Approaching Flannery Fatigue

 

It was bound to happen. After delaying my good intentions to find the roots for my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery due to a sickly September, I thought I'd try my best to make up for that lack. There is, however, no sense in trying to squeeze thirty days of research into a mere extra week. This goal, I decided, needed a decent full month of concentration sometime again in the future—sometime, that is, after I've recuperated from Flannery fatigue.

And then, wouldn't you know it, those DNA matches came back to haunt me. A Flannery cousin popped up in my husband's results—from Ontario in Canada, no less, home of the migrating Margaret and her husband Denis Tully and their children.

It was a small match, but big enough to tempt me into following the trail. From that Flannery cousin, I followed a Find A Grave clue for her father, (which conveniently included a copy of his obituary naming that same DNA cousin as well as all his siblings). That led to his father, and then that Flannery man's father—all while still remaining in Canada, in and around some of the same communities where our Margaret Flannery and her husband Denis Tully had settled in Ontario.

Tempting, that is, until I ran into yet another brick wall. This Flannery trail goes cold, still in Canada. I have no way to connect this ancestral Flannery from the DNA match's line to Margaret Flannery from my father-in-law's line. It seems I have a collection of stubs—dead ends on the Flannery branches.

It will take a lot more than a few days' work to unscramble this puzzle. Though I still regret not being able to work through the past month on this September goal, it's time to put it aside for another year's Twelve Most Wanted. It's time now to catch up with October, before another month disappears.

Two Places at the Same Time

 

If Margaret Flannery Tully and her family migrated to that tiny town known as Paris in what is now Ontario, Canada, where did she come from? That question about the two places she once called home is not as hard to answer as it might seem, thanks to finding a handwritten letter confirming the baptism of their son, John Tully, kept over the decades in personal family papers. Not only was that document the key to discovering Margaret's maiden name, but it was how I learned the location the family called their home church back in Ireland.

That church location was in Ballina, part of what was once known geopolitically as the "North Riding" of County Tipperary. But as you probably have learned by now, the most important location for tracing an Irish ancestor is actually the land subdivision known as a townland. Finding that townland can be challenging. After all, County Tipperary has a mere 3,245 townlands—or 3,144 townlands, as one Irish website puts it, "that we know about."

Besides finding the handwritten note verifying Margaret's son John Tully's baptism, I've since been able to locate digitized copies of baptismal entries for the remainder of the Tully children born in Ireland. For instance, in finding that their oldest known son, Michael, was baptized on June 5, 1834, I could spot the priest's entry at the top of the register stating that the family came from Tountinna, the townland named for the highest point in the Arra Mountains.

I've been there myself, viewing the rugged terrain which once housed the Tully family before their departure for Canada. By all accounts, the Tullys arrived in Canada in time to be listed there in the "1851 census"—an anomaly in itself, as that census, due to other difficulties, was actually not enumerated until January 12, 1852. Still, the very document which led me to find the Tully residence in Tountinna, Griffith's Valuation, was said to not have been completed until June 29, 1853.

Yet, looking closely at the Valuation entries in Tountinna—transcribed, unfortunately, as "Fountinna" in currently-available typewritten records—it is quite clear that, despite the family's entry in the Canadian census in the previous year, there was an entry for Denis Tully, Margaret's husband, back in that Irish townland. It is only in looking closely at the details from the Tully entry in Griffith's that we see the evaluator's note, "Added to [entry] No. 1. House struck out of valuation."

It is sometimes only in the relentless pursuit of the tiny details that we learn more about our ancestors. In Margaret's case, it appears we will only—if at all—be able to learn more about her roots if we continue to follow suit.

This Past Month: Plans versus Reality

 

On the first day of September, I launched into the exploration of an Irish immigrant woman in my father-in-law's family. Women in our family history are always hard to trace, and Margaret Flannery had had me stumped for the twenty years since an uncle had provided me with the handwritten document that even mentioned her maiden name. This month, I figured, was time to right that situation and paint a fuller picture of this bride of Denis Tully from Ballina in County Tipperary, Ireland.

I started off well enough, with an overview on the first day of my plans to "throw the net wide" to discover Margaret Flannery Tully's many descendants, courtesy of DNA test results, combined with my new subscription to Ancestry.com's ProTools. Besides that work, I mentioned on the second day that I also intended to seek information on the cluster of Flannery families who seemed to appear in her neighborhood, once the Tully family had made the big move from Ireland to a Canadian town in Ontario called Paris. 

Then, I got sick. I think you know the rest of the story. Part of my intention was, as I had done the previous month, to hunker down with my computer and scroll through online copies of centuries-old baptismal records, seeking any sign of Flannery family mentions, whether babies, parents, or godparents. Somehow, this month, I just wasn't up to that level of concentration.

For the longest time, I didn't do any research—and, face it, in the past I had usually found a way to rig a breakfast-in-bed set up so I could get work done on my computer, even while resting. But not this time. 

Though I ended up blasting through one of my biweekly report sessions without so much as a peep about it on the blog, after two weeks of this malaise, I did wince and check the numbers. Surprisingly, even the few days I was able to go online, I was able to find some DNA cousin connections and note them in my in-laws' tree.

Of course, now it has been another two weeks, so let's take a look at the numbers. Thankfully, I eventually got to the place where mindlessly scrolling through Ancestry hints was at least doing something besides sleeping. Apparently, that progress was not too bad. For my in-laws' tree in those past two biweekly reports, I moved the head count from 41,485 at mid-month to 41,674 today. In the past four weeks, that meant adding 335 new names, all somehow connected to Margaret Flannery's descendants—and most of them still residents in Canada (though some of them managed to slip across the border from Sarnia to Port Huron in Michigan). 

Some of that progress is thanks to recent additions of Canadian newspapers to the collection at  Newspapers.com. Much of the guidance has come from the ProTools ability to see matches of DNA matches, and in particular, their relationship connections. As to the specifics of what I found, though, we'll have to save the details for a wrap up in the remaining two days of this month.

Revisiting the Flannerys

 

I first discovered Margaret Flannery thanks to the thoughtfulness of a packrat relative. Uncle Ed, my father-in-law's older brother, had become the "keeper of the stuff," as author Denise Levenick calls it. In other words, Ed was the one who inherited all the "stuff" that his mother had kept before him—and she, in turn, had gotten it from her parents.

After Ed's passing, now years ago, several family members were sitting around his kitchen table when his widow brought out a box filled with some of that "stuff." There was, it seemed, something in there for everyone. Old keepsakes and memorabilia went to some of Ed's now-adult children who appreciated the nostalgia of times past. My husband was gifted with the World War II letters home from his own father, then serving in the Navy, to the family back in Chicago. And I, hoping for something to help with family history research, received a priceless gift: a handwritten letter from County Tipperary, Ireland, confirming the baptism of John Tully, my father-in-law's maternal grandfather.

As far as I was concerned, it was John Tully's mother who made the star appearance in that verification of his baptism. The letter identified her, complete with her maiden name: Margaret Flannery. Since then, I've explored what I could find of her family, both in Ballina, the place where the baptism was recorded, and even across the ocean in Paris, the small town in Ontario, Canada, where Margaret and her husband, Denis Tully, settled their family.

While receiving that document was an unexpected and irreplaceable gift, I have been able to trace Margaret after her arrival in Ontario—but not for long. Her earliest years in Canada unfortunately predate the available records from the local Catholic Church, as far as I and other descendants I've partnered with can tell. And I have yet to find any record of her death. Though it may not be obvious from her absence in the 1861 census that she had passed before that point, it is a given that at some point during that era, she certainly did so.

For the most part, thanks to collaboration with distant cousins in possession of labeled family photographs, I've been able to trace almost all of Margaret's children. DNA matches have guided me to build out the Flannery family tree even further. But the real key, I believe, will be to trace those collateral Flannery lines, especially considering the appearance of other Flannery families in close proximity to Margaret and Denis after they settled in Paris.

True, those could be coincidental appearances, but in a just-established town of barely one thousand people, I tend to favor such connections as a good sign. Take, for example, the appearance on the same page of the 1851 census on West River Street in Paris of both Denis and "Mrs." Tully and another family by the name of Flannery. Relatives? I've taken some time in the past to begin exploring that possibility, and we need to revisit that question once again this week.

Throwing the Net Wide

 

While last month may have been my moment to celebrate the small victories in ancestral research, this month I'm hoping to throw the net wide and pull in information on several family members. For September, we'll move on to another of my father-in-law's Irish great-grandmothers, this time looking at the Flannery family from County Tipperary.

Now that I'm equipped with Ancestry.com's ProTools—and especially the "Networks" beta version—I can easily put together a cluster of possibly related people. In this case, I'll be keeping close tabs on people with that same surname, both in the northern parts of County Tipperary, where my father-in-law's great-grandmother once lived, and onward into the 1850s and beyond, when she and her family began appearing in records in Canada.

Looking at clusters of connected people can be particularly helpful when we find no other pathway to move forward in our research. Particularly when working with families of Irish heritage, there are other clues which may help piece together a proposed family constellation, such as names of godparents for pre-famine baptisms in Ireland. Migrations en masse may also provide clues as to why names of neighbors back in County Tipperary soon afterwards showed up in census records in one particular town, far across the Atlantic Ocean. 

This month, we'll first review what we've already discovered about this great-grandmother Margaret Flannery, wife of Denis Tully. From there, we'll explore the other Flannery households which also appeared in records for Margaret's new home in Canada, as well as do a thorough search through church baptismal records back home in County Tipperary. As we widen the family network, we'll also keep an eye on any DNA matches related to this Flannery line to see what leads they may provide.

Granted, this month may be a repeat of last month's exhaustive searches through Catholic Church documents, but we'll do so, pen in hand. Any clue to help build this cluster of Flannery connections may lead us to the goal we're seeking: to connect Margaret Flannery with her siblings and parents, whoever they were.

Ancestor #9: Finding the Flannery FAN Club

 

Sometimes, it takes a village to find an ancestor. In the case of my father-in-law's Ballina bunch from County Tipperary, Ireland, my only hope of isolating the right Flannery ancestral line for the wife of Denis Tully may be to explore the entire village. At least, the work will call for a re-examination of the F.A.N. Club—Family, Associates, and Neighbors—of Irish emigrants Margaret Flannery and her husband, Denis Tully.

I had worked before on Margaret Flannery, my father-in-law's great-grandmother who married Denis Tully in Ballina, County Tipperary. It was far easier to find her with her family after they immigrated to Canada, but there were certainly signs that the Flannerys had lived in Ballina. The question still remains, though, about Margaret's parents and siblings—and who among them also made the voyage to Canada.

Fortunately, since the last time I worked on this ancestor for my Twelve Most Wanted in 2023, I've connected with two DNA matches researching the same surnames in the same county—an excellent bonus from genetic genealogy companies which provide the research tools to reach out to our distant DNA cousins. By the time I get to researching Ancestor #9 this fall, I will have covered quite a bit of background information through books and videos, thanks to a lively exchange of emails with these two researchers, in preparing to tackle this ninth challenge.

Unlike my goal for the other months during this Twelve Most Wanted sequence, September will enable me to broaden my horizons in searching for the parents of Margaret Flannery by taking into consideration those associates and neighbors whose names kept popping up along with hers, from Ireland to Canada. Even if we don't discover Margaret's parents' names, we'll hopefully build a network of relatives and other associates whose connections may help move the process forward another step or two. 

Who's Left Behind?

 

After bemoaning my possible fate of conceding loss to another brick wall ancestor, I got to wondering: who was left behind? After all, the Flannery folk who made it to Canada must have left behind some of their relatives in their homeland in County Tipperary, Ireland. And there was one document which I could consult to at least console myself that the Flannery trail hadn't yet gone cold: Griffith's Valuation.

Thanks to signs of approximate birth years for the youngest members of the Flannery families in the 1851 Canadian census, I can estimate dates of each family's arrival in their New World. For my Denis Tully family, his wife Margaret Flannery must have given birth to baby William by 1849. Likewise for the Edmund Flannery household, where baby John made his Canadian debut about 1847. And John Tully's wife, likely Kitty Flannery, gave birth to Margaret in Canada by 1849.

Granted, that puts all three families as leaving Ireland before those dates, and long before the completion of Griffith's Valuation back in the "North Riding" region of County Tipperary, the emigrants' original home. But even though Griffith's was said to have been completed in that county at the end of June of 1853, the resultant catalog of tenants there might give us an idea of the names of Flannerys left behind.

Ballina, the Catholic parish where many of our family's Flannery and Tully relatives were baptized—also the name of the townland where the church was located—was in the civil parish of Templeachally. Having a map to determine the relative placement of these townlands and civil parishes in County Tipperary certainly helps when taking a look at the list of heads of households in Griffith's. 

So who was left in Templeachally after our Flannery relatives left for Canada? Doing a search in the North Riding portion of County Tipperary for Flannerys in Griffith's Valuation, I found names like Michael, John, and William, as well as Anne. Of course, that was a search based on the spelling as Flannery, but as I've already seen from baptismal records, that surname could morph into many different spelling iterations, so repeating that search may yield more names to consider. And based on residences given in some baptismal and marriage records, searching in those nearby civil parishes may also point out other possible relatives remaining behind (and who survived the famine).

While that listing doesn't point me in a precise direction, it does at least give me a universe of possible first names to consider as I work my way through the maze of Flannery connections both in County Tipperary and across the ocean in Ontario, Canada.

Signs They Were There

 

The further I reach into old Canadian—and then Irish—records, the more I see signs not only that our Flannerys and Tullys were there, but ways that they continued to connect. Take this July 1847 baptismal record for John Flannery, son of Edmund Flannery and Margaret "Quogh" in the Roman Catholic records of Ontario, Canada. For the godparents of this son born on June 24, the priest had listed John Gorman and Margaret Tully. Tully had been the married name of Edmund's suspected sister Margaret, and Gorman is a surname spotted as neighbors of our original Denis Tully family from the 1851 census.

Denis Tully, my father-in-law's great-grandfather, had married someone named Margaret Flannery, but being that they were both immigrants to Canada West from Ireland, I needed to trace their path back to their homeland. What signs could I find that the Flannery family was there in County Tipperary as I had supposed? That was my next step.

Fortunately, there were several signs, embedded in the scrawl of religious documented in the all-but-underground Catholic church of the time. Referring to the 1851 census where we had already found them in the village of Paris in Brant County, Ontario, I knew their children's names: Patrick, Cornelius, and Michael. (Youngest son John, as we've already seen, had been born after the family arrived in Canada.)

Yet looking to baptismal records back in County Tipperary, in the area surrounding the town of Ballina, I couldn't find a record for any of these children of Edmund and Margaret. What I did find was a record naming those parents for two other children, children who apparently died in the late 1840s—and possibly became the impetus for the family's decision to migrate to Canada. Those two were Ellen, baptized in April 1843, and Edmund, baptized in 1845.

Those two baptismal records garnered a few interesting details. For Ellen, the record represented the parents as "Ned"—a possible nickname for Edmund—and gave Margaret's maiden name as Keogh, a more likely spelling for her name than the Quogh rendition in her son John's Canadian baptismal record. For Ellen's younger brother Edmund in April 1845, his parents were seemingly listed in a rush: "Edmd" for his father, with Margaret's name likely abbreviated as "Marg.," read possibly in error as Mary.

While looking at these baptismal records, I also gleaned the names of each child's sponsors, just in case those names turned out to be significant to us in our current chase for DNA cousins. For Ellen, the godparents were John Keogh, likely Margaret's brother, and Winny, a woman whose maiden name keeps appearing in family records but seems difficult to render properly: Finn? Linnel? For Edmund, the godparents were Laurence and Mary Mullins.

Sometimes, it seems that to find the key to connect the extended family constellation, we need to reach ever farther in records. I find myself in that place, working with this Flannery line, so I did a search on a collection of Irish baptismal records, limiting the results to County Tipperary and Ballina. I'll glean all the pertinent names, including sponsors, and see if I can find any patterns among the Flannery names. After all, traditional Irish naming patterns may help me make some presumed connections to compare with the distant Flannery cousins I'm working with online.

In the meantime, in perusing those County Tipperary records for Flannerys, I couldn't help but notice one marriage record which also linked to our Tully line: someone named John Tully—but not ours—marrying someone named Kitty Flannery. These two likely also followed my father-in-law's great-grandparents from Ballina to Canada, if they are the same as the John Tully family in the 1851 Canadian census. Though I haven't yet been able to figure out just how this John Tully connects to our Denis Tully—hint: he is not Denis' son by that same name, as that is our fully researched direct line—this time we'll take it from the Flannery side and see if we can connect Kitty to her relatives in County Tipperary, as well. 

Rebuilding the Tree

 

Can you build another person's family tree?

No, I didn't ask whether you could copy someone else's family tree; I said actually do the work yourself and build a tree from another family's starting point. For some of our DNA matches unlinked from any family tree data, sometimes that is our only choice: roll up our sleeves and build the tree ourselves.

Not that I'm in that exact situation. The tree I'm building now will hopefully become part of my own father-in-law's tree, but for now, I'm not quite sure, so this is an experiment. My goal is to find a connection for my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery, wife of Irish immigrant Denis Tully from Ballina in County Tipperary, Ireland.

As it so happens, finding Denis Tully's household in the 1851 Canadian census revealed some neighbors of interest: the family of a man named Edmund Flannery. As if that weren't enough of an impetus, further down the same census page I discovered another immigrant Tully man whose wife happened to be a Flannery. Family members? Perhaps we'll see in this week's brief tour of what can be found, looking both backwards and forwards on that Flannery family tree.

My first step has been to add, then detach, Edmund Flannery from Margaret Flannery's part of my father-in-law's tree. That way, he is still in my database, but not in a position which might mislead an unsuspecting researcher to copy that detail—which, for now, could just as easily be a mistake as a presumed sibling.

From there, I'm beginning to add Edmund's children to that same database, under their disconnected father's record. So far, I've only been able to add Edmund's oldest son, Patrick. Included in Patrick's line was his wife, Margaret Gorman, Canadian-born daughter of Irish immigrants whose place in that same Canadian census was only one page prior to Edmund's own household.

Patrick and Margaret's family included several daughters and one lone son, at least according to the next document where I found Patrick's growing family listed: the 1891 Canadian census. From eldest to youngest in stair-step fashion, they were Mary, Margaret, Ellen, Agnes, James, and Kate.

As I've been busy adding documentation as confirmation of the connection—and in hopes of building the tree out further, in case it garners some additional Flannery DNA connections—the facts I'm uncovering jog my memory, and I realize I've run into Patrick before. Long before, it turns out, I found him on another failed research expedition to uncover our Margaret Flannery's roots. Patrick Flannery was the unfortunate sixty three year old man found drowned in a mill race in 1895.

What's a mill race, I had wondered at the time. Thanks to some help from a reader, and an incredible stroke of good fortune in that the only year the Essex Free Press had been placed online then was for that same year—1895—I at least learned of Patrick Flannery's sad demise. Since then, of course, much more material has come online, and I have found the death record for our Patrick, informing us that his death was—thankfully—an accidental drowning and not due to foul play. And, oh, that he was born in County Tipperary, and that the reporting party, at least, was from Paris in the County of Brant, our Patrick's Canadian home. But not much more than that.

From that eldest Flannery son Patrick from the 1851 census, I'll continue the same research project for his younger brothers. Hopefully, today's much-improved access to more online records will yield me better results than the last time I attempted this same project. In the meantime, we also need to take a look backwards to see whether we can find any documentation now on those Irish-born sons of Edmund Flannery back in County Tipperary.

Friends and Flannerys

 

Does that F.A.N. Club notion really hold? Could immigrant neighbors really have been more than just friends? Was it family or just coincidence that after a trip of more than three thousand miles, Denis Tully and his wife ended up with neighbors surnamed Flannery?

It all started with an ink blot and a curious hesitance to enter the actual name of married women in the 1851 census for the village of Paris in Brant County, Ontario. There was my father-in-law's great-grandfather Denis Tully, listed with his forty three year old wife, entered simply as "Mrs." Only a few lines below that in the same census record was an entry for another family with the surname Flannery. Predictably, the wife's name was also entered as "Mrs.," but the husband's name was aggravatingly obscured by an inconvenient ink blot.

Edman, I guessed—but I could hardly be sure. What kind of name might that have been? Besides not wanting to be socially forward about women he didn't know, this enumerator apparently hadn't shined in spelling during his school years.

No matter. What I did want to know was whether Edmund—as I presumed the official had meant to write—might have been an in-law of Denis Tully. After all, Denis had married a Flannery, himself. Perhaps ink-blot Edman might have been his brother-in-law. If so, I couldn't resist the thought that Edman might lead me back to the place in County Tipperary, Ireland, where both the Tullys and the Flannerys were said to have originated.

That is still my question today, though I've since found plenty of indicators that there were other Flannerys in and near the Catholic parish of Ballina. Reason I'm revisiting this question: another DNA connection has contacted me about a possible Flannery link in Canada. We're forming a Flannery collaboration. While we are comparing notes, it might be helpful to outline what I know about this Flannery family in Brant County before stepping backwards in time to their origins in Ireland.

That 1851 census showed a household with four children, having a similar pattern to our Tullys: all born in Ireland, with the exception of the baby of the family, born after the family's arrival in Canada. In this case, the baby was John Flannery, and at the point of that enumeration year, his upcoming birthday would have made him four years of age—in other words, sometime during the year of 1852.

Along with John—and after a significant gap in ages—were his older brothers Michael (aged 15), Cornelius (aged 17), and Patrick (aged 19). I've tried tracing these sons forward in time, as well as looking for their Flannery father back in County Tipperary. Now that I've found a possible Flannery cousin to compare notes with, thanks to a referral by another DNA match, we'll spend the rest of the month seeing what can be found on the extended Flannery family. 

A Flannery Family Focus

 

Would it be possible to solve a family history mystery in the span of ten days? Could we, if we've already tackled the question twice before, manage to handle it before the close of this month? I'm not sure, but I'm willing to give it a try. After all, my planned research project for this month has fizzled out—yes, I can be a wimp that way—and I need to find something to replace it.

Into this perfect research storm steps an unsuspecting DNA match who provides the inspiration. Actually, this researcher is a genealogy friend of a friend, referred to me by another DNA match who is also working on the same line. Together, we are tackling various aspects of the trail-gone-cold of my father-in-law's immigrant great-grandparents Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery. After a volley of emails with this new-found connection, I decided I found my blogging answer: make the Flannery family line my focus for the rest of July.

Oh, we have tackled this project several times in the past. Sometimes I feel as if it were all to no avail—my immediate reaction when thinking back to the two times I've blogged about the Flannery family in 2015 and, more recently, just last August. But now that I look back to some of the posts on the Flannery family here at A Family Tapestry, I realize I did make progress. It's time to regroup and move a step beyond.

So this is it: the Flannerys will be our focus for the remainder of the month, both in County Tipperary, where they originated, and where they emigrated, a place which was once called Canada West. There are several neighboring Flannery families I've discovered in the past few times this surname has been reviewed, so tomorrow we'll take a look at those loose ends and see whether we can find a clear path forward.

Running in the Family

 

From time to time, when I hear people discussing members of a family, I'll hear the phrase, "It must have run in the family." Perhaps it is in comparing pictures of siblings, or meeting someone's parent or child, that the similarities can jump out unexpectedly.

In piecing together a family tree, researching collateral lines can be just as helpful. Though we may not see those ancestors face to face—or even in photographs—learning something about their siblings can help guide us in our search to fully understand the family. Once we learn about an ancestor's siblings, we start to get those "aha" moments when we realize there are traits which run in that family.

Take the ice hockey player, "Red" Kane, I mentioned yesterday. I've been working on that family's tree longer than I had expected, simply because I haven't been able to locate adequate documentation. And yet, stepping forward into the unknown anyhow, I began to spot some similarities popping up in the possible members of that family.

It actually wasn't Red Kane himself whom I first found in my search, but a brother. Thanks to a hint at Ancestry as I stumbled about online, I found a border crossing for Red's brother John. Though whoever filled out the border crossing paperwork in 1945 got his name partially wrong—John Birchman Kane instead of John Bertram Kane—his birthdate and the name of his mother Lillian confirmed this was the right sibling.

The place he was destined for in 1945 was what caught my eye: the San Francisco Hockey Club at the Winterland Arena. I got the feeling he wasn't traveling across the continent from his native Stratford, Ontario, for the mere purpose of visiting a tourist attraction. He was going on business.

It wasn't until the other end of his life when I found the rest of the story. In his obituary, I picked up a few of the missing details from the earlier portion of his life. For one thing, John B. Kane went by the nickname Jeff (though the only mention of a hockey player by that name was for one season with the San Francisco team during the 1945-1946 season).

John was one of eight siblings who survived to adulthood. According to his obituary, John, like his brothers, "excelled in hockey." His obit noted that he played semi-pro in both San Francisco and Indianapolis, before returning home to Canada to play for the Toronto Winged Wheelers. Now that I've found that information for both John and his brother Francis, perhaps that trait, running in the family, may help guide me to the rest of the brothers.

It was the obituary which also helped fill in some of the blanks in John's own life, especially the many places where he lived, and the family members who remained—and may potentially be among my husband's DNA matches whom I've yet to place correctly in the family tree.

But following these traits and personal history turn out to be helpful in yet another way. Like piecing together colored slivers into a mosaic to make sense of the bigger picture, it is such glimpses of each family member's lifetime which helps me paint the picture of the larger family descended from our Dennis Tully, the immigrant from County Tipperary who settled in Canada. And this family in particular presents me with a challenge: there are several pieces of their picture which are still missing.

Prime among the missing puzzle pieces is what became of Dennis Tully's own grandson, the man who supposedly was father of these Kane brothers who lived and breathed hockey. Until I began finding obituaries for any of John's siblings, I had no idea what became of Frederick Hugh Kane. But now, at least I know he was out of the picture, according to this obituary, when his mother moved her children to Toronto when John was about twelve.

I'll do the math, of course, and keep looking for more documentation, but I'll also take my cue from the fact that hockey runs in this family's blood. Detail by detail, across all eight of the siblings who survived to adulthood, what I can find hidden between the lines may, in the aggregate, be what leads me to the answers I'm seeking on this family line. 

Looking for the Stories Behind the Ancestors

 

Granted, not many of us know our own third cousins, personally. But this month, in researching the descendants of a newly-discovered branch of my father-in-law's Tully family, I found one I wish I had gotten to know. 

Dennis Tully, that Irish-born Canadian immigrant whose descendants showed up in my husband's DNA matches, unexplained, had a large family which included several daughters. One of them, named Johanna but preferring to go by Hannah for short, married a man by the name of Hugh Kane. They, in turn, settled in Stratford, Ontario, where they had a somewhat smaller family than the Tullys' own, the oldest of which Hugh and Hannah named Frederick Hugh Kane.

Frederick eventually married a Stratford gal named Lillian, from which followed at least eight children that I could find, with the last two being twins. While I have yet to determine part of their family story—Lillian seemed to be the strong influence in this household—I noticed a theme developing in the siblings' stories. They were all active—and one skill that they liked in particular was ice skating.

No surprise, here; they're Canadian. Plenty of opportunities to practice their hobby, eh?

I began seeing this trend as I read through the siblings' obituaries. When I got to one in particular, I found myself wishing I had had the opportunity to meet him in person. The memorial styled him as someone with roots in Canada, but there was so much more to say about the man. He was apparently a great storyteller, "never met a stranger" and "could learn everything about a person in the course of an elevator ride." Credited with "silent generosity," he served on his adopted city's parks and recreation board for eighteen years, after which the city named a park in his honor. At the close of the obituary, where typical "in lieu of flowers" statements are inserted, this one was different: "that you would do one spontaneous, unsolicited act of kindness for someone."

This Tully descendant alone, of all his siblings in the Kane family, had left Canada and settled in Texas, which might have explained the border crossing documents I was able to find. As it turns out, there was a reason for that, and it had to do with his love of skating. Actually, that love of skating brought him to cities across the North American continent, places like Detroit, Saint Louis, Tulsa, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Vancouver--as well as the Fort Worth area, where he eventually settled. As a professional ice hockey player, Francis J. Kane—or Red Kane, as he came to be called—played in 447 games from 1943 through 1951. While most of his games were played in the minor leagues, he did play for the major league Detroit Red Wings.

It was fun to find so many details about the life of this third cousin. More than just building out a family tree with bland names, places, and dates, I've always wanted to include the stories that seem to bring these people back to life again. Newspapers are one way to attempt getting the bigger picture, but sometimes that resource is as limited as the editorial policy in place in an ancestor's hometown paper. Granted, it is not every day that we find write-ups in Wikipedia under our relative's name—but sometimes, that rare occurrence can provide information as well as links to other resources about that family member. Sometimes, just googling the family member's name, or looking through old history books at Internet Archive can also provide resources for those stories we crave.

When we do find those unexpected stories, what a treasure they are. At the slightest hint that they might be out there, it's worth taking the time to go take a look. 

Canada, Genealogy, and Ice Hockey: There May be a Connection

 

Perhaps it will come as no surprise to learn that this couch potato has never been much for professional ice hockey. Despite our city becoming home to a minor league team years ago—which, in politics beyond my comprehension, eventually gave way to another team up through last year—I've never been to any of their games. Even taking time to understand which local team belonged to which league was more complicated than my mind could take in.

For the most part, though, the connection was clearly with a major league team whose home base was located somewhere in Canada. And that is the only reason I've taken any notice in the sport for this week's posts at all: guess whose descendants played ice hockey professionally?

Yes, if you've been following along here for the past month or so, you've noticed that my father-in-law had some Canadian cousins, thanks to one newly discovered branch of their Tully line remaining in Ontario while our family moved onward to Detroit, Cleveland, or Chicago.

As I worked my way through the generations of this Dennis Tully's family, I feel as if I've "met" a whole new set of cousins. Briefly, I've been introduced to their stories, but for the most part, I know very little about them, other than their names, dates of their life span, and where they lived. But some stories stand out. And yes, despite my disinterest in ice hockey, I actually became quite interested in the stories of a few of these third cousins.

Granted, I'm still churning out that Tully family tree, generation by generation, for my main goal of placing eight DNA matches in their rightful place. While that is going on in the background, this week, I'd like to begin sharing some of the stories I'm uncovering. We'll begin, tomorrow, with the story of one of Dennis' descendants whose energy and skill on the ice brought him far from the family's adopted home in Ontario, Canada, while pursuing a passion close to the hearts of many Canadians.

New Month, Same Research Goal

Welcome to September! Are you ready? I'm not.

While I've made progress on my research project for August—admittedly, somewhat sidetracked with the unexpected appearance of new relative Dennis Tully in my father-in-law's tree—what should I encounter as the research plan for this upcoming month of September but the goal of delving deeper into another Denis Tully's roots.

Call that redundant, I guess. Or prescient planning. How was I to know, back in January when I set my research plans for my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors to research for 2023? At that point, I had written that I wanted to delve further into the details I had already discovered about Denis Tully. Back then, I had a hunch that what I was seeking was perhaps simply hidden in plain view, right in front of my face. Perhaps re-examining all the facts I had already found might lead to the a-ha! moment which has, so far, eluded me.

Right now, I'm continuing the chase for what most likely is Denis Tully's son, another Irish immigrant in Ontario, Canada, also going by that same given name. I'll keep working on that project through the beginning of this month, with hopes that I'll get more responses to my messages to newly-found DNA matches which might lead to further family stories and remembrances. Old letters, saved photographs, reminiscences about visiting distant cousins in, say, Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland might be just the thing to help confirm where the younger Dennis fits in the family constellation of the elder Denis.

Depending on just where this journey leads us for September, we may find the story line winding down far before we reach the end of the pages in this month's calendar. If so, at that point, we'll detour to another branch of my father-in-law's family to round out the month. With this many descendants of just one line of Denis and Margaret Flannery Tully's large family, we're sure to run into more stories at some point. 

Making Connections with Other Family Researchers

 

How helpful it is when the tools we have to reach out to others researching our family lines actually return useful connections. In the case of my current Tully project, I've met another avid family history researcher at Ancestry.com and we've been comparing notes on what we know about the family.

The rationale for connecting with such distant cousins is that some parts of a family may have benefited from more heirlooms or heritage stories than other members. In this case, the researcher has enjoyed a wealth of family stories passed down from previous generations. Added bonus: she is willing to share.

In a recent conversation, we were noting how many members of the Canadian Tully family had opted to cross the border to settle in nearby U.S. cities, such as Detroit and Cleveland. This researcher, who had already shared a number of local details with me, asked, "Have you heard of the Black Donnellys?"

While no, I hadn't, she piqued my interest further by explaining that due to that tragedy, that may have been the specific reason a number of family members may have left the area.

Of course, you know I had to race to Google to see what I could find about the massacre that occurred at the Donnelly home in 1880. I had never heard of the tragedy. Then again, here I am across the continent and south of the international border by almost one thousand miles. Give or take the distance that separates us, plus the years which have passed since the massacre occurred, there is a lot that separates me from the "local history" of that time and place. And yet, this researcher could explain how the impact of those events had influenced her family's choices in where they lived and worked. She urged me to consider whether that, rather than other reasons, might have been the impetus for the Tully family's choice to leave where they had settled in Canada.

Local history that is so far removed from us may not be a detail we take into account as we puzzle over the seemingly unreasonable choices our ancestors made. Yet, if we only knew of those details—could develop a knack to put ourselves in our ancestors' shoes, so to speak—perhaps their choices would make more sense to us. Perhaps, even, we could better intuit what their next steps might have been.

Granted, it is hard, from a vantage point so far removed from where these ancestors once lived, to learn how to put ourselves into their shoes. I am convinced, though, that taking the effort to learn more about the local history, geography, and living conditions of the time and place will help reap rewards in our research progress. If nothing else, this becomes a strong motivator to me to reach out to the others who are also researching the same family lines. There's someone out there who does know the family's stories—and perhaps that someone would be more than happy to share what she knows.

When Boy Meets Girl

 

Were you one of those children who clamored to hear just how your dad met your mom? It seems so many people have a soft spot for boy meets girl stories. I'll admit I was always curious about such details concerning my own parents—but right now, I'm more interested in how some of my ancestors met. Top that list with the ancestors who seemed to make such details a well-kept secret.

Since I've been researching my father-in-law's roots this month, one couple on my need-to-know list is the newly-discovered line of Dennis Tully who, after his arrival in Canada, married another Irish immigrant named Margaret Hurley. This Dennis is, as far as I can tell, a newly-discovered son of my father-in-law's ancestor who was also named Denis Tully.

My thinking was that if I could find this Dennis' marriage record—and if I were extremely fortunate—perhaps it would reveal the parents' names for both bride and groom. Unfortunately, I have no idea how or where Dennis met Margaret, let alone when. My best guess, based on the birth dates of their children, would be about 1856.

It occurred to me that I've been down this path before with the extended Tully family. It was a few years ago when, thanks to some DNA test matches, I discovered that there was another son of our Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery. This son, Michael, was not in his parents' first census record after the Tully family moved to Canada, but did show up on the subsequent census in 1861—not in the same household, but at least on the same page as his father.

I never had discovered how Michael met his wife—here's a groaner: she was also named Margaret—so I decided to revisit that family line to see if I could figure out a way to locate such details. I looked first for Michael Tully prior to his marriage to Margaret, and found a likely candidate in the 1851 census. This Michael Tully was a sixteen year old laborer listed in the household of an Irish Catholic couple named John and Bridget Moore. Along with Michael was another boarder named Ann Welsh—a surname which, back at the Tully household of Michael's parents was the same as that of a family living nearby.

This Michael, in 1851, was residing in a town called Brantford, which at the time was part of the same county as the home of Michael's parents—the village of Paris in Brant County. A distance today of twelve kilometers from town center to town center would prove an easy trip, even back in that era.

If that were the right Michael Tully, then could Brantford be the place where Michael met his future wife Margaret? Her maiden name was Dowd, which could present some spelling challenges. I looked to see what could be found in the census just following their likely 1856 marriage.

Though I did find a family named "Doud" in the 1861 census, living in nearby South Dumfries township—which in the 1850s did include a portion of Paris—it didn't appear by their ages that this Margaret would have fit in, though the proximity to Brantford looked promising. Another Dowd family in Hamilton also caught my eye, but didn't seem likely, either. Of all the Dowds which were listed in the 1861 census for Canada West, none seemed likely. 

Though my test run with the question about Michael Tully didn't produce any helpful clues, I did try the same exercise for Dennis and his bride Margaret, looking in the 1861 census for her likely family. Granted, in researching this family line, I've stumbled upon results peppered with spelling permutations like Horely and Earley. Notwithstanding that caution, I could find no detail which could help me figure out how Dennis could have met Margaret.

Sometimes, those boy meets girl stories may only survive through the years when the storytellers in the family pass down the tale from generation to generation.

I'm still looking for that Tully family storyteller.

The More we Add, the More we Connect

 

The wonderful thing about some tech tools for genealogy is that, the more information we add, the better it is that the tools can connect us to the information and people we need.

Recently on Ancestry.com, I received a message to return to my DNA test results to check for updates. Ancestry is apparently rolling out new details. "More of your matches have been updated into parent groups," the email read. On their invitation, I clicked the green button to "see your updates."

This, I presumed, would be when the company resolved some of the DNA matches in the "unassigned" category, but when I checked that entry, it still remained under a banner declaring, "pending update."

Not to worry. Right now, while I'm working on my father-in-law's Tully line, I see Ancestry still has 7,703 matches lined up for that paternal line alone. Let's just say that should keep me busy for at least as long as it takes for Ancestry to get around to actually updating the unassigned category.

Besides, was it merely my imagination, or did I suddenly find new ThruLines matches for that same Tully line, now that I've added upwards of twenty new cousins to that tree? The more that tree grows, the more surnames can connect to other subscribers' trees—the main point of the ThruLines tool. I've added material the tool can sink its teeth into, and now it is churning out the information to guide me further.

When I first told people, years ago when our family first DNA tested, what my game plan was for linking those DNA cousins to their rightful place in my family tree, I invariably heard groans. Yes, it is a lot of work, but now I'm finding even more genetic connections pointing squarely to Irish immigrant Dennis Tully, born 1830 in County Tipperary, being another likely son of my father-in-law's great-grandfather. Through pursuit of collateral lines, once again an entire branch of the family is now coming to light—both in Ontario, Canada, where that immigrant had settled, and now throughout the province and even across the border in the United States.

Not Gretna Greens

 

Where do you find marriage records for your ancestors when the ceremony doesn't seem to have occurred in the place where either bride or groom called home? The presumption is to look for the closest "Gretna Green" and check the records there.

I've been holding out for a marriage record for Dennis Tully, that Irish immigrant to Canada whose wife Margaret's maiden name didn't seem to match up with records I had for my father-in-law's Denis Tully. My goal in looking for Dennis' marriage to Margaret Hurley is the hope that their record would reveal something I've yet to find back in Dennis' Irish birthplace: names of parents.

Since there is no record that I can find anywhere near County Tipperary, where our Tully family originated in Ireland, I am presuming the ceremony was conducted after the bride and groom arrived in Canada. And yet—so far—no document. That's when the notion of checking Gretna Green possibilities taps me on the shoulder.

The concept we've since labeled "Gretna Green" goes back to a law passed in England in 1753 prohibiting underaged couples from marrying without parental permission. Since laws are apparently made to be circumvented, sure enough, English couples soon discovered they could get around that requirement by marrying somewhere other than England. Conveniently, Scotland at that time had no such restriction, and enterprising lovers slipped over the border to Scotland to exchange their vows. The first town they found where they were free to do so was called Gretna Green.

The name of that tiny village, Gretna Green, soon came to be the label for any place where couples eloped to avoid marriage restrictions imposed in their own hometown. And genealogists eventually learned that, when unable to locate the marriage confirmation for their ancestral couples, they could consult a list of cities which were considered to be Gretna Greens. The FamilySearch wiki, for instance, provides a map of known locations in the United States, as well as a chart which begins, "If your ancestor is from..." (fill in the name of a family city or region), "Then check here...."

Though the chart mainly focuses on United States cities and regions, I noticed there were several entries for Canada, including one for Ontario locations where couples might slip across the border to, for instance, Port Huron, Michigan. 

While that thought might have been tempting for me—Dennis Tully did have some descendants who either married in Port Huron, or even settled there—I still believe that would not be a likely scenario for Dennis Tully and Margaret Hurley, themselves. There are a few reasons I think so. For one thing, each of them was Catholic, and baptismal records I've found for some of their children indicate their intention to follow the tenets of their religion, which would include the Catholic sacrament of marriage—hardly a ceremony they would leave to the closest blacksmith across the border in Gretna Green.

Then, too, while the Gretna Green concept was alive and well long before the time in which Dennis and Margaret would have married—their oldest child was born in 1857, so likely a year prior to that point—the area in Canada in which they settled would not have lent itself easily to slipping across the border. While it is true that the region in which they settled later saw traffic to the United States through places like Port Huron, I would be more interested in confirming the time period in which such movement would have likely occurred—a much later time period, I suspect.

Another reason I'm not capitulating to the Gretna Green concept just yet is that I haven't thoroughly searched the marriage records for the possible locations where either Dennis or Margaret may have settled in the 1850s. Taking a look at the overview for marriages in Ontario, Canada, in the FamilySearch wiki, there are far more resources than just what can be found for our couple—nothing, incidentally—at Ancestry.com. Even so, there may be gaps in what is available in microfilms at FamilySearch, itself, though I won't know until I grind my way through all of the available resources there.

Even so, there are limitations to the microfilms which are available. Many records prior to 1869—and our couple's wedding would fall within this range—were gleaned from church records, not civil records. And even if we could find the right record for the right couple, despite some later records I've found in Ontario with all the information I'm seeking, chances were high that the record itself might be sparse. 

Fortunately, FamilySearch provides a list of "What else you can try" if initial search attempts bring up nothing. I will likely be checking out the links provided on this list, too. But first, I'll narrow my search to the places where I've been able to find Dennis in the earliest years after his arrival in Canada West. The first possibility would be in Blenheim, where a young, single, man by that name was living with another Irish laborer, two Catholics living in the midst of a page filled with Protestant families in the 1851 census. Could he have met Margaret there? Or did he meet her when he settled in Warwick in Lambton County? Or even in Paris, Brant County, where his possible father lived—and where, later, his first child was born?

These are the three main possibilities I'll be checking as I search for that elusive marriage record for Dennis Tully and Margaret Hurley. It makes more sense to look at those locations—or the geographic region closely surrounding those locations—than to strike out to intuit which Gretna Green location might have been the favorite spot for eloping couples in the late 1850s in Canada.

Counting Cousins

 

Cousins, at least in my opinion, can be valuable guides to piecing together a family's story—especially when it comes to those cousins who lived three or four generations prior to our own lifetime. Right now, I'm just not sure whether the newly-found Dennis Tully is actually brother of my father-in-law's maternal grandfather, but I'm testing out some hypotheses by plugging him into my tree—along with the several children of that Dennis who would be cousins of my father-in-law's own mother.

Since today marks my biweekly progress report, this will provide a count of just how many individuals have been tentatively added to that family tree. The hope is that I will eventually reach down to the third cousin level where DNA matches start popping up in the tree—matches which, at some point, I'll need to tag in the tree for their genetic as well as genealogical connection.

Since making that decision to tentatively add Dennis Tully and his wife Margaret Hurley to my tree, I've added 218 additional names. Call each one of them cousins, for that is exactly what I've been working on. And those 218 are just the beginning of the task. Once Dennis removed from his native Ireland and settled in Ontario, Canada, his marriage—whenever and wherever it may have occurred—led to a far more abundant life than he could have hoped for, back in County Tipperary. There will be several more descendants of Dennis Tully and Margaret Hurley added to this tree, as we will see in the next two week period. As of today, that tree stands at 33,340 names.

Though the line of the other Denis Tully—he whose wife was Margaret Flannery, and whom I'm presuming was the father of the younger Dennis—has been my research focus this month, I did also manage to add one more name to my own mother's tree. These stray additions usually happen due to discovery of an important life event—a marriage, for instance, or birth of another child—and I try to update my tree as soon as I discover the addition. Though the addition may be small, saving it for later—those "more opportune times"—seldom works out well in the long run. Better to keep up with family changes when they are announced. Considering my own tree is now up to 33,900 names, that timeliness is an imperative.

The DNA match count may be inching up ever so slowly—on Ancestry, for instance, my husband's match count went up by only two in the past two weeks, and my own by three—but I anticipate with this month's research project to eventually discover several more DNA matches which connect my husband to that newly-discovered Tully line. Already, by adding new lines of cousins from the Dennis Tully descendants, I'm seeing surnames from marriages which I've also spotted in those DNA match lists. I'm looking forward to connecting the genealogical documentation to the DNA information now available to place these matches in the right part of the family tree.

And I marvel to think it was only a few years ago that we would never have had any way to know about these missing cousins at all.