Still Off the Shelf: Irish Migrants in the Canadas

 

Some books take time to absorb. Back in July, as I was closing out my search for the Flannery branch of my father-in-law's roots, I received a well-recommended book which promised to broaden my thinking on the subject of Irish immigration. Since I've been traveling this summer, I took the four hundred page book with me on trips where I knew I'd have time to read (think long flights across the continent). And Irish Migrants in the Canadas certainly did give me food for thought.

One concept behind the book was author Bruce S. Elliott's intent to examine the stories behind Irish immigrants from one specific place—County Tipperary in Ireland—during a specific time period and headed to a specific location across the Atlantic. As the foreword explains, rather than discussing that migration as an "abstract process or an aggregate phenomenon," the book's goal was to focus on actual migrants and "trace the lives of a significant number of real people—not aggregated census numbers."

Thus, the author's breakthrough work pinpointed the stories of nearly eight hundred families on their journey from Ireland to Canada and beyond. That "beyond" is key for my father-in-law's family, as is likely for many of Irish descent who not only traveled further inland in Canada, but also migrated south to the United States, as did my father-in-law's ancestors. Many researchers, I'm sure, don't consider this possibility for their American ancestors, though I noticed through Gail Dever's blog, Genealogy à la carte, that an upcoming presentation to be delivered by Canadian Kathryn Lake Hogan for the Fairfax (Virginia) Genealogical Society reveals that there is a lot to be considered with this possibility.

What I am valuing about this book is the depth of thought put into the historical context of these Irish immigrants. Though I likely will not find any mention of my father-in-law's specific ancestors (spoiler: I already peeked at the index of names), the exercise of following the author's thinking behind his research approach will be excellent for developing a sense of what is necessary to understand about any given ancestral situation.

Though this month I am far afield of those Flannery ancestors headed to Ontario, focusing instead on why the Kelly family chose to route through New Orleans to Indiana, I believe the same research discipline will yield helpful details by broadening my perspective. The book may be slow reading, but I am tagging several passages with helpful reminders of how Bruce Elliott approached his study, and contemplating how I can adapt that method to use in search of the story behind each of my ancestral immigrant families.

Wondering Why

 

There comes a time when chasing our mystery ancestors that we begin wondering why. Why, for instance, did John Stevens, my father-in-law's great-grandfather, choose the port of New Orleans as his landing place after leaving his Irish homeland? Why did John Stevens' future wife, Catharine Kelly, and the entire Kelly family, also choose to head to New Orleans? And why did his brother-in-law, Michael Creahan, future husband of Catharine's sister Bridget Kelly, also head from Ireland to New Orleans?

When it comes to wondering why, I propose a universal resolution to that state of puzzlement: search for an answer. That, in effect, was what I did: look for reasons why these Irish immigrants to the United States didn't take the usual route to New York City—or even the less expensive alternative of moving to the British colony in Canada. That search, in fact, led to a productive exploration of this alternate destination.

As I discovered, the route from Ireland to New Orleans was a choice exercised by the Irish for almost one hundred years before the famine took its toll on the population of Ireland. It turns out there were logical reasons for such a draw. For one thing—a reason too easily dismissed in our less-reverent age, perhaps—the Catholic majority of that southern American port city was a draw to the persecuted Catholics in Ireland. Then, too—especially prior to American acquisition of the territory—New Orleans was once beholden to a nation which was not British, perhaps a draw for those Irish weary of their struggle with their English overlords.

Between 1842 and 1864, according to one estimate, 110,000 Irish entered the port of New Orleans. Another estimate pegs the number at 425,000 for Irish arriving in New Orleans. No matter what the count, the influx of Irish immigrants in New Orleans made the city the number two destination in the United States for Irish arrivals, second only to New York City.

When they arrived at the port in New Orleans, many Irish chose to move on to midwestern destinations, but a good number stayed and worked where they landed, just as did Michael Creahan. This, however, was not the easiest option in the long run. Given the climate and hazards of the environment there, combined with the usual jobs taken by many Irish immigrants—working at the port, or digging canals through mosquito-infested swamps—many died of yellow fever, cholera, or malaria. In 1850, for example, one New Orleans hospital admitted 18,476 residents suffering from such diseases, of whom 11,130 were Irish immigrants.

Another possible inducement to choose New Orleans as their destination might have been the cost of getting there. As one resource put it, cotton ships from New Orleans bound for Liverpool unloaded, then "filled their holds with human ballast for the return trip." The fare—for those who actually reached their destination—was a bargain.

Discovering these details through a little bit of research into a "side topic" helped enlighten me on the reasons why the Creahans, Kellys, and Stevenses might have chosen a destination far different than the one I assumed would be a more likely choice. It doesn't, however, provide me the documentation for their arrival—a task which we still will need to face up to in the coming days. More important than the paper proof that they arrived here in America—we already see signs of that occurrence in other records—what we need is a listing of the family constellations in each party's traveling group. And—though I doubt I will find it—some nod to the townlands they once called home in their particular county in Ireland.

At this stage, pre-discovery, at least we can hope.

Tracing Michael

 

There are some Irish immigrants in my father-in-law's heritage whose age seemed to be rather fluid. When they were young, they were very, very young—but when they were old, they were ancient.

Take Michael Creahan, the husband of Bridget Kelly. Bridget was the sister of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Catharine who, like that sister, died young leaving several children behind. Depending on the record, Michael was said to have been born somewhere between 1824 and 1827, or even to have a date of birth as late as 1842, according to his death certificate—and yet his 1915 obituary states his age at passing was eighty eight. It is only because of other identifying details that we'll be able to trace Michael Creahan over time, and hopefully glean the missing details about his journey to Lafayette, Indiana.

It is a good thing that we have some clues to guide us in that paper chase. Prime among those clues was the statement in Michael's obituary that he had spent ten years working in New Orleans before proceeding up the American waterways to Indiana. It was not lost on me that that was the same route followed by Bridget Kelly's own family, as well as the route taken by the future husband of Bridget's sister Catharine, John Stevens. You can see now what had put me in mind of the F.A.N. Club concept for this extended family. 

With Michael Creahan's timeline, as given in his obituary, it might serve me well to review whatever passenger records still exist for the port of New Orleans. Arriving in America in 1847, if we can safely extrapolate from the details given in his obituary, Michael did not immediately depart for Lafayette, but remained in New Orleans to work for ten years.

It is clear from the 1860 census, where he appeared with his wife Bridget and his Indiana-born one year old daughter Ellen, that he had been in Lafayette since at least 1858. Looking ten years ahead provides us more useful details to help in tracing Michael: the 1870 census, while showing the household after the loss of his wife, includes additional family members Bridget Creahan, his eighty four year old mother, and Patrick Creahan, likely his older brother.

These additional names may help identify the right Michael Creahan in passenger records—if the family traveled together—and locate them within the mass of Irish immigrants remaining in New Orleans for the 1850 census. And if we play our F.A.N. Club cards right, perhaps that will include a turn at locating the rest of the Kelly family in New Orleans, as well—perhaps even the impossible-to-find immigrant John Stevens.

When the FAN Club Keeps Calling

 

Sorting through siblings sometimes uncovers a missing member of the family, as we saw yesterday in tracing the unexpected niece in bachelor Matthew Kelly's 1880 household. We discovered that Matthew had a sister who died as a married woman with four young children. As it turns out, though that Kelly sister, Bridget, died before the 1870 census, we can still learn a lot about her family—particularly her husband—by following his record through the rest of his own life.

There is a reason for chasing after that seemingly unrelated person. Yes, as an in-law, Bridget's husband Michael Creahan would not likely be a blood relative of the Kelly line I'm working on. However, I'm banking on that one reason for continuing the search: the possibility that, even in the family's "F.A.N. Club," we may find ourselves led to some clues about further family connections.

That F.A.N. Club premise is calling my name quite loudly right now, and for good reason. Just taking a brief look at what I could find on Michael Creahan, I may have run across some leads. Thanks to the Find A Grave volunteer who transcribed his obituary onto his memorial on that website, I learned a few details about Michael's journey to his final home in Lafayette, Indiana. That record I confirmed by finding a similar version of the May 17, 1915, obituary which was published in the Bloomington Evening World in the Indiana town where Michael's daughter had moved.

We'll talk more about Michael Creahan's obituary tomorrow, but here are some details which made me want to look further at documenting the steps along his way to America. First, the obituary mentioned that Michael Creahan was from Limerick. While the obituary didn't specify whether that meant the city of Limerick or County Limerick, it did add that Michael had left his homeland about 1847, and at that time of emigration he was twenty years of age.

Another point brought out in Michael's obituary was that, having arrived in America, he spent all but ten years living in Lafayette, Indiana. Those other ten years? That was when Michael was working in New Orleans, bringing to mind the familiar immigration route of some other members of the extended Kelly family. Could Michael have been an early arrival among his family members, sending funds back for their eventual voyages to join him in the New World? Or did Michael actually follow the path because others from among his associates and neighbors had already been that way before him?

That's why the F.A.N. Club concept is tapping me on the shoulder: family, friends, associates, or former neighbors could have influenced Michael's decision to leave home for, eventually, Lafayette, Indiana, via the route others from Ireland had taken, through New Orleans and up the river waterways of the central United States.

Michael Creahan's obituary was a tempting starting point, but there are some other details we'll look at tomorrow to see whether we can glean any further clues on what brought all these Irish immigrants to Lafayette, Indiana, by the 1850s.

When Stumped by Ancestors, Keep Searching

 

On a mission to find a family member—any family member—who could provide clues as to where the immigrant Kelly family once lived in Ireland, we've run across a puzzle: who was A. M. Crahan? We've found the children of widow Mary Kelly and her deceased husband James handily all reported in the same household for the 1860 census: sons Matthew and Thomas, plus daughters Rose and Ann. We already know the three grandchildren Mary was caring for were the children of her deceased daughter Catharine Kelly Stevens, and we were even able to spot the youngest of those grandchildren in the Kelly household for the 1880 census, long after Mary's own passing in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. But when we look more closely at the Kelly family entry in that 1880 census, we're stumped by the appearance of another relative: a thirteen year old niece named A. M. Crahan. Who was she? More importantly, who was her mother?

The plain response to such unexpected discoveries is: when stumped by ancestors, we simply need to keep searching. Hopefully, there is an answer out there. Somewhere. But it sometimes takes quite a bit of  looking before we run into the finding.

I tackled this messy question several years ago. I won't repeat all the steps in the discovery process here, as my point now is to gather all I can find on the Kelly siblings of Catharine. It is they who, if anyone would, might point the way back to their home in Ireland, wherever it was. Yet of the four siblings found in the 1860 census, we've since discovered that Matthew and Rose died unmarried. The appearance of this Crahan niece tells us that there was another Kelly sibling not listed in that 1860 household. Who was she?

A woman married before the 1860 enumeration, whoever she was, she was gone before the time of the 1870 census. Through a long series of steps, I discovered the woman's husband was named Michael Creahan, and the daughter's initials—"A. M.," as she was listed in the Kelly household for the 1880 census—stood for Anna M. Creahan. Her missing mother, who died in 1869, was the former Bridget Kelly.

So there was another Kelly sibling, showing me that it sometimes takes a lot of effort to track down all the collateral lines in a research problem. Perhaps there will be even more siblings to discover in this Kelly family. But for now, as I review this discovery, I realize that Bridget's husband Michael Creahan, himself,  might have some clues to help us in our search for more details on where the Kelly family once lived in Ireland.

When There are Too Few Matches

 

It is sometimes surprising to me to see how different the count is for DNA matches from different ancestral lines. The other day I mentioned working on my mother-in-law's Snider/Snyder line, where her ThruLines results (through her testing proxy, my husband) boast well over two hundred cousins—and then I scrolled down the list to see how many DNA matches there were for my father-in-law's second great-grandfather, James Kelly.

The result? A puny eight matches. Where were all the Kelly matches? Did no one among those descendants decide to test their DNA?

As I pore over the documentation for this Kelly family, I keep thinking there were far too few matches for the number of siblings Catharine Kelly Stevens had. Of course, I have to be doubly careful when analyzing these Kelly DNA matches, not only because the surname is such a common Irish name, but because my father-in-law actually descended from two entirely separate Kelly lines. But bearing that in mind, I still would have presumed James and Mary Kelly would have had far more descendants than they had.

Here's the overview, mostly drawn from the same 1860 census where we found the widow Mary in the household of her (presumably) oldest son, Matthew—along with her motherless grandchildren James, John Kelly, and William Stevens, found on the subsequent page. Matthew, then age thirty eight, was named in that census along with Rose, age thirty three, then Thomas, age twenty three, and finally Ann, age twenty one.

At first glance, it might be easy to assume, based on ages given, that Rose was Matthew's wife, and Ann was Thomas' wife. One could guess that Matthew and Thomas could have been brothers—but it is hard to tell what the family constellation might have been, given that there was only the most minimal of marriage information recorded for that census (whether anyone was married within the year).

With a record like the 1860 census, it takes comparing notes with other documents to construct the family's story more accurately. That there was some sort of relationship with the three Stevens boys was evident by their placement in that household, to be sure, but we'd need to look elsewhere to learn more about who, exactly, might belong in the now-deceased Catharine Kelly Stevens' collateral lines.

Fortunately, though I can't find Matthew Kelly in the 1870 census yet, he was still in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, for the 1880 census. And the 1880 census marked the starting point for recording family relationships, providing us the information that Rose was certainly not his wife; she was Matthew's sister. 

Furthermore, as we noted the other day, the youngest Stevens son, William, was also in the Kelly household in 1880, this time solidly identified as Matthew's nephew. At the time of Matthew's death a few years later, the local newspaper's report of his passing also noted his relationship to William, as we can see from the work of a Find A Grave volunteer, who posted the clipping on Matthew's memorial online. That same simple newspaper entry also confirmed that Matthew, up to the time of his death, was a bachelor.

If, like Rose in the 1860 enumeration, Ann was also an unmarried Kelly sibling, we begin to see why the number of possible descendants who could be candidates for DNA testing might be limited. And yet, that 1880 census provides us with another tantalizing clue: an additional member of the Kelly household, A. M. Crahan, identified as a niece. If she was Matthew's niece, yet not a Stevens descendant, which Kelly sibling claimed this child?

Though it gave us a start at piecing together the Kelly family constellation, that 1860 census apparently didn't reveal all the collateral lines of our Catharine Kelly Stevens. You know what that means: it's time to search for further Kelly connections.

When it's Time to Compare

 

Could a simple change of background color be all it takes to make me sit up and take notice of surroundings? 

Since I've been working on my father-in-law's Kelly ancestors, I thought I'd take a peek at the latest DNA matches via Ancestry's ThruLines tool. As I always do, I clicked on the icon for Ancestry, then chose the drop-down menu for DNA results to select ThruLines. I was on a mission to find all Kelly matches and nothing was going to get in my way.

I thought.

How is it that a little change of color on the website's display can suddenly make an oh-so-familiar screen look completely different? I clicked on ThruLines on that drop-down menu, but a different looking page came up. It was labeled "DNA Compare."

Hmmm, I thought, That's not what I was looking for. Must have clicked the wrong choice, I thought. I'll go back and try again.

That's when I saw it: the "NEW" button next to the word "Compare." 

Funny, I hadn't noticed that before—but a Google search told me the Ancestry blog had written up that "DNA Compare" on February 24, 2023. How did I miss that?

For the most part, the offerings under "DNA Compare" include "Regions"—comparing estimated ethnicity percentages with selected DNA matches—and "Ancestral Journeys," which focuses on immigrant communities' destinations or origins. In addition, for a limited time, a third comparison is made with "world class athletes," possibly a nod to this past summer's newsworthy sporting events.

While those categories were admittedly fun to peruse, I didn't find any eye-opening stunners. There was really no surprise to learn that I share similar ethnic backgrounds with those close relatives who also decided to test their DNA at Ancestry.com. Perhaps if I had been an adoptee still struggling to determine the identity of my birth parents, this might have been a useful tool. At this point, though, I'd peg such offerings as similar to what, in a previous century, might have been called "parlor games." Fun divertissement but not really useful.

On the other hand, being able to compare what our matches share with each other on a more basic level would be helpful. That, however, is the domain of a different set of offerings: the Ancestry Pro Tools. I haven't sprung for that additional cost yet, intending first to wring out all the information already available to me concerning those DNA matches. I prefer to complete the basic work first before upgrading.

Meanwhile, chasing those elusive Kelly roots may indeed call for a DNA assist, but I'll first be doing my comparisons with the basic tools available. For those whose intent in testing was to do the work in finding matches based on centiMorgan counts and large segments of shared genetic material, what's needed to complete the task is, for the most part, already there.

As I work through the matches, I'm not finding any surprises yet, but I did notice there weren't very many matches linked to this Kelly line to begin with: only eight for my father-in-law's Kelly line, compared with over two hundred matches for one of my mother-in-law's ancestral lines. Sometimes, there just aren't enough candidates out there for comparisons, no matter how impressive—or fun—the available research tools may be.