When the Same Surnames Keep Showing up

 

Until the puzzle pieces keep repeating themselves, we sometimes don't even realize we've just received a research clue.

When I found the wedding photo of Lynn Ottum and Robert Wulf among the collection of pictures I retrieved from a local antique store, I presumed the former owner, Marilyn Sowle Bean, had kept the memento because they were her relatives. Last week, I researched both names and, surprised that I couldn't find any connection to my mother-in-law's family, decided to post the photograph here anyhow, in hopes that someone in their own family might find the post and request to receive the picture.

With that, I dismissed from my mind the possibility of discovering a new family line for Marilyn...until I ran across a second photo bearing the same surname. When surnames like that—especially a name I had never heard before—keep popping up, I wonder whether I've missed a connection.

To tell the truth, when I didn't succeed in determining a family connection last week, I actually thought maybe I had been overzealous in my purchases at the antique store. Maybe this was someone else's family photo. However, the photo I found this week—still from Marilyn's collection retrieved from the antique shop—definitely had a connection to Marilyn's family.

There is no doubt that this photo is tied to Marilyn Bean. Even if she hadn't affixed her meticulous labels on the reverse, I could tell the young boy in the photo was her own son. Granted, it was hard to determine his age but remembering how he always looked so much older than he actually was, because of his height, I would have guessed he was about five years of age. I wondered, however, why the little girl sitting with him wasn't instead paired with Marilyn's daughter—until I realized she would have been a toddler at that point, if her brother was just five.

For privacy reasons, I'll just say that the young girl, whose name was listed on the reverse, also had the same surname as that of the bride in last Saturday's photograph. My first guess was that the bride from last week's photo must have had a brother, and that this little girl would have been his daughter. 

However, having now encountered two people with the same surname helps focus the research effort more accurately. That research effect thus revealed the bride's approximate date of birth, leading me to discover her place in the 1940 census—back in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Apparently, just as had Marilyn's parents, after the 1930 census, bride Lynn Ottum's parents, Marjorie Schulze and Alvin Lawrence Ottum, moved their family from Wisconsin to southern California after the 1940 census. Though there was only one child listed for that census, Alvin's obituary, printed in the newspaper back home following his 1986 death in southern California, indicated that among the surviving family members were two daughters, as well as one son. Although his children were unnamed in the article, this leaves us with the possibility that the younger daughter might actually be the one named in the photograph.

Regardless of the actual identity of the young girl in the photograph, the picture is now one which I want to return to a family member. Not only that: whether Friends, Associates, or Neighbors, this F.A.N. Club clue reminds me that seeing the same surname twice—or more—in the same collection of the family's "stuff" is my prompt to keep searching for the connection.

This is no longer the case of a memorable wedding ceremony—or even of a cute little girl posing in a photo with one's son. Marilyn kept these photos her entire lifetime for a reason. It's now my task to discover what that reason might have been.  

About John and Kitty

 

If one approach to circumventing a research brick wall fails us, we always have other routes to explore. That may be my positive attitude showing, but what do we have to lose for trying?

While exploring the connection between my father-in-law's great-grandparents Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery and a different Tully couple by the name of Dennis and Margaret, the scant material we could find in the immigrants' adopted home in Ontario, Canada, was too inconclusive to provide us a next research step. Granted, there still is that DNA connection with descendants of that other Dennis and Margaret, but it will take more digging and further documentary resources to reach any conclusion.

In the meantime, there was yet another loose end begging us to explore its connection with the extended Tully family from the Ballina Catholic church parish in northern County Tipperary: John Tully and Kitty Flannery. We had explored the possibility that they had emigrated at about the same time, and to the same place, as my father-in-law's great-grandparents—although we were hampered by the quirk of the enumerator of the 1851 Canadian census in Brant County of what was once known as "Canada West." His impeccable manners refused to allow him to inquire as to the given name of the married women on his route, thus rendering John Tully's wife's identity as simply "Mrs."

Though we ran into some difficulties in confirming whether the same named family was the one showing up across the border in Detroit, Michigan, for the U. S. 1870 census, I've since located a few documents which should help confirm the identities. First, though, let's arrange these new discoveries in a timeline to gain an ordered perspective.

Back in the County Tipperary Catholic parish, Ballina, where we first found the letters confirming my father-in-law's relatives, I have since found a marriage record for John Tully and Kitty Flannery, dated February 23, 1841. At the very least, it can bestow us a reasonable estimate as to John's latest possible date of birth, assuming he was at least twenty at the time of his marriage.

As we've already mentioned, their child was baptised a year later, showing us now that daughter Mary was their firstborn. Her baptism on March 10, 1842, was followed by that of daughter Judy on April 15, 1844, and son "Patt." on July 20, 1846.

What we can now add to the mix is a birth record on March 20, 1856, for a daughter entered into the baptismal record in Ingersoll, Oxford County, Ontario—on that same route leading from where Denis and Margaret Flannery Tully had settled in Paris, through where the other Dennis and Margaret lived, and on to the U.S. border at Michigan.

This daughter, baptised "Brigid Tulley," was the key to finding John Tully's family in the 1861 Canadian census. This time, the family—if, indeed, it was the correct one—could be found listed among the residents of the tiny village of Saint Marys in Perth County, Ontario.

Once again, the unfortunate Bridget had her name's spelling mangled—she was entered as "Bridgeit"—but the other individuals in the household sported ages which almost all aligned with the John Tully family we had found back in Paris in Brant County's 1851 census. The only outlier was Kitty, who this time not only was transformed from the "Mrs." of Paris and the "Kitty" of County Tipperary, but as "Cathrin" emerged as slightly younger than the forty six years we'd have expected, given her entry in 1851.

That said, the census score card now yielded us these approximate years of birth:

John in 1814

Kitty in 1819 or 1821

Margaret in 1849 or 1851

Michael in 1853

Bridget in 1856

Earlier this week, we had moved our research focus to Detroit, suspecting that the family had once again migrated across borders. This was not an unusual move for the extended Tully family, for my father-in-law's family had several personal papers from relatives who had followed the same path from Ireland to Canada to the midwest United States—some even beyond Detroit to Chicago or the Dakota territory.

As for that 1870 census entry we had found, though, I wasn't entirely sure. That is where we took that left turn to follow a Margaret Tully Baxter's line backward through Ontario once again—leading to the other Dennis and Margaret, of our DNA matches, which we had explored.

One detail, though, tells me there was more than one Margaret Tully living in Detroit, if only by association to her sister Bridget. Here's why. Included with some of the U.S. census enumerations was something called a mortality schedule. This list provided the names and dates of death for those in the vicinity who had died in the year leading up to the census. 

For the 1870 mortality schedule, there was an entry for a fourteen year old Canadian-born girl named Bridget Tully. The schedule indicates that the time frame of the report included the year ending June first of 1870, showing us that Bridget's month of death was March of that same year. Furthermore, this specific schedule was for the eighth ward of Detroit. Looking back to the 1870 census where we found our possible John and Kitty Tully, we see they also were listed as living in the eighth ward, making it likely that the deceased teen was their own Bridget Tully.

With that discovery, we can be more confident that the John and "Mrs." Tully in the 1851 census, back in Brant County, Ontario, were indeed our John and Kitty. We also are redirected, in the matter of their daughter Margaret, away from the woman of the same name we had traced back to the other Dennis and Margaret Tully, and will need to discover what became of this Margaret, daughter of John and Kitty. Finally, it would be helpful to complete the search for John and Kitty themselves, as what became of them following their appearance in the American 1870 census is unclear. We need to look for them not only in future census records, but in any indication of their final resting place.

In steering clear of mistaking one Tully relative for another of a similar date—I won't even get into the issue of the other Dennis and Margaret's daughter, also named Bridget—we now can safely say we know that one additional couple from those old Ballina church records also made the voyage from County Tipperary during those horrible famine years, making their new home, at least temporarily, in "Canada West" before moving onward once again.

Going Back to the Beginning

 

In the case of possible mistaken identities—duplicate names and similar dates for brick wall ancestors—it can be helpful to retrace our steps back to the place where the families all originated, to see whether there are any encouraging signs.

For our twin Tully couples—both named Dennis and Margaret—we certainly have one clue working in our favor: their ages are not quite the same. What are the possibilities that the younger Dennis and Margaret were also baptised in the same parish back in County Tipperary, Ireland, where our Dennis Tully and Margaret Flannery once lived?

From the Canadian census records in the farm community where Dennis Tully and Margaret Hurley settled, that Dennis' year of birth had been provided as any date from 1829 to 1831. Margaret's age, according to census records, varied much more greatly, putting her year of birth in Ireland as anything from 1830 to 1837.

We've already determined, from the 1901 Canadian census, that Dennis and Margaret arrived in their new homeland in different years. This could indicate that they arrived as single travelers and married subsequent to their immigration—but that is not necessarily so; this could be a case of a serial migration. We should keep our eyes open for marriage records back in Ireland, as well.

Seeking baptismal records for a Dennis Tully in the same Catholic parish in County Tipperary as our own Dennis Tully's former church, Ballina, did not bring up quite the dates the Canadian census led us to assume. There was one Denis Tully baptism noted in the Ballina parish records on September 14, 1834, with parents listed as Thomas Tully and Margaret Wilkinson. The sponsors listed for this event seemed to be familiar names: John Tully and Margaret Flannery, a promising sign.

That, however was the only Dennis Tully I could find in the parish records during that time period for any son by that name. Admittedly, I have little confidence in that entry, for two reasons. The first is the year of the baptism, lagging the dates we've already gleaned for Dennis in the Canadian census records—not to mention, the (unfortunately unsourced) date of birth included on his Find A Grave memorial. 

The second issue, however, is a softer detail: the traditional naming pattern adhered to by so many Irish Catholics of that time period. If, indeed, the first son of an Irish father was to be named after that father's father, the first son I could find for Dennis he named Patrick. True, that detail was extrapolated years later, when the Tully household had grown to include seven children, according to the 1871 census. Perhaps by then, immigrants Dennis and Margaret had shed their old ways from the old country.

As for Margaret Hurley's origin, it is a sheer guess to assume that she came from the same hometown as her husband—but I was curious to see whether there were any Hurleys in the Ballina parish, nonetheless. As it turned out, there were indeed two options, although they stretched the margin on the ages we had gleaned from the Canadian enumerations. One was from July 29, 1835, in which James Hurley and Catherine Ryan baptised a daughter named Margaret. The second occurred a year later, on August 8, 1836, with parents Michael Hurly and Biddy Loge. Once again, neither father's name was echoed in the choices of names for Margaret's sons, although Biddy might have been a possible mother's name with Margaret's eldest daughter being named Bridget.

To complicate matters, at the end of Margaret's life, no notation was included in her death record regarding her parents' names. As for her husband Dennis, however, there was an entry. Provided by the informant John Tully—presumably his youngest son—while the mother's entry was left blank, the father's name was noted to have been Dennis.  

The Other Dennis and Margaret

 

It may seem preposterous to spend time chasing after another family's brick wall ancestors when I can't even straighten out my own family history connections. However, given that a different Dennis and Margaret Tully keep showing up in my search for my father-in-law's great-grandparents by the same names, it would be worth my while to determine just how it is that other researchers think our ancestral couple is related to theirs.

True, there is one DNA match on my father-in-law's Tully side whose roots trace back through Canada to a Dennis Tully and Margaret Hurley—not our Flannery—from Ireland. That alone is enough reason to consider the possible connection. Add to that another discovery since then, showing a second solid DNA match whose tree includes the same couple, through a different line of descent. Margaret Hurley may not have married the Denis Tully in my father-in-law's direct line, but the man she called her husband is likely someone whose direct line leads back to a key person shared in our Denis' lineage. I smell a whiff of a triangulation in the air.

Before becoming elated over such possibilities, though, let's take a look at what can be verified about this Dennis Tully who married Margaret Hurley. Following the cues from what we learned yesterday of their (possible) daughter, Margaret Tully Baxter, I checked first in Watford, Ontario, where the younger Margaret was reported to have been born. Sure enough, there was a memorial on Find A Grave for the elder Margaret, who died in 1904. The same monument, which identified her as "wife of D. Tully," included an inscription noting Dennis' passing in 1909.

Since that at least provided us the indication that there was a couple by that name living in that area, the next step was to check census records for more information on this Dennis and Margaret. The most recent census record I could find was for 1901, still in the Warwick township of Lambton County in which Watford was located. There, the record provided an actual date of birth for Dennis—March 2, 1830—but left the entry blank for his wife, other than the year of birth as 1833. 

Another helpful bit of information from that census was the year of immigration. Dennis declared his arrival was in 1849, much in line with our Denis' timeline. Margaret followed in 1850, suggesting a search for a Canadian marriage record for the couple, rather than having to search through the near-illegible, densely packed church records in their native Ireland.

Before their last appearance in the Canadian census, I could find this Dennis and Margaret living in the same location for the 1891 census, as well as the 1871 and 1861 enumerations. Reconstructing the family constellation from those documents, Dennis and Margaret were parents to Brigid, Margaret, Mary, Johanna, Patrick, John, and Sarah Anne.

In none of those records did an enumerator provide an errant mention of just where in Ireland the couple originated, or any other clue which might bring us closer to our goal of figuring out just how this Dennis and Margaret connected with our Dennis and Margaret. While we can spend time building out their family tree in hopes that their children's future records might reveal further details on the parents' origins, it might help—to reassure us, if nothing else—to explore whether there are any Hurley records back in the County Tipperary homeland where our Denis and Margaret originated, or whether there were any other baptisms for a child named Dennis in that Ballina parish where we found our other Tully families.   

Wild Thoughts

 

You can just about sit back and watch this thought unravel.

Here we are in the month of August, tackling yet another brick wall ancestor from the list of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2021. It is the siblings of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery Tully I'm in pursuit of. Given that the godparents listed on the baptismal records for the children of Margaret Flannery and Denis Tully must either be his or her siblings or in-laws, we've found a double-dip with the naming of sponsors John Tully and Kitty Flannery. Only...tracking them from that point onward becomes difficult.

As it turns out, John and Kitty were married, and had three children baptised in their home church in Ballina, County Tipperary. After that point, Margaret and Denis emigrated to Canada—and possibly, so did John and Kitty. Only I couldn't tell; the 1851 census for the place where they settled—Paris in Brant County, Ontario—labeled the wives as "Mrs."

The idea to trace John and Kitty and their children onward seemed to lead to yet another home—this time in Detroit, Michigan—before I lost track of John and Kitty once again. However, at last sighting, that family had children Margaret and Michael in the 1870 census. My thought was to trace each of the children into their future to see whether their death certificate would provide the names of their parents, giving us a thumbs up or thumbs down on whether we had located the right John Tully family or not.

Son Michael, at least in this Detroit household, was born in Canada about 1853. Someone matching that name and year of birth did die on December 28, 1921, in Detroit—but he was a single man. Not only that, but he was a man without family close by, apparently, for the informant on his death certificate was the doctor who performed the surgery which led to his demise. Seeing that, it is no surprise to discover, for the required lines on parents' identification, Michael's father was listed simply as "Tully" and his mother, "unknown."

Still, I decided to follow through and see whether Michael could have been buried in a family plot. After all, his death record indicated he was buried at Mount Olivet. Looking for his memorial there on Find A Grave, though, was not helpful, for the photo of the simple stone indicated a birth year of 1861, not 1853. Furthermore, the headstone listed only the initials "M. J." rather than a given name. Searching the cemetery for any other Tully listings gave no useful results.

Although following Michael's trail did not lead us to answers, what about his sister Margaret? In searching for a Margaret Tully in death records in the Detroit area, I used Michiganology—formerly known as Seeking Michigan—which performs searches for previous names, such as maiden names, as well as the more straightforward searches for current name. Since I didn't know whether Margaret had married, this was necessary, and did lead to a possibility.

The only death certificate I could find, in the vicinity of Detroit, was for a Margaret Baxter, wife of Henry, who died on Christmas day in 1935. The death certificate handily provided the name of her husband—Henry—for further research. For my main purpose in locating the record, it did tell me the names of her parents—but it was not the information I was hoping for.

This Margaret was listed as daughter of Dennis Tully and a woman by the name of Margaret Hurley, with both parents born in Ireland. This Margaret was said to have been born in Watford, Ontario—handily for immigrants, on a straight path from Paris, Ontario, to the state of Michigan across the international border.

The date of Margaret's birth, however, was not the 1849 estimate we had extrapolated from the 1861 census in the household of our John and "Mrs." Tully. Her date of birth had been given as November 25, 1875—not even close to the date we first observed.

Hold your horses about the discrepancy of her parents' identity, though, for in researching this Margaret Tully Baxter, there were two unusual details that gave me some wild thoughts. The first was that déjà vu feeling telling me I've seen that name before—even paired with that set of parents. The second was a detail which I only stumbled upon, once I looked up this Margaret's memorial on Find A Grave.

The volunteer who posted Margaret's information was helpfully thorough in placing a copy of the woman's obituary on the memorial. Going the extra mile, the volunteer also alerted me to a discrepancy: the Margaret who married Henry Baxter on May 8, 1889, most certainly could not have been a child born in 1875. And she wasn't. In the actual marriage record, "Maggie" provided her age as twenty three, yielding a year of birth closer to 1866—still not the 1849 of our John Tully's census entry, but certainly not 1875.

More important, though, was the discovery that, in this marriage record at least, this Margaret claimed her father's name was indeed John Tully. And the "Mrs." to go along with that John? Mary McGuire. While the witness to the marriage was conveniently someone named Michael Tully—her brother?—there are too many frayed ends to tie this story together and fasten it to our Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery.

And yet...

The reason the names of the couple Dennis Tully and Margaret Hurley sounded so familiar to me is that, in searching for my Denis and Margaret, I often ran into other trees containing those names. More than that, my husband has a Tully DNA match whose founding immigrant ancestors were named Dennis Tully and Margaret Hurley. In the past, I've always dismissed that as a case of errors in a paper trail, but the DNA match gives pause to reconsider. The fourteen year age discrepancy between our Denis Tully and his neighbor John Tully in the Canadian 1851 census could have indicated a cousin relationship between them, or an uncle to nephew. With a forty to fifty centiMorgan connection with this DNA match, we could be considering a third or fourth cousin connection—or as distant as an eighth cousin relationship, according to the Shared cM Project at DNA Painter. 

No matter how close or distant that connection may have been, stumbling upon this Margaret Tully Baxter—whoever she was—may help guide me back to another clue for the Tully family constellation in County Tipperary, Ireland, where the story started.  

Nice Thought . . .

 

A research project—at least for me—begins with a question. My goal is to find an answer to that question. The right answer, of course, would be a nice touch. In the case of tracing the lines related to my father-in-law's Irish ancestors Denis Tully and Margaret Flannery, it apparently also involves pursuing a twisted course.

Last week, we began inspecting the Irish Catholic baptismal records for the children of Denis and Margaret Tully in hopes of discovering, through their choice of godparents, the names of their own siblings. While that doesn't yet provide us with the names of their parents, it is at least a step in the right direction. 

From that effort, we learned that among the possibilities, there might be siblings named John Tully and Kitty Flannery. What was interesting to learn was that, following the route of Denis Tully and his family from County Tipperary in Ireland to the County of Brant in present-day Ontario, Canada, another family showed up in the 1851 census with some similarities in name and ages.

Tracing that family of John Tully, his incompletely labeled wife "Mrs." and their Irish-born daughter Mary beyond that Canadian 1851 census could lead us to further information to either confirm or reject the hypothesis that they were one and the same as the John and Kitty Tully in the parish of Ballina, back in Ireland. That, at least, was my thought.

As my father-in-law's Tully ancestors were wont to do, this Tully family did not seem to stay long in one place. By the time of the 1861 census in Brant County, our Denis was still living in the same location in the village of Paris, but gone were John Tully and his family. While there were possible matches in other locations in Canada, one likelihood was that John and Kitty may have been one of the first among the Tully family to migrate yet again, this time to the United States.

As it happened, there was a Tully family somewhat fitting the description, living in Detroit, Michigan, at the time of the 1870 U.S. census. With the head of the family named John, born about the same year as that indicated in the 1851 Canadian census, the household also included a wife by the name of Catherine—of which the diminutive "Kitty" would be a logical nickname. In addition, there was in that Detroit household a daughter named Margaret, who had been born in Canada about 1851—not quite the 1849 suggested by the Canadian census, but reasonably close.

Unfortunately, gone was the older sister Mary, who by then could have been married—or deceased. In her place was a younger child, this time a son by the name of Michael, born about 1853.

With this mixed bag of results, it seemed too inconclusive to tie together the three record sets concerning John and Kitty Tully, though I wasn't yet willing to concede that I was following a false lead.

My thinking at this point is to trace what can be found of this John and Catherine Tully in Detroit, their daughter Margaret and this new entry of a son named Michael, to see if any subsequent records might reveal more of their identities. Parents' names listed on the death record of either child—Margaret or Michael—could provide conclusive evidence, if we are on the right track. Otherwise, well, it's always helpful to know we've tested a hypothesis and the answer is "no."  

Double Duty

 

For a second month now, I've been working on piecing together the story of my father-in-law's Irish immigrant ancestors, but that is not the only project which has occupied my time. I've also spent a fair amount of time assembling the details on an extended family tree for my mother-in-law's roots. It is no surprise, then, as I arrive at another of my biweekly progress checks, to realize that the count on my in-laws' tree is zooming ahead.

That is a good sign, for two reasons. Not only do I hope to move beyond the stalemate where some brick wall ancestors currently have me stymied, but in piecing together a tree for my mother-in-law complete with collateral lines, the result allows the record to serve double duty with another project I'm tackling.

That project is to create a tree representing the descendants of early settlers in the county my mother-in-law once called home: Perry County, Ohio. All her direct ancestors called that place home sometime between the date of Ohio statehood—1803—and the years leading up to World War II. Because so many residents of that small county's communities have historically been related to each other in several ways, I chose that same time range to form the parameters for a volunteer DNA project I administer specifically for descendants of those families to compare their test results.

Creating that tree has become a task to untangle a spaghetti bowl of familial connections. The same surnames keep popping up in different branches of the family, coming close enough to demonstrate what is meant by "pedigree collapse." Beyond that research clue, getting to know the extended lines in one county over many generations has helped me get familiarized with the families living in that region, and how they weave in and out of multiple collateral lines over the decades.

Having worked on that project bit by bit over many years now, it's not surprising to see that my in-laws' tree now numbers 22,878 documented individuals, with 259 new names added in just the past two weeks. The tree has become a tool to help guide me through DNA matches who lead back to Perry County—not to mention, one way to allow me to feel like I'm at home in a county which I've only been able to visit two or three times in the past. And hopefully, with a little more work on one aggravating ancestral branch of that family, I should—someday—be able to negotiate my mother-in-law's matriline and make sense of those mitochondrial DNA exact matches which still have me stumped. 

That, however, will be a goal for another year.