D. N. A.: Do Not Assume

While you have been following me through all my research foibles, concerning the mistaken identity of Ann Crahan—whom I had presumed was our Kelly family connection, Ann Kelly—I have embarked on a study of a different type. I made the six hour drive to southern California to attend the DNA conference held in conjunction with the annual Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank.

This is not my first foray into learning about STRs and SNPs and other scientific code speak. But I am still as mystified about the practical application of the use of DNA in genetic genealogy as I was at the beginning of my first class. Why does it all look like a badly jumbled assemblage of alphabet soup?

My goal, in initiating DNA testing a year ago (at last year's Jamboree, in fact) was to trace the two male lines I was most interested in: my husband's Irish lines, courtesy of his one hundred percent Irish father, and my own father's brick-wall line that was supposed to be Irish, but turned out, instead, to be one hundred percent Polish. Go figure.

It was at this very conference a year ago that I asked my brother—our family's only surviving male relative who could qualify for such a task—to take a DNA test. He graciously complied, and I've been staring hopelessly at his test results ever since. That, in fact, was what initiated my attendance at an all-day seminar on the topic last October.

I still don't get it.

In the meantime, hoping for better results with a second attempt, I also asked my husband to participate in DNA testing. We were, after all, planning a trip to Ireland to research his roots there, and I had hoped the DNA test results would add an interesting dimension. After all, DNA is science, and science is exact. Right?

Unfortunately, about all it has added, so far, has been a greater sense of confusion. Either that, or nobody else with the same genetic makeup has ventured out to do the same test.

The type of test used for each of these men is called the Y-DNA test, which seeks to trace back the paternal line through generations from son to father to grandfather. Theoretically, that would yield matches with others bearing the same surname. In reality, in neither of these lines has that held true.

So, a full day of classes to see if I could learn more was in order. The DNA Day at Jamboree this year began at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday morning, and went until 7:00 that same evening. I've learned a whole lot more detail about the concepts and the process—even witnessing an illustrative live session demonstrating how the DNA strands are extracted from the sample material—but I still don't get how this will apply to help me find missing cousins.

Perhaps it's just a matter of not having any distant cousins who've gotten bit by this crazy bug to research our genealogical roots. While other conference participants talk of finding multiple matches through DNA testing, my two guys are getting almost no results of any significance, and especially no results matching men who bear the same surname. Are they the guinea pigs from Mars?

Still, the keynote address from Dr. Maurice Gleeson, himself a psychiatrist and pharmaceutical physician from Ireland, was so full of irresistable mind-candy that it tempted me to check out the possibilities more closely. Studies are being done in Ireland that may soon hone the accuracy of lines in relationship to specific regions within the country. In other words, instead of the rather bland ethnic percentages handed out by the major testing companies in the United States—telling people like my brother and husband that, no surprise here, they descend from northern Europeans—these studies may be able to pinpoint certain sets of genetic identifiers to specific counties in Ireland. Similar studies are being conducted in the UK for those of English heritage.

Abilities such as these, predicted to be unfolded in the near future, may become such an accelerator for genealogical research. While that still leaves my brother and his Polish past still shrouded in mystery, it will at least provide an additional tool for my husband in his quest to locate those points of origin in Ireland.

I'd like to hope that results such as these would be revealed before we take our trip to Ireland this fall—but even if that is not so, I can certainly hope that my understanding of these DNA results will occur before we leave for Ireland. I'm certain there is something more I can learn about applying these results that would help guide our travels and our research.

But Wait! Don’t Stop Now!

Having had my hopes dashed about finding what had become of the missing Ann Kelly—since she was not one and the same as the Mrs. Anna Creahan—the sensible approach would have been to lay the thing to rest and move on to more productive endeavors.

Not me. Blame it on the stubborn gene.

Incredulous that Anna Creahan could be Anna Cunningham Creahan and not Anna Kelly Creahan, I still couldn’t let go of that mystery niece in the 1880 Kelly household in Lafayette, Indiana. Who was that “A. M. Crahan” girl? And what gave her the right to be called niece? If that didn’t finger a relationship with this Ann and Michael Creahan, who was the source of that surname?

My first inclination was to suppose that Ann Kelly had been married twice, and to search for any marriage records for an Ann Kelly marrying a Mr. Cunningham. Of course, you know how hopeless a search like that would have been.

I then reversed tracks, and went searching for Michael Creahan’s marriage information.

For whatever reason, the search engine gremlins were not restless that night, for FamilySearch.org offered up a tantalizing possibility that it hadn’t brought up before: that of a Michael Craghan marrying an Annie Cunningham. So it was true: this was not our Ann after all. There was no use wallowing in these details. That would change nothing. It did, however, open my eyes to other spelling possibilities for that elusive surname.

But wait, I told myself. Could one of those step-children listed in Anna Creahan’s obituary actually have the initials “A. M.”?

I grabbed the obituary and started reading through the list of survivors. Who was Mrs. John P. Quinlisk? I headed straight for FamilySearch.org to see what could be found.

A marriage record for a John Quinlish came up, showing his wife’s name to be Anna. Well, there was the “A.” That was a good start.

There was more. Fortunately, at the time the Quinlish couple had married, the State of Indiana was becoming a bit more thorough in their recordkeeping tasks. In addition to the name of bride and groom, each set of parents’ names was included, too.

The groom, John, was son of Michael and Mary Ryan Quinlish, adding nothing to my hopes for this September 21, 1898, occasion. The bride’s information didn’t seem much more helpful. Anna’s father was, indeed, Michael “Crehan,” but the mother was listed as Bridget Kelley.

Who was Bridget Kelley?

I did remember the Find A Grave entry for Michael revealing that he had lost a wife prior to his marriage to Annie Cunningham (even now, I grudgingly admit that maiden name). And I remembered that this first wife was named Bridget.

Knowing that earlier marriage records were not likely, in Indiana, to contain much information beyond bride’s and groom’s names, I tried finding records for the marriage of Michael and Bridget. Perhaps that would explain who that Bridget was.

The closest entry came up for a Michael “Cuhan”—demonstrating once again how difficult tracing this surname had become. The link was for a report gleaned from an index, unfortunately, but it did confirm that the bride’s name was Bridget Kelly. Their wedding was performed February 8, 1853, in Tippecanoe County—likely in the county seat, Lafayette.

Only slowly did the realization dawn on me that I might actually have found the connection between Matthew Kelly’s niece, A. M. Crahan, and this Michael Creahan couple. Could it possibly be that the four survivors listed as stepchildren in Annie Cunningham Creahan’s obituary all, just like A. M. Crahan, actually were blood relations of Matthew Kelly?

Could Bridget Kelly be one of our Kellys?

A Long-Winded Obituary

Receiving a copy of the February 15, 1917, obituary for Mrs. Anna Creahan, for me, was a delight. Not only was it effortless to obtain the record via email from the Indiana library serving as hometown repository for the Bloomington Daily Telephone, the report itself was composed in that genteel and flowery manner of Victorian sensibilities. It was sure to produce the kind of information I’d be seeking.

In many respects, the obituary did not disappoint. Though it started out with the blunt headline, “Mrs. Creahan Dead, Age 78,” it eased up considerably after delivering its duty as factual informer in the first sentence.

Mrs. Anna Creahan, age 78, step-mother of Mrs. Ella Fulk of this city, died Tuesday night at Lafayette from the infirmities of old age. Mrs. Creahan was a fine old Irish lady who came to this country from Ireland when she was a girl. Her husband died two years ago. The funeral will be tomorrow at Lafayette and Mrs. Fulk will attend.

Because I already had found the burial information for both Anna Creahan and her husband Michael, the date and location in Lafayette, Indiana, helped confirm that I was reading the right obituary. This was the Ann Creahan I was seeking.

After this introduction, the Daily Telephone noted that the rest of the obituary was gleaned from the Lafayette newspaper, the Courier—fitting, because that was not only where she had lived, it was actually where Anna Creahan had passed away.

Mrs. Anna Creahan, widow of Michael Creahan, an old and highly respected resident of Lafayette, died at 11:30 Tuesday night at St. Elizabeth hospital. Two weeks ago she was stricken with a severe attack of grip, and several days ago she developed pneumonia.

The Courier seemed in the mood to go into greater detail about Mrs. Creahan’s illness—something we’d rarely see in an obituary today—and though the narrative seems somewhat monotonous, it did provide additional family clues.

She was taken to the hospital a week ago today from the home of her niece Miss Louise Lenihan, 511 Kossuth street. Her condition had been critical since Saturday, and when she passed away she was surrounded by her niece and nephews. Mr. Creahan died in May, 1915.

Lenihan? Hmmm…I’ll have to make a note of this. Very helpful. Remember, I’m still tracing this line in hopes of uncovering who, exactly, that mystery niece “A. M. Crahan” in Mathew Kelly’s household was. Perhaps at last, I’ll find out what those initials “A. M.” stood for.

Right after the sentence that confirmed Anna’s husband’s date of passing—which we had already found, thanks to Find A Grave—my reading came to a screeching halt.

Mrs. Creahan was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, and came to Lafayette with her mother…

All was well and good up to this point. Not only had I gleaned the name of another possible relative, but I had received the bonus goodie of learning her county of origin in Ireland—something I’ve yet to determine for these impossible Kellys.

All in the same breath, I had grasped a victory and had it torn from my reach with the very next words:

Mrs. Creahan was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, and came to Lafayette with her mother Mrs. Mary Cunningham, when a little girl and had been a resident here for half a century.

With that, I lost all zest for the discovery—for anything following that sentence, actually. Did it really matter any more? This was not our Ann Kelly. It was someone named Anna Cunningham.

On general principles—the hope that someone will be searching for this Anna Creahan, even if she turned out not to be ours—I’ll post the rest of the obituary below, with the complete transcription. Maybe someone will be entering that phrase in quotes, “Anna Creahan” in a Google search box, and will appreciate the find. I know I would have.

As for the Kelly niece, A. M. Crahan, it seemed I was farther than ever from being able to determine what had become of her. There were too many obstacles to overcome in continuing the search.

Somehow, though, I couldn’t let the thing go. With some brick walls—combined with stubbornness—it seems they come in handy for a good head banging.

            Mrs. Anna Creahan, age 78, step-mother of Mrs. Ella Fulk of this city, died Tuesday night at Lafayette from the infirmities of old age. Mrs. Creahan was a fine old Irish lady who came to this country from Ireland when she was a girl. Her husband died two years ago. The funeral will be tomorrow at Lafayette and Mrs. Fulk will attend.

            Of Mrs. Creahan’s death the Lafayette Courier says:

            Mrs. Anna Creahan, widow of Michael Creahan, an old and highly respected resident of Lafayette, died at 11:30 Tuesday night at St. Elizabeth hospital. Two weeks ago she was stricken with a severe attack of grip, and several days ago she developed pneumonia. She was taken to the hospital a week ago today from the home of her niece Miss Louise Lenihan, 511 Kossuth street. Her condition had been critical since Saturday, and when she passed away she was surrounded by her niece and nephews. Mr. Creahan died in May, 1915. Mrs. Creahan was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, and came to Lafayette with her mother Mrs. Mary Cunningham, when a little girl and had been a resident here for half a century. For more than thirty years she resided at 1112 south Fifth street. Deceased was an earnest member of St. Ann’s church and had belonged to that congregation since the parish was established. Prior to that she was a member of St. Mary’s church. She was possessed of deep religious convictions, and her religion was exemplified in her every day life. She had been a member of the Rosary society of the church for more than thirty years and was also a member of the ladies’ auxiliary of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. She took an active interest in the Hibernian society and was a kind and sympathetic neighbor and friend. Mrs. Creahan had a wide acquaintance throughout the city and her memory will long be revered by those who knew her best. During her long life she was the author of many kind deeds and her passing will be regretted by many. She is survived by the following step-children: John E. Creahan and Mrs. John P. Quinlisk of Lafayette; Mrs. Ella Fulk of Bloomington, and Mrs. Julia Sullivan of Denver, Colo.

At Last! The Evidence!

It was while I was puzzling over the Find A Grave entry for Annie—was Mrs. Michael Creahan really the former Ann Kelley?—that I was struck with one of those serendipitous finds.

Serendipitous is one of those words that seems too long to be worth the trouble—until, that is, the trouble results in a discovery so successful, it melts away all the agony of former defeat. Then, serendipitous becomes not a word your mouth says, but a word your mouth savors.

So, on my tree in Ancestry.com, I was punching in all the data I had found so far on this branch of the Kelly family that had unexpectedly popped into view—remembering the lesson I had learned by neglecting to do so when I had found Johanna Flanagan Lee in another family line. What should happen when I got to the point of entering Ann as Michael Creahan’s wife—hoping fervently I wasn’t prematurely taking that liberty—but one of those shaky-leaf Ancestry hints popped up.

The hint breathlessly assured me there was a way to get Ann Creahan’s obituary.

No way, I thought. I had already tried every way I could to access the historic newspaper collection for Lafayette, Indiana, with no results.

I checked it out, anyhow. It was a worthwhile move.

The Ancestry page warned me that, with the next click, I would be whisked away from their site and into the domain of an entirely different website. Fine, I thought, I’m willing to take that risk.

With that, I moved to a small town cyberworld that turned out to be a pretty slick operation. It was the website for the Monroe County, Indiana, Public Library. More specifically, I was brought directly to their Obituary Index page.

Granted, like Dorothy in Oz, I suddenly had a gasp of recognition: this wasn’t Kansas, er, Tippecanoe County. Why would Monroe County house an obituary for someone I was seeking in an entirely different county? The two counties weren't even next to each other.

I decided to give it a try anyhow, and entered the name of the woman I was seeking: Ann Creahan.

Her obit was there! And for the paltry sum of $3.50, the library promised to send it to me. I wasn’t a patron, I didn’t have a library card number, I didn’t even live in the state of Indiana, for crying out loud. But they were game if I was. I entered my PayPal information on the secure page for that purpose, indicated which obituary I was seeking, and was done with the whole process in a few minutes. Easy.

It may seem rather mundane for me to marvel at this minor feat of computerized genealogical research aids. After all, we do have the technology. But how many of us local organizations actually use it? I, for one, having researched in counties across the United States, was impressed.

Within only a few days—I made this transaction over a weekend—I had an emailed copy of the very obituary I was seeking. Not only was the whole transaction easy, it delivered a long, detail-packed obituary, as well.

So detailed, in fact, that I’ll save my discussion of it for tomorrow’s post. I want you to savor the moment as much as I did.

Reconstructing That Family Constellation

Trying to confirm the rightness of genealogical discoveries sometimes leads exploration into more than one generation. At least for me. I need to make sure all the puzzle pieces fit together nicely before assuming any one particular name should be snapped into place in the family picture.

With Ann Kelly—an unmarried adult living with her siblings in 1860, missing from the household by 1880—I had my guesses that she had become the mother of the niece, A. M. Crahan, who surfaced in Ann’s former Kelly household by 1880. It was as if Ann had exchanged places with the young Miss Crahan.

Though I did find a married Annie Crahan living in the same town—Lafayette, in Tippecanoe County, Indiana—I wasn’t sure I had found the right family. But what other Crahans were there? This was the only one I could find in 1880.

There was a son listed in the household of Annie Crahan and her husband Mike, fortunately. Since I haven’t been able to glean any helpful information online to determine whether I had found the right family, perhaps wandering down the son’s line might turn up some clues.

Turning to the Find A Grave site where I had found his parents’ burials, I searched for the son, John. I made sure to keep in mind the alternate spelling of Creahan, since I wasn't finding much under the spelling as Crahan.

Luck seemed to be turning for me. There, I found not one, but two John Creahans buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery. Both appear to have been born at roughly the same time—not helping much. Each was married. The one John, though, tragically also lost his wife—named Catherine—at an early age, leaving young children behind. Thankfully, an efficient Find A Grave volunteer had posted a copy of the obituary, indicating that this John’s parents were named Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Creahan. Although it’s tempting to think about the possibilities, seeing that the young wife Catherine’s maiden name was Dolan—after all, Ann’s brother Thomas married a Dolan—I won’t go there now. Consider it sufficient to rule out this John as the possible son of Michael.

The other John may be likely, or not. I still need more information, of which there is very little online right now.

Trying to figure out who the Crahan daughter might be is more difficult to determine. For whatever reason, only her initials were provided in the 1880 census. If  they were the correct initials, that would still leave many possibilities for given and middle names—and that is only if “A. M.” remained unmarried for the rest of her life. Add in the possibility of a married name, and the search becomes unwieldy.

If Ann did indeed marry this Michael Creahan, it is unlikely that the two children were hers, though—despite the label of “niece” on the 1880 Kelly household entry. Both the children’s years of birth predate Michael’s first wife’s passing in 1869. With Ann’s age given in the 1880 census as forty, she would be unlikely to have had any children of her own after that point.

It all makes a convincing scenario—but only if that Crahan really did morph into Creahan. If it became Crane or stayed as Crahan, or went farther afield, such as Graham, the chances of reconstructing this part of the family would become much less likely.

…except, of course, for one slip of a hint offered up on Ancestry.com. It was for an obituary, which could be provided if I cared to order it directly from an Indiana library.

I did.

Danger: Surname Morphing Ahead

Though it may seem we’ve been as thorough as possible with follow-up on this serendipitous family discovery, there is actually one more thread dangling from the Kelly family tapestry that needs to be woven in more securely. To do so requires us to step back one generation from where we’ve lately been exploring—that of the children of Thomas and Bridget Dolan Kelly—to one of Thomas’ own sisters.

You may have remembered that additional tidbit we stumbled upon when we finally located the whereabouts of the youngest of Catherine Kelly Stevens’ sons, William. It was an entry in the 1880 census revealing that, even though William’s father had remarried and established his own household, William had chosen to stay with the uncle and aunt who had raised him: the unmarried Kelly siblings, Matthew and Rose.

By 1880, there was someone else appearing in that Kelly household, too—a teenaged girl listed only by her initials, A. M. Crahan, but noted as “neace” of the head of household, Matthew.

Of course, seeing a label pinning a relationship like that to a new name got my mind whirring with family possibilities. Which Kelly sibling would bestow such a relationship to someone with a different surname? It would be a Kelly sister, obviously—this is not rocket science.

The one sister missing after the listing in the 1860 census—the last census which could be located for this family grouping—was Ann. Presumably, if Ann were still alive after 1860, she had left the Kelly family household on account of her own marriage. Was Ann the mother of A. M. Crahan? And if so, why was her daughter now living with an aunt and uncle? What had become of Ann? Had Ann, like her sister Catherine, died early—possibly in childbirth—and repeated that scenario by leaving her orphaned daughter to be raised by her uncle and aunt? Who was Ann’s husband, and what had become of him?

There did happen to be an 1880 census result for an Annie, wife of a Mike Crahan with a sixteen year old son John Crahan, but Mike’s age was given as 30, an improbable scenario for both the sixteen year old son and a thirteen year old daughter. Ann’s age, on the other hand, fits her previously-supplied date of birth rather handily. Did this imply that Ann might have been married twice, with the second man adopting Ann’s children?

If this was our Ann, living with Mike Crahan in 1880, why, then, was the Crahan daughter not living in their household if the son was? Was it only because the son was working as delivery boy to his father’s teamster employment?

Another difficulty emerged when trying to locate grave records in Lafayette, Indiana, via Find A Grave. I couldn't find any entry for Crahan. But there was one for Creahan. Was Michael Creahan the same man as Mike Crahan?

The first hurdle to answering that question came with determining the specific surname itself. What would that surname actually be? Crahan seemed clear enough on the 1880 census entry, but that spelling wasn’t turning up in subsequent search results. I was finding all sorts of wild permutations for that surname offered up, including one entry spelled as Csehan. And no, that is not my typo.

Then, too, how, exactly, would one pronounce a surname like Crahan? Could it have been pronounced, handling the “h” somewhat like we do with Graham? If so, could it have been shortened into Cran? But there are no feasible results in Lafayette for that spelling. Could it have morphed to become Creahan? What about pronouncing it with a long “a” sound? Could Creahan then have been shortened? Should I really be searching for Crane?

On Michael Creahan’s page at Find A Grave, it showed a relationship to a wife named Bridget, not Ann. Looking there, however, we can see Bridget died in 1869—creating a scenario in which a substitute mom would have been needed pronto. Enter Ann Kelly? Possibly.

Finding Ann’s headstone in Find A Grave—listed as Anna—revealed she was in the same family plot as Michael and Bridget. A Lafayette Journal and Courier index entry reveals she was, indeed, Mrs. Michael Creahan—not a child, as the Find A Grave photo of the smaller headstone seemed to make it appear.

If the original 1880 census entry for the mysterious A. M. Crahan that got me started on this wild chase had included a name and not merely initials—and perhaps had included a credible surname as well—I would have felt a bit more confident in this cemetery finding. But you know me: I can’t help myself. I have some severe doubts about what I’ve found so far. Morphing surnames are too squishy for me. I have to delve into this puzzle more deeply. And that means traveling down yet another generation.

A Little O’Connor Addendum

Bridget-cum-Elizabeth Kelly O’Connor gave out her birth year for Chicago census enumerators with wide abandon. Depending on the decade, her birth was documented in the Joseph O’Connor household as 1880 (for 1910), 1878 (in 1920 and 1930) or 1875 (for 1940). Sure didn’t help when it came time to figure out exactly which Kelly daughter she was.

Ancestors: when you leave a trail of governmentally-documented birth dates behind you covering a span of five years variance, you make it difficult for your descendants to properly trace you. Really. Get your story straight!

But I think I’ve got her number. It was Ancestry.com that helped me figure it out this time, with an index of Cook County marriages that provided the date of her marriage to Joseph P. O’Connor: February 10, 1900. Added bonus? The bride’s name was entered as Bridget E. Kelly. But wait! Her age, given as a demure twenty one to his twenty seven at time of marriage puts her birth in 1879. Go figure.

Elizabeth didn’t make things any easier when it came time to determine her eldest daughter’s date of birth. Catherine—or Katherine, as it was alternately spelled in one census record—had dates of birth varying from 1898 to 1901. It made me wonder when I found this marriage record for one Catherine O’Connor marrying someone by the name of Harry Edwards: was this our Catherine O’Connor? Or just a coincidence with a similar birthday? Perhaps these reporting errors are genetic.

A birth record showed a Catherine born November 15, 1898: would this be our Catherine? It seems to match the 1910 declaration by her parents that they were married, by then, for twelve years. Of course, that’s as long as you don’t pay attention to Catherine's age as listed in the 1920 census—that one seemed to indicate she was born in 1901.

On the other hand, I have to cut this family some slack, especially after finding one official record which included details not ordinarily supposed to be listed on such governmental documents.

We hit the jackpot on Joseph O’Connor’s death record. Apparently, the 1932 certificate included not only the names of Joseph O’Connor’s parents Thomas and Catherine, but it also revealed the very place in Ireland where Joseph was born: Kilkenna.

I love you, Chicago!

Now…if only I can figure out exactly what you meant by that “Kilkenna.” Could it mean Kilkenny?




Photograph: a door on the south side of Kilkenny Castle, Ireland; in the public domain; courtesy Wikipedia.