The History That Defines us

 

Perhaps each generation can point to a defining episode in their history. For those of our relatives no longer with us, that time might have been the challenges of World War II. Others among us may remember, say, the day President Kennedy was assassinated, or a devastating earthquake or tornado which hit close to home. 

For some of our younger generations, though, one day stands out as the dividing line in their reality: the day nearly three thousand people died, and then had that video-taped moment repeatedly replayed on national news.

It's now been twenty years. While I know very little about the long-term impact on those who suffered the deepest losses, I can't help but reflect on how much one day—one incident—can define those of us who lived through that experience. Events shape us. Cataclysmic events shape us immensely.

Perhaps, in some cases, it is not beyond reason to say some events not only shape who we become, but redirect our lives. That certainly was the case for the Irish ancestors of my father-in-law like Stephen Malloy who, in the face of famine and political unrest, needed to make the difficult choice to leave behind all they knew of life.

In the case of Stephen Malloy, the risk he took was to escape his homeland for the possibility of a better life far from his native country. While we can absorb the facts of his life, we can't really appreciate the full import without stepping back to take in the bigger picture surrounding it. To understand his story, we need to comprehend history. The events surrounding our ancestors' lives provide the context shedding light on their choices, their decisions, their next moves.

Granted, when those of our own family shaken by that devastating event twenty years ago raise their own children, that next generation, once grown, may find very little in that remembrance that resonates with them. In turn, that generation may live through an experience which will become to them all the same in magnitude as we experienced waking up on that morning twenty years ago—or, as my own New York family members did, arriving at work on that terrible Tuesday.

As we reflect on the timeline of our own ancestors—just as someone will, concerning us some day—our best chance of understanding why they made the decisions they did will be to find the key within the events of their day, particularly those events which rocked their world, just as "nine eleven" did ours.

The Inevitable: Taxes

 

As the saying goes, nothing in this world can be as certain as death and taxes. For governments, that means two certain sources of records. And for genealogists, it translates into two sure resources in which to locate our ancestors.

For those of us who can claim Irish ancestry, one such source of records came in the form known as Griffith's Valuation. Sir Richard John Griffith, appointed first by the British government to conduct a boundary survey of all the political borders in Ireland, subsequently conducted Ireland's first "tenement" survey. This survey—the instrument which eventually became known as Griffith's Valuation—was meant to assess the value of all properties, not just those of the landed gentry, for the purpose of determining liability to pay the Poor rate for support of the destitute within each Poor Law Union. 

While paying taxes is seldom an act we welcome, the fact that our ancestors were implicated in such obligations is something we can celebrate as family historians: in that very act, they left a paper trail behind them for our benefit. Especially in Ireland, we can be grateful for such records, as very little else in the way of census or other governmental records of the nineteenth century is left us.

That said, zeroing in on the location of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Anna Flanagan Malloy, thanks to the letter sent to her on her husband's departure for America, was something I could hardly wait to do. If nothing else, I was curious to see whether any records could confirm the whereabouts of these brick wall ancestors.

Consulting the free online resource for Griffith's Valuation at the website Ask About Ireland, I checked first for any sign of a Flanagan family in the civil parish of the townland to which the letter was sent. Clicking on "Griffith's Places," rather than entering a surname, I wanted to see all the surnames in the region surrounding the destination of Anna's letter.

There were twenty four entries for the civil parish of Corcomohide listed in the transcription. Only one came up with the surname Flanagan. Keep in mind that Griffith's valuation did not list the name of every resident of the parish, only those, as head of household, who were attached to the assessed properties.

From that transcribed listing of the "occupiers" of the parish, it is possible to pull up a copy of the actual handwritten ledger by clicking on the icon for that choice. Doing so for the only Flanagan listed—his name was William—I noticed his entry was in a different townland than that of the letter sent to Anna. While the entries for the townland of Cappanihane—complete with listings regarding landlord John Mason—did not include any Flanagans, William Flanagan's name was included within the nearby townland of Cappananty.

According to the handwritten record, William Flanagan's entry included a house, office, and garden. His property, judging by those surrounding it, was rather on the modest size. Whether William was one of those in the district bordering on "destitute" or whether this was a layout suitable for a single dweller rather than head of a large household, I couldn't tell. In fact, I couldn't even tell whether this Flanagan was related in any way to our Anna Flanagan Malloy. But the fact that there was even one Flanagan located in the area was encouraging.

That the one Flanagan in the area was named William was also a welcome sign—but in order to explain that, we'll have to take a giant step forward, both in time and distance, to see the connection between Anna and someone named William Flanagan, on the other side of their lifetime, thousands of miles away in a place called Chicago.   

Lists of Links and Ways to Find Them

 

From the maze of geopolitical divisions in 1840s Ireland—now that we've sorted out the precise location where we hope to locate Anna Flanagan Malloy—we can determine where, if anywhere, we can find records containing her family's names.

We are fortunate that my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna had one keepsake which she, and then her daughter and descendants after her, kept as the only reminder she had remaining of the husband who, after writing her, was never seen by her again. From that letter, we can surmise that its address reveals either the place where she lived in 1849 or, at the very least, the location of her family's landlord.

From that address—the townland of Cappanihane in County Limerick—our next step is to explore what records might still be available to examine for any signs of the family's whereabouts. Whenever I explore a new research location, my first step is to orient myself with maps and brief descriptions of the region or town (if applicable), and then delve into lists showing possible resources for further genealogical research.

A first step in that tour of lists, of course, is to explore the FamilySearch.org wiki, but in the case of this townland or even its next-step geographical division—the civil parish of Corcomohide—there is not much information to be obtained at this resource. Wikis, in general, provide a quick way for researchers to collaborate on compiling resources, but lacking any input from these volunteers, we can see—at least in the case of this wiki at FamilySearch for Corcomohide—the bare bones generic template provided by organizers to guide volunteers in adding any specifics.

In other words, there is not much available, at least at FamilySearch.org in their wiki, to guide us in researching family roots from that particular civil parish—yet.

Another resource for guidance I've often consulted when approaching research in new-to-me regions is Cyndi's List. However, while there is a category specific to County Limerick in Ireland, of the sub-categories (which currently include nearly one hundred links), I found little of substance that can't be obtained through other means.

A resource touted by some researchers, Linkpendium, likewise contained several links for County Limerick, most of which were either outdated or could have been obtained by other means.

When all else fails—and why wait until that point?!—I turn to general search engines like Google, even when researching genealogy. Sometimes, my approach is to employ the specific suffix of the country I am researching when accessing the search engine—in this case, it would yield the address google.ie to allow me to search the same way people in Ireland use the website for their searches—but this time, I didn't even need to go that route. I found some useful resources even by employing the Google site specific to my own country.

Granted, there were some pockets of information I could glean from the usual resources. FamilySearch, I've long since discovered, may have more than one way to describe the information I'm seeking. Searching for specific topics on FamilySearch by employing Google to do so—use Google to search the term FamilySearch.org plus the topic or specific term I'm seeking (the townland of Cappanihane, for instance)—sometimes brings up three or more options, such as this clickable list of all civil parishes located in County Limerick, or this chart of those same civil parishes, linking them to their corresponding barony, poor law union, Catholic parish, and Catholic diocese. Helpful resources, indeed.

From this foray into the genealogical side of Google, I was reintroduced to the updated resource posted online by the diocese of County Limerick, called the Diocesan Heritage Project. From the cross-referenced chart at FamilySearch.org, I could see that the Catholic parish for Corcomohide was known as Ballyagran and Colmanswell. The Diocesan Heritage Project entry for "Ballyagran-Colmanswell" provided some history for the changing parameters of the church parish.

Besides the dates and names of locations within the parish, the Heritage Project provided one detail which urged me to research further. According to the website, the first parish priest for Ballyagran was a man listed only as "Fr. Flanagan."

Flanagan!

Scrolling down the website entry for the parish, I also noticed a chart listing the names of all the parish priests by year. Though certainly not the earliest listing, there was a James O'Flanagan listed as priest from 1842 through 1850, the same years in which our Anna Flanagan and her family might have lived in the area. Whether Flanagan and O'Flanagan was the same family at that time—or whether James O'Flanagan was the same man as the priest mentioned in the Diocesan Heritage Project as "the first parish priest"—I can't yet say.

One thing I can tell, at this point: there were at least two people named Flanagan living in the region of that church parish when Anna received her letter from her husband, Stephen Malloy.

Now to see if we can find any further records for Flanagans in the civil parish of Corcomohide—wherever the records might be kept. 

Getting Political About Divisions

 

Anyone researching their Irish forebears eventually becomes accustomed to seeing such terms as townlands and civil parishes. When we delve into the mystery of just where Stephen Malloy's wife and daughter were staying during his abrupt departure for Boston, those division labels become an important part of the Irish research lexicon.

Basically, a townland was considered among the smallest of geographical divisions in Ireland. As an indication of their relative size, keep in mind that there were literally tens of thousands of townlands in Ireland when Stephen Malloy sent his letter to his wife Anna in 1849.

Finding the townland of an Irish ancestor becomes, for some, the equivalent of pursuing the genealogical holy grail. Yet, here we are handed that information passed down to us in the form of a letter clutched closely for the rest of her life by the wife of the man who supposedly sent it. If the letter to Anna Flanagan Malloy was indeed sent care of the Flanagans' landlord John Mason, his property holdings, as the envelope led us to believe, were noted to be contained mostly in the townland of Cappanihane.

From that tiny vantage point of the townland, we can examine the various geopolitical divisions in which the Flanagans' home was located. Cappanihane was contained within the electoral division known as Ballyagran—an important name for us to keep handy as we explore this possibility later this month.

Beyond that, the local civil parish would have been Corcomohide, contained within the barony of Connello Upper. All this was under the jurisdiction of County Limerick, despite the original townland—to say nothing of the Catholic parish to which they were personally affiliated—actually including land either at the county line, or (in the case of the Catholic parish) reaching across to the other side of the border with County Cork.

Confusing? I still find the designations hard to remember, which may be reason for so many researchers urging us to persist in seeking those townlands. And yet, with those terms, we can now begin to explore what records for the Flanagans and the Malloys are available to us from that time period, both at the governmental level and from their own church parish.  

Learning About the Location

 

Having a copy of the letter which Stephen Malloy sent to his wife Anna in Ireland before his abrupt departure for Boston helps us just a little. After all, the address on the envelope—still kept with the letter itself—pinpoints where, at least, Anna was living in February of 1849.

I find it helpful, when beginning a new research challenge—or even when revisiting a brick wall with the hopes of this time tearing it down—to examine details on the place where these specific ancestors were located. Delving into the description and history of the ancestor's location can sometimes shed clues useful for further study: additional tips and resources, or explanations of situations which may have impacted our ancestors' life decisions. In the case of Stephen Malloy and his abandoned wife and daughter, I was searching for anything which might open up a little crack in that brick wall.

That said, I can't be certain that the address on the letter to Anna Flanagan Malloy was meant to send Stephen's message to his own home back in Ireland. Anna may have been well aware of Stephen's circumstances; his absence, though likely temporary, may have been an extended one, and she could have moved back home to be with Flanagan kin during her husband's absence. It is hard, given only one letter at this point, to tell what the entire back story might have been.

Though we are all quite familiar with how people address letters in our own times and location, we need to remember that that was not a universal, timeless custom. I had to learn from Irish researchers how residents of Ireland were accustomed to addressing letters, back in the 1800s. I also needed to keep in mind that Stephen, as a Catholic living in Ireland during that era, likely did not know how to read or write, himself, but may have required the services of someone else (hopefully a friend) to compose his message.

The envelope (shown below) bore this address:

Anne Moley

Cappanahane

County [Cork?] Charleville

[to?] care of J— M— Ireland

Let's examine that information, line by line. On the very first line, we obtain the reminder that spelling was not an important factor during that time period, at least to the person writing the letter—and doubtlessly to Stephen Malloy, who probably knew very little about such details. It does, however, remind us to be just as flexible as we reverse the situation and attempt to find records for someone with that surname.

The second detail we need to realize is that this letter was being sent to someone located in a rural area far from any urban centers on an island which traditionally presented a uniformly rural setting. Thus, there was no need to designate a street name, let alone a house number. The address basically serves to direct the letter carrier from the point of the urban area through the next-sized town, and then on to the actual townland, where someone was sure to know who the addressee might have been.

Thus, we find Stephen's letter, sent from Liverpool in England, directed first to the seaport in County Cork—the city by the same name, most likely—then northward on the main road leading from the city of Cork on the way to Limerick. That midpoint was the town of Charleville, still within County Cork.

Just looking at the entry for Charleville at Wikipedia allows us to glean a brief sense of what the region had been experiencing, leading up to that time period. Keeping in mind that Anna was Catholic, the Wikipedia Charleville history observes that ever since the enactment of the Penal Laws, Catholics wishing to attend Mass had to do so secretly. Though that edict occurred well before the time of Anna's generation, over decades, it meant the abandoning of church facilities and the combining of Catholic parishes. Thus, the parish at Charleville became joined with parishes at nearby Bruree and Colmanswell.

These, as it turns out, were across the county line in County Limerick. This draws us even closer to the location to which Anna's letter was heading, the townland of Cappanihane in County Limerick.

Added in even smaller script underneath the address, as if an afterthought, was the direction, "care of," followed by an illegible name. Even scanning and enlarging the photocopy in hopes of making the script easier to decipher didn't help much. Perhaps the name was John Mason—judging from other examples of the handwriting, the initial letter seemed to be a "J" followed by an "o"—but the surname could just as easily have been something like "Melon."

However, knowing a bit more about the location now, it was easier to discover that the property in that townland was largely the responsibility of the Mason family, of which one John Mason was immediate lessor during the time of Griffith's Valuation. While it is not possible to know for sure—considering the condition of the envelope's copy and the unclear handwriting on that line—it is quite possible that Stephen Malloy addressed his last letter to his wife by sending it in care of the Flanagan family's landlord.

Now that we have a better idea of the vicinity in which Anna Flanagan Malloy had been living—at least temporarily—we can delve further into the geopolitical details tomorrow. After that, we will begin to explore the online resources available to us for our research on this family.  

Above: Enlarged detail from the envelope containing the 1849 letter, handwritten on the behalf of Stephen Malloy and addressed to his wife back in County Limerick, Ireland.

Getting Ready for the Big Day

 

It's Labor Day—the day everyone plans on enjoying a last gasp summer celebration before plunging into the work of harvest, then winter. Somehow, in all those end-of-vacation plans, in times not so long past, today used to be the last day to get ready for another big event: the first day of school.

How many parents have made that a traditional send-off, complete with photos of their cherub stepping out on that big adventure? Marilyn Sowle Bean was evidently no different than so many others, capturing her daughter, then barely five, as she walked out the door to her first day of kindergarten in Santa Rosa, California. So many big hopes, mingled with just as many small-girl fears, as Judith Louise took these first few steps of independence in her new neighborhood.

While hardly anyone now sends her five year old to a first day of school right after Labor Day, I'm quite sure the mementos of the day—whenever it is—capture much the same collection of mingled feelings as have been experienced for generations.

 

Counting on Progress

 

Every time I see someone like professional organizer and genealogy aficionado Janine Adams encourage others to do daily research on their family history, I know that advice is spot on. A little bit each day—say, like her "30 x 30" challenges to devote at least thirty minutes a day for an entire month to a family tree research issue—can certainly add up. The challenge isn't to do the thirty minutes—that's the easy part—it's to come back and do that same little bit again, tomorrow. And the next day. For the rest of the month. And repeat.

With the past three months devoted to finding some of my "Twelve Most Wanted" from my father-in-law's tree, it has all added up. Even looking at the last two weeks' tally, I can tell there's been progress made. Right now, that family tree includes documentation on 23,399 individuals, with 255 of them added in just the past fourteen days. While those numbers may seem a lot, each one of those relatives—ancestors and their collateral lines—were added one by one, a little bit each day.

Even though my focus isn't on my own family tree right now, I still try to devote some time to that side of the family, as well. After all, next month, my focus will shift to my father's elusive ancestors, and I don't want to lose any momentum on that side of the family. While the progress isn't quite as noteworthy, I did find fourteen more individuals to add to that tree, which now contains 26,176 individuals. Every little bit of progress counts.

The main point may be that slow and steady, over time, nets the most progress, but there are other reasons for this approach. For one thing, keeping one's mind in the game helps us remember the various lines of relationship, instead of having to start from scratch with a refresher course, every time we pick up the research task again. The daily review keeps our eyes open to those details which are fresh in our memory. That, in itself, streamlines the process when we can keep more details in our working memory, instead of constantly referring back to work done in the distant past.

For me, though, the most helpful part is that, laying out the "map" of family connections allows me to keep pace with the just as steadily added DNA matches we're receiving at the five companies where I and family members have tested. While those match numbers increase slowly, with every match confirmed, that information sparks a domino effect linking even more relatives on the tree with their matching identities in our DNA results.

Add that to the many innovations and new tools being introduced lately in the various DNA companies, and the progress translates into far more encouragement than I can recall from the earliest of our testing experiences. Improved chromosome painting, more intricately delineated ethnicity reports, and highly-honed probability charts can make a difference, but this well-oiled machine runs even more smoothly when coupled with a well-researched family tree, complete with collateral lines.