The Girls' Team Strikes Out

 

If my search for matrilineal descendants of my fifth great-grandfather John Carter's wives were a baseball game, I'd say we are about to head into the ninth inning, and the girls' team just struck out.

After reviewing the family line of Carter daughter Sarah, wife of William Sutton, I thought it might be handy to simply skip over the next daughters and head straight to the other Carter daughter who also happened to marry a Sutton family member. That would be Judith Carter, third daughter of Hannah Chew, the wife who survived John Carter.

Judith and her husband, Joseph Sutton—who, incidentally, was brother of Sarah Carter's husband William Sutton—had four children. Of those four, only one was a daughter: Maria Chew Sutton. According to the 1941 Suttons of Caroline County, Virginia, this Maria was born in 1790. By 1811, she had married her double first cousin, John Carter Sutton, son of her Carter aunt, Sarah, and her Sutton uncle, William. The marriage didn't last long. After giving birth to her only son, John Oliver Sutton, Maria apparently died within the subsequent year. Strike one.

Well, I guess I should have stuck with protocol and continued the line of Carter daughters by age ranking. So, back we go to Sarah Carter's next youngest sister, Margaret, the last of the daughters said to have been born to John Carter's wife Elizabeth Armistead, the wife whose missing documentation I've been puzzled by. At first glance, though, we can easily see that when this mom came to bat, she'd easily be strike two: to her husband, John Marshall, Margaret bore several children, all of whom were sons.

At this point, we move on to Mary Beverley Carter, the oldest child of John Carter's final wife, Hannah Chew. Mary Beverley became wife of D.A.R. Patriot Richard Stevens. At this point, I didn't quite realize I was about to face up to strike three, since Mary Beverley claimed at least three surviving daughters: Lucy Carter Stevens, Mary Chew Stevens, and Judith M. Stevens.

Of those three possibilities, though, I have yet to find confirming documentation. It appears that Lucy Carter Stevens never married. Mary Chew Stevens did marry, and bore her husband, Samuel Winston, one son and one daughter—but as far as I can find, that daughter never married. And all I can find for the third daughter, Judith, was one son. Until more research unearths the tell-all documents I've been seeking, we'll have to concede that Mary Beverley Carter's progeny did indeed represent strike three.

Not to worry, though, for there are yet three more Carter daughters to review tomorrow in the final inning of this month's project for my Twelve Most Wanted of 2026.

 

Not All Daughters Lead to Matrilines

 

It seemed like such a straightforward, streamlined solution: to determine which of John Carter's children belonged to which of his wives, start with the daughters. Then, since my fifth great-grandfather John Carter lived and died in Virginia in the 1700s, trace the descendancy of his many daughters, seeking to focus specifically on the daughters' daughters' daughters, on down to the present time, at which point we could find willing Carter descendants of those matrilines to take a mitochondrial DNA test and help us compare results.

There's a problem with such an approach. Yes, of course, there is that one issue of finding eligible descendants who would be willing to participate in such a DNA project. But that is not the problem which concerns me. Where I'm stuck is this: not all ancestral daughters would eventually lead to matrilines. Somewhere in that long line of generations, John Carter's descendants could experience the exact opposite of what genetic genealogists call "daughtering out."

While I'm still stymied with actually documenting the genealogies of all of John's children, I did find one way to do a quick and dirty assessment of such a situation. I turned to the ThruLines tool at Ancestry to see whether, even at the level of fifth great-granddaughter, my autosomal DNA test could reveal genetic connections to this distant Carter ancestor.

At the level of fifth great-grandparent, that is the most distant level the ThruLines readout will extend. Sure enough, there in my results was an entry for my own DNA matches who join me in linking back to John Carter. 

There were seventeen of those Carter DNA matches. The closest of them shared a puny nineteen centiMorgans with me—an understandable amount, considering the distance of the relationship—and the smallest shared amount registered at only six cMs, hardly a measure generating confidence.

Still, my purpose was to do a quick assessment of my theory that finding matrilines direct from the current generation back to the Carter wives might be a challenge. Looking at the proposed lines according to ThruLines, here is what I found: 

• One match to Mary Beverley Carter, through her son Richard C. Stevens
• Five matches to Margaret Carter (half sister), all through her son Carter Marshall
• Six matches to Sarah Carter (half sister), four through son John Sutton, two through son Norborne Sutton

As you can see, none of those matches came strictly through a matrilineal line of descent, foiling our project's purpose. 

Looking even further, checking the ThruLines entries specifically for the wife of John Carter from whom I'm descended, Hannah Chew, there are a total of fifty nine DNA matches currently entered in this category. For one of them, Carter daughter Judith showed six matches to me, but three come through Judith's son Joseph Sutton, two from son Stephen Sutton, and one more from son John Sutton. Not even among these can I find lines of descent from any of John Carter's granddaughters. I, myself, am such an example, as the matriline leading from Hannah Chew to me stops with my second great-grandfather, Thomas Taliaferro Broyles.

In a general exploration of all of John Carter's grandchildren, I spotted further problems from documentation. Some daughters did have daughters of their own—but of those I've found so far, some died young, or, having survived and married, had only sons. I did find one daughter who had a daughter—but I find no record that she even married, let alone had daughters of her own.

Granted, ThruLines relies on the trees of those who tested their DNA at Ancestry. There can be mistakes. But even the old published genealogies some people rely on contain errors, too. Seeking actual documentation, as we've already discovered, can reveal details not included in some genealogies.

To complicate matters, researching ancestors from the 1700s is far easier when we are looking for ancestral grandfathers than when we are looking for their wives. Women from earlier centuries seemed almost invisible, adding this one challenge to our quest to trace the matrilineal descent of John Carter's wives. Still, if someone doesn't build the tree, we'll never arrive at the answer we're seeking.

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.

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.

Little Telltale Signs

 

Though Catharine Kelly Stevens may have died in 1858 at a young age, she left three telltale signs to help guide us to the right Kelly family in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. Those little signs were her three sons: James, John Kelly, and William. With their help, I was able to piece together the right Kelly family of Catharine's mother and remaining siblings.

It had always been a mystery to me why those three children had seemed to disappear after their mother's death. Since James was born about 1854, John Kelly in 1856, and William a little over a month prior to his mother's passing, by the time of the 1860 census, they would have been young children in need of care. They had to be somewhere, but there was no sign of them—nor their father, the widowed John Stevens, either.

It was records of Catharine's collateral lines which began to paint a picture for me of what became of her three sons. In the household of Catharine's presumed brother, Matthew Kelley, it just so happened that there were three Stevens boys in the 1860 census. It's just that, looking at that entry for Matthew Kelly and his family—including his mother Mary—the listing for the Stevens children wouldn't have been obvious without turning the page. It appears as if the household listing were complete with the line entry on Matthew's mother Mary at the end of the first page.

Note to self: always turn the page. Just in case.

With the subsequent census in 1870, the two older Stevens boys returned to live with their father John, who by then had remarried and welcomed three more children into his household. Once again, I needed to revisit the Kelly household to trace that third, missing Stevens son. It wasn't until the 1880 census when I finally found William back in Matthew Kelly's household, this time listed specifically as Matthew's nephew.

With that useful pattern of following the motherless sons of James and Mary Kelly's deceased daughter Catharine, I was able to make a few connections between John Stevens and his in-laws' family. It helps to have some confirmation that one is following the right family line, especially with a surname as common as Kelly.

Seeing that, I wondered whether piecing together a listing of the unfortunate Catharine's siblings might also provide some enlightenment on where the Kelly family may have originated. We'll take a closer look at the collateral lines in that Kelly family tree, beginning next week.

NOT Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

 

If I stare at the headstone of Catherine Kelly Stevens long enough, I can barely make out the words, "wife of John Stevens." Or perhaps that is wishful thinking. I can't even decipher any entry for her own name. Only her date of death—May 3, 1858—seems clear enough to believe.

Truthfully, I can't even say it's beyond a reasonable doubt that James and Mary Kelly's daughter Catharine was married to John Stevens, my father-in-law's great-grandfather. Records are far more sparse for Indiana's Tippecanoe County in the 1850s than in those east coast locations boasting immigrant settlers as far back as the 1600s. And what few records can be found sometimes come with irksome abnormalities.

Take the presumed marriage license for John and Catharine. The license, dated on the twenty-seventh day of December in 1853, authorized "any person empowered by law to solemnize marriage" of the named couple. However, on that same document, the groom's name is given once as John Stevenson, and three more times as John Stephenson. Is this still our man John Stevens?

If this was the correct couple, they were married a little over three months after Catharine's father James had died—a likely possibility if a widow was seeking to find promising situations for her daughters after losing her own husband. But this could as likely have been the case of two people with the same name. After all, even in a city of barely six thousand people, it could be possible for someone named Catharine Kelly to have a name twin.

Of course, even the spelling variation on Catharine's own maiden name—Kelly or Kelley—would give pause to someone nowadays, but may not have been cause for concern in a previous century. But with no other records yet available to compare, we don't have much to go on beyond family tradition and these sparse indications.

There is, however, a way beyond this tangle, and that is to employ the records we can find of Catharine's collateral lines. As it turns out, because Catharine was a young mother when she died, the records of her own children will help guide us in the process of sorting out the details on this family—first for Catharine herself, then for her parents.

Tomorrow, we'll begin reviewing what's already been found on John and Catharine's three sons, then take a look at Catharine's own siblings to see what else can be discovered about the family.

"Start With What you Know"

 

If the standard genealogical mantra is to "start with what you know," then I probably shouldn't even begin pursuing James and Mary Kelly. There is so much not known about these second great-grandparents of my father-in-law—but if I don't start somewhere, I won't start at all.

Researching this couple with the quintessential Irish surname amounts to groping about in the dark like a blind man in a back alley. Most of what I "know" is based on associations with family members of the next generation and very weak inferences. With next to zero documentation, there isn't much for me to go by. If it weren't for the help of local researchers familiar with the territory and history of Lafayette, Indiana, I wouldn't even have made as much progress as I have to this point.

Take James Kelly, for instance. There is an entry for him in the Find A Grave listings for the old Greenbush Cemetery in Lafayette—but no headstone shown to verify the name or dates. And the date given in the Find A Grave memorial as James' death—September 1, 1853—may actually be the burial date.

Fortunately for me, the Find A Grave volunteer who posted James Kelly's memorial—it was spelled there as Kelley—happens to be a very active participant in the local genealogical community in Lafayette. Though I haven't met her face to face, we have discussed this Kelly family by phone and email before one of my trips to visit Lafayette. According to the volunteer, she gleaned the information on those early Greenbush burials from the actual cemetery records, of which I believe she had a copy.

What was helpful in those conversations was the volunteer's provision of information on James' wife Mary, as well as their daughter Catharine, whose untimely death followed the birth of her third child, William Stevens. In Catharine's case, thankfully, we do have a photograph of her 1858 headstone.

Once again, information on Find A Grave is sparse for Mary Kelley: no date of birth or death given. Only thanks to the specific location of her burial plot can we determine Mary's connection to James and to Catharine Stevens: section 2, lot 118. Even then, it is an inference based on proximity—that, and family oral tradition that Catharine's parents were James and Mary.

There were, thankfully, a few other signs of proximity to help bolster such inferences about the Kelly family. Finding those, however, will mean exploring what essentially are collateral lines among these ancestors of my father-in-law. Let's take a look tomorrow.

Playing Catch-Up

 

Can one ever play catch-up with genealogy?

This month, since I'm working on the family tree of a step-mother in my father-in-law's ancestry, there obviously won't be any DNA component to check; Theresa Blaising and the Stevens family are relatives by marriage only. There were no half-siblings descended from Theresa to blend in with her husband's previous children.

That was my inspiration for launching a different weekend project for the month of August: catch up on all the DNA matches backlogged from that side of the family. This may or may not work. Consider that the flow of new DNA matches has slowed to a trickle ever since the Golden State Killer mystery was solved—thanks to genetic genealogy—and that puts a different frame around the picture of my husband's newest DNA matches. 

Since the beginning of June, my husband has gained only fifteen new DNA matches—and that's only at Ancestry.com. I imagine the other testing sites have experienced the same slowdown. In the last month alone, my husband received only two new matches. Not much to work with in numbers that low.

Not to worry, though, for in total, my husband currently has 1,340 matches at just Ancestry alone. I'd say that's a lot of catch-up work to be done there, despite all the handy tools such as Ancestry's ThruLines program.

If I ever can catch up with that moving target—hopefully, there will be more matches added as the months roll on—there are other tasks to complete. Popping over to the various tree-building sites I've added over the years, I can work on updating the information on each month's Twelve Most Wanted as I dig further into their documentation. Working step-by-step and simultaneously in different programs may be just the way to catch up on workloads there.

Still, for all those promises, I sometimes wonder if there is even such a state as being "caught up." With each step backwards in time, we double the number of ancestors we are researching. At some point, that task will achieve a critical mass of impossibility—a reality we all need to face. I'm seeing that this year as I bang my head against that genealogical brick wall in a couple of my father-in-law's lines.

As the forward momentum staggers, perhaps the best resolution is to look sideways at the collateral lines for clues and DNA match connections, then finally to look backwards at all the organizational clean-up that still needs attention. In my in-laws' tree of well over thirty thousand, there certainly is a lot of cleaning to catch up on.

Sure, Make a List — But Check it Twice

 

If we draw up a list of the facts we've gleaned from Theresa Blaising Stevens' death record, we'll have the following:

• Father: Blasing, unknown first name
• Mother: Mary Hirshberg
• Birth: Lorraine

If, however, at that point we simply dust off our hands with a resounding and victorious "There!" we may simply open ourselves up to being misled down the path of genealogical discovery. We've made our list, alright, and we are ready to move on, but before we do, we need to check that list twice.

I'm a huge fan of seeking more than one document to confirm each detail about an ancestor's life. In the case of Theresa, our quest to find her roots will be expedited if we look for additional records. And that is exactly what I did: check for Theresa in multiple documents. Not only did I check a census record from her early years of marriage—the 1900 census gave her place of origin as Germany, and her arrival in the United States at about one year of age—but also located possible records from her childhood home in Indiana.

There, in the earliest census record in which I can find the "Blasing" family—the 1870 census enumeration for New Haven in Allen County, Indiana—Theresa was listed as an immigrant from France. Her age was given as two years. And her mother's name, encouragingly enough, was Mary, just as Theresa's own death record, decades later, indicated.

All well and good, until we seek further information. Eventually, a 1907 obituary for a "well known pioneer woman" who died in New Haven confirmed that Theresa's mother was indeed born in France—in Lorraine, as it turns out. That discovery pointed me to a death certificate for "Mary Anna" Blaising, which in turn gives us the chance to view the possible names of Mary's parents.

Spoiler alert: if you were thinking this death certificate would confirm the details on Mary's maiden name that we saw in Theresa's own death record, go back to re-read yesterday's post. Or here, I'll save you the time: names provided for death certificates by informants are often given under the stress of grief over loss and can sometimes include mistaken details.

So, Mary's maiden name, as given by the informant for her own death certificate? According to her son August, at whose New Haven home Mary had died, Mary's maiden name might have been something like Herschbeck. But I can't tell for sure; the handwriting, while clear, actually looked like it said "Herochbeck." Either way, it certainly wasn't Hirshberg, as had been given by the subsequent generation when Theresa herself had passed in 1947.

Added bonus: that lingering doubt about troubled memories calls the provision of Mary's mother's name into question, as well. Perhaps it was Mary Ann Becker, as her son August reported it. Or not. There's only one thing left for us to do: check that list of gleaned facts not just twice, but maybe three times. Or more.     

Rewind: Theresa, From Finish to Start

 

You know genealogists: when we want to know the story of a relative's life, we start at the end and work our way back to the beginning. It's no different when we look at the life of Theresa Blaising Stevens, step-mother to Will Stevens and grandmother to Will's children, including my father-in-law.

The document left to us at the finish line of Theresa's life tells it all—sort of. The main problem with death records is that we must rely on the accuracy of cool-headed memory to record key bits of information—information like where the deceased was born or what her mother's maiden name might have been. And those are precisely the kinds of details most likely to slip a distraught relative's mind at the moment of a family member's passing.

In the case of Theresa, who died at eighty one years of age, her husband—John Kelly Stevens—had long been gone, predeceasing her by eighteen years. He certainly wasn't around to report what he knew of the twenty-one year old bride he had married in 1887, back in Fort Wayne, Indiana. That task, if it fell to any family members, would have been the job of Theresa's step-son, Will—except that he, too, had died before her.

Best I can piece together of Theresa's last days was that though she still lived in Fort Wayne, she was likely visiting her step-son's family in Chicago when she died, as the address given on her death record is on a street where the Stevens family once lived. The informant's name, though, is not one of a family member. Possibly that informant's name given on the record was for a caretaker or medical assistant.

Still, the details can provide us some guidance. We just need to keep pressing onward until we find better information, which we'll do bit by bit this week. So far, what we can see from Theresa's record is that the informant did not know Theresa's father's name, other than giving the surname as "Blasing." However, her mother's name was provided as Mary Hirshberg, and Theresa's own place of birth was given as "Alsace Lorraine, Allen, France."

Lest you wonder whether the "Allen" in that given birthplace might have signaled confusion with Theresa's resident county in Indiana, let's save these determinations for such time as we find secondary verifications. This, at least, was a start—and we need to remember that, no matter how old a relative might have been, or how expected her time of death, her passing still would have brought on stressors to the rest of the family, pressures that may have caused people to blurt out misinformation unintentionally.

After her passing, the family's plan was to return her remains to Fort Wayne, where she would be buried in the mausoleum at the Catholic Cemetery, right next to her husband, John Kelly Stevens. There, the simple etching of her dates tells us that Theresa was born in 1866, though far from the "Fort Wayne" entry given at Find A Grave. Rather than rely on that well-meaning volunteer's entry, we'll need to rewind Theresa's story even further, and look to see what we can find on either her as-yet-unnamed paternal side, or through the maternal side of a woman whose name we now have as Mary Hirshberg.

"The Only Grandmother I Ever Knew"

Sometimes, our work in digging up family history can unearth some details which upset our relatives' understanding of their relatives. As much as I appreciated my long-deceased father-in-law's brother Edward, who as "Uncle Ed" guided me through the generations of the Stevens family, once I began researching in earnest, I uncovered some conflicting details. 

My first step in such cases, of course, was to consult him. After all, he was my guide through all the names and dates, thanks to all the records, letters, and other memorabilia that family had stored for decades. But when I asked him about his grandfather John Kelly Stevens' wife—on paper, Ed's grandmother was named Catherine Kelly, another confusing detail—he mentioned the name of another woman: Theresa Blaising. "She's the only grandmother I ever knew," he reminisced.

That indeed was true, for Uncle Ed's maternal grandfather was long gone by the time he was born, and his maternal grandmother died when he was still an infant. Even his paternal grandfather John Kelly Stevens died when Ed was a young boy, so the only grandparent left to him was Theresa.

As it turned out, Theresa, living in Fort Wayne, Indiana, wrote many letters to her step-son and his family over the years. In the family's true packrat tradition, several letters—if not all—were saved in a special keepsake drawer at the Stevens home in Chicago until years later when Ed's widow gifted them to my husband.

Knowing the techniques of family research, it wasn't hard for me to find Theresa documented in several of the usual resources genealogists frequent, so I've already found much on this woman. I selected Theresa as one of my Twelve Most Wanted for this year because, despite not being a "blood" relative, she played an important part in the lives of my father-in-law's family, and I'd like to learn more about her own roots. This month will launch us into that journey of discovery, beginning with a review tomorrow of what is already known about her, thanks to family memories. 

Why No Y?

 

Before we take our final leave of the Stevens quandary—the abrupt appearance and equally quick disappearance of Hugh Stevens—there's one last question I have. To put that question in shorthand, I'm wondering why there is no Y—as in Y-DNA, the genetic test which can reveal a subject's father's father's father back through time and even beyond the dates of genealogical records.

To test Hugh Stevens' supposed brother's line—that of John Stevens who immigrated to Lafayette, Indiana, in 1851—my husband took the Y-DNA test at Family Tree DNA. He tested for 111 markers, certainly far less than the 700 markers used in the most complete Y-DNA test available now, but still a sturdy indicator representing John Stevens' genetic legacy.

The result? After ten years of waiting, there are only two other men who match my husband at that 111 mark. The kicker is: neither of them is surnamed Stevens.

If I look at my husband's current matches at the next lowest level—67 markers—he has thirty two matches, but the closest of those is a genetic distance of three, not an exact match. Again, the test taker goes by a different surname. In fact, not one of those thirty two matches goes by the surname Stevens. We are not getting close here, either.

What could be the cause of this lack of results? Of course, the easiest answer could be that no one from this Stevens family has tested besides my husband. However, despite NPE possibilities—"not the parent expected"—another reason might be that there were no male descendants left to test on this patriline, other than my husband's own male cousins on the paternal side. My husband's paternal grandfather was an only son, and his father before him, though having one brother with surviving children, included a son who had no children of his own.

And that leads us back to immigrant John Stevens, the father of those two brothers. Could he have been the only surviving son of his father, as well? Or could this lack of Y-DNA matches be due to another reason—perhaps that our John Stevens wasn't really a Stevens son after all? It becomes quite a lonely planet here, when looked at through a lens like that.

No matter what the reason—only surviving Stevens patrilineal descendant or immigrant hiding under an alias—it's clear that no one else has yet tested who descends from that patriline, whatever name it turns out to be. And it's also clear that, with no further leads to answer our research questions, we need to set aside our study of John Stevens' Irish roots, likely for a very long time.

Stevens? Stephens? Anybody?

 

In an era during which spelling mattered much less than it might today, a thirty one year old man left County Mayo in the northern reaches of Ireland, journeyed to Liverpool, England, where he obtained passage—likely on the cheapest ticket possible—to New Orleans, Louisiana. From there, he completed his journey up the Mississippi, then by its tributaries to Lafayette, on the Wabash in Indiana. According to his report recorded on his First Declaration, he arrived during the last month of 1852.

The name he gave was Stevens—Hugh Stevens—but it could just as likely have been spelled Stephens. In fact, looking at passenger records for New Orleans, I was just as likely to find entries for "H. Stephens" as for a man spelling his name as Stevens. Besides, who are we kidding here? Hugh Stevens signed his First Declaration with a mark, not a signature; he likely had no idea at all how to spell his own name.

So, taking that question one step further, I took one last peek at the records drawn up—and thankfully still in existence—back in his home location in County Mayo. For this, I first visited the website Ask About Ireland, where their search of Griffith's Valuation yielded me one solitary household in County Mayo listed under the surname Stevens: the family of Michael Stevens.

Ah, then, the question becomes: could this Michael have been the father of Hugh? Or even of his possible brother John? Looking back at John's family where he settled in Lafayette, Indiana, I can see he had three sons named James, John, and William. No Michael. Can I trust that Irish immigrant to follow the tradition of his forefathers and name his firstborn son after his own father? If so, that father wouldn't have been named Michael.

What can be learned about the parish in which that Michael Stevens was said to have lived? Griffith's Valuation showed Michael Stevens to have lived in the civil parish of Killasser. Taking that question to the search engines led me to a newsletter published for what appears to be the church parish by the same name. Still, it provides a usable description of the rural location for someone as far removed from the scene as I am, as does another entry I found on the near-defunct old RootsWeb site. Townlands.ie fills in some of the blanks about the many townlands within that civil parish, but as I'm at a loss as to where to turn next, the information is currently of no use to me.

Could that surname have turned out, rather, to be spelled Stephens? Trying this second option back at Ask About Ireland, I found thirty six entries in County Mayo, including two with the given name John. Prominent among the many given names listed were Patrick and Michael, but no James, the name of John Stevens' firstborn son. And not a one of those thirty six was named Hugh, making me wish all the more that Hugh had not disappeared—not, at least, until having fathered a firstborn son and followed the traditional Irish naming pattern to give me some help with that question.

Until I find more clues to help with this puzzle, I doubt I'll be able to move forward with this month's research question. With that, I'll fold the file up and put it back in its digital place. If any major discoveries of further records surface in Ireland—or a long-lost distant cousin and descendant of our missing Hugh Stevens decides to take a DNA test—I'll be happy to revisit this research question. But for now, it's time to move on. There are other research tasks to tackle.

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. 

Time for Comparisons

 

Now that I've got a copy of the actual First Declaration for Hugh Stevens, it's time to compare his answers to those of earlier arrival John Stevens. Since Irish immigrant John Stevens was my husband's second great-grandfather, I had made sure to get a copy of his record when we visited his newfound American home in Lafayette, Indiana, years ago. Now I'm wondering whether comparing the two Stevens men's answers will reveal anything.

Since I've written about John Stevens before, I simply turned back to that blog post to revisit the wording on John Stevens' First Declaration. For John, let's put the data in a simple outline:

• The document was dated August 4, 1851.
• He gave his age as twenty seven.
• He sailed from Liverpool in 1850.
• He arrived in New Orleans during December of 1850

From that information, we can extrapolate that John Stevens was born about 1824.

What about Hugh? Here's what the recently-received document revealed about that second Stevens immigrant to Tippecanoe County, Indiana:

• The document was dated October 10, 1854.
• He gave his age as thirty three.
• He sailed from Liverpool in 1852.
• He arrived in "Orleans" during December of 1852.

From that information about Hugh Stevens, we can assume he was born about 1821.

From birth dates that close together, one could presume that Hugh Stevens and John Stevens were brothers. After all, they both were born in County Mayo, Ireland, and both immigrated to the same rather small city in Indiana. What are the chances? But we need to be aware that they could just as easily be first cousins. Or more distant relatives. Or not related at all.

With this small set of data, there isn't much we can say at all—but we can consider it an indication of a F.A.N. Club at the very least. The similarity of travel routes, down to the same month of arrival, is a tempting indicator. That they both chose a city of barely over six thousand people to settle in can seem a compelling detail. That they both chose a destination other than the main immigration ports on the east coast—far easier for travel—is also a tempting confirmation.

Now that we have the actual dates for Hugh Stevens' arrival in New Orleans, we can take a second look at passenger records to see whether any "H. Stevens" passengers did show up in Louisiana in December of 1852. Better yet, let's take another look at a wide set of records to see whether there is any sign of a Stevens family containing both given names.

First, the Transcription

 

Years ago, I had discovered the Tippecanoe County Historical Association included a genealogical records section called the Alameda McCollough Research Library. You can be sure that every time my travels called for me to drive from Chicago through Indiana, I found a way to make a stop at that repository. Since I have no travel plans slated for that direction any time in the foreseeable future, I was ecstatic when I discovered, earlier this month, that they now can provide researchers with near-instantaneous gratification—so I ordered a copy of the First Declaration for my possible Stevens relative, Hugh.

Now that I've gotten the digitized document in hand—so to speak—let's take a look at the transcription. That, after all, will be my first step before determining what else we can discover about this Irish immigrant. Here is what the form stated.

To the Judge of the Tippecanoe Circuit court, in the State of Indiana:

Hugh Stevens, Being an Alien, and a free white person, makes the following report of himself; upon his solemn oath declares that he is aged 33 years; that he was born in the County of Mayo in Ireland, that he emigrated from Liverpool in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty two; that he arrived in the United States at the City of Orleans in the State of Louisiana in the month of December eighteen hundred and fifty two; that he owe allegiance to Victoria, Queen of Great Britain + Ireland and that it is bona fide his intention to become a citizen of the United States of America, and to renounce forever allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty whatever; and particularly to Victoria, Queen as aforesaid, of whom he is subject.

The document was completed on the tenth day of October in 1854. Hugh Stevens signed on that day with a rather weak cross, noted as "his mark."

And from then on, he simply disappeared—but we know that that can't be the rest of the story. Though the document only gives us a few clues, let's see whether they can give us any guidance.

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.

Thinking Creatively While Waiting

 

There is nothing that frustrates me more than having to wait. In this week's case, I'm waiting to learn just how to proceed with ordering a second copy of the First Declaration signed by Hugh Stevens, some time after his arrival in Lafayette, Indiana, in the early 1850s. Yes, yes, I know: if I had gotten the record copied and carefully preserved the first time, I wouldn't have to wait a second time. Such is the story, sometimes, of genealogical guinea pigs like me—always a test case, and sometimes a messy one.

While waiting, I thought I'd try to be productive by considering how else I could solve my research problem. You see, I'm stuck with my husband's second great-grandfather, supposed Irish immigrant John Stevens, whose own First Declaration tells me he emigrated from County Mayo in Ireland, via the port of New Orleans, up the Mississippi and its tributaries to arrive in Lafayette sometime before the close of 1850. The problem is: I have no idea who his parents might have been, back in Ireland.

Come to find out there was a second Stevens man—you guessed it, Hugh Stevens—who took the same route at about the same time, only a year or two later, and I'm wondering whether John and Hugh were related. Perhaps brothers? This could lead to an end run around this Stevens brick wall, I am thinking.

While I am waiting for Hugh Stevens' own naturalization record, I'm wracking my brain for ways to find any sign of Hugh in other records. Up to this point, I've had no luck. I checked for city directories online at Ancestry, but discovered there are pitifully few records of any kind specific to Tippecanoe County, location of the city of Lafayette. Besides, the dates are long after Hugh's arrival, with the collection beginning in 1885.

Looking at quick sketches of local history, though, I find an encouraging sign: Wikipedia's entry for Lafayette indicates that "in its earliest days" the place was considered a "shipping center" on the Wabash River—a detail which has long since changed, due to soil erosion impacting the river's navigability that far north in its course. At one point, the nearby Wabash and Erie Canal work undoubtedly was a draw for immigrant labor, particularly the Irish, who also flocked to other such projects—but this, too, would be before the time of Hugh's arrival.

One final thought is to revisit the passenger records for ships arriving in New Orleans. I've checked those records in the past with little success, both for the Stevens men, and for John's Kelly in-laws. It seems our ancestors always arrived in the very gaps currently existing in the preserved records, an unfortunate scenario for researchers like me. But perhaps things have changed, or more records have been discovered. It is, while I'm still waiting, a reminder to go take a second look. Maybe this time....

The Gift of Local Resources

 

When looking for leads on ancestors, it is indeed encouraging to discover that the place they once called home now has a dedicated cadre of volunteers intent on preserving their stories. That is the gift of local people who value preserving their history: they create resources which help others do the same.

While I've heard reports from disappointed researchers, recently returned from research journeys in places without much resources, in the case of this month's project—to find Hugh Stevens in 1850s Lafayette, Indiana—I may be in luck. Tippecanoe County apparently has an ample supply of residents dedicated to preserving records dating back to the county's formation in 1826.

I've benefitted from the ongoing work of these volunteers now for decades, having personally visited the Alameda McCollough Research Library of the Tippecanoe County Historical Association, and followed up with material placed online by the Tippecanoe County Area Genealogical Society. Years ago, one of the Society's longstanding board members personally assisted me in locating the grave sites of my husband's Kelley ancestors at the historic Greenbush Cemetery, using original burial records to mark that location for our upcoming visit that year.

As it turns out, there are ongoing projects the county's volunteers are still pursuing, judging by what I've read while on the hunt to find answers to my current research question. According to an article in Lafayette Magazine, a September 1, 2014, publication of the Lafayette Journal & Courier, there's been plenty of work to assemble a thorough listing of all cemeteries in the county, versions of which can be viewed on the Society's site at Rootsweb.com, as well as the older Indiana GenWeb site.

What I am keen to see, though, is the joint project of the Society and Historical Association, called "Finding the Forgotten." This grant-funded project, launched in 2016, sought to comb through county records to glean information on pauper burials dating from the county's creation in 1826 through 1860. Though the TIPCOA website does indicate an alphabetical listing was created, only those for surnames beginning with the letter "A" are accessible. 

With our likely relative Hugh Stevens' arrival in Lafayette in the early 1850s followed so quickly by his disappearance, a likely scenario might have been death from disease contracted during his voyage from Ireland. If that were the case for such a recently-arrived immigrant, it could be likely that he was buried in a pauper's grave. I have yet to find any other records of what became of him, making a listing such as the "Finding the Forgotten" project a promising resource to check.