Retracing Research Steps

 

It is clear that, despite waiting a few years to tackle my Kelly brick wall again, I'm making little further progress. In an attempt to retrace my research steps from a few years ago—I know, insanity—I was, however, pleasantly surprised. But not successful.

However, it's helpful to see what is new on those online sites we've used in the past. After all, active sites are constantly updating their material. So, just to catalog my steps—and take a look at what has changed since the last time I passed this way—let's take a look at a list of local online resources for the city of Lafayette and Tippecanoe County, Indiana. 

I've always been one to check out local resources, and Tippecanoe County has been fortunate to have not one, but two volunteer-driven genealogical sites. Of course, the GenWeb network is ever-present, and Tippecanoe County has been part of that system, and has a list of clickable links to resources on their landing page. Among those links was a listing of the county's early settlers; clicking through, I was disappointed, but not surprised, to see that neither my Kelly family or the Stevens line was represented on that list. But when it comes to such lists, I'll always look, just in case.

Another old familiar site is the TIPCOA website. Short for Tippecanoe County Area Genealogical Society, the site has had a face lift since I last visited. Apparently still hosted on the old Rootsweb, many of the links lead to other pages also on Rootsweb, making me wonder whether the site will, someday, simply disappear. The website includes links to many resources, yet none of them seem to hold the key to answer my research problem.

I checked once again the FamilySearch.org wiki for Tippecanoe County. Though it clearly indicates that marriage records should be available back to 1830, I know I had already attempted to find confirmation of Catherine Kelly's marriage to John Stevens with no results in the past. However, I had approached this puzzle from the angle of looking for church records, not civil records, so maybe that is one revision to make, as I rework this research dilemma. Despite there being a Catholic church presence in Lafayette well before the possible date of the Kelly-Stevens wedding—at least according to this chart—the response to my former inquiry was that such records were no longer available.

While this brief tour, revisiting old resources, did point out a few new options to try in seeking details on Catherine Kelly Stevens' origin back in Ireland, it brings to light the lack of records needed to connect the Kelly family with their roots back home in Ireland. Find the marriage record in Indiana, yes, and also the telltale passenger records for the entire Kelly family. But if nothing further can be found, then what? 

The realization that there may be nothing more to be found—at least from my limited current position of not being able to travel and research in person—may mean I'll need to set aside this research goal and move on to the next month's challenge. Sometimes research can be that way; in one case, we find next to nothing, in another, we amply fill the time allotted and then some.

D N A : Documentation Work-Around

 

There are certain points, in researching our family history, when ancestors just seem to fall in the gaps. They immigrated to this country before passenger records were carefully kept. Or they were born and died in between the 1880 census and the subsequent existing enumeration in 1900.

In the case of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Catherine Kelly, she must have arrived in Indiana after the 1850 census—and died before the next one was recorded. Worse, I can find no existing record of her marriage to John Stevens, and even her burial record is spotty. Granted, even with these challenges, her three motherless boys were taken in by her Kelly siblings, providing one solid clue to point us to the right one of several Kelly families. But even diligently studying each of those Kelly siblings' lines has not turned up the paperwork I was hoping to find.

There is, of course, another way to confirm familial connections: DNA. Granted, the concept of "matches" means it takes at least two to confirm a connection—my willing subject (my husband) needing someone out there with just the right genetic makeup to take the notion to test at the same company.

The next step isn't quite as easy as that statement makes it sound. Once a DNA match shows up in our account, we need a way to compare notes and confirm that the match is owing to that specific family relationship. That confirmation process requires trees—two of them would be optimal. But not just a pedigree chart reaching back in time only to direct line ancestors; this tree needs collateral lines and lines of descent.

That has been my primary motivation, over the past seven years since taking my first DNA test, for building out my trees. As Diahan Southard of Your DNA Guide says, "A wide tree is usually better than a tall tree."

It takes lots of work over time to adequately document a "wide" tree. Despite that challenge, though, some DNA testing companies provide tools to help manage the flood of DNA matches and sort through the many unknowns.

For instance, at Ancestry.com, I've been careful to maximize the option of creating custom groups. You can be sure I've worked my way back through the generations, setting up a custom, color-coded group for each of the great-grandparent couples. In the case of Catherine Kelly, because she is one of two separate ancestral couples bearing that same surname, I clarify by using her parents' names, James and Mary Kelly.

Once I've set up that color-coded custom group, I work my way through all new DNA matches to add those I recognize to the correct custom group. In that way, I'm now set up to benefit from the system and sort all matches by surname. All I need do is select the "Filter by" option and select "Groups," which gives me the drop-down menu to identify the group I want displayed.

Right away, I can see that the James and Mary Kelly descendants group only has four matches currently attached to that group—but that is plenty for our purposes right now. The point here is to see that, by regularly maintaining the categorization of matches by this system, when I have a question about a specific ancestral line, I can go directly to this sorting mechanism and pull up the matches in question.

It is encouraging to see that there are some DNA matches which link back to this specific Kelly line in my father-in-law's tree. They all link back to that same sibling of Catherine Kelly Stevens—her youngest sister Ann—but they inform me that I am pursuing the right Kelly family. With a name as common as Kelly, that is an important first step to confirm.

 

Just Because They're so Cute

 

At some time in either late 1913 or early 1914—even mothers sometimes can forget—Mrs. Joseph L. Sowle brought her two cherubs to the Pryor photography studio in La Crosse, Wisconsin, to have their young portraits taken.

She certainly dressed her children for the occasion. David Moore Sowle, by then having passed his fifth birthday, did not seem to chafe at the outfit she had chosen for him—certainly not the togs preferred by boys his age. Little Miss Josephine Lucille Sowle, though yet a mere infant, smilingly cooperated with the procedure.

Baby Josephine eventually became the woman Marilyn Sowle Bean called "Aunt Jo," and David, thirteen years later, married Olive Brague and soon after became Marilyn's father. And old photographs like these, carefully passed down through the decades, ended up abandoned at an antique shop upon the passing of the last generation in that family line.

Above: Photograph of David Moore Sowle and Josephine Lucille Sowle, taken circa 1913 by the Pryor studio in La Crosse, Wisconsin; currently in possession of the author.

 

Three Friends

 

Where are those old high school yearbooks when you really want them?

It's the 1930 yearbook which would have featured Josephine Sowle, perky "Aunt Jo" to Marilyn Sowle Bean whose entire photo collection ended up in a local antique store after her passing. In 1930, Jo would have likely graduated from high school in Onalaska, Wisconsin.

Jo and a friend—the photograph was thankfully labeled with the name Hazel Rahn—were captured in a 1930 snapshot flanking a man whose name was given as Ernest Otto. Jo we've already discussed, and I've been able to find quite a bit about Hazel, but Ernest was not so easy to discover. Not only was his expression, in contrast to the two smiling faces of the young women on either side of him, difficult to read, but the only man by that name in the same town would not have been of an age to be high school companions with Jo and Hazel.

Josephine Sowle could easily be found in the 1930 census in the household of her parents, Joe and Dora Sowle. Ever mindful of each relative's "FAN Club"—her friends, associates, and neighbors—I took a look around the census page where I had found the Sowle family. It wasn't too hard to spot Hazel Rahn, two doors away, living with her parents, Herman and Lula, and her three younger siblings.

Hazel Rahn was easy to find online, not only in trees on Ancestry.com, but in other records. While not in a high school yearbook, her face could be found in its college counterpart a few years later. It was in that year, 1933, when she graduated from the State Teachers College at La Crosse, and began a long career in education and community service.

Two years after her graduation, Hazel married farmer Henry F. Heider, and while she continued teaching, the couple raised three children. Her years in a close-knit farming community inspired her, in 1982, to publish a book, Along the Waterloo Road, on the history of the place which she had come to call home.

All that, of course, was long after she smiled for an unnamed photographer in 1930 while standing arm in arm with her neighbor Jo and Ernest Otto. But who was he? 

The only detail I could find for someone by that name in Onalaska, where the picture was taken, was for a twenty seven year old man living not far from Jo and Hazel in the same town. This Ernest was part of the household of Louis and Frieda Otto in 1930. 

Looking closely at that family, I noticed a younger sister, Elisabeth, who would have been the same age as Hazel. Could the gathering have been on account of a party for their graduation? Hard to tell from the one snapshot. A moment in time, capturing three people who, together in 1930, likely had very different stories from that point onward.

Above: Photograph labeled "Josephine Sowle, Ernest Otto, Hazel Rahn, Onalaska, 1930." From collection of Marilyn Sowle Bean, currently in possession of author.

Resisting Temptation

 

After poring hours of effort into dislodging an ancestor from a brick wall—hint: it still isn't working—it can be tempting to grasp at clues showing up at one's Ancestry doorstep.

I'm still stuck on the origin of the Stevens brothers' deceased mother's family. Ireland is the certain answer—but where in Ireland?

It doesn't help that the surname we are seeking is Kelly. And no, it isn't that particularly trying fact that Kelly can be—and often has been—spelled in two formats: Kelly and Kelley. The problem lies with the lack of records either preserved and passed down, or maybe never kept in the first place. After all, we are looking for a family who arrived in what was then the outer fringes of America in the early 1850s.

It's not like they followed the tried and true immigration pathway, either. At least, if they took the same route as John Stevens had, in arriving in western Indiana via the Mississippi River tributaries from New Orleans, passenger records from the east coast ports would be of no service to us.

What I do have, fortunately, is a fairly large Kelly family living in Lafayette, complete with the telltale sign of the three Stevens boys living in that same Kelly household after their mother, Catherine, died in 1858. So why can't I find any sign of James and Mary and their six children—Matthew, Rose, Catherine, Bridget, Thomas, and Ann—arriving on the New World's shores?

For one thing, it is possible that, like many immigrants, the Kelly family engaged in "serial" immigration. In other words, one sibling was the first to come over, secure employment, and send money back to the homeland to bring the others to America, likely one by one. With that in mind, it was tempting, after not having found the Kelly family constellation in the 1850 census, to try and stuff one promising early arrival, Rose Kelley of about the right age in the 1850 census, servant to an attorney in town, into that slot for our Catherine's sister.

But I resisted the temptation.

Likewise, knowing how the Irish of that time period tended to follow a traditional naming pattern for their children, I couldn't help notice in following Catherine's brother Thomas, that he named his oldest son James—a nice confirmation tying Thomas and Catherine together with their father James, who died shortly after reaching Indiana.

Right after noticing that detail, up popped a hint at Ancestry for my consideration: a baptismal record for a Thomas of just the right age, with parents James and Mary, from a parish in County Westmeath. Added bonus: the maiden name for mother Mary. Not to mention, the proximity of the county to Dublin aligns nicely with oral family tradition that Catherine came to America from Dublin. Should I take this hint?

Again, I'm resisting the temptation. While it is a valuable way-sign, what I'll need to do first is see whether those baptismal records also provide entries for all the other children in our Kelly family—attached to a Mary with that same maiden name. The encouraging news, though, is if this does turn out to be a keeper, County Westmeath happens to be one of the few Irish counties whose 1841 census records are still partially extant.

Although matching details can be alluring, we can't just spring for the two or three data points which line up just right. After all, we're talking about a surname like Kelly in Ireland. The chances that a Thomas was son of a James and Mary likely was a scenario repeated over and over again in that location. We need to fit a much larger set of data points into such a comparison—for instance, the names of members of the entire family, intact, into that same test case. That will take much more work before we can safely accept such a hint. It's not just Thomas we're looking for; it's the entire Kelly family.

Regarding that Kelly family which arrived in Lafayette, Indiana, we have one other way to check out the family connections: DNA testing. It's fortunate that we do have the listing of Catherine's many siblings, and that I've been able to trace many of their descendants. It is the youngest of the Kelly family line which provided me with genetic confirmation of our connection—but that is a story to save for next week. 

"6th [September 1837] Bapt[ized] Tho[ma]s s[on] of James Kelly and Mary Coffey sp[onso]r Honora Shanaugham" from Catholic Parish Registers 1655-1915, Castletown-Geoghegan, County Westmeath; courtesy Ancestry.com

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Attending to Unfinished Business

 

I often hear talk of genealogy "do overs." Perhaps I just don't get that concept because I am always making adjustments to my family trees. 

Now that I am revisiting a brick wall ancestor who had previously kept me locked in check mate, I am again discovering several spots needing further attention. Catherine Kelly Stevens may have departed this life early, but her siblings' entries in my newly-combined family tree still need attention.

That problem occurred back in January, though of course I never noticed the defect until now. It all came about when I realized the best way to handle our new world of genetic genealogy was to abandon my former tree-keeping design of a separate tree for each of my child's grandparents. Instead of keeping one tree for my mother-in-law and yet another one for my father-in-law, I decided to merge the two trees into one.

That decision, however, presented a problem of its own. While I could now attach my husband's DNA test to one specific tree—and better handle the identities of each of his DNA matches on that same unified tree—I couldn't simply take the one tree and merge it with the other.

Well, technically, I could. But I don't want to.

Why? I'm a stickler for what I call the "footnote" column on each relative's profile in Ancestry.com. If I simply add information from another tree—whether it is a tree I've built myself or someone else's work—all I'll see on the "footnote" column is a tag identifying the source as another Ancestry tree. Of course, I don't want that; I want the footnote column to include, well, footnotes. I want to see a link to the document where I found each line item of that ancestor's life details.

So yes, that meant ever since January, I've been slogging through those thousands of names and adding each census record, each death record, and each additional genealogically significant item, line by line, to the correct ancestor on the new, combined tree.

The easiest way to do this was to add my father-in-law's tree to my mother-in-law's tree. After all, hers is the disproportionately huge one which was approaching twenty thousand entries already. Why make things any harder on me?

In the process, inadvertently there were some Stevens line ancestors left out of the picture...like the very family I'm trying to work on right now. So, just consider this month my own personal genealogy do-over of sorts, rebuilding the tree for all of Catherine Kelly Stevens' siblings, their spouses and, for those who had children, all those lines of descent as well.

On the positive side, any time we review our work with those fresh eyes, not only do we discover incomplete work, but we can discover newly digitized documents which can add to the story. Using Newspaper.com, for instance, I've now added several other details to this extended family line, by virtue of marriage and obituary entries which were not available to me, the last time I passed this way.

Tedious? Yes. But while I haven't yet stumbled upon any new facts to help point me in the right direction concerning these Irish immigrants, at least I'm getting a clearer picture of what life was like for the Kelly family, once they settled in their new world in Lafayette, Indiana, back in the 1850s.

Falling Into the Gap

 

Have you ever celebrated finding a new record set, and set about scouring its contents for your ancestors, only to discover there's a gap in the collection, right where your ancestor should have been?

I've had that happen several times before, and seeking the passenger listings for my father-in-law's Stevens and Kelly families, it looks like I'm about to see that happen once again.

Let's just say that experience has cooled my enthusiasm for jumping right into the fray when I find a new online collection. I've learned to stop and consider what, exactly, is available within each collection I'm about to examine.

Based on the Declaration of Intent for John Stevens, an immigration document he filed in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, he claimed to have arrived in the United States at the port in New Orleans. An unexpected route for an Irish immigrant right in the midst of the famine back in his homeland, John Stevens' itinerary might have been for an entirely different reason than that of his fellow countrymen.

While I can't yet determine the route taken by his future wife's family—I have yet to find any immigration documents for the James Kelly family that I can say with assurance belong to the right individuals—I suspect they may have taken the same route as John Stevens. After all, what would have caused them to end up in the early 1850s at the same small town in western Indiana, other than the logical conveyance by river navigation?

Still, no matter where I've looked for John Stevens in record collections for the port of New Orleans—and, at the same time, searched for the Kelly family—I've come up short. Let's review the reasons why and see if anything has changed since the last time I attempted this search.

First, I review the resources available online—since I won't be traveling to do in-person research any time soon. My first stop is usually to check out the FamilySearch wiki. While the overview of the collection seems promising—the digitized records from the National Archives cover the years from 1820 through 1945—there are some caveats which already are sending me warning signs.

One warning, for instance, comes from the observation that the earliest records were handwritten, making it possible that, in transcription or indexing, the writing could have been misread. A second caution comes from the realization that all information recorded was gleaned from passenger reports. A false report, of course, leads to incorrect information. Even if the passengers reported all details correctly, there was always room for the possibility of clerical error. Combined, this cautions me that I might have to read through those handwritten passenger names, myself, line by line, if the usual search methods don't yield me an answer to my search query.

While the overview on the FamilySearch wiki for New Orleans passenger records is helpful, that is not the only place I look. Of course, I'm certainly pleased that Ancestry.com also includes two record sets on New Orleans passenger lists in their holdings, which glean microfilmed material from several sources. And just in case one resource incorrectly identified my ancestors' entries—hey, this happens—not only can I jump from the records at FamilySearch to Ancestry to compare notes, but I can also check out the same material from the Louisiana Secretary of State's website.

Yes, having resources in more that one place can be cause to celebrate, but let's not get too hasty yet, shall we? After all, we have yet to actually do the work of searching for our Stevens and Kelly names in those records. And there is one more caution to keep in mind. This I found, courtesy of a finding aid compiled by the ever-helpful Joe Beine on the German Roots site online, where he notes that those Ancestry.com lists I mentioned come "with some gaps."

Guess where the gaps are?

Granted, some of the gaps may have occurred before or after our Kelly family arrived in America—and other gaps have inspired work-arounds for those critical years of 1851 and 1852. However, because some of the handwritten material may require a thorough—remember the term, "reasonably exhaustive"?—search, before jumping into such a project, it is always good to review the fine print to see if we are still headed in the right research direction.