Approaching Flannery Fatigue

 

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

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

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

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

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

What we Find When We're Looking for Something Else

 

Rabbit trails—those tempting deviations from our intended research goal—can be dangerous, but I can't say I'd advocate ignoring them completely. Sometimes, it's what we find when we're looking for something else that turns out to be the answer to another question that has stumped us.

Take this Flannery puzzle that has kept me at bay for the entire past month of September. Granted, that month I had a rough go of it, thanks to unexpected illness and other troubles. Yet into this new month, I've still decided to persevere for at least a few more days to seek information on Margaret Flannery's roots in County Tipperary, Ireland.

Having made a listing of all the known children of Margaret and her husband, Denis Tully, my next step was to list each child's godparents, based on their baptismal record.

From that point, the tedium began: searching baptismal records from that same Catholic parish where I had found the children of Margaret and Denis—the church at Ballina—to look for the families of each of those named godparents. After all, if Margaret and Denis had selected these named godparents because they were siblings or in-laws, that would help me identify collateral relatives for both the Tully and Flannery lines. Besides, perhaps I would uncover a reciprocal baptismal relationship where Margaret or Denis were named as godparents for these siblings' own children.

Yes, I did mention tedium. I can't say I made much progress looking for the few Flannery names among the godparents. Basically, that included Kitty, William, and Bridget Flannery. Most of the rest of the godparents were from the Tully side of the family, so I continued my search on that branch of the family next.

My next search candidate, then, was Thomas Tully. Surely with that surname, the relationship would be clear: Thomas should have been a brother to Margaret's husband, Denis, right? But I couldn't really be sure because, for example, Thomas could have been selected as a godparent because he was an in-law to the new parents; he could have coincidentally acquired the same surname because he was, say, a cousin who just happened to marry a sister of one of the parents.

It was worth the detour to discover what could be found about this Thomas. In an 1834 baptismal record in the same parish for a son named Denis Tully, parents Thomas Tully and Margaret "Wilkisson" named as the child's godparents none other than John Tully and Margaret Flannery.

It just can't get any better than that. While we already know who Margaret Flannery was, we can now add John's name as another possible Tully sibling.

This, of course, brings up another possible theory, which in turn requires me to search for all the baptismal records for Thomas' children. If this Denis, born in 1834, was Thomas' eldest son, another Irish tradition would mean that Thomas' father's name would also be Denis. Thus, my Denis would, by necessity, have been the eldest son of his father—and, as far as I can tell, my Denis had also named his eldest son by that same name, in honor of his father. Perhaps looking further for this newly-discovered brother John Tully might reveal a firstborn son whose name resonates with this evolving pattern.

Unfortunately, the chance of finding baptismal records before the 1830s is near impossible for this area of County Tipperary, so discovering the exact dates and details for brothers Denis, Thomas, and John—and their parents—just wouldn't happen. But we can extrapolate from known traditions and piece together possible collateral lines, if nothing else.

Though it doesn't help me move forward yet with any Flannery discoveries, for now, I can at least add two collateral lines to my father-in-law's Tully ancestors, all thanks to the wanderings in pursuit of the answer to a different research question. You can bet I stopped to write that answer down so I wouldn't forget what I found.

Two Places at the Same Time

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Gift of DNA Cousins

 

With a little help from our friends on the technology side of the world, it's not that hard to figure out who our distant cousins might be. And it's the gift of effective tools for being able to discover DNA cousins that has enabled me to paint a picture of the far-reaching connections that can flow from one ancestor's family.

In researching my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery in the past month, I've been able to reach down the generations to document all the way to her fifth great-grandchildren. Many of them still reside in Canada, the place where Margaret and her husband, Denis Tully, had settled after leaving their native home in what used to be called the "North Riding" of County Tipperary, Ireland.

Researching those more current generations in Canada had been, in the past, a challenge. Perhaps it might have been the cultural influence of a more reserved, British composure that left obituaries with an air of understatement. Finding an obituary for an ancestor we're researching might, in general, be cause for the genealogy happy dance, but when that hard-won victory leaves us with news stating the deceased "left a wife and four children," it's, well, rather deflating. I found many instances of that reticence about divulging information, even well into the twentieth century.

Granted, some countries embed a far more generous zone of silence, for privacy purposes, in divulging, for instance, contents of some governmental records. While for my American ancestors, I need only wait a mere seventy two years before being able to view their names in U.S. Census records, countries like Canada set a ninety-two year wait, and Ireland and Great Britain espouse an even more conservative hundred year rule.

With limited access to the types of documents genealogists normally rely upon to build a family tree, the advent of DNA testing has indeed become a gift. The tools that have since been developed to help sort that avalanche of new data speed the research process even further. In Margaret Flannery's case, I still am working my way through the many DNA cousins said to be connected to her line. Having recently acquired the ProTools available at Ancestry.com has accelerated my ability to connect the dots between these DNA matches, thankfully, though I realize I still have a long way to go before I can check that finished task off my to-do list. 

Connecting DNA matches to my father-in-law's tree, while helpful—hey, I've found some willing collaborators among these DNA matches!—does not always guarantee that the results will automatically point us in the direction of the answer to my main question. I still want to know exactly where Margaret Flannery came from before she met her husband Denis Tully and settled with him high up in the mountain townland of Tountinna.

That, of course, was my main research goal for this past month. Or, to amend that statement, my erstwhile goal. Still, I have one more day to lay out the details of what I know, so far, about Margaret Flannery's roots back in Ireland. We'll talk about that tomorrow, and figure out then what to do next.

This Past Month: Plans versus Reality

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revisiting the Flannerys

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Throwing the Net Wide

 

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

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

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

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

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

Ancestor #9: Finding the Flannery FAN Club

 

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

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

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

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

Signs They Were There

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the Trail's End

 

The positive aspect about plans is the way they keep us on the straight and narrow research trail in accomplishing goals. If you plan things like I do, though, there is usually more plan than month in which to complete it. This month, however, is quite the opposite. Though I've had good intentions, my plan to learn more about my father-in-law's great-grandparents, Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery, yielded me little.

Instead, I hit a snag: a detour into an entirely new branch of the Tully line. That unexpected turn came when I discovered Denis and Margaret may have had a son I never knew about. That son, also named Dennis, was the ancestor of more than eight DNA matches for my husband. This was someone I couldn't simply ignore. Never mind the lack of documentation, either back in his native Ireland or in his immigrant home in Ontario, Canada.

At this point, I've nearly completed as much as could be found on the many descendants of Dennis Tully and his wife, Margaret Hurley. In addition, I've linked those eight ThruLines DNA matches to my husband's tree and found three more matches within those at Ancestry.com. Since then, I've combed through his matches at three other companies: MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA, and 23 and Me. Through that research journey, I've confirmed at least one more DNA match at MyHeritage and am still watching for others.

Yet that original goal—to learn more about Dennis Tully's parents in the Tully and Flannery lines—has brought me no closer than I was when I started. With a little over half a month remaining, I've run out of plan before I've run out of time. I could jump ahead to my goal for October, moving into the last quarter of the year, which I usually devote to my own father's difficult-to-research Polish lines. Or I could try exploring another avenue which needs attention.

The down side to relying on monthly plans is that if those plans run short of month, I'm quite out of practice being spontaneous. Where is the allure of those rabbit trails when you need them to be beguiled? 

The Tortoise Approach

 

Perhaps change is in the air. Along with the shifting seasons, I'm spotting signs of more than just beta tests at Ancestry.com. In fact, there's quite a buzz about the banner heading AncestryDNA's landing page—something I've unwittingly bypassed since I sign in directly to the option to view my matches or latest ThruLines update. Superimposed upon what appears to be a map of the world's reference panels, the banner heralds: "Coming soon: AncestryDNA results will be updated with even more precision in the coming weeks."

Coming weeks? How long will I have to wait to see this? I fervently hope I've missed seeing that banner for quite some time. I'm not sure I can wait that much longer. Sometimes, I feel more like the hare in the fable, chafing at the starting line to be off and running, rather than the plodding tortoise, sure to never win the race to find my ancestral answers.

While several genea-bloggers are surmising the latest heralded changes at Ancestry will relate to ethnicity estimates, I'm frankly not all that concerned about those data points. As I work, match by match, to pinpoint the place on my family tree where each DNA cousin belongs, I'm hoping for far more useful data for such a task. Remember, I'm stuck with this extra member of my father-in-law's family—Irish immigrant Dennis Tully, who is the apparent ancestor of more than eight of my husband's DNA matches. If there was any way, through DNA technology, to speedily determine whether he was the actual, bona fide son of our Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery, rather than being another relationship, that is the stuff of which I'd be most appreciative. As far as I can see, there is no other way to find documentation showing the correct relationship.

Between the latest beta tests and banners promising good things to come, the news certainly is being heralded on social media. Anticipation is fun, yes, but the end results will fully tell the tale. Yet, looking back over the last nine and a half years since buying my first DNA test kit, the ease with which I can determine where to place each cousin in my tree has greatly increased. I'm in awe over how much I've learned about family connections through this tool of genetic genealogy.

At this point, I've completely connected each of the eight ThruLines matches for this Tully line—the largest DNA test-taking set of all the descendants of Dennis Tully's supposed parents, Denis and Margaret Flannery Tully. Within the remainder of the DNA matches at Ancestry.com, I've also spotted three or four additional candidates for this line and placed two of them in the tree, as well. Next task will be to move on to the other DNA companies where my family has tested, to spot matches descending from this same Dennis in those companies' matches, as well. And matches who may not show up in my husband's test might be part of the test results for either of my two sisters-in-law.

More discoveries await, I'm certain. All it takes is more work—plodding work to examine matches not yet aligned with Side View wizardry or through other tools. A tortoise approach for sure. New tools may redirect those efforts into slam-dunk answers with the new and improved hare approach, but I know I can figure out many of these puzzles with old-fashioned sheer effort, as well.

Still, I'm glad for those speedy short-cut tools. The more we can accomplish in less time, the more liberty we'll have to move on to even more amazing discoveries. In a few weeks. With the next update. In the meantime, perhaps I can make it to the finish line before the hare makes its next appearance. You know the old saying about slow and steady....

When Parts of the Story are Missing

 

Researching a less-familiar family line can feel somewhat like finding your way down a dark hallway, blindfolded. That's the feeling I'm left with, once I entered the line of Dennis Tully's grandson, Frederick Hugh Kane. It's been that thin line of hockey connecting each of Frederick's children—and, eventually, leading me to them.

The key to finding each of these children was taking a leap into the dark and locating an obituary for at least one potential child. Then, using the names of that person's siblings listed in the obituary, branching out to locate more documentation on the next sibling. Once again, step by step, comparing names to move to another sibling, until I complete the family constellation. 

It hasn't been easy. The last sign I could find of Frederick Hugh Kane—other than his own Find a Grave entry—was his appearance in a few census records. In 1911, he appeared in his parents' home in Perth County, Ontario. At that point, he was twenty one and single. Ten years later—though with no sign of any marriage record—he was not only married to Lillian, but was father of three: baby Frederick and daughters Mary Ethel and her mama's namesake, eldest child Lillian Ruth.

From that point, the elder Frederick's next appearance in 1931 was as a married man, yet in the household of his sister Ethel and her husband, Frank Harkin. No mention of Frederick's wife or children, at least in that household. Frederick's burial in 1954 was the next record I could find for him, buried alone, but in the same cemetery as that of his sister Ethel.

Meanwhile, from the obituary of one of Frederick's children, John, I learned that their mother had moved them to Toronto when John was about twelve. Since he was born in 1925, that meant his mother moved the family in 1937—several years after her husband appeared in his brother-in-law's household for the 1931 census.

There is a story missing here, of course, but likely not one I'll be able to access. While there is always a need to be discreet with family details—although some governmental entities divulge more documents with the public than others—it is the continuing story of the DNA connection which I'm seeking.

I could likely fill in the blanks in my own mind as to what became of that family. But now that I've found the obituaries for far more children than those whose names appeared in that most recent publicly shared census enumeration, I've begun piecing together the family constellation. And that's really all I had been seeking: a way to confirm where DNA matches belong in our family tree.

Genealogy, for me, has always functioned somewhat like an algebra equation. When I find myself missing a key detail—the "x" of the equation—I simply have found ways to re-arrange the known facts to isolate the variable. When the known facts are readily accessible—and we all know which states or provinces share more than the others—we can pencil in that algebraic genealogy calculation quite handily.

There are other realms, however, where even if we are missing the documentation, we can read between the lines and guess what might have occurred. And that is where discretion comes in. Perhaps there are parts of the story which are better laid to rest, for the peace of mind of those who remain, if for no other reason. 

Running in the Family

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking for the Stories Behind the Ancestors

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

New Month, Same Research Goal

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

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

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

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

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

Making Connections with Other Family Researchers

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When our Family's Heritage Speaks to Us

 

Yesterday, my daughter and I spent a couple hours in the kitchen preparing a big batch of pesto to freeze for wintertime dinners. There was no recipe; just the oft-repeated combining of fresh ingredients which my daughter blended from that culinary sixth sense which seems to need no road map. It was a lot of work, of course, but an enjoyable opportunity to get together and talk—not to mention sopping up the last few drops with a morsel of fresh bread, a slice of mozzarella topped with tomato and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. As much as we relish a treat like this, you'd think we were re-enacting a centuries-old family tradition, but we weren't. We just appreciate delicious food.

Earlier in the day, I had gone to the library along with a few other volunteers from our genealogical society to help library patrons with their family history questions. We never know what to expect, but do our best to provide guidance and resources, based on our own prior research experience. It doesn't hurt that some of our volunteers are former real estate appraisers, or are well versed in researching Native American roots or using DNA for genealogy.

As it often turns out, this was one of those days in which that expertise came in handy. An African-American library patron came to us with a research brick wall, but not what you'd expect; she was attempting to find her ancestor in records of the Cherokee nation. Our volunteer did her best to equip this library patron with additional resources and some next steps to take before checking in with us again next week.

When I reflected on the day's experiences later that evening, I realized one thing: you can't always tell which aspects of a person's life will reveal the truth of their roots. You may think—especially since I sport a name like Taliaferro in my ancestral heritage—that my daughter's pesto recipe came to us, handed down through generations of Italian ancestors. But you'd be quite wrong in such an assessment. I have no such connection in my family tree, nor does my husband in his. It just so happens that we live near a farmer—he's the Italian—who grows wonderfully aromatic basil, which he will pick fresh for us when we need to do up a batch of our recipe. It's a matter of resources at hand in the local market and an epicurean bent to our nature.

Likewise, our friend who stopped in to see us at the library that morning might have had a more expected research question. At least, we had expected something far different. But in this researcher's case, she had something my basil-grinding daughter and I didn't have: a family tradition. Her family had paperwork which had been passed down from her grandmother, years ago. She just wanted to find a way to connect all the records available to complete the family story.

Granted, there are family history stories which may have been, to us, previously unknown—until we stumbled upon an unexpected discovery. Such is the case for the generations of descendants reaching back to that previously-unknown brother of my father-in-law's grandfather Tully. But for the most part, families which shared those stories over generations tend to know the general direction their research will lead them. In those cases, our task is more of one seeking to close the circuit, to come full circle through documentation as well as oral tradition, so that the story we pass down to the next generation is one we can confirm through a full array of resources.

 

When Boy Meets Girl

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm still looking for that Tully family storyteller.

Read the Fine Print

 

Read the fine print—then read it again. It's that double-check which sometimes saves us from veering off in the wrong genealogical direction.

I can't tell how many times I've been grateful that I actually laid eyes on a document itself, rather than trusting someone's transcription of the form. Mistakes can happen, of course, and we always want to avoid those needless errors. But I know that looking at a second document—and then a third and a fourth—further keep us from getting snared in someone else's error.

In my behind-the-scenes research drill this month, I've been adding Tully cousins to my father-in-law's tree. Just today, though, a census record caused a double-take. An entry for what, ten years prior, had been a daughter, became a son in the subsequent enumeration.

I'll chalk that up to a clerical error, but though I have run into such problems in the past, I do admit this time, I hadn't spotted it right away. It was only after said daughter Francis seemed to disappear from all subsequent signs of existence that I went back, searching. Sure enough, that Francis turned out to be a son in the later document. By his adulthood, I noted that he preferred to go by the name Frank—perhaps for obvious reasons.

In the same research project, I've spotted a transcription giving another new Tully cousin's date of death as 1944, when in reality it was 1994. Someone just keyed in a "4" to the sequence one space too soon. Now, wouldn't that have made a rather curious entry in the family tree? The record's transcription made it look as if it took the family fifty years to actually get around to burying the poor bloke. Made me look twice on that one, too.

I'm sure everyone's got their favorite story of records errors and transcription troubles. No matter how long we have been on this family history research road, though, there's bound to be one or more transpositions which slip by us unawares. It always helps to review our efforts. Actually lay eyes on the document. Read the fine print—not just once, but twice. Make sure it's a digital version of the original if at all possible, not merely someone's transcription. And double-check what has been found; if possible, find two different records to confirm a fact, not just rely on one document.

Perhaps it's the unfamiliar research path I'm on right now which heightens my caution. After all, this line of the newly-discovered Dennis Tully represents a family I hadn't known about before. I have no family stories to rely on, no hand-me-down photos or family treasures to guide me in this process. All I have are the records, right or wrong. Those can build a lifelong sequence of events for each member of Dennis Tully's family line by letting the fine print do the talking, from document to document, to identify the right relationships.