Tallying Who Made it to Chicago

 

Seeking information on the roots of a great-grandmother doesn't seem to be such a difficult project, so let me give you an illustration of where my research is stuck, when looking for my father-in-law's own great-grandmother, Anna Flanagan Malloy. I'm not quite clear on just how she made it to Chicago, but I do know she was in that city by 1860. Along with Anna was her thirteen year old daughter, Catherine Malloy. The two of them lived with forty year old William Flanagan, also an Irish immigrant, who I later discovered was Anna's brother.

The tally for the Flanagans who moved from Ireland to Chicago doesn't end there, though. Looking through old newspaper clippings saved by the family, I eventually stumbled across a funeral notice for William which not only identified Catherine as William's niece, but named another niece, as well.

That niece was named Johanna Lee. Like the others, she was born in Ireland, but by the time I had discovered her in Chicago, she was married and had several children. Who Johanna's father was, I have yet to discover, but I have seen mentions of another name linked to the Flanagan family which cause me to question whether he might be the one who was Johanna's father.

That man was named Edward Flanagan. And though I haven't had much luck tracing him in past years, perhaps this time, it will be worth my while to revisit the question. After all, besides the addition of more and more records online each year, search tool improvements via artificial intelligence and transcriptions of handwritten documents may bring us just the documents we need to find the answer to this research question.

This week, we'll look at what can be found about this Edward in Chicago records, then make the leap across the ocean to see whether there are any clusters of these names in records from the area where Anna Flanagan Malloy once lived in Ireland.  

Six is All we Get

 

If you are looking for clues to help break through brick walls, a surefire way to overcome research roadblocks is to look to DNA. In the case of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan and her mysterious fleeing husband Stephen Malloy, however, six DNA clues is all we get. Worse, there are no guesses on the ThruLines tool as to who their parents might have been. Nobody knows, apparently—at least, nobody who has already tested their DNA.

Of those six Flanagan and Malloy DNA matches we get, however, none is a distant relative. All matches descend from Anna's only daughter Catherine, who eventually became the wife of Chicago cop John Tully. With Catherine's six children, though, the possibilities are still limited. Only three married and had children: William, Mary Monica, and Agnes, my father-in-law's mother.

From those three children came the descendants who eventually became my husband's DNA matches. But even that became a limited resource. Looking at the possibilities, I began to wonder whether using a different form of DNA testing—mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA for short—might help uncover clues about Anna Flanagan Malloy's Irish past.

Here were the possibilities. From William came his only child, one daughter whose frail constitution didn't prohibit her from having children of her own, but each of those granddaughters of William chose to become nuns, perhaps inspired by the sobering loss of their mother. Agnes, the baby of Catherine Malloy Tully's family, raised six healthy children—five sons and one intrepid daughter whose only child was a son; again, no resource for possible mtDNA testing. But Mary Monica was a different story.

Mary Monica had one of those storybook romances from that bygone era. The family's doctor, who lived down the street and was far more a part of the local community than what we experience in current times, mentioned that his brother in Ohio had unexpectedly lost his wife and mother of his two young children, a toddler daughter and infant son. Would Mary Monica consider...?

The answer was yes, and Mary Monica set out from her home in bustling Chicago to a lifetime in a far different setting, that of rural Perry County, Ohio. From that union with widower Dennis McGonagle came nine children, all with different stories to share of the lives which unfolded after that move.

Four of those six DNA matches come from that same storybook romance. Two of those four are actively researching their roots and have been in touch with me to compare notes as we struggle with that brick wall impasse of Anna Flanagan and her husband Stephen Malloy. And though he may not realize it, another DNA match is the grandson of the Tully descendant who had, in a past generation, become the designated family recipient of the original letter from Stephen to Anna on the eve of his unexplained flight from Ireland to the New World, just before his disappearance. (A poor photocopy of that original letter is all that's left to witness that original goodbye between husband and wife.)

Meanwhile, what can a researcher do? I keep watching the autosomal DNA results at each of the companies where we have tests—and hope a matrilineal descendant of Anna might be willing to take a mitochondrial DNA test.

And I keep adding to the family tree in hopes of finding more distant cousins, especially those whose roots may reach back a generation before Stephen and Anna. After all, in the past two weeks, I've documented 395 more family connections on my in-laws' tree, which now has 40,615 individuals. And though the DNA matches come dribbling in at about two or three for each biweekly period, perhaps someday, one match will make that connection we've been waiting for.    

Getting it Right

 

Genealogy has come a long way during the decades in which I've been involved. Just reviewing my old notes from the 1990s reminds me of how spoiled we researchers are, now. Still, understanding how people went about finding the details of their family history pre-Internet—and certainly pre-computing—gives us a fuller appreciation for what previous generations were able to accomplish in finding their roots.

That said, I ran across a detail this week as I began work on the Flanagan family for my Twelve Most Wanted for July, and it prompted me to see what our role should be in carrying forward the research effort: we are a part in getting it right for those who follow behind us.

I found the glitch when I reviewed my old posts on my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan Malloy. Anna, an immigrant from Ireland, was living in Chicago with her daughter Catherine and her brother William by 1860.

It turned out that William Flanagan did not make it to the turn of the century. It was the monument at his grave which gifted me with the information on how to trace the Flanagan family in Ireland—but that same monument somehow stumped another researcher from a previous time period.

During that earlier time period, a man by the name of Tom Cook took it upon himself to gather useful data that family history researchers might find handy. Among other tasks, Mr. Cook went through the cemeteries of Chicago, transcribing headstones. He compiled the information in an unpublished manuscript, which many researchers have since appreciated.

Eventually, that material came to be known as Chicago Irish Families. Subscribers to Ancestry.com may have seen the online version, a database now containing material from 1875 to 1925, although the original included material from 1831 onward.

William Flanagan's headstone transcription was included in that online version. The bulk of the transcription contained material just as I've mentioned in previous posts—except for one detail. According to the database—and, I presume, the original manuscript—William "died Aug. 14, 1898, aged 80 years."

Perhaps the headstone needed cleaning on the day that Tom Cook arrived at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery. For whatever reason, he read—or mistakenly copied—the date as 1898, but the year of William's death was actually 1893. That, of course, throws off William's year of birth as well, since only his age was given, not the year of his birth. The correct date of death is evident from a picture I had taken of the headstone years ago on a trip to Chicago.

Realizing the difference, the next step is to see if I can add the photo of William's headstone to the Find A Grave memorial that has already been posted, based on the original Cook manuscript—not to mention, add an additional photo showing the full height of the monument. Perhaps that will help future Flanagan researchers who are also looking for clues to point them in the right direction about this family's origin.

Patriot Ancestors, Present Kin, and Pyrotechnics

 

Holidays can sometimes connect us with thoughts about specific ancestors. For Independence Day last year, I mentioned bringing an ancestor to the Fourth of July parade—in memory, that is. Those of us who descend from D.A.R. Patriots can keep them in mind during holidays such as this.

For 2025, however, this holiday may be somewhat different. At least for those in my city, a tragic event in a remote northern part of our state not only wiped out the supplies on order for our own fireworks display, but may have cost the lives of several employees at the site of the original explosions and fire—a sobering realization.

Though without the usual after-dark festivities of the holiday, I already know how the day will go. I'll enjoy a morning walk before meeting a friend over coffee, then spend the afternoon and evening with family at home. Maybe, if we're lucky, the fireworks display for the minor league ball team will still be on for the weekend, and can fill in for the city's lack of pyrotechnics. Whether their program is on or cancelled, however, it helps me realize how unexpected events can shift our view of what's important and what's not.

At our genealogy society's social meeting last week, we all seemed to be on the same page with that thought. Members weren't concerned as much with getting the names and dates right—though that is important—as digging far deeper to find what really mattered to their ancestors.

We may never fully grasp such concepts, of course, but we can try. Just because an ancestor lived one hundred years ago—or, for that matter, two hundred and forty nine years ago—doesn't mean they never lived a life with the same kinds of hopes and disappointments as we do in the day to day experiences of our own lives. Patriot ancestor or present kin, we all have those moment-to-moment ups and downs of life. Being able to see our ancestors in that light has a way of bringing them to life for us, if only for the flash of a moment's glimmer of understanding.

About Those Flanagans

 

Tracing my father-in-law's Flanagan roots in Chicago was an obvious starting point; Chicago was home to four generations of his family history. Chasing those Flanagans anywhere, however, may turn out to be a challenge.

As far as the surname Flanagan goes, the first problem we'll encounter is one of spelling. Far too many variants on the surname's spelling can make for research roadblocks. From Flanagan to Flanigan may be a change so slight as to not be noticed (except for the most ardent proofreaders), but add in variants such as Flannagan or Flanaghan and it's time to start using the wildcard asterisk in online searches. Then, too, for those Irish immigrants who, due to laws in place in times past, had no idea how to spell their own surname because they couldn't even read, who was to know if a clerk or government official spelled their name wrong?

Spelling woes aside, there is another challenge facing us in chasing my father-in-law's Flanagan forebears: the sheer number of people who share that family name.

I've always realized that Flanagan was a common surname, but I thought I'd better look for some statistics on that issue—and found out the surname isn't as common as I had thought. Still, in the United States, where my father-in-law's Flanagan ancestors immigrated, the Flanagan surname, at least a decade ago, was ranked just below the top one thousand surnames. Putting it another way, roughly one in every eight thousand people has the surname Flanagan. I guess there's not as many Flanagans here as I had assumed.

When we look at the numbers back in Ireland, it appears that—at least now—the Flanagan surname is ranked the ninety-fourth most common in the country. In other words, one out of every 572 Irish residents claims the surname Flanagan. 

To give those numbers a bit more granularity, I found a website which illustrates the spread and frequency of the surname by maps. While I am not conversant in the specifics of Poor Law Union locations—or even electoral divisions—the website Historic Stats provides maps demonstrating the distribution of the surname Flanagan in Ireland.

Just eyeballing those maps, I get the vague sense that our Flanagan immigrants may have come from one of the areas more densely populated with Flanagans, but I'm not so sure yet. But before we can get to the point of making an educated guess on that count, we need to head back to Chicago to set the record straight there on some Flanagan details.

 

The Flanagans in Chicago: What Little I Know

 

It was sometime before 1860 when Anna Flanagan Malloy arrived in Chicago from her homeland in County Limerick, Ireland. I'm not sure how she got there, or even why she chose Chicago, but there she was in the 1860 census to let me know that at least she made it.

Along with her teenaged daughter Catherine, Anna Malloy resided with a forty year old Irishman named William Flanagan, for that time period, a scandalous thought—until you realize that William was Anna's own brother.

It was William, confirmed bachelor to his dying day, who years ago gifted me with my first clue about tracing the Flanagan line. Found in an old Chicago cemetery, the monument erected to his memory proudly declared that he was a "native of Parish Ballygran" in County Limerick, Ireland. 

Parish "Ballygran," as it turned out, was actually Parish Ballyagran, lying toward the southern border of County Limerick, just above County Cork. That discovery, along with further information linking William to a niece, Johanna Flanagan Lee, brought my Flanagan count in Chicago up to four people: William, his sister Anna, her daughter Catherine, and his other niece Johanna.

There was, however, at least one other Flanagan family member in Chicago. One may have been Johanna's own father, whom I have yet to identify. Whether that father was one and the same with Edward Flanagan, whose name has popped up as I've worked on this line over the years, I can't yet say. However, I'm convinced it's time to use the network-building capabilities available at Ancestry.com to explore just who Edward was, and whether we can find anything more that would link the right Edward Flanagan to this line. 

After all, there were a lot of Flanagans in Chicago back then. Hopefully, sorting them all out will help us find the right one for this family.

Headed to Ireland this Month — Digitally

 

As confident as I was last month, in battling brick wall ancestor Simon Rinehart, that the ever-expanding reach of technology would find me some answers, this month brings me a boatload of doubts about such successes. For one thing, we're bidding adieu to the well-worn research paths in Perry County, Ohio, and launching across an ocean to a country known for catastrophic loss of documentation. To compound the issues, our research target for July is a land also known for its preference in selecting the same, oft-repeated names for its many children.

For July, we're headed to Ireland—digitally, at least. With this month's research project, we shift from my mother-in-law's American ancestors to my father-in-law's Irish roots. With a family history full of stories and amply supplied with brick wall ancestors, his is a collection of emigrants' memories with not much more to go on.

Perhaps it is for this reason that, unlike others of my Twelve Most Wanted projects, this month I didn't select just one ancestor's name, but a family of ancestors: the Flanagans. I am hoping that the FAN Club approach—or cluster research—will help me sort through the family and associates of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Anna Flanagan Malloy. She is the young mother who, at home in County Limerick in 1849, received a letter from her husband who informed her of his abrupt departure for Boston.

I am thankful that Anna kept that letter for the rest of her life, passing it down to her daughter, who then passed it along to her descendants. If not for that letter, I think it would be near impossible to have traced this family. At least with the letter, I had a start. But then what? I have hardly found any guidance to trace the family back just one generation.

With this coming month, I will be tracing the possible Flanagan siblings who also emigrated from Ireland, especially one, possibly named Edward, who eventually moved to Chicago along with his sister Anna and another brother, William.

We'll start by reviewing what we found, the last time I visited this research problem, then see what can be located in documentation on each of these Irish immigrant Flanagans, both in Chicago and back in their Irish homeland.