having problems pushing back beyond the generation of my father-in-law's great-grandfather John Kelly, I'm trying every tip and trick I can remember to see whether anything can fill in those missing blanks.

The Irish naming pattern held that a man's first-born son would be named after that man's father. The second-born son would be called by his mother's father's name. For daughters, the pattern would be reversed: the first-born daughter would be named after the mother's mother, with the second-born daughter named for her father's mother.

Though I have not been able to find baptismal records in County Kerry, Ireland, for all of John and Johanna Kelly's children, based on the records gleaned after their immigration to Fort Wayne, Indiana, I think I have a fairly complete accounting of the family constellation.

Here's what I've recorded so far. First-born son was named Timothy. Following Timothy's birth about 1860, there were three daughters. The first of the daughters was named Catherine—the ill-fated woman who became my father-in-law's paternal grandmother, dying shortly after the birth of her only son. Following Catherine were two daughters named Mary; I presume the first of those two died in childhood, thus explaining the re-use of that same name signifying the importance it represented to the family.

Following the three daughters, John Kelly finally got his second son, whom he named Patrick. A final son trailed years afterwards, whom the couple named John.

If we use the Irish naming pattern to find reasonable suggestions for John Kelly's parents' names, we could presume that his father was named Timothy, and his mother, Mary. The fact that John Kelly, after immigration to Fort Wayne, jointly purchased a family cemetery plot with a co-worker named Timothy Kelly is thus doubly enticing. However, whether either man carried forward that Irish naming tradition from across the ocean is anyone's guess. I have yet to find any sign of an older Timothy to fill the shoes of John's missing father from County Kerry.

Another clue for us to ponder, while awaiting appearance of any actual documentation that can provide solid footing for our journey backwards through the generations—though somehow I can't muster the confidence to fly blind solely with this naming concept. I'm still holding out for some form of solid documentation. 

About Those Irish Naming Conventions

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Following the Pattern

 

Extracting an ancestor's name from the gaps in Irish records may depend on how closely held traditional Irish naming patterns were during that time period. My question right now is whether the ancestor of several DNA matches was indeed a missing son who belonged in the family of my father-in-law's great-grandfather Denis Tully.

If Irish naming patterns held true—and they weren't always followed precisely—they could be a key to determining who Denis Tully's parents might have been. In addition, since I've been able to glean the names of four of his brothers when they were recorded as godparents for Denis' children at their baptism, naming patterns might help me place the known Tully brothers in birth order. Furthermore, if I could then find records for any of those brothers' own families, I could spot-check the adherence to the naming tradition to further confirm I had correctly hypothesized their parents' names.

It all comes down to "if."

Just for reference, let's review what that naming tradition was, during the years in which Denis Tully lived at the northern border of County Tipperary in the hills to the east of the village of Ballina, prior to his family's emigration to "Canada West"—present-day Ontario—about 1849. According to one source, Irish parents named their first son after the child's paternal grandfather. A second son would become the namesake of his maternal grandfather. It was not until the third son that we would see parents naming the child after his own father.

If this is the pattern Denis Tully adhered to, there are a few other conclusions we can draw from this list, particularly since I am grappling with the assertion of some DNA matches and others researching the line that their ancestor, also named Dennis Tully, was son of my father-in-law's great-grandfather Denis Tully. If the younger Dennis were indeed eldest son of our Denis, the naming pattern would imply that father Denis himself were son of a man named Dennis. Else, the only reason he would name a son by his own name—if the pattern held true—would have been if the child were his third son. Following that same logic, father Denis himself would have been the third son of the grandfather Dennis, unless the grandfather's own father were also named Dennis.

The problem is that there is simply no way to find documentation for that time period in that location—at least now, with the resources currently at hand. And yet, several DNA matches and others researching the family history of this other Dennis have entered our family's Denis as his father.

None of those other researchers have produced documentation to demonstrate that connection, though they include that detail on their public trees online. Indeed, if that Dennis Tully were born in 1830 as his Find a Grave memorial in Ontario states, we would be hard pressed to locate a baptismal confirmation of that fact, since currently-existing records from the parish at Ballina are spotty before 1832.

Because I've already gleaned the names of the Tully godparents for each of our Denis Tully's children, we now can say that Denis was brother to four other Tully men: Luke, Thomas, John, and Mick (likely Michael). While the process may be tedious, I can revisit that collection of baptismal records online to find the entries for each child of each of these four Tully brothers. Then, I could line those grandchildren up in date order to see whether the naming tradition would tell us anything further about who the brothers' parents might have been.

In the process, of course, I would hopefully run across some sign of which Tully brother this younger Dennis might have called "Dad." In fact, I've already run across one possibility. We'll take a closer look at that discovery tomorrow. 

The Problem With Namesakes

 

When exploring the generations in one's family history, it's quite common to encounter a son named after his father. While such namesakes are understandable, they also can create some confusion if the names are not coupled with other identifying information. Researching an Irish namesake, though, can cause extra headaches for one particular reason: the old country's particular tradition of adhering to a naming pattern.

In the research problem I'm trying to untangle in the remainder of this month, we're dealing with a DNA match to my husband who claims—on paper, at least—to have descended from the same Denis Tully who was my husband's second great-grandfather. Sharing a match of forty five centiMorgans, these two could be related as closely as third cousins, or be as distant as fifth cousins.

This match has a tree shared on Ancestry.com which makes it appear as if the closest relationship in that cousin range is the correct choice. In other words, with the same number of generations removed, both lines point back to an ancestor named Denis Tully from Ireland. There's just one problem with that scenario: unlike my husband, who descends from Denis' son John Tully, this match's tree claims a direct line to a son of Denis given the exact same name. A namesake.

And there's my problem. As much as I've traced this Tully line back in time from Chicago to their immigration stopping point in Canada of Paris, Ontario, I have yet to find any son of Denis and Margaret Tully named after his father. True, when our Tully family first showed up in the 1851 census, there was already one son missing from the household (their recently-married son Michael, whose own household became apparent near his father's household in the subsequent census in 1861). But there is another reason I'm concerned about this supposed namesake son.

My primary concern about finding a Denis, son of Denis Tully, is due to the long-followed naming pattern adhered to during that era in Ireland. The pattern goes something like this: the first son is named after the paternal grandfather, the second after the maternal grandfather. Only with the third son would the name given be his father's namesake.

Even though the children in our Denis Tully's family married in Canada, at least some followed that old tradition of their homeland. Son Michael gave his firstborn son the name Denis, after the child's paternal grandfather. Though Michael's older sister Johanna also followed that naming convention—her second son was also named Dennis, after his maternal grandfather—none of the other Tully children adhered to that pattern. While they, too, were immigrants from Ireland, those Tully children were far younger when arriving in Canada and likely had less cultural influence pressing them to follow the tradition of their father and even their older siblings.

There is, however, another reason I'm concerned about a claim of Denis Tully having a son by that same name. The Dennis who was ancestor of this DNA match was said to have been born in 1830. The oldest child I've been able to locate from our Denis' records was born in 1832. While it is quite possible that our Denis could have had a child before that date, the likelihood that he would have named that son—possibly his firstborn—by his own name is slim. The only scenario in which he would have done so—at least, according to that traditional naming procedure—would be if Denis' own father was also named Denis.

There is another reason why I'm hesitant to accept that our Denis had an oldest son who shared his father's given name. This reason has nothing to do with naming traditions, or any other custom carried over from the Tullys' Irish roots, but is a matter of the names of the women who married into the Tully line. We'll take a look at that issue tomorrow.

 

Building the Other Guy's Family Tree

 

There are a number of tempting possibilities residing in the discovery of the Flanagan DNA match connecting William and Catherine of the Cappananty property in County Limerick through their possible son James and my father-in-law's own Flanagan line. After all, if DNA connects my husband with a descendant of James Flanagan, I'd consider the connection to William and Catherine a strong possibility.

Let's look at the clues pointing us in that direction. The Flanagan property in Cappananty, at the time of Griffith's Valuation, was labeled with William's name. Later, the property register was changed to Catherine's name, and eventually to James—most likely indicating some sort of family relationship.

On my father-in-law's side of the equation, his great-grandmother Anna Flanagan, who had married the disappearing Stephen Malloy, had only one child: a daughter whom she named Catherine. If during that time period of the late 1840s, Anna's regional custom was to adhere to the old Irish naming pattern, she would normally have named her oldest daughter after her own mother. Anna's daughter being named Catherine would thus point to the possibility that Anna's own mother was named Catherine, as well.

In addition, we know that Anna had a brother William, though we don't know where he fell in his family's birth order. If Anna's brother William were son of another man named William, that would mean the younger was third son of the elder. There was another brother—implied by the arrival in Chicago of Catherine's cousin Johanna Flanagan Lee—but we don't yet know his name.

On the DNA side, the line of descent from James presents challenges, as well. For a start, we need to remember there was a gap in available church records for the Catholic parish of Ballyagran which the Flanagans called their home. There were baptismal records available for James' son James, and for his daughter named Anna. And yet, there are several online trees which indicate a large number of children—most of them without documentation other than attribution to other Ancestry subscribers' trees.

The normal step in such a DNA quandary would be to roll up our sleeves and begin building our match's family tree. Step by step with appropriate documentation, we could paint a clear enough picture of the family constellation—if we could overcome what seem to be an insurmountable lack of records.

Still, there may be another way around this roadblock. Just as I attempted for the Flannery puzzle last month, we could examine those sparse church records to find names of baptismal sponsors, then build out the family connections based on the theory that godparents named were siblings or in-laws of the parents of the child.

We could also attempt to find documentation for the current trees posted on Ancestry. Or directly contact the DNA match to see whether that Flanagan descendant might have been the beneficiary of those coveted family keepsakes. Just as my father-in-law "inherited" his Tully grandfather's baptismal verification letter, someone from the James Flanagan line of descent may have been blessed with some private token of relationship, as well.

No matter how the deed is accomplished, though, it is apparent with some DNA matches that if we want to know more about our family, it falls our lot to be the one to build our own version of someone else's family tree. Whether "quick and dirty" as some DNA enthusiasts like to portray it, or a more carefully documented effort, there are simply times when we need to build that tree for ourselves.

Besides the James Flanagan line, though, there is yet one more possibility that needs our attention before the month is out: the line from the unnamed Flanagan brother who had a Chicago-bound daughter named Johanna.    

The Knack of Being Nosy

 

Since the habit of flipping pages and being nosy has stood me in good stead while researching my godmother's father's personal history, I thought I'd extend the courtesy to Michael Melnitchenko's wife, as well.

The only reason I had learned anything at all about Lydia Melnitchenko was that she was the customary chaperone for my godmother, Genia, during her early years traveling as part of a ballet troupe. Just as every passage to America for French-born Genia required reams of immigration paperwork, because she was traveling internationally as a minor, the same documentation needed to be completed for her chaperone from Marseilles, Lydia.

In the stacks of records I could find for Genia, of course her mother was always listed by her married name. If I hoped to push back the family history yet another generation, I would need to obtain her mother's maiden name, which passenger lists seldom required. I did, however, locate it in a later set of records which provided resources for my research goal: United States immigration records and Social Security applications.

Though Genia was born in Marseilles, France, and lived there with her mother while her father was earning his living in the ocean-going shipping industry, the family still very much identified as Russians. For people of Russian heritage, this naming tradition became a two-step, family-linking process.

Once the Melnitchenkos finally settled in New York City after the second World War, from Genia's own Social Security application, I learned Lydia's maiden name: Leonoff. And, a bonus for those researching family with Russian heritage, I learned Lydia's possible father's given name as well, thanks to the patronymic naming system.

That tip came disguised in index cards typed out from information on United States immigration applications, in which the women had an odd addition to their name, in the form of a man's given name inserted between the woman's given name and surname. Not quite a bona fide patronymic system, but let's just say it was Americanized.

I had first seen this on the card typed up for Genia's immigration paperwork, in which her given name was written as "Olga Eugenia Michael." Michael, of course, was the Americanized form of her father's given name. Thus, when I found the same type of card for Lydia, listing her as "Lydia Theodore," I figured that must have been her father's given name—or at least its Americanized version.

Theodore, of course, would not be how the name was written or pronounced in Russian. It is more likely it would have taken the form Fyodor. Add to that the traditional Russian patronym for a daughter of Fyodor—Fyodorovna—and we get the idea of what maiden name Lydia might have carried, back in the homeland of her Russian roots: Lydia Fyodorovna Leonoff (or possibly Leonov).

Despite having deciphered just what Lydia's name at birth might have been, I still faced substantial obstacles in being able to locate any documents from that early stage in her life, given the turmoil she had suffered in her homeland. Still, I hoped there would be a way to uncover at least a little bit more of her story, knowing how much the stress had silenced her as her life wore on toward its end.

Truth be told, I had always hoped there would be a way to find any relatives for the family at all. I already knew that Genia was an only child, and presumed that her parents had been alone in coming to this country from war-torn Europe. I always harbored that dream of discovering another family member.

That's where the lesson of being nosy and learning to flip pages came in. Just like I had for researching Michael's ordeal in surviving the torpedo attack on the ship where he had been serving during the World War, I once again started flipping pages for other records in which I had found the family listed.

This time, it was on the record of the final arrival in America of Genia and her mother, that I flipped a page and discovered there might be another family member out there. Her name was Alexandra, and she lived back in Marseilles.

One Name, Two People

 

One of the benefits embedded in the otherwise difficult challenge of researching my godmother's Russian heritage was a naming device often used by that people group. Broadly speaking, patronyms provide the incorporation of more than one generation's identity in a specific person's name. There are patronymic naming devices in many different heritages, but in the Russian heritage, the patronymic becomes an official part of a person's name, both in documents and when addressing a person verbally.

In the Russian tradition, the placement of that "middle" name—the patronym—reveals the connection to a person's father. The patronym thus is a combination of the name of the father and a suffix signifying "son of" (-ovich) or "daughter of" (-ovna), identifying two persons with that one person's name. In researching my godmother's father, Michael Melnitchenko, discovering the ship's manifest listing him as a crew member, though solely with his patronym and surname—"Ivanivitch Melnitchenko"—made me wonder if Ivan was, indeed, Michael's father's name.

Finding Michael Melnitchenko in other documents, even with the "middle initial" of "I," seemed to confirm I was following the right person. After all, how many people could there be, using a name like that?

That sense of research confidence should have been my warning that, perhaps, I was being lulled into a dangerous lack of skepticism. Just when we think we've got the case all but closed, something is sure to pop up and throw us a curve.

Sure enough, somehow I did encounter a document which made me question the assumption that I was viewing records for the one and only Michael Melnitchenko.

It was a World War II draft registration document which pulled me up short. That I even found the thing bordered on the impossible, for it was indexed at Ancestry.com as "Michael Juan Melnitchenko"—a sure sign of an unlikely culture mash-up. Upon inspection of the actual digitization, the "Juan," as I suspected, turned out to be "Ivan," a much more realistic match for someone with a surname like Melnitchenko.

Since I knew very little else about the man, other than approximations of the year of his birth from the ages he reported on the multiple crew listings I had located, all I could determine was that Michael was born about 1897—in Russia. Here, however, was a draft registration form for a Michael with a shortened form of what I presumed was his patronymic "Ivanivitch" and that same year of birth. What could possibly go wrong?

I always like to examine every line of a document before adding it to the collection of verifications for a given ancestor, and this was no exception. The more I looked, the more questions I couldn't deny were popping up—and, I have to admit, plaguing me with doubts that I had found the right man.

The draft card, for instance, had what looked like a reasonable approximation of the name I was seeking as well as the year of birth—not to mention, including not only the birthplace in Russia, but providing the name of a specific town—but I couldn't help noticing that this was not someone who resided in New York City. Forget that: here was a document signed April 27, 1942, when surely our Michael would be away at sea, earning his living.

The Michael in this registration card reported an address in West Hickory, Pennsylvania. Not only was that a location not in New York, but it was clear on the other side of the very wide state of Pennsylvania. Even worse, for occupation, this man had listed "tanner." Delving into the details on the reverse side of the card, I could see that this Michael had reported his height as five feet and eleven inches, with a weight of 181.

I remembered seeing such details on some crew lists, and flew back to those records to double check the stats. Sure enough, while Michael the tanner was five feet eleven, Michael the chief mate was five eight and 172—a different profile, indeed.

The more I puzzled over this one, the more convinced I became that I was looking at records for two different Michael Melnitchenkos, despite both being sons of Ivan. That meant I'd have to let go of my delicious find of the place of birth in Nikolaiev, Russia.

Still, the more I looked at the collection of documentation I had found, the more puzzled I became about the whole mess. Something was just not adding up in the narrative about the life of Michael Melnitchenko, at least in the pile of data amassed so far. There were a few other details which demanded I follow up on them. Embedded within his story, I wondered if there were yet another story. 

Above: Top line from the 1942 U.S. Registration Card for Michael Ivan Melnitchenko of West Hickory, Forest County, Pennsylvania; image courtesy Ancestry.com.

 

A Sea-Faring Life

 

The key to unlocking the hidden story of someone's family through the generations is to remember that genealogy represents a chain of events. That chain is best examined when we start at the end and work our way, step by step, backward in time.

So it is with discovering the story of my godmother's family. Though she was, in my ten-year-old eyes, the equivalent of Cinderella's own fairy godmother, my Genia the ballerina came from a family with real flesh-and-bone stories, some of them undoubtedly tragic—and almost none of them known to me, the child who had met Genia's parents so long ago.

While it was quite difficult for me, as a child, to discover much about Genia's mother Lydia in her incapacitated state in old age, I remember so clearly Genia's father. It was he who usually met us at the train station where we arrived from our suburban home about a half hour's ride from the big city. He was the one who would navigate us along the teeming Manhattan sidewalks, leading us to his small apartment perched high above the bustling street below.

We would talk almost all the way, mostly my mom catching him up on news while my sister and I scurried along close behind them. I clearly remember looking at the leathery back of his neck, below his seaman's cap, and wondering what life had been like for him.

Now, after all those years, that I've taken up the notion to find out for myself about the Melnitchenkos, it isn't necessarily the wealth of digitized documents that may make this quest far easier than it would otherwise have been. It was Michael Melnitchenko's choice of occupation which provides me with a way to trace at least part of his life.

Michael—or, likely, Mikhail—was a seaman.

When, as a child, I first visited the Melnitchenko household in New York City, I had no idea Genia's father's name was Michael. For a child, an adult like that would of course be addressed only as Mister—despite the fact that I always called Genia by her name. That was, after all, what my mother did. 

Years later, I first located Michael's name through his daughter's records—the same way we would navigate any research problem. Only for that rule of thumb, "Start with yourself," I needed to substitute Genia in the prime position. 

The best places to find any records linking Genia to her father were her own travel documents. Though as a young dancer, she often was linked with her mother on passenger records, it was from records of border crossings and passports that the requested parent's name was often listed as her father, not mother.

I found a record giving her father's address in New York in a border crossing in Rouses Point, New York—one mile from Quebec in the northern-most tip of New York state—dated March 23 of 1950. That form helped me pinpoint when the Melnitchenkos actually established residency in the United States, as Genia stated that they had been in the U.S. from April 21 of 1947 through the point at which she had left for that trip to Canada in 1950.

Once again, the document helped verify that Genia's full name was Olga Eugenia, and that, although now "stateless," she had been born in Marseilles, France, on January 6, 1924. But the value of finding this document was that it provided the specific link naming her father as Michael Melnitchenko, and confirming their Manhattan address on Sixth Avenue.

Again, it was a travel document identifying Genia which enabled me to confirm her father's name. This time, though, I first needed the intermediary confirmation that, having arrived in America, the Melnitchenkos had requested to change their name to the shortened form, Melch. From an immigration card in Brazil for "Genia Melch," she reported her father's name as "Michel" Melch (likely translated from the English "Michael"). 

Having found the confirmation of Genia's father's name (at least in its Americanized form), it wasn't difficult to find him in his own travel records. Only this time, the senior Melnitchenko was not traveling for such glamorous reasons as appearing on stage around the world. His reasons for travel were far more practical: he was a seaman by occupation.

Though the collections of ships' manifests for crew members are far more limited than passenger records in general, I could find Michael Melnitchenko in several, making it possible to compose a (somewhat incomplete) listing of his years of service from the 1920s through the late 1940s. 

At the first, I found him leaving Marseilles barely two months after Genia was born, hired as a fireman for the S. S. Hirondelle. The valuable addition in that discovery was that it revealed an alternate name for Michael—a patronym, a useful indicator of lineage in many countries, including Michael's origin in Russia.

The litany of crew listings was by no means thorough, for the next entry I could find wasn't until 1943, aboard the S.S. John Rutledge. That record, itself, requires us to revisit to glean further details, but for now, it provides us the confirmation of that middle initial, "I" for the patronymic Ivanivitch, in this record. By that point, Michael was forty seven years of age, and had attained the position of chief officer.

Other manifests confirmed his position on the crew of various vessels: the S.S. Pio Pico out of New York harbor in 1944, the S.S. J.D. Ross out of Marseilles in December of the same year, the S.S. Robert Toombs arriving in New York from Port of Spain in August of 1945, and the S.S. Clyde Austin Dunning, arriving in New York harbor from France in May of 1946—with the added detail that Chief Mate Michael had, by then, claimed a "length of service at sea" of thirty two years.

While that little excursion through the preserved and digitized records of various ships' crew listings wasn't primarily to assemble genealogical information, it did provide a broader picture of who Genia's father was. If nothing else, it helped a former ten-year-old understand why the back of a man's neck could appear so leathery, long after those thirty two years of service on the open seas.

The records, though, helped provide some other details I hadn't expected to need. While Michael was coming and going from the port of New York, there was another record drawn up for a "Michael Ivan" Melnitchenko, which made me wonder whether I was tracking one person with that unusual name—or two.

 

Above: Photograph of Genia Melnitchenko (listed as Genia Melch) from her application for temporary immigration to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1960; image courtesy Ancestry.com.

By Some Strange Coincidences

 

On the eve of their fifty-first wedding anniversary, Mark and Bridget Falvey's hometown newspaper ran a detailed article on the milestones in the couple's long life together and the strange coincidences which tied their family together. While that certainly must have been a nice commemorative for the Falveys' special day, it also serves to guide us in piecing together the timeline of two Irish immigrants who arrived in Chicopee, Massachusetts when it was merely "a hamlet of scattered houses."

The way The Springfield Daily News reported it in their January 14, 1911, back page column, the Falveys' January 15, 1860, wedding occurred only three years after the two immigrants had arrived in Chicopee, "each unconscious of the existence of the other." Each had taken a "sailing vessel" from Ireland only weeks apart from the other's journey. Though Mark Falvey and Bridget Gibbons traveled on different ships, each vessel experienced the same type of journey: thirteen weeks of enduring "severe storms with heavy seas." Noted the Daily News:

There was nothing in their lives which they ever welcomed quite so joyously as their first sight of land after passing thirteen soul stirring weeks upon the water.

The similarity in their journeys into New York harbor were topped with the next stop in their separate journeys. Each traveled to Chicopee, where they secured lodging at the boarding home of a "Mr. and Mrs. Carrigan of Dwight street." It was at that place where they met and undoubtedly compared stories of their harrowing crossings from Ireland.

Mark and Bridget were eventually the proud parents of six children, three of whom—Jeremiah, Mary Ann, and Catherine—survived to celebrate their parents' 1911 milestone anniversary. Apparently, after Mark and Bridget had welcomed their firstborn Jeremiah into their family, their hosts from those early immigrant days, the Carrigans, also welcomed a child into their own household. For the Carrigans, it was a daughter they named Bridget—whom the Carrigans eventually saw become wife to the Falveys' son Jeremiah in a wedding ceremony on February 14, 1899, tying the knot on a story in the next generation which began at the Carrigan home with the meeting of the two immigrants so many years before.

The Daily News article provided a few more clues about the Falveys. Though no one divulged the exact location where Mark originated in County Kerry, Ireland, I did notice some helpful leads. For one, the article revealed, "Mr. Falvey is the oldest of a family of seven, and Mrs. Falvey the oldest of a family of eight."

From this, if we can depend on the old Irish naming tradition holding true in the Falveys' case, as the oldest, Mark would have been named after his paternal grandfather. Thus, if Mark's father's name was Jeremiah—as the Falvey siblings' records have already revealed to us—that means Jeremiah's father must have been Mark, if that is what he named his oldest child. While that may be the slightest of hints—after all, I've yet to find any documentation in County Kerry piecing together any of this family line—it does align with the family traditions of yet another DNA match connected to this extended Falvey family.

Admittedly, newspapers are not the most reliable of documentation sources for piecing together family history, but they can provide us with unexpected leads. Sometimes, that means reading between the lines, or extrapolating from inferences rather than outright statements. I had, for instance, been concerned about Mark Falvey's statement, in his naturalization records, that he had entered the country via New York City, and yet, the newspaper article provided corroboration through the vignette of the couple's similar sailing experiences.

Despite newspapers' reputation for editorial errors, it always pays to look not only for milestone articles, but to search through collections using the dates of an ancestor's entire lifespan, as we saw yesterday. I certainly was reminded again of that practicality.  After all, I wasn't the one who discovered this wonderful article at first; it was thanks to a comment by reader Kat that alerted me to check those newspaper archival subscriptions to see what she had found.

While examining every document we could find for the three Falvey siblings who arrived in Chicopee, Massachusetts, from County Kerry, Ireland, did not blaze a shining path to lead us back to their homeland, their descendants are not the only Falvey relations among my husband's DNA matches. His second great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey, had other relatives whose descendants also are matches. We have yet another family to examine after taking leave from these three Falveys in Massachusetts, whom we will introduce tomorrow. 

Clues: Some Add Up and Some Do Not

 

What can we say about the hard-earned clues we've uncovered in our quest to tie together the relationship between various Irish-American immigrants who all claimed that most Irish of surnames, Kelly? If Abbie Kelly Sullivan's daughters could be said to be nieces of Margaret Kelly of Toledo, and Margaret, in turn, could be identified as sister to Timothy Kelly of Fort Wayne, then wouldn't that make Abbie sister to Timothy? And if the witness to Abbie's marriage to John Sullivan was a man named John Kelly, wouldn't that tie together the family I suspected would emerge from this long, convoluted research trail?

There were encouraging clues which seemed to add up in the right direction along this winding path. John Kelly, for instance, had named his firstborn son Timothy. We now know that Margaret Kelly's father was named Timothy Kelly. If John was Margaret's brother, that would have meant, by extension, that John's father would have been that same Timothy. That old Irish naming pattern would ring true for John's choice of name for his firstborn son, which would be designated as namesake of the father's father.

On the other hand, if Timothy, Abbie and John had a mother named Catherine, why was it that Timothy's second daughter was named Mary, not Catherine as the pattern would have dictated, and Abbie's youngest daughter became the one to bear her maternal grandmother's name? We might be able to excuse Timothy for not strictly following that Irish naming formula—he was, essentially, raised in the United States despite his Irish birth—but what about Abbie? I can find no record that Abbie ever left Ireland. What happened to her affinity with the dictates of her homeland's culture?

Then, too, it is disturbing to see the age disparity between Timothy and John. True, the Irish in America seemed to have a very fluid sense of age—or aging, as it seemed some aged more in a decade than those ten years ticked off between each American census report. There are reports of Timothy's year of birth that range from 1827 to 1830, which is modest compared to the range of dates I've found for his supposed brother John. In John's case, the dates given were as early as 1808 and as late as 1830. With Timothy's sister Margaret having been born in 1833, seeing an older brother's birth date as 1808 would give a range for their mother's childbearing years as at least twenty five years. Perhaps possible, but somewhat pressing belief.

While it was also encouraging to find the Kelly-Sullivan marriage listed in the Catholic parish records in Killeentierna, County Kerry—where we've found other possible documents for this extended family—it is most certainly true that that John Sullivan wasn't the only man by that name in that region. Nor would it be likely that John Kelly, witness to the ceremony, would be the only man sporting that name in town.

Another detail to keep in mind: these are parish records which have survived the ravages of time—and of a difficult season for clerical record keeping in the Catholic church of that time and place. It is possible that there were other nearby Catholic parishes which also included members with such Irish names as John Sullivan and John Kelly—some records, especially, which may not have survived the ravages of time to be passed down for our research inspection. That these are the only people with those names that I could find in County Kerry doesn't mean there weren't others who have yet to be found.

At this point, my main question is: how religiously did the Irish in County Kerry adhere to that "traditional naming pattern" touted by so many Irish researchers? If that was the rule—and the only way to go—in the circles of families in County Kerry in the mid-1800s, then that clearly rules out the records I've found. Added together, they don't support the naming pattern—unless there were known exceptions, and variations from the norm were permissible. 

My secondary question is founded on a serious doubt that I have found all the Catholic parish records that can be found—or that will ever enter the online digitized collection of possibilities. Until I can accomplish more detailed searches or know I've accessed the entire available record set, I can't say these discoveries confirm the relationship between John Kelly and Timothy Kelly.

What I can follow up on, though, is the fact that these discoveries serve as indicators that it is possible that there was a cluster of names which agree with the family circles I've seen echoed across the Atlantic in the adopted homes those immigrant Kelly descendants chose to settle. The larger the collection of related names which can be found clustered around the same Irish homeland, the more confident we can be that we might have the right details to point us to a location of the family's origin.

In that cluster, we need to also remember the nexus between that set of Kelly kin and another family whose abandoned trail we need to return to: that of John's wife Johanna Falvey. Can what we've learned about a possible Kelly family help point us to the right Falvey connections?

Getting Those Hints

Perhaps it was because her sister, Mary Danehy, had gotten married after arriving in the U.S. that I had assumed such was the case for Johanna Danehy, as well.

The first record I had found for Johanna was that of her burial at the Catholic Cemetery in Fort Wayne. There, I found her alongside her husband, Cornelius Sweeney, in Section B, lot 516, as we discussed the other day.

Working my way backwards in time, as genealogists are accustomed to doing, I discovered it wasn't a long stretch at all from her death in 1912 to the earliest document in which I found her in America. That first glimpse of Johanna Danehy Sweeney's family constellation was provided, courtesy of the 1880 census.

There, living one house down from her brother Michael Danehy on Bass Street, Johanna cared for a small household: just her husband and one son, thirteen year old Phillip, no doubt named for his maternal grandfather.

I'm not sure why the knowledge of Irish naming patterns didn't set off bells in my head, for I surely am aware that a son named for his mother's father meant a son who was second-born. But it didn't occur to me, when I first found this record, to go seeking whatever became of that firstborn son.

Nor did the obvious entry for place of birth in that same census prompt any questions in my mind. I was so lulled into assuming the same pattern for one sister as the other that I didn't notice it in the least.

It wasn't until reviewing the family's burial records last week that something jogged my mind to wake up and pay attention to these telltale details. Lo and behold, son Phillip was born in 1868—in Ireland. Which meant not only would an older brother have been born there as well, but that his parents were married in Ireland, as well.

Truth be told, I was plodding along my mind-numbed way for quite a while...until a hint from Ancestry broke into my foggy reverie and suggested there might just be a marriage record for a Cornelius Sweeney and a Johanna Danehy in Ireland.

You know those shaky leaf hints we all are so fond of scorning?

Yeah, one of those.

Thankfully, I took a look. At just about the time I was writing my post for last Friday. Hmmm...this will take some more thought. And a bit of time to check it all out. With the weekend behind me now, that's exactly what I did.

I do feel justified in taking caution to not ricochet in the opposite direction and gullibly glom on to every hint thrown my way, for those Irish naming patterns can turn around and shoot you in the foot if you are not careful. After all, not only did I find telltale signs of a marriage in County Cork for Cornelius and Johanna, but another for Cornelius and Ann. With spelling variations for the surname Sweeney going wild in the pages of various church registers, this was going to be a search that banned all jumps to conclusions.

The beauty of finding the right record, of course, would be the concurrent identification of the exact place where the entire family originated in County Cork, Ireland. Wherever Johanna got married would likely be the place the Danehy family once called home. Depending on how long Johanna and Cornelius were married before leaving for America, there is the possibility that, just like her father had left behind one son when he left the country, she and her husband might have found themselves doing the same, as well.

Above: "A Wooded Path in Autumn," 1902 oil on canvas by Danish artist Hans Andersen Brendekilde; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

 

Kattie and Mary

We've spent more than a week, now, trying to find any hints as to just how Timothy Kelly of Fort Wayne might have been related to my husband's second great grandfather, John Kelly. My only clue, at the start, was the fact that the two men had together bought a family plot at the Catholic Cemetery. That, I discovered when working through the puzzle of where John's married daughter, Catherine Kelly Stevens, had been buried after her untimely death in 1884.

In reviewing all that could be discovered about Timothy's first wife and children Andrew, Richard, Timothy and Deborah didn't provide any promising leads. Yet, in turning to the two remaining children of Timothy and Ellen—their oldest two daughters, for which not very much documentation can be located—there lies the same tantalizing naming pattern that we had encountered with John Kelly's own two daughters. The eldest was named Catherine, followed by the next born named Mary—"Kattie" and Mary, as they appeared in the Kelly household for the 1880 census.

There were differences between those two sets of daughters, of course. Since Timothy had arrived in the United States at a young age, and had married Ellen in Fort Wayne, of course their two oldest daughters would have been born in this country. The two daughters of John and Johanna were born back in Ireland—in County Kerry, as we have discovered.

Timothy's two girls were born in 1861 and 1863, followed by three brothers. John's Catherine was born approximately 1862—not much younger than Timothy's Catherine. As for the Mary born to John and Johanna, well, let's just say it appears (with thanks to reader Kat for finding this documentation) that Mary was a special name to that family, for there may have been one born in 1864 followed, after her possible death, by another Mary born in 1867.

Could there have been anything to those Irish naming patterns, even for two families as far removed from each other as—if they were actually family—Timothy and John Kelly? Or were the two families just coincidentally drawn to favor those names—in that same order—of Catherine and Mary?

For immigrant Irish in the 1860s, it is quite possible that they could have been following tradition. In a recent article posted on the FindMyPast blog, Fiona Fitzsimons of Eneclann explained the "very strong naming pattern" evident in choices of names bestowed by Irish parents upon their eldest children. Though the author concedes that the naming patterns did not appear to be adhered to as strongly for daughters as for sons, there is the possibility of an order, as outlined in more detail in this list found at Rootsweb.

In the case of Timothy Kelly's daughters, it may have been possible that the eldest, Catherine, gained her namesake position from her maternal grandmother, and likewise second-born Mary from her paternal grandmother. However, we also have to remember, in comparing these two sets of Kelly daughters, that even if Timothy and John were brothers—thus both having the same mother's name to pass down to their second-born daughters—the name of each of the eldest daughters would have come from a different woman's mother. Thus, Catherine would have had to be the name of both Ellen's mother and Johanna's mother, if both families were following the pattern.

But I don't yet know whether Timothy and John were Kelly brothers, Kelly cousins, or just two guys living in Fort Wayne who happened to have the same, common, Irish surname. All I know is that they didn't mind pooling their money in the same pot, when it came to making arrangements to bury their dead.

More important than that, I have yet to fully determine what became of Timothy's Catherine and Mary—although I have some guesses, which we'll look into tomorrow.

 Above: The household of widower Timothy Kelly, as shown in the 1880 U.S. Census for Fort Wayne, Allen County, in Indiana; courtesy of FamilySearch.org.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Having found the patronymic key to connect me with the previous generation in my godmother’s as-yet-unknown Melnitchenko family history, I wanted to race to the closest online genealogical resource of Ukranians-R-Us.

Not so fast, however.

I need to make sure some other details don’t slip through my fingers—before I forget I had found them.

For one thing, there were some documents I had discovered on Lydia, my godmother’s mother. Just like I had seen with my godmother’s naturalization records—where what I had previously thought to be her middle name was actually an Americanized version of a patronymic—her mother’s records had presented the same information.

When I first discovered the index card for Lydia’s Declaration of Intent, I was elated. Not yet understanding the Russian—and eastern European—use of patronyms in their names, I had presumed I had just located Lydia’s maiden name.

The card had printed Lydia’s name as:

Melnitchenko, Lydia Theodore

I instantly decided I had found Lydia’s maiden name! What a prize in a world where women often became invisible upon marriage.

Of course, that moment of elation was short-lived. Once I made the discovery, yesterday, of the patronymic naming tradition of Russian heritage—and that of nearby cultures as well—I saw Lydia shrink back into oblivion.

Well, at least partial invisibility. I do, at least, know her father’s first name. Correct that: I know the Americanized version of her father’s first name. Whatever the Ukrainian equivalent is to the name Theodore, that is Lydia’s father’s actual name.

Now, if only I could locate some Ukrainian marriage records, complete with listing of bride’s father’s first name.

And, oh: compatibility with Google™ Translate. I’m thinking I would need a big assist there, too.

More to Learn About Names

What rhymes with Melnitchenko?

And more importantly, where do names like “–enko” come from?

With names swirling around in my head, I couldn’t be sure about dismissing any that I had recently found online, in my search for my godmother’s Melnitchenko family. I had made headway in discovering my godmother’s mother’s name (Lydia) and at least the first initial of her father’s name (“M,” which I strongly suspect should represent “Michael”). However, I had also uncovered the fact that not only was the name I knew her by (Genia) a nickname for the more formal Eugenie, but it represented her middle name, not her first name.

Her first name, as we saw yesterday, was Olga.

Upon finding that out, I had to go back to several files I had previously dismissed out of hand. One—with the names Olga, Eugenia and Michael in an index of Declarations of Intent filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York—I had presumed, earlier, to be the smoking gun revealing Genia’s mother’s name. (After all, I was already pretty sure her father was Michael, so that must mean her mother’s name was Olga—right?)

When I found the passenger list that showed me Genia’s mother was Lydia, I decided to trash the lead from the naturalization index—until I found that border crossing file yesterday, showing Olga and Genia to be one and the same person.

Now, I want to revisit all those index files I had found, both at FamilySearch.org for Genia and for Lydia, and at Ancestry.com for Michael.

But before I do, I need to take you on a detour through some naming traditions in a culture I’ve never researched before: that of eastern Europe and Russia.

This detour was originally inspired, thanks to a comment posted by a reader a few days ago. Sharing a link to a book written by a man surnamed, coincidentally, Melnitchenko, Intense Guy had gotten me thinking about the origins of surnames. In particular, I began musing about where the suffix “–enko” might have come from. Could it be—like the book title Iggy had just sent me—a surname having its origin in the Ukraine?

I Googled that very question. The result was a short education in not only the origin of surnames rhyming with Melnitchenko, but of the use of patronymic naming patterns in eastern Slavic ethnic groups.

I had learned about patronyms before, mainly from research focusing on those of Scandinavian heritage—not that I have any Swedish or Norwegian ancestors, myself, just that I learn a lot from fellow genealogical researchers. But I had never known anything about the use of patronymic naming systems for those of Russian or Slavic heritage, either.

Reading the material I had just found—right after the section that confirmed that Melnitchenko was a Ukrainian surname—I learned that a person’s patronymic name was obtained from the father’s first name (nothing surprising there) and inserted in the middle of the child’s name, between the given name and the surname.

The only caveat was: the father’s name, itself, wasn’t inserted in the child’s name. A form of the name was entered. That form included a suffix indicating “son of” or “daughter of” the father. So, for instance, in Russian, the suffix “–ovich” would be added to the father’s name. Likewise, the Ukrainian counterpart would end in “–ovych.”

Now, take that little thought and wrap it around the all-too-common experience of immigrant meeting English-speaking government bureaucrat. The fine details of “–ovich” for Russian and “–ovych” for Ukrainian likely became lost upon those Anglo-Saxon attuned ears.

Could the result ever become "–ivitch"?

Now for the last stop on my detour: revisiting yet another previously discarded find in my search for the Melnitchenko family. This time, we have to rewind the clock to 1924, and check back with the passenger list I had found—and then discarded—for the crew of the S.S. Hirondelle, sailing from Marseilles to New York.

Could the "Ivanivitch" in sailor Melnitchenko’s name actually be a patronymic name? Could this twenty seven year old Russian sailor be the same as seaman Michael I. Melnitchenko I had found in later years here, and here?

When I then go back to those index cards I re-collected from my discarded finds in the index to New York naturalization records, I now think I know what the entry was really saying for immigration applicant Michael Ivan Melnitchenko.

“Ivan” wasn’t his middle name. “Ivan” was an Americanized way of signifying who Michael’s father  was.

And, having learned that simple naming lesson, we now can push back another generation…  

 

 Above: "Fair in the Ukraine" painting by Basil Sternberg (1818-1845); courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.