The Possibility of Patrick

I supposed I can consider it fortunate, given my problems in tying my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey to the preceding generation back in Ireland, that I've discovered a Falvey descendant among my husband's DNA matches. Don't jump to conclusions that the proof of the relationship will simply fall into our hands, though. The possibility of Patrick Cullinane being a nephew of our Johanna Falvey looks like it might be challenging to establish by documentation. 

Here's what I've found about Patrick so far. First, as far as baptismal records go: I've found nothing. Not, at least, back in the home parish in County Kerry. Not if we can rely on his date of birth being in the early 1860s.

Fortunately, Patrick does show up in archived records across the Atlantic in Boston, Massachusetts, where this immigrant showed up some time in the 1880s. That was where this marble worker's marriage to Joanna Sullivan was documented in Boston on May 15, 1890. And, unsurprisingly, Catholic Church records at the archdiocese of Boston confirmed the names and birthdates of several of the Cullinane children: Helen Nora in 1895, Johanna Josephine in 1896, Honora Catherine in 1898, Daniel Sullivan in 1900, John Francis in 1901, Leon Patrick in 1903, and Julia Agnes in 1905.

While that may look like a tidy list with ample opportunities for descendants who become DNA matches, that is simply not the case. Despite the number of children attributed to Patrick and Johanna according to church records, other names could be gleaned, if following census records or other documents.

The catch was this: Patrick had married a woman who not only had a surname—Sullivan—quite common among Irish immigrants resident in the Boston area, but who had a given name subject to shortening. If we can rely on name equivalent charts like the one provided by the FamilySearch.org wiki,  the name Johanna could be used interchangeably with Ann or Anna.

And that is precisely our problem. Apparently, there was a Patrick Cullinane living in Boston whose wife, at least according to census records, was called Anna. That couple's household included some children whose names did not line up with the baptismal records specifying Johanna Sullivan as their mother. Could this be the same couple, with nickname inserted, and a few additional children thrown into the mix? Are we looking at the same couple, farther along in the timeline? Or have we stumbled upon a case of name twins?

To complicate matters, the couple's surname was sometimes rendered as Cullinane, and at other times it appeared as Cullinan. Whether both surnames represented spelling variations for the same family, I can't tell. To confirm, I'm resorting to tedious exercises like making periodic checks in city directories, just to rule out name twins for Patrick. This may not merely be an instance of checking the possibility of Patrick being a relative of my father-in-law's Falvey family, but of confirming just which of two Patricks in Boston was actually the right man.

Mind Mapping Kelly

 

This month may have started out with the goal of seeking John Kelly's roots. That quickly changed. After all, even narrowing the search to an Indiana immigrant's homeland in County Kerry, Ireland, coupling such a search with a surname like Kelly didn't advance my position. I had to branch out to learn anything more about my father-in-law's family tree.

Thus entered the sideline of pursuing the history of Timothy Kelly, John's co-worker in the booming Fort Wayne railroad industry, and possible relative. Finding further information on Timothy then led to discovery of his sister Margaret in Toledo, Ohio. And that sister Margaret soon led to nieces and nephews in her home, recently immigrated from Ireland, with the surname Sullivan.

As the surnames piled on, the resultant search presented a case for the use of mind mapping the family connections. I'm not sure yet how John and Timothy Kelly were related—if at all. My plan, over the weekend, to review what could be found in newspaper mentions of the three Kelly names—John, Timothy, and Margaret—led to no more than I had found the last time I had revisited this research question.

This impasse convinced me to re-read all my posts on these Kelly connections, beginning with our family's trip to County Kerry in 2014, when we searched for the actual townlands which had been mentioned in Kelly baptismal records before their emigration. This tour through all I had written on the Kelly line reminded me of some rough times running in tandem with my intended research goals—recalling research collaboration with Kelly relatives now long gone, struggles to continue through Covid casualties and fire threats and serious family illnesses.

Despite the many detours on the path to finding that Kelly answer, I had discovered some connections which still could use additional verification—if there is any out there to find. Bottom line is that in County Kerry, I now have several linked surnames which beg for at least a dotted line of connection. From Timothy's sister Margaret, I had learned her reported parents' names from her death certificate: Timothy Kelly and Catherine Flynn. The reporting party on Margaret's certificate, Katie Sullivan, was a niece who thus provides us with another surname connected to the family constellation. And reviewing farther back in records, baptismal reports for John Kelly's oldest children provided godparents' names yielding a Fleming connection, as well.

With all these surnames swirling in my head, it's time to sketch out a mind map of their connections—and keep an eye out for their repeated mention in records drawn up, back in County Kerry.

O, Where Did the O Go?

 

When you trace the lines of descent of an ancestor through multiple generations, be prepared to observe the evolution of the family's surname. In the case of Johanna Falvey, American immigrant from County Kerry, Ireland, to Chicopee, Massachusetts, that is indeed what became of her married name.

With Johanna's 1875 marriage in Chicopee, the local registrar chose to record her husband's name as O'Reiley. True, we've already learned from subsequent census records that Johanna could neither read nor write, and it's almost certain that her husband-to-be, an Irish immigrant laborer, could do no more, so it's unlikely that either of them would speak up to correct a spelling "error."

This, however, was an era in which the spelling of surnames was far more in the control of the record keepers than the information givers, so I was quite prepared to see the surname morph, at least to the "common" spelling variation used at the time.

That was, indeed, what happened, come time for the 1880 census, where we found Johanna and her young son Frank listed with the more usual spelling as O'Reilly.

If I hadn't noticed any examples of the next aberration in my previous wanderings through the various Sullivan lines connected with this extended family, I might not have been prepared for the next variation in Johanna's married name. Searching online for any sign of the roots of these extended families, I had noticed the Irish vacillating between names with the "O" prefix and the same surname, minus the "O." I'd see Sullivan as the mother's maiden name in one baptismal record, and a couple years later in the same County Kerry parish, encounter everything the same, except now that same mom had become an O'Sullivan. Methinks the Irish see that "O" prefix quite differently than their Irish-American descendants do.

My first clue that this might be the case for our Johanna was in viewing her brother's obituary. Mark Falvey had died in 1912, long after his sister Bridget, but quite a few years before Johanna's passing. Thus, we have a record of Johanna's mention in Mark's obituary.

Clue: the "O" was missing.

Though Mark's funeral notice included his nephew Frank "Reilly" as one of the pallbearers, his actual obituary also reported Frank's mother's name in an entirely different rendition: as "Mrs. Patrick Riley." Indeed she was, albeit merely phonetically—though she wouldn't have known any differently.

Gone, by the 1910 census, was that arbitrary "O." Indeed, Johanna's entry then was already being listed as Riley, not Reilly, same as in the 1920 census. 

At that point, there were no further entries that could be found in census records for Johanna. Her obituary in the December 15, 1927, edition of the Springfield Republican was perfunctory, stating the date of her death, her address, and details on the funeral and burial. The address given for the late Mrs. Riley agreed with the record we had found in the 1920 census, ruling out any possibility—a rather likely one, given the common surname—that it was announcing the passing of another woman by the same name.

Though the sole announcement of her passing listed no survivors, we already know that Johanna had a son. What had become of him? It was once again because we had traced the evolution of that family's surname that I could locate any record of Frank, who himself had a paper trail strewn with variations on his given name as well as his surname.

As it turned out, to insure I followed the trail of the right Frank Riley, there was another constant to guide my path: Frank's occupation. Frank Riley was apparently a lifelong employee of the postal service, so every time I found a document with that very common name, I checked to see where that Frank Riley worked. Following the trail of Frank Riley, postal clerk, I could piece together the story of his own life, as well.

Though Frank remained single, living at home with his mother through the 1920 census, after her passing, Frank did get married. One simple photo of their headstone at Find A Grave told almost the whole story, listing Johanna Riley's dates, followed by those for "Frank P." and then "wife Helen." Frank's date of death led me to his own obituary in 1941, which, in its one paragraph, provided not much more information than I had gleaned in his mother's notice and through the other records I found concerning him.

One item I noticed missing from that entry answered my final question: did he have descendants? If Frank Riley and Helen Shea Riley had any children, they did not survive him, for Helen was the only family member listed in Frank's obituary.

Despite the wild ride to persevere in tracing this Falvey line of descent through its various name permutations, in the space of one additional generation, that genetic signature disappeared from the ranks of future generations. 

 

Checking on Another Sullivan

 

After what I discovered yesterday about the possible mother's maiden name for my latest research quest—finding the parents' names for Mark Falvey of Chicopee, Massachusetts—I am beginning to wonder whether I have uncovered a new rule: that all Irish immigrant family trees must include the surname Sullivan.

And yet, I didn't wish to be too hasty about that. After all, we need to put ourselves in our ancestors' shoes whenever we encounter a puzzling outcome in our research. The place where I found that Sullivan maiden name was in a death certificate. Think about it: what is farthest from one's mind, upon learning that a loved one has just died? Correctly reporting the maiden name of the long-gone mother of the deceased.

In a spotless hand, an official someone in Hampden County had drawn up the death certificate for Mark Falvey, ancestor of my husband's DNA match. There is no way I could fault that impeccable handwriting, or claim I had misread the entry. Sure enough, in researching all these members of a very extended Falvey family from County Kerry, Ireland, it is time to add yet another Sullivan to the mix. Mark Falvey was born to a woman named Margaret Sullivan—if, that is, we can believe that cool heads prevailed when his son stood in as informant for the official report.

 

Just in case a stress-induced mistake was permanently captured for generations of genealogy researchers to perpetuate, I decided to take a look at other records to see whether the report could be replicated. Unfortunately, even though Mark Falvey's naturalization paperwork claimed his arrival in the States was when he was twenty two years of age—arriving in New York City, which I not only find odd, but can't trace through other records—there was no mention of his parents' names.

However, there are other documents. And, as documents of that era went, they often omitted some detail about the women in a man's life. Thus, Mark's marriage record reported that he was son of Jeremiah Falvey—but omitted any mention of the mother.

Fortunately, Mark was not the only Falvey to settle in Chicopee. Remember, my husband has another DNA match who traces back to one of Mark's siblings who also lived in that city. Those who are researching that area in Hampden County have ample access to additional records online. So, I took that same record set which included Mark's marriage entry, and searched for any Falvey who was married in that county. 

In the search results, I could spot other possible candidates. That was the good news. The down side was that the transcription of the entries was less than optimal. Someone at Ancestry had indexed the parents' names for Bridget Falvey as Janey and Margaret. Obviously, something was lacking there. A similar result occurred for the marriage record of a woman named Johanna Falvey, whose parents were noted to be Samiah and Margaret.

Thankfully, the search results led me to actual copies of the documents, so I took a look at the real deal. Maybe my ability to read dreadful handwriting might tune up those previous attempts.

Sure enough, the actual register entry for the October 11, 1860, marriage of Bridget Falvey to James O'Brien could loosely be translated to read Jerry and Margaret Falvy. Of course, that record didn't include a mother's maiden name, either. And the other Falvey entry that could be found? Perhaps her much later wedding date—April 17 of 1875—did the trick, for this time, the bride's mother had a full identity: yes, although somewhat difficult to decipher, it looked like Margaret Sullivan was the wife of Jeremiah Falvey and the mother of Johanna Falvey.

Another Sullivan. All together now: groan.

What we have, with this exercise in seeking the mother's maiden name, is very possibly the link to tie these three Falvey weddings together. Thus, we can assume that Mark, Bridget, and Johanna were three siblings—or at least half-siblings—who somehow made their way to Chicopee from County Kerry, Ireland. We'll double check on that assumption tomorrow, as we get to know a bit more about Bridget, the sister of Mark Falvey (as opposed to his wife of the same given name). After that, we'll confirm what else can be found about Johanna Falvey's mother through the documents she left behind, as well.

Whatever Became of Mary?

 

What does a researcher do with the challenge of tracing a name as common as Mary Sullivan? Not much, apparently. But at least I tried.

With the closing chapter of the life of the immigrant ancestor of one of our Sullivan-Falvey DNA matches, the only remaining chance of tracing that line back to Ireland rested upon Timothy Sullivan's widow, Mary. And yet, given a name repeated so much in records from the vicinity of their adopted home, Detroit, it would be hard to track what became of Mary. 

It would have been nice, of course, to locate a death record for Mary—a fully completed death record, mind you, including provision of the names of her parents and their location of birth. Silly me, of course, as the deceased's parents were as likely to be named "unknown" as any more reasonable moniker.

Keeping in mind that Mary's husband was buried at Mount Elliott Cemetery in Detroit—Timothy's will even specified that location—it would seem logical to look for Mary's burial in that same place. However, in a quick search through Find A Grave, no less than thirty seven women with that name were buried there, including one whose husband was named Timothy. Careful cross-checking, however, revealed that even that tempting possibility needed to be ruled out.

It was possible to narrow the date range for the death of our Mary. She was still among the living in time for the 1880 census, which showed her living in a household that included her as-yet-unmarried son Jeremiah and her daughter Mary. Yet, none of the Mary Sullivans who died after that point—within a reasonable age, of course—seemed to match our Mary's details: widow, born in Ireland any time from 1810 to 1815.

There was one aberration that I stumbled upon, in trying to learn a bit more about Mary. It was a notice inserted in the proceedings of her husband's probate. After her son Cornelius had been appointed as executor of his father's will in 1871, and following the process of attempting to sell his father's properties to settle his debts, there was an insertion in the court's records on August 31 of 1872.

Mary Sullivan the widow of said deceased this day appeared in Court presented to the court her written renunciation of the will of her said husband and of her election under the statute which was duly filed

 

And just like that, widow Mary Sullivan renounced her legal right to benefit from her inheritance—an option also called a disclaimer of interest. Why would a woman of her age in a time like that choose to do so? There had to be a compelling reason, but try as I might, I could find no trail to follow. 

One guess might be that she had chosen to marry again, but being able to insure that we found the record of the right Mary Sullivan in such a situation would be so challenging that we need to remember to go back to our original research goal for tracing this family: the hope that following the line of one DNA match back to Ireland would help us pinpoint the specific location in County Kerry where the whole family originated. 

Though it seems unlikely that we'll achieve our goal with this latest twist and otherwise disappearance of Mary, we do have another recourse in our quest to trace that original Falvey line: another set of DNA matches. This time, though, the matches lead us far from Detroit, to a town in Massachusetts where the roots of two DNA matches immigrated in the late 1800s. Perhaps with this second attempt, we'll find more complete records to lead us back home to Irish soil.

A Will, But No Way

 

If the newspaper reports at the end of life for the two successful Sullivan brothers, James and Jeremiah, neglected the opportunity to wax eloquent about the two self-made men and their Irish heritage, perhaps if we take a step backwards to the generation of their immigrant father, we might glean a bit more information about their heritage.

Timothy Sullivan, according to census records, had been born in Ireland any time between 1807 and 1813. Based on the birth dates of the two Sullivan children bridging the gap between life in County Kerry and life in Michigan, the Sullivan family could have arrived in North America no earlier than 1848, nor later than 1852.

While all those dates are devised from reports in various census records, one thing about Timothy Sullivan was sure: his eldest son, Cornelius, showed up at court in the county of Oakland, Michigan, on behalf of his mother and siblings, to present his father's will on September 9, 1871.

There were no surprises in the listing of names of the interested parties—although, given our difficulties determining Timothy's origin in County Kerry, I halfway hoped there were. Wish as I might for any clues to lead us back home to Ireland, though, this is what we learn about the family in 1871.

Gone was son John, who likely died before the 1870 census, where his name was already missing. In no particular order, the remainder of the family was listed: Timothy's widow Mary, his sons James, Timothy, Jeremiah, and the petitioner, Cornelius; and his daughters Mary and Elizabeth. No mention of any other relatives, though Timothy did specify his wish that $2,000 be set aside by his family for a charitable donation to an unspecified cause.

Cornelius, acting on behalf of his family, was appointed to settle the estate. In the process, it was determined that his father's accounts were not sufficient to satisfy the debts against them, and Cornelius was authorized to sell off his father's various properties in and around Detroit.

By August of the next year—introducing note of a procedure for which I wish we could read between the lines—Cornelius' mother, widow of the deceased Timothy, presented to the court "her written renunciation of the will of her said husband and of her election." That being given on August 31, 1872, and "duly filed," the record drops off with the turn of the page, leaving us to wonder, despite realizing we were not going to glean the details we first had come to find, what turn of events that might have signified.

Another search. Perhaps, another unproductive lead. But one we can't just not follow.

 

Going, Going, Gone

 

What can be learned about our ancestors from hundred-year-old newspaper reports? In some unfortunate instances, barely anything.

Take this example of how, in four chances to provide useful information, the local newspaper failed to say much of substance concerning the family of one of the city's well-known businessmen.

In the afternoon edition of The Detroit Times on Friday, June 7, 1912, the paper noted on its front page: "James Sullivan Ill With Appendicitis." Most of us having suffered through such an attack would probably have been better suited, had that news not been noised abroad by the local newspaper, thank you very much. But this was James Sullivan, founder of the Sullivan Packing Company of Detroit, thus apparently a successful businessman.

The article didn't provide much further information—not, at least, what a genealogical researcher might have been seeking. After the headline, the brief article shared more personal information, including that he:

was reported, Friday morning, to be resting easily after a good night in Harper hospital. He submitted to an operation for appendicitis late Thursday, and complications that ensued made his condition so serious that not even members of his family were permitted to see him.

That family, incidentally, would include his wife Catherine who, as a former Falvey, is the likely DNA connection that links my husband, through his own Falvey second great-grandmother, to descendants of this line. While I have yet to identify the most recent common Falvey ancestor in either of their trees, the only detail I'm gleaning from this series of articles on Catherine's husband James is the very public sharing of his most personal medical conditions.

That, however, was not all. There was an update in the same paper, the very next day. After the previous afternoon's cliff-hanger, The Detroit Times was quick to inform their reading public that

James Sullivan...was reported, Saturday morning, by the hospital authorities, to have passed a good night with normal temperature obtaining.

Don't breathe a sigh of relief just yet, for ten days from that brief news report, The Detroit Times cut to the chase with the abrupt headline: "James Sullivan to be Buried Wednesday." Other than the barest of details, the straightforward paragraph failed to supply those important details a family historian would be seeking, a century after the fact. The newspaper declared him to be fifty six years of age, and revealed that he had been born in Birmingham, Michigan. Giving the date for the funeral and its location—Saint Leo's Church—followed by burial at Mount Olivet, the article mentioned only that James was survived by "his widow, four daughters and three sons."

As a recap—in case their readers missed that detail about the passing of James Sullivan—on the afternoon following the funeral, The Detroit Times ran another minuscule insertion on the front page of its June 19, 1912, edition. Under the heading, "James Sullivan Buried," the article recapped the morning's events, taking care to list the names of all eight of the active pallbearers, but again saying not one word about who the bereaved family members might have been. Different times, different world. 

"A Great Expert in This Line"

 

Our Irish immigrant ancestors may have arrived on America's eastern shores, penniless and starving, but that didn't keep them from employing a native cleverness to advance their cause in the years ahead. And that may be a fortunate thing for those of us researching our roots, for the successful sometimes garner more public attention than the merely destitute.

As for our Sullivans in Detroit, any detail which could serve to connect them with their specific homeland—wherever it might have been in County Kerry—has escaped our notice. So far. But the glimmer of a hint that some of Timothy and Mary Sullivan's sons rose above their humble beginnings has me hoping for a breakthrough with a different resource: newspapers.

While the newspaper-issued obituaries and memorials of past centuries sometimes lacked for the specific details a genealogist seeks, they did, however, sometimes provide a more colorful portrait of the deceased. Perhaps as a last resort, let's look at what can be found about that Sullivan family we've been researching in Detroit, Michigan.

My first discovery of the possibility that the Sullivan sons might have achieved some success was when I found the first notice of Timothy Sullivan's fifth-born son's passing. Jeremiah, born about four years after the Sullivan family arrived in Michigan, had been the next to youngest child in the family—until baby brother Peter died as a young boy.

Jeremiah appeared in his family's household as a four year old in 1860 and, predictably, as a fourteen year old in 1870. Long before the 1880 census, though, Jeremiah and his entire family was faced with the loss of their father, as according to his will, Timothy died on September 3, 1871.

Perhaps it was such a start in adulthood that Jeremiah received from his apparently successful farming father that could explain my next encounter with Jeremiah: a notice of his own passing. It was a modest insertion in the death notices in The Detroit Free Press on Thursday, May 10, 1923, that provided a clue that Jeremiah had met with quite a bit of success in the years since his father's passing.

SULLIVAN—May 3rd, at his winter home, Sawtelle, California: Jeremiah, beloved husband of Myrtle Sullivan, son of the late Timothy and Mary Sullivan, dear brother of Timothy Sullivan, Mrs. John Gleason and the late Cornelius and James Sullivan. Funeral Friday morning from his residence....

While the listing of family members might have sufficed some researchers, one word caught my eye: "his winter home." Despite living in California myself, I had no clue where Sawtelle was, and had to attend first to my insatiable curiosity. That taken care of, the next order of research business was to learn something more about this Jeremiah. What had he devoted his life to that provided the liberty to maintain a second home more than two thousand miles from his main residence?

Further searching didn't reveal much, though I did encounter a black and white version of his likeness in a news article in that same day's edition of the newspaper. Under the heading, "Packer who Died in West, Buried Here," the only additional details provided were the accolades heaped upon the recently departed: "one of the pioneers in the meat packing industry in Michigan," and that he was associated with the Sullivan Packing company "since its incorporation."

The next day, under the "Market Notes" section of the paper, a long article reviewed Jeremiah Sullivan's business accomplishments, including that he was in "the live stock business," specializing in buying hogs from various midwestern cities and shipping to Buffalo. According to the notes in The Detroit Free Press, he was "a great expert in this line" and "one of the best known men in the live stock business in the state of Michigan."

He had worked in partnership with his brother James—husband of the Falvey connection I'm tracing—but the news mentioned that that partnership had been dissolved at the time of James' passing.

Thus, while this series of newspaper articles on Jeremiah Sullivan didn't wax as poetic as I might have hoped, when it came to the opportunity to say where his parents originated (as some other such obituaries have done in this time period), it did direct me to look one step further: to any news reporting for the other partner in this Sullivan family business, Jeremiah's older brother James.    

 

Different Records, Conflicting Realities

 

We can always hope, can't we, that the record of our ancestors' foreign-born siblings might lead us back home to the village from which they began their immigrant journey. Chances are really good, however, that no matter how hard we struggle with the possibilities to bring our Sullivans back home to Ireland, we will come up empty-handed.

There is a good reason for this: while many Irish church records have recently been digitized and posted online, there are still many more which are, so far, unaccounted for. Apparently, that includes the four Irish-born children of County Kerry residents Timothy and Mary Sullivan: Cornelius, John, Mary, and Elizabeth.

Of course, it would help to have a correctly-spelled maiden name for Mrs. Sullivan. Depending on which record we use, her maiden name was either a spelling variant of Monaghan or Minahen. Of all their Irish-born children, the only one I could find back in County Kerry might have been Elizabeth. According to the U.S. Census for 1860, Elizabeth was born around 1848. I could find one Irish baptismal record for an Elizabeth Sullivan, daughter of Timothy, baptised in August of 1847, but her mother's name was listed as Moynihan. Not quite the same.

Then, there was an Elizabeth, daughter of Timothy Sullivan, baptised in County Kerry at a date much closer in agreement with that census report—May of 1849—but while her mother's name was indeed Mary, the surname was not even close to Monaghan. It was Herlihy. Not a likely candidate, despite appearing in the parish records for Kilcummin, a locale featured in my searches for the Sullivans' shirttail relatives who later connected to my Kelly and Falvey lines.

The same story developed as I searched for those other Irish-born Sullivan offspring. Not much to find, when looking at records back in Ireland. So what about looking forward and relying on another record set to answer my question about their origin? Taking a look at the death certificates I could locate for any of Timothy and Mary Sullivan's children, I came face to face with another drawback to relying on death certificates: people say the most unpredictable things when faced with the stress of losing a loved one. The last thing anyone is thinking of, at that point, is correctly reporting the maiden name of the deceased's mother.

Case in point: these discoveries that can be found for the Sullivan descendants. The drawback in locating any information subsequent to the death of Timothy Sullivan's eldest—son Cornelius, born in County Kerry about 1842—was that he died at a fairly young age. At the time of his death in Michigan in 1877 of "d[r]opsey of the heart," his parents were named, thankfully, but his and their location of birth was simply noted as Ireland. And even though I've seen some ornate memorials placed at the grave sites of those who died during this era, Cornelius Sullivan's marker did not gush on, when it came to stating place of birth.

Looking to some of his siblings who lived to a much later age, even then the revelations are straightforward. Cornelius' brother James, the second of his siblings who were American-born, had the straightforward report of both parents—with Mary's name shown as Minahen—born in Ireland. No help there. Same for their sister Mary, in whose 1931 death certificate her mother was listed as Monaghan, but both parents were stated to be born, simply, in Ireland.

Despite the misfortune of every Sullivan, so far, following exactly the stated protocol of such reporting requirements, it always pays to look a little further. As it turned out, there were a couple other Sullivan descendants who could not restrain themselves from stating the exact origin of their Sullivan forebears. It is the little reporting errors such as these which inspire me to keep looking. And it is their continuance, in like manner, to buck the system that turns out to aggravate me no end.

Recall that while eldest Sullivan son Cornelius died at a young age, he did not die childless. We are gifted—well, at least partially—by the reports on the death certificates of two of Cornelius' own children. Keep in mind that, even though these are death certificates for Cornelius' children, each of those documents were required to also report where those decedents' father was born. Thus, we glean the following for Irish-born Cornelius from two of his children's death certificates.

From Cornelius' youngest child, son Timothy Paul Sullivan, who was not quite three years of age when his father died, we gain the following.

 

It is the little gifts like this which seem to help our research cause so much. Here, on this son's record, we gain the report that his father—the elder Timothy Sullivan's firstborn son Cornelius—was born in Killarney, Ireland.

On the other hand, with young Timothy's sister Elizabeth, we see the following about Cornelius from her 1928 death certificate:

 

Same Cornelius, different reality. Just the opposite of what was given in her brother's document, this one has her father the American-born parent—in Pontiac, Michigan—and her mother born in Ireland. So much for the "gift" of Elizabeth's brother's certificate, showing their mother being the one born in the states—in that case, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. If we find reversals like this, how certain can we be in that report about the Sullivan origin being in Killarney?

What does that say about the people those Sullivans left behind? Could the fact that Timothy Paul Sullivan himself once served as an undertaker boost our confidence to rely on his family members to uphold the career-based care he surely had to take with records, himself? Or, checking to see who the reporting party was in each case, does this tell us anything about whether women or men tend to provide more reliable answers? Or that sons would remember less about their deceased mother's origin than they might about their father? 

In looking for any records of the Sullivan family's origin, whether factually accurate or more wistfully fanciful, I can't simply accept that report about their origin being in Killarney. After all, I ran across that same situation in Johanna Falvey's own obituary. Johanna, the one who started this whole research chase, had family who declared she was from the "Lakes of Killarney"—a romantic notion, but not necessarily accurate. It may be possible that the same dynamic was operating here with this other family from County Kerry. A lot of people may have heard reports about Killarney, but hardly anyone could pinpoint with accuracy any locations with names such as Firies or Kilcummin.

There is, however, one more avenue to explore. As it turns out, some of the Sullivan children turned out to become successful businessmen in their own right. With success comes wider networks, and thus, higher possibilities of being featured in articles in newspapers—perhaps, even, meriting a wordy obituary or two. We'll take a look at what we can find on that front, tomorrow. 

Sullivans: Let's Try This Again

 

Why, considering the prevalence of a surname like Sullivan—especially coming from County Kerry—would I attempt finding the ancestors of someone with a name like that, if it wouldn't even be the line of the family I'm seeking? Because the name I am seeking—Falvey or O'Falvey—is nearly as popular, back in the Irish county of the family's origin. Remember that five-fingered fit into the genealogical glove? I'm going for a perfect ten: one hand for Sullivan, the other for Falvey. Perhaps combining two common names—and adding all facets of their specific families—I will sort the right Sullivans and Falveys from the misleading ones.

It's a descendant in this particular Sullivan-Falvey line who happens to be a DNA match through my husband's second great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey. All twenty nine puny centiMorgans this DNA match has in common with my husband fit into just one tiny segment, but it's enough to pique my interest in tracing this match's ancestry to see whether those roots lead me back to the relatives of our own Johanna Falvey from County Kerry.

While this match's Falvey ancestor was born in the United States—shortly after her family arrived in Michigan in the early 1850s—at least I have been able to glean her siblings' names as well as the same detail for her husband. It is, in fact, on account of her husband that I'm even trifling with those frustrating Sullivan kin again at all. It was their family story, you see, which mirrored Catherine Falvey's tale almost exactly—except with one helpful key: her husband James Sullivan was part of a family with several older siblings who were born not in America, but back in Ireland. Tracing that line, hopefully, will help me zero in on just the right Falvey connection, as well. So let's take a look at what we can discover about this Sullivan line, once they settled in the farm area outside Detroit, Michigan.

Catherine Falvey, born in Detroit about 1853, according to the subsequent census record in 1860, was the second-born child of immigrants Daniel and Mary Falvey. In due time, she married James Sullivan, second child born into the Sullivan family after their arrival in Detroit, but all told, sixth child of Timothy and Mary Sullivan.

Because of extensive records left behind by each of the Sullivan children, it was not hard to gather that James Sullivan's mother's maiden name was something like Monaghan—the spelling varied according to which report was given for her children's own death records. But finding any records of what became of James' father, Timothy, was more of a challenge. As you can imagine, Timothy was a popular given name to attach to that ubiquitous Sullivan surname, and the possible options for his own death record didn't leave enough information to clinch the right one.

Along with Mary Monaghan, though, Timothy Sullivan gave the world at least four children who were born in Ireland—two sons and two daughters. Their oldest they named Cornelius, born approximately 1842, thus providing us a possible clue to determine his parents' own wedding date. Following Cornelius, the couple baptised son John around 1844. After that, they welcomed in two daughters: Mary in 1846 and Elizabeth in 1848, after which point the family made arrangements to leave Ireland for a new continent.

An additional benefit of having the first four Sullivan children born in Ireland is that we can be slightly more sure that the family might have adhered to the traditional Irish naming pattern. From this, we can garner the notion that Timothy's own father might have been named Cornelius, and that his mother might have been Elizabeth. This, however, will be only modestly helpful in locating any further information on Timothy's own birth, as his age given in later census records leads us to believe he was born any time from 1802 to 1813, an era from which not many Irish baptismal records survived.

However, if we are fortunate—and that is a big if—at least one of these children of Timothy and Mary Monaghan Sullivan will appear in Irish Catholic baptismal records, leading us back to their point of origin in County Kerry. 

 

Kate's Sullivan Beau

 

When we research the relatives we've never met—those ancestors whose life story ended long before our own time—we need to take care that we don't superimpose our assumptions about everyday living upon people whose reality didn't include telephones or cars, let alone computers. When we think of alarm clocks, we need to think more along the lines of roosters or hungry cows in the barn. And when we think of weddings, we most likely need to think "arranged" more than star-crossed.

Thus, despite my dismay in discovering that the ancestor of my husband's Falvey DNA match was married to yet another Sullivan, there may be a silver lining in that surname challenge. Perhaps, just perhaps, the reason Catherine Falvey married another Michigan-born child of Irish immigrants wasn't because they fell in love in high school. Perhaps it was because Catherine's family once knew James Sullivan's family back in County Kerry, Ireland.

That, of course, would be the optimal outcome. Then, I could trace yet another Sullivan line and hope it would lead me to the townland these folks once called home. In the meantime, though, we need to paper our trail back home with solid documents to support our case.

Here's why James Sullivan's circumstances have such a tempting draw on me. For one thing, we can find him in the 1860 census records, just as we did for Catherine Falvey's family. There he was, with his seven siblings, all living with their Irish-born parents Timothy and Mary Sullivan in the former township of Greenfield, Michigan, now part of Detroit.

Unlike Catherine Falvey's family, however, not all of James' siblings were born in Michigan. For some reason, Timothy and Mary stayed in Ireland long enough to bring four of their children into the world: eldest son Cornelius, second son John, and daughters Mary and Elizabeth. It was after Elizabeth's arrival around 1848 but before the birth of their fifth child Timothy, about 1851, that we can mark the family's arrival in North America.

While having the names of four Irish-born Sullivans may help me isolate that family constellation back in Ireland, the pattern of their immigration makes me wonder yet something else: could it be that they came to Detroit specifically because they had other family or near neighbors already settled in Detroit area? Or, seeing the Falveys' own family pattern in the 1860 census—their first child after their arrival here was also born in Michigan in 1851—could it be that the Sullivans and Falveys traveled together from Ireland?

I'm eyeing research cues such as these for one unfortunate reason: though it is clear that Catherine Falvey's father was named Daniel Falvey, I've already discovered that it will be a challenge to trace him back from his adopted home in Detroit to his origin in Ireland. Though I can find news on Daniel Falvey's family in America, there is not much to go by, once we jump back to the place where life began for that earlier generation of Falveys. Once again, my hope rests on finding details about yet another Sullivan family—one which, hopefully, guided the marriage of their son to a Falvey daughter for reasons beyond our modern-day approach to weddings.  

Nooo, Not Another Sullivan!

 

As promised yesterday, our purpose today is to meet someone new in my quest to ascertain the roots of my husband's second great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey. That someone new, as I've already mentioned, was Catherine Falvey, and I found her in Detroit. 

The reason I'm interested in this particular Catherine Falvey is that somehow, one of her descendants shares a minute segment of DNA matching the exact pattern claimed by my husband. A Falvey match, I presume. My goal, if I can't trace Johanna Falvey's family line back to Ireland, is to see whether I have any better results in following the immigrant line of this other Falvey descendant. Let's take a look and see what can be found about this other Falvey family.

For one thing, unlike Johanna Falvey who was already married to John Kelly before leaving Ireland, this Catherine Falvey did not immigrate to America as an adult. Rather, she was born here to immigrant parents. She can easily be found in the 1860 census, living in Detroit along with her immigrant parents, older brother, and younger siblings. All the children in this Falvey household were born in Michigan, beginning in the early 1850s.

While it is true that I might face the same research challenges seeking the marriage record of her parents, Daniel and Mary Falvey, as I have with the other related lines I've attempted to follow back to Ireland, at least I have six additional Falvey names to pursue in hopes of at least one mention of connections back to the home country or relationships with other Falvey members.

While I will also pursue Catherine Falvey's siblings' lines for clues, our first step is to see what can be discovered about Catherine, herself. She is, after all, the direct line ancestor of the person whose DNA matches that of my husband. We'll need to rule out any unforeseen alternate family connections—after all, we need to make sure it is Falvey, and no other surname, which is the connection tying these two DNA matches together in their one shared segment. From that point, the rest of the story needs to be to examine Catherine's line to assure us that she is indeed the Falvey ancestor of the DNA match, and not another Falvey second great-grandmother—although, in that case, since it involves examining connections to living individuals, I won't be posting about that portion of my research.

So, what can be discovered about Catherine Falvey, herself? Step one is to trace her parents' household through each decennial census record I can find—all, thankfully, remaining in the Detroit area. It isn't long, though, until the expected happens. After finding Catherine in her parents' home in the 1860 and 1870 census records, she is in a new home for the 1880 census as, yes, she, too, has married. Her husband? A Michigan-born child of Irish immigrants, same as Catherine.

Though I can't yet find any marriage record, I can infer from the 1880 census that Catherine and her intended were married about 1879 in Michigan. In time, "Kate" and her husband would become proud parents of seven children, all carrying a surname which seems vaguely familiar to me, after all my attempts at taking another alternate route to discover the parents of my Johanna Falvey and her husband John Kelly: another Sullivan connection!

What is it with these Sullivans? Am I forever doomed to keep bumping into them in this research maze? They seem to be everywhere, intertwined into the life stories of both my Falveys and my Kellys. Let's hope this time, that Sullivan name leads us back home to the right destination in Ireland.

Seeing the Air

 

Yesterday was one of those unfortunate days we've lived through lately, here in northern California, in which we could actually see the air we were breathing. The smoke from fires near and far was, once again, descending upon us, swirling around us, and reminding us of components we wouldn't normally expect to include with our every breath.

Breathing that kind of air is not a habit I'd advise for anyone, yet it did prompt me to think about other invisible materials which, not normally seen yet once rendered visible can, instead, help our situation. If there is anything invisible in the world of genealogy, it would be those untraceable links from one mystery generation to another, hidden behind those insurmountable research brick walls that have us struggling. Oh, to be able to actually visualize those invisible links!

Surprise! We can see those invisible threads tying our ancestors' generations together. At least for a few generations, the tool which renders those invisible connections visible is the process which shows us the patterns laid down in the very genes in our own bodies. Those genetic patterns, when compared to other people's genetic signatures, can lead us to people who "match" a portion of our own DNA records.

When it comes to my convoluted research attempts to find the origin of my husband's second great-grandparents, John Kelly and Johanna Falvey, I have certainly put in my fair share of time twisting and turning in the face of a wide variety of records—all to no avail. Of course, from their records left after their immigrant years in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I already know John and Johanna were born in Ireland. Furthermore, chatty resources like newspaper reports of their death lead me to believe they both originated in County Kerry. But where, specifically? And who were their parents?

Enter the key to unlock the code so I can actually see the invisible "air" of their genetic record. I have the DNA test results for my husband and his two sisters. Though those test kits at five DNA companies plus GEDmatch.com haven't garnered a great number of matches with Falvey kin—searching for Kelly matches would not be a productive foray just yet—there are a few matches to work with. Now is the time to re-evaluate just whom to pursue on this next attempt at finding the answers I seek.

Starting with Ancestry DNA, I limited my search to those matches who also have the surname Falvey somewhere in their family tree. Of those results, there were only three customers who placed high enough to be listed as possible fourth cousins—nothing closer. 

Of those three matches, one shared thirty five centiMorgans with my husband, all in one lone segment. Examining her tree, I see one encouraging detail: this Falvey ancestor ended up traveling from Ireland to New Zealand—a good sign, as we already have another Falvey match from a different testing company with those specifics. This line very likely will align with that other New Zealand match, an answer I'm already off and running to pursue.

The second of these three closest matches is someone who is far closer in relationship to my husband. An actual descendant of Johanna Falvey's own children, this match already has a place in my husband's family tree, confirmed as a third cousin, once removed. Their shared thirty four centiMorgans, though only one count less than that shared with the first match, is actually distributed over three separate segments. Because of the already-known relationship, pursuing this match will likely not reveal any information I don't already know. The only way it could help with my research problem now is if this person is willing to collaborate with me and share the details she has on any of her DNA Falvey matches to whom she might be connected through genetic material my husband or his sisters did not inherit from those ancestors.

The third of the three closest matches is someone who shares just a little less genetic material: twenty nine centiMorgans. Like the first match, this amount is shared in only one segment, likely pointing to a specific inheritance from someone coming at least a generation prior to our Johanna Falvey. This information may prove valuable, so my next task will be to examine this match's family tree and pull up all associated documentation related to that Falvey line. You can be sure I will be examining each of the digitized documents for any details omitted in the indexing process, as well as seeking out further records to round out the narrative.

Thus, our next task will be to meet Catherine Falvey, presumably the daughter of immigrants from County Kerry known as Daniel Falvey and Mary O'Leary. We'll take a look at whether the documentation on this family will reveal anything new about the extended Falvey family. Hopefully, it will lead us back to the right townland location in County Kerry.

But first, we need to start from step one: the same step we take when we begin our own tree. Just as we would start with ourselves on our own family history project, we'll begin this new exploration with a Falvey descendant in a much closer time and place than pre-Famine Ireland.

Our first visit in this research trial will be to travel to a place not far from the Toledo home of all those Sullivans we've been agonizing over: we'll start our journey in Detroit, Michigan.

Boxed in by Sullivans

 

Truth be told, having followed several related lines—mostly belonging to Sullivans—connecting to that of John Kelly of County Kerry, all I have to show for the effort is: not much at all. In all my research wanderings, it is as if I have pounded on the four walls surrounding me, yet only now have I been able to see I've been surrounded by Sullivans, but none of their clues have led me to open doors with any useful answers. 

I can find the connection between our family's ancestral John Kelly and his sister "Abbie," who married a Sullivan. I can find John Kelly's sister Margaret, the spinster aunt who, once immigrated to Toledo, Ohio, served as host to several Sullivan nieces and nephews—and then more Sullivan grand-nephews—who followed in her footsteps and came to America. But I can't find the hand pointing me in the direction of the townland back in Ireland which the Sullivan and Kelly families called home before home became the midwestern United States. 

Clearly, it's time to backtrack. To regroup. To come up with Research Plan B.

Do I have an answer? To put it shortly: no.

I suspect my next best bet is to go back to tracing those DNA matches which seemed to belong to family members linked with either our John Kelly's line, or that of his wife, Johanna Falvey. Some of those matches, after all, were the six to ten centiMorgan matches which I joined others in howling over their potential loss this past summer at Ancestry.com. Fortunately, I saved our Falvey and Kelly matches. And it is for such a time as this. May as well get back to work muddling through the possible links.

This, of course, means borrowing from the playbook of adoptees seeking their birth parents: building tentative family trees from our current time, using each of those matches as the home person. Then, working step by step, pushing back one generation at a time, not just copying the other person's tree online, but building my own using documentation to verify the connections. Then, seeing where that line leads us, back in Ireland. Hopefully, it will be in County Kerry.

Having to backtrack and regroup with a research goal can be disheartening, indeed. There are some obstacles which may prove insurmountable, even if we call for a re-do of effort. For one thing, there are so many records missing from the historic accounts of the common people of Ireland. Another contributing factor is the aggravating habit of our Irish ancestors to borrow from their elders the same names, repeated generation after generation by each sibling of each family, making confident identification of this specific John Kelly next to impossible, at times.

Yet, I'm up for one more go round on this attempt. Thankfully, there are a few promising DNA matches to examine. If we have them, why not use them? Perhaps we'll uncover a story or two along the way. But even in this process, we need to remember that every research task may come with its own embedded genealogical clock. Sometimes, the timing of the quest may simply not be right; the records we need may not be available now, but that is not to say they will never be accessible. Some projects are initially handled far before their time has come to be completed.

A Missed Opportunity

 

If I had seen what I've just found of a past census record before participating in my own most recent census enumeration, I think I would have gotten down on my knees and thanked the enumerator for doing a conscientious, careful job of noting my entries. My descendants may be depending on it.

As it is, I did make progress, in the current research project, in finding out more about Charles Sullivan in Toledo. Not long before his wife's untimely death due to complications of childbirth, Charles had filed his Declaration of Intention to become a citizen of the United States. He filed the document in the Court of Common Pleas in Lucas County, Ohio, where he had settled with his wife and children in Toledo.

From that document, we learned a few details about Charles—although, unfortunately, nothing about his parents. Those few details were enough to confirm that we were, indeed, looking at a report about the right Charles Sullivan—an important detail, considering the prevalence of a name like his.

For one thing, he reported his birth as occurring on May 1, 1882, in Stratford, England. We learned that he stood five feet, seven inches tall, with blue eyes and dark brown hair—and even that he was "tattood" on his "left rist."

Charles traveled with his wife Alice—another gratefully-received hint that we are on the right track—and children aboard the RMS Adriatic, arriving in New York City about the tenth day of December, 1920. From there, he and his family traveled to Ohio to settle with Alice's siblings and Sullivan aunts at 324 Saint Mary's Street, the very house where Alice soon gave birth to a stillborn son before losing her own life.

But what about their story, back in Stratford? Wouldn't you like to know more? I sure would. Yet, even though I can find them in the 1911 census, the opportunity to discover one of the key points I was seeking was doomed to slip through my very fingers. Notice the category in the 1911 census for England and Wales with these specific instructions: "Birthplace of every person. (1) If born in the United Kingdom, write the name of the County, and Town or Parish."

 

Now, wouldn't you like to know that about your own British Isles ancestors? That was precisely what I was seeking, not only for Charles, but especially for his wife, Alice. But do you think the census enumerator was able to follow those straightforward instructions for Charles (line one), his wife Alice (next line) and their young son Charlie? The answer:

No. 

When You Want to Cut to the Chase, But This is Not the Time to Hurry

 

All I wanted was to chase those Sullivan ancestors back to London, zoom in to look up one simple record, glean the details and, like tracing a map to secret treasure, speed onward to my goal.

With these Sullivans, it didn't work that way. It wasn't that my race to the nexus of this Sullivan family with the Kellys back in Ireland—our side of this extended family, incidentally—had already gone smoothly. But having found the immigrant ancestor in Toledo, Ohio, I was now ready to cross the pond, hop through a few document hoops, and spring over to County Kerry.

How green I was. Instead of my vision of snatching a few key records while unfurling the Sullivan timeline effortlessly back to the 1850s, the scene was now more like a dead standstill. The action had reduced to the quandary of examining that brick wall as if it were a barrier of masonry which, in one spot, held a camouflaged touchstone which, handled just right, could release the door to a secret passageway.

Somehow, attempting to crash into the genealogy world in 1890s London suddenly catapulted me into a strange mash up between Indiana Jones and Tiny Tim. An adventure, yes, but I needed to tiptoe through those tulips very carefully.

In other words: not so fast. Stop to smell those genealogical roses. There was a lot to observe on the road ahead.

While I have researched ancestors in Canada and Ireland and tried my hand at my own Polish roots (without even knowing the language), attempting my first search in England pushed me into a world I had never before experienced.

Thankfully, I could locate the family of Alice Sullivan and her siblings, complete with those newly-discovered parents' names, Michael Sullivan and Mary Cummings, in England. The problem was, every time I found what appeared to be a correct census record for the family, it presented me with a different name for their whereabouts.

Since Alice Sullivan's older brother Edward first showed up at their aunt's home in Toledo, Ohio, in time for the 1920 census there, the previous census for him would have been England's 1911 census, but I couldn't locate the family in one residence then. I could find some of them separately, but keeping in mind that five-fingered fit in the genealogical glove, I shied away from trying to fit the wrong square Sullivan into any round slots in my family group sheet.

I could find the family of Michael and Mary Sullivan in the 1901 census, though. Figuring out where they actually lived was, for me, like reading a foreign language. The heading on the enumeration page told me that the Sullivans lived in the civil parish of Saint Mary Stratford of Bow. As if to add an afterthought, in parentheses, the enumerator added "part of." Was that the thoroughly British way of saying, "sort of"?

Not just that: the jurisdiction litany went on to specify that the Sullivans were part of the borough of Poplar, the urban district of South Hard, and the division of Bow + Bromley, and, oh yeah, the parliamentary borough of Tower Hamlets. Is that enough? Apparently not: all that is to say the place is  part of the County of London. 

Clearly, I needed a tour guide.

I sensed the difficulty ahead when I had pulled up the draft record for Michael and Mary's son Edward, back in the States. His World War I record stated his place of birth simply as London. Yet, his entry in the 1901 census gave that place of birth more specifically: Bow Middlesex. So where was that?

My tour guide turned out to be a mixed bag of Google, Wikipedia, and FamilySearch wiki results. Checking simply for "Bow," I learned it was part of the county of Middlesex. But only until 1888. Then, it became part of the county of London. But that's not all: Bow was really short for Stratford-at-Bow, a name the place claimed from as far back as the medieval era, referring to a bridge built there in the twelfth century. Talk about history.

Focusing specifically on the genealogical angle, the FamilySearch Wiki for Bow, Middlesex provided a series of links to specific record sets at several online resources. One of those links was to the FreeBMD website, where I tried my hand at finding Edward Sullivan. As one might suspect, there were plenty of results with that name to choose from. And many details to absorb about how to construct a proper search. And, for crying out loud, even more about those registration districts, which never seemed to match up with the locations I already thought I had sufficiently pinned down. Apparently, the geography of England has far more details than I could ever hope to glean upon a cursory glance.

But wait! What if I had picked the wrong place name for the specific date range I was seeking? To pile on that complication over and above my current woes of ascertaining whether I had actually found the right Sullivan seemed more than I could bear. My warp speed was slowing to molasses. And it isn't even January yet.

From another record, I had gleaned an alternate name for Bow as Stratford-le-Bow (Saint Mary), and found yet another FamilySearch Wiki entry—with more links to record sets. In this wiki entry, the litany of place names seemed to match more closely the ones I had found in the 1901 census.

Reading the wiki entries, following the links to other resources, and studying the narratives found there certainly put the skids on my research speed, but in case I'll be spending more time researching digitally in Merry Olde England, it would be best to, indeed, slow down and smell those genealogical roses. Or tiptoe through those telltale documentation tulips. This is no time to speed past valuable input. Better now to tap, tap tentatively on that brick wall until we find the touchstone which will let us proceed to more useful information.

These are Not the Sullivans You're Looking For

 

It would have been nice if I could find a maiden name for Mrs. Charles Samuel Sullivan, mother of the three young Sullivan nephews we found living with their aunt in Toledo, Ohio. After all, the whole family had arrived from England, and, a generation before that, supposedly had roots in County Kerry in Ireland. Like a scantly scattered breadcrumb trail of fairy tales, it still might be enough detail to lead me to the family's origin—if, that is, I could identify Mrs. Sullivan's own particulars.

Alice K., or Alice L.—depending on which child's documentation one relied upon—was only provided a married name in those records. Thus, my hope was to at least find more details on her husband's records. Yet, try as I might, I couldn't locate a death record for him in Toledo. Of course, I couldn't be entirely sure he had died in Toledo, but since he had been buried there, one could presume there would be a paper trail providing more information.

Lacking that one resource, it would be difficult to again repeat the process of finding him, somewhere back in England—supposedly around London—and then differentiate him from all the other Charles Sullivans sure to be found in the vicinity. Without his parents' names, though, how was I to trace his generations back to that original Sullivan connection we had found linking that family with the Kelly family of my husband's heritage?

Stuck on that sticky detail, I decided to keep moving onwards. After all, I still didn't know anything more about Charles' wife Alice—other than that it was likely that she, too, had died in Toledo. Of course, it is certainly possible to locate a death record without a maiden name, so this was a plausible first step to take.

Fortunately, taking a look at FamilySearch.org, I located a promising death record for an Alice Sullivan who died in 1924. Granted, there could have been multiple Alice Sullivans living in Toledo at the time, but the key is always to look at the actual document, not just rely on a transcript.

Pulling up the record, I could see right away—even before spotting her husband's name—that it was the right choice. The address given for this Alice Sullivan was 324 Saint Mary's Street, the very place where the original aunt, Margaret Kelly, had started hosting her immigrant sisters from Ireland, before any of her nieces and nephews arrived from England.

Ecstatic about that find, the next spot my eyes sought was the line giving her father's name. After all, this is the clearest confirmation of maiden name, and I was all about cutting to the chase. Seeing that, though, I realized I had my answer all along.

It was she who was the Sullivan connection to our Kelly family, not her husband. All those reports I found were reporting her maiden name. A Sullivan had married a Sullivan. Perhaps Charles was related to this Sullivan line as well, but until I find his documentation, I'll never know. In the meantime, I now have what I need to proceed one generation closer to the Kelly-Sullivan nexus in County Kerry: that other Sullivan's parents' names.

Above: Excerpt from the Lucas County, Ohio, death certificate for Alice Louisa Sullivan, daughter of Michael Sullivan and Mary Cummings of Ireland; image courtesy FamilySearch.org.

Looking for the Real Charles Samuel Sullivan

 

The trouble with common names is that, even in the same city, an ancestor can have a duplicate. Such was the case I encountered, once I got the clue that the Sullivan brothers—taken in by their spinster aunt at a young age—might have actually immigrated to Toledo, Ohio, along with their parents.

It wasn't hard to discover what their parents' names might have been. Although obituaries during the time of the Sullivan brothers' deaths didn't divulge names of parents, finding online resources for Ohio death certificates was fairly straightforward. Thankfully, it wasn't long before I encountered my answer—well, sort of.

The death certificates I could find noted that the parents' names were Charles and Alice Sullivan. Sometimes, the mother's name was augmented with a middle initial, but aggravatingly enough, it wasn't always the same letter. That, however, was a lesser problem than this other realization: Alice was always listed by her married name, not her maiden name. This, combined with the commonness of the surname, would surely cause some interference when I attempted my next step: tracing the family back to England from their adopted home in Toledo.

I started my search in Ohio with what I did know: brothers John, George, and William claimed a father named Charles. I set out to look for this Charles Sullivan, and soon discovered his full name was actually Charles Samuel Sullivan. A middle name: handy!

It wasn't long until I bumped up against my first roadblock: there were two Charles Samuel Sullivans who had registered for the "old man's" draft during World War II. Now what?

Sure, Sullivan is a fairly common surname. And yeah, I'll grant that there could be more than one Charles Sullivan in town. But two with the same middle name, too? And born within a year or so of each other?

I first found the references to these two men and their registration records at FamilySearch.org, which didn't provide a digitized copy of the actual document, just the names and the dates of birth. I jumped over to Ancestry.com to see if I could find the same records there, which fortunately, I did. I didn't have any example of our Charles Sullivan's signature, so I couldn't compare records for that sort of clue.

Once I looked at each record carefully, I spotted part of the problem. I had done my search looking for a man by that full name, limited to those living in Ohio. One of the cards was apparently completed by someone who wasn't too good at following directions; it contained only a street address without any city given. That Charles Samuel Sullivan could have lived anywhere in the state of Ohio. Later, cross-checking the date of birth with other records on file at Ancestry.com helped me discover just what town should have been added to that record.

There was, however, another detail which the card did provide: a place of birth. Our Charles, of course, should have reported that his birthplace was in England; this mystery Charles turned out to be from Dayton, Ohio.

With that, we can now presume that our Charles Samuel Sullivan was born on May 1, 1882—if, of course, there won't be any other Charles Samuel Sullivans pop up in Toledo.

That, however, doesn't entirely prepare me to jump back to England to peruse records there. I'm still missing one vital detail: the maiden name for Charles' wife Alice. If Charles had moved from England to Ohio, and if his son John's obituary had mentioned that the Sullivan children had moved to their aunt's home upon the death of their mother, then Alice surely would have had a death certificate issued by the state of Ohio, as well.

That is precisely what my next step would be in this search to trace the family back to England—and eventually to Ireland, where the Sullivans originally connected with the Kelly family I've been researching. But before all that, I needed to find Alice Sullivan's death record in Ohio.

The Necessity of Newspapers

 

You may find it odd—well, at least those who know my longstanding aggravation with editorial errors—to see me tout the necessity of newspapers for family history research. However, just for today, let's give newspapers a break. After all, who hasn't found an error in, say, a death certificate or, worse, a headstone?

Especially in the case of my husband's Kelly family roots in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and their connection to a spinster aunt in Toledo, Ohio, I had long wished I could access the newspaper archives for the Toledo Blade. Remember, I had first discovered Timothy Kelly's relationship to Margaret Kelly of Toledo years ago. What had prevented me from making more progress was, in part, the inaccessibility of those Toledo newspapers.

As it turns out, though the main newspaper archival services used by genealogists lack the very issues I was seeking, there was—eventually—a resource open to me. Better yet, it is available to all, free of charge.

That resource is the Google News service which has scanned archived editions of several newspaper publications from around the world. Of all the cities they could choose to include in their gratefully-received collection, Toledo was one that made all the difference in this particular family history search.

Yes, in the meantime, through subscription services like Ancestry.com, and nonprofit operations like FamilySearch.org, I've found quite a few documents to extend my discoveries from that one aunt in Toledo—Margaret Kelly—to her Sullivan niece and nephew from County Kerry, Ireland, and even further to her grand-nephews, the Sullivan boys from London, England. But sometimes, those documents seemed to contradict each other, or leave questions as to the specific relationship between each member of those subsequent generations of Sullivans.

How I discovered that Toledo resource at Google News, I can't even remember now, but it was a recent find. While the collection is by no means complete—there are some missing issues, and some editions include unfortunate gaps of white space where the obituary I was seeking was surely obliterated—it does cover a wide span of publication, and also includes a second Toledo newspaper from a previous era.

Once I oriented myself to the complete range of options in using the Google News service—you can clip a specific "article," for instance, allowing a researcher to capture the exact URL for that particular obituary—I set about harvesting every obituary I could for this extended Sullivan family.

I found, for instance, a fuller description of just what happened to the youngest of the three Sullivan sisters who lived with their Aunt Margaret.

Miss Catherine Sullivan, 201 Sumner Street, operator of a grocery store at that address 3- years, died in Mercy Hospital yesterday after an illness of five months. Born in County Kerry, Ireland, Miss Sullivan had lived in South Toledo 60 years. She had operated the store in partnership with a sister, Mary Sullivan, who died in 1926. Miss Sullivan had been in the hospital since Aug. 31 when she received a fractured leg in a fall in the basement of her store.

In addition to confirming we have the right Catherine Sullivan—always a possibility to keep in mind with a surname as common as Sullivan—the newspaper entry corroborated what we already had discovered about this Sullivan family in an obituary which continued for two further paragraphs. The piece also added the useful details of married names for female relatives. The article even included the occupation and specific place of employment for one of her nephews, the John Sullivan whom we discussed last Friday.

These are the types of details so pertinent to any genealogical pursuit, but doubly so for those having names which easily could be duplicated by other residents of the same city.

Newspapers, however, can sometimes add more details than we would suspect, as we can see in searching for John Sullivan's own obituary, published years later. In addition to alleviating my concerns that I might have found the wrong John Sullivan in that marriage license the next state over—it included his wife's maiden name in the obituary—the article also provided an expanded explanation about John Sullivan's early personal history.

John Sullivan, 71, owner of the former Sullivan's Delicatessen, died Thursday in St. Luke's Hospital. Mr. Sullivan, of Carolina Avenue, Perrysburg, operated the delicatessen on Louisiana Avenue from 1946 until 1978. Born in London, Mr. Sullivan arrived in the U.S. in the early 1920s. After the death of his mother, he and his brothers lived with an aunt who ran a grocery in South Toledo.

In addition, the obituary added some possible clues about what became of the Sullivan brothers' parents, which will redirect my research approach. I had at first presumed that the brothers had left England shortly after the devastation of the first World War, leaving parents and possibly other siblings behind. This article, however, hints at the possibility that either their mother, or possibly both parents, immigrated to Toledo along with the boys. That the boys might have been orphaned at the passing of their mother is now a distinct possibility, leading to further searches for death certificates in Ohio, rather than only in England.

While the details offered up in newspaper articles must always be viewed with the skepticism that comes with prior experience of editorial errors, newspapers are an excellent source of corroboration and expanded information, especially when researching ancestors with those all-too-common names. They can confirm we are on the right track. Or they can put up the necessary road signs to warn us to turn back and take a different route.

Above: Excerpt from the February 6, 1942, Toledo Blade obituary for Catherine Sullivan, and the April 4, 1987, Toledo Blade obituary for John Sullivan provided courtesy of Google News.