When the "Big Easy" Isn't Easy

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not in 1850

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brick Walls and Kellys

 

If we call those hard-to-research ancestors "brick walls," then my father-in-law's Kelly family must be a walled citadel of relatives. Demarcation of this barrier began when James and Mary Kelly left all behind and sailed for New Orleans from somewhere in Ireland.

Trying to find any clues through DNA testing has not been promising. Using my husband's DNA test as proxy for my father-in-law's genetic heritage, we are looking at a connection at the distance of third great-grandfather—not so distant as to be unreachable, but still only showing us eight possible connections to these Kelly descendants via Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool. Out of those eight, two are children of my husband's cousins, telling me nothing new.

The paper trail has been clear enough from James and Mary's children down to the present, thankfully. I have not really added many new Kelly descendants to my father-in-law's tree since beginning this month's research project, thus it is no surprise that I only added ninety one new individuals to that family tree in the past two weeks. Those have mainly come from continuation of previous months' research projects, which are always chugging away in the background. Still, the total count for the tree, after two weeks' work, is now 36,751 names.

However, of those eight DNA matches linked to James Kelly's line, there is one ThruLines suggestion which I cannot trace. Beginning at the top with James himself and moving forward in time, there is a disconnect at the level of a grandchild. I simply cannot find any documentation to identify that individual which ThruLines indicates as James' descendant.

If I can't see my way clear to the end, perhaps switching perspective and looking in the opposite direction—from the DNA match backwards in time, all the way to the ancestor during James Kelly's era—may help point out the connection. Or point out the error. Building a "quick and dirty tree," as CeCe Moore used to call it in her training sessions, may highlight the error in the Kelly connection—or perhaps help highlight how the suggested ancestor actually fit in. There have been several iterations of that original tree-building idea over the years, complete with caveats from experienced researchers. But the biggest hurdle, at least from my perspective, will be finding the time to actually do the work of building someone else's tree.

I had hoped that, building out my own take on the Kelly line—plus all the collateral lines—would prompt ThruLines to identify additional DNA connections, but that count of eight ThruLines Kelly matches has stayed set for quite some time. It's the luck of the draw if any other Kelly descendants will choose to test in the future—and that may only be augmented if James Kelly had any siblings whose descendants also survived down to the present generation.

In the meantime, this coming week it will be back to our alternate research strategy: examine the context of immigration through New Orleans for these Irish immigrants, and hope for some sign of a F.A.N. Club associated with the extended Kelly family.

Wondering Why

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tracing Michael

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overused Cliches and Doing Things Over

 

If doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result has become a cliche—try this cataloguing of the famed "definition" attributed to a really brainy guy—then I guess I won't write any more to litter the literary landscape. That said, I still did try my hand—again—at looking for Hugh Stevens' arrival in New Orleans in December of 1852. 

And the result? This may come as a surprise, but it was the same outcome as the last time I tried to find him. Despite what he insisted to officials when he arrived in Lafayette, Indiana, Hugh Stevens' name wasn't on passenger lists in New Orleans during that supposed month of his arrival. Or that page (or two) is still missing from the records which have been saved for all these years.

I did find some near misses. Using the search mechanisms at FamilySearch.org, I filtered out all passengers born in places other than Ireland and Great Britain, but somehow managed to include all the spelling variations for the Stevens surname. The closest date of arrival I could find was for a Stephens in 1851.

Moving to Ancestry.com, their search process yielded twenty four possibilities arriving in New Orleans for the search term "H. Stevens," including spelling variations. Two of them even arrived in 1852—a promising sign that those dates weren't totally lost from the record—but they came much earlier in the year.

Despite those disappointing results, I did notice one detail that might turn out to be helpful: many of the ships arriving in New Orleans listed their point of departure as locations either in the Caribbean or in Central America. Only four of the arrivals listed came directly from Liverpool, Hugh Stevens' supposed originating point.

That said—and this will come as no surprise to you—it's time to stop doing the same thing over and over again in the hopes that this time, the result will be different. Though signs of Hugh Stevens' origin was my slated research goal for the month of July, we'll wrap up a few other futile searches on his behalf this week, and then move on to another more pressing investigation. 

Initial Impressions

 

It didn't take long, after perusing what remains of records of passengers passing through the port of New Orleans in the early 1850s, to realize that many travelers preferred to identify themselves by their initials. Thus, my chances of finding the right Hugh Stevens in those records suddenly became awash with the possibility of including all travelers going by the name H. Stevens. Every Henry, Harold, and even Horatio immediately took his place alongside the Hugh Stevens I've been searching for.

Another research difficulty in finding travelers in the 1850s: point of origin was sometimes labeled—if at all—by a politically correct designation. Thus, though I've been seeking Irish immigrants arriving in New Orleans, the more likely designation would be Great Britain. Yet another smoke screen gets thrown up to disguise which one of those "H. Stevens" candidates might have been a viable selection.

A further complication, that our Hugh Stevens traveled from Liverpool, England, might tempt a lazy government official to simply record him as being from England, rather than his true residence in Ireland—if any designation was added to the record at all.

Add to that the likelihood that a surname like Stevens could just as easily have been recorded as Stephens, and you begin to see the challenges facing someone who simply wishes to find Hugh Stevens among the thousands who sailed through New Orleans and up the Mississippi.

Hopefully, the one document in which I've been able to spot Hugh Stevens will be mine to view for myself by early next week. Though I'm fairly certain all the basic details I recall about that scant piece of paper will be all that the second copy will reveal, I keep hoping for a revelation. We'll see at that point, which will determine whether my research goal for this month's Twelve Most Wanted will move forward or join the pile of hopeless lost research causes.

Different Than the Rest of the Crowd

 

While most Irish refugees to North America during the years of the Great Famine may have headed to New York or Boston, my husband's second great-grandfather John Stevens had to be different than all the rest. Instead of choosing those typical northern American ports—or destinations in Canada, or perhaps Australia or New Zealand—John Stevens chose to head to the port of New Orleans.

Why he did so has always puzzled me. For the longest time, his stated 1850 date of arrival on his immigration papers was one falling in the gaps of what was available in digitized records collections. Although such online collections are now more complete than when I first began this search, I still haven't located any record that match his details.

With such research trouble, I've begun to wonder whether John arrived from somewhere other than Ireland itself—for instance, traveling through one of the Caribbean islands. Hence, my goal in exploring the background information on the more general topic of Irish emigration itself, especially from John's supposed homeland in County Mayo.

Today, I begin to see some positive signs that he could indeed have arrived through the port of New Orleans. Though some of the statements I've uncovered do not come sourced or footnoted (hey, one is simply an Indiana newspaper), I see them as way-pointers in a long journey to arrive at the truth of this ancestor's travels.

True, both FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com have digitized copies of passenger records for the port of New Orleans. But let's first look at who might have arrived in New Orleans in general.

New Orleans is situated in what is now the state of Louisiana, located in the deep south of the United States. By virtue of its location at the mouth of the Mississippi River, the port's significance has always been its entry to a vast waterway connecting this Gulf port with much of the American midwest. Indeed, John Stevens made use of that transportation feature by continuing his immigration journey northward to the state of Indiana, where he finally settled.

Apparently, the Irish began arriving in Louisiana from the 1820s, and in increasing numbers during the famine years. New Orleans by 1840 had become the third most populous city in the United States—not to mention, the wealthiest. Perhaps on account of such reasons, rather than simply heading west across the Atlantic to New York or Boston, a significant number of Irish emigrants knew to sail farther south.

According to one newspaper column—unfortunately unsubstantiated—the port of New Orleans was considered "less regulated and more lax in following immigration law" than other American ports, leading some immigrants to "purposely choose" this as their port of entry. One other detail supposedly shared by immigrants was knowledge of the likely times for outbreaks of malaria and yellow fever in New Orleans, meaning those in the know would time their travel to avoid the months between May and November.

This last detail, although unsubstantiated in the newspaper report, caught my eye for one reason: what seemed to me to be the odd time John Stevens selected for his arrival in America. According to his Declaration of Intention, John Stevens arrived in New Orleans in the month of December. Could he have known of this bit of travelers' advice?

While digitized copies of the passenger lists for arrivals in New Orleans are now available for the years 1820 through 1945—and arranged by date of arrival in port—I did notice the collection notes admitted, "Some arrival dates are not represented in the data." True, in the past I had only searched for John's surname as spelled exactly "Stevens" and not "Stephens," so it is worth taking another look. But having his declared date of arrival, I have not been able to spot his entry in past forays into this record set.

However, seeing that mention of travelers' hesitance to arrive in Louisiana during the height of the malaria season does give me a slight glimmer of hope that John Stevens did indeed arrive in New Orleans just when he said he did. Now, it's just a matter of finding the record to have appropriate confirmation of this step in his emigration journey.

Of course, to be able to see that the entry is indeed for a man named John Stevens—and that the name wasn't simply an alias—would bolster my confidence, as well. After all, if he did indeed come from County Mayo, I have not seen many encouraging signs that his was a surname included among the residents living there during famine times.

Falling Into the Gap

 

Have you ever celebrated finding a new record set, and set about scouring its contents for your ancestors, only to discover there's a gap in the collection, right where your ancestor should have been?

I've had that happen several times before, and seeking the passenger listings for my father-in-law's Stevens and Kelly families, it looks like I'm about to see that happen once again.

Let's just say that experience has cooled my enthusiasm for jumping right into the fray when I find a new online collection. I've learned to stop and consider what, exactly, is available within each collection I'm about to examine.

Based on the Declaration of Intent for John Stevens, an immigration document he filed in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, he claimed to have arrived in the United States at the port in New Orleans. An unexpected route for an Irish immigrant right in the midst of the famine back in his homeland, John Stevens' itinerary might have been for an entirely different reason than that of his fellow countrymen.

While I can't yet determine the route taken by his future wife's family—I have yet to find any immigration documents for the James Kelly family that I can say with assurance belong to the right individuals—I suspect they may have taken the same route as John Stevens. After all, what would have caused them to end up in the early 1850s at the same small town in western Indiana, other than the logical conveyance by river navigation?

Still, no matter where I've looked for John Stevens in record collections for the port of New Orleans—and, at the same time, searched for the Kelly family—I've come up short. Let's review the reasons why and see if anything has changed since the last time I attempted this search.

First, I review the resources available online—since I won't be traveling to do in-person research any time soon. My first stop is usually to check out the FamilySearch wiki. While the overview of the collection seems promising—the digitized records from the National Archives cover the years from 1820 through 1945—there are some caveats which already are sending me warning signs.

One warning, for instance, comes from the observation that the earliest records were handwritten, making it possible that, in transcription or indexing, the writing could have been misread. A second caution comes from the realization that all information recorded was gleaned from passenger reports. A false report, of course, leads to incorrect information. Even if the passengers reported all details correctly, there was always room for the possibility of clerical error. Combined, this cautions me that I might have to read through those handwritten passenger names, myself, line by line, if the usual search methods don't yield me an answer to my search query.

While the overview on the FamilySearch wiki for New Orleans passenger records is helpful, that is not the only place I look. Of course, I'm certainly pleased that Ancestry.com also includes two record sets on New Orleans passenger lists in their holdings, which glean microfilmed material from several sources. And just in case one resource incorrectly identified my ancestors' entries—hey, this happens—not only can I jump from the records at FamilySearch to Ancestry to compare notes, but I can also check out the same material from the Louisiana Secretary of State's website.

Yes, having resources in more that one place can be cause to celebrate, but let's not get too hasty yet, shall we? After all, we have yet to actually do the work of searching for our Stevens and Kelly names in those records. And there is one more caution to keep in mind. This I found, courtesy of a finding aid compiled by the ever-helpful Joe Beine on the German Roots site online, where he notes that those Ancestry.com lists I mentioned come "with some gaps."

Guess where the gaps are?

Granted, some of the gaps may have occurred before or after our Kelly family arrived in America—and other gaps have inspired work-arounds for those critical years of 1851 and 1852. However, because some of the handwritten material may require a thorough—remember the term, "reasonably exhaustive"?—search, before jumping into such a project, it is always good to review the fine print to see if we are still headed in the right research direction.