Networking; In Which Is Found Aussie Relatives, A Cranky Cousin, And A Castle

     

     It's so annoying, you find a promising lead, you write an email, and you wait.  And you wait and wait.  But occasionally, you get lucky.  Most of our ancestors were not only children, they had siblings who married and had children of their own.  Every so often you find a descendant of one of those siblings, your cousins; and sometimes, if you're even luckier, those cousins have amazing stories to share.

      In my case, one such cousin lived in Australia!  I had no idea I had a cousin down under.  But when I found a DNA match whose tree contained the surname O'Dwyer and wrote to her, this is what I received in response--

"Hi Ellie, I live in Brisbane.  My great-grandmother Alice O'Dwyer arrived here in about 1876.  She was born in Tipperary about 1855.  Her father was Andrew O'Dwyer."  

     That was incredible!  I'm sure she meant to add another great to that description, but this is my family.  My third great-grandmother, also named Alice O'Dwyer, was the paternal aunt of this Alice.  Comparing notes with my DNA match was immensely helpful to my research.  Using Irish civil registrations, I was able to locate the younger Alice's family living in Churchfield, County Tipperary, the very same townland my grandma Alice lived in.

     Two incredible bits of luck came from the McGarr side of my family, one was an old letter shared with me by a cousin living in Florida.  Written by a relative who had known them, it contained a firsthand account of the children of John and Mary Kelly McGarr.  John was one of the earliest McGarrs in Auburn, New York arriving from Ireland in about 1840, well before the famine and was, I believe, the brother of my third-great-grandfather Daniel McGarr who remained in County Kildare.  This wonderful letter confirmed many facts I'd found through my research, while giving some insight into how family members regarded one another.  For instance, the author showed jealousy towards several of John's children who were financially successful, calling one, "the real snooty one", remarking that another married, "a fancy detective", and "the least I can say about Kate is she lost a child while in the south. She had plenty of money".  I wonder, what was the most she could have imparted about the unfortunate Kate, who actually lost three children in the south in quick succession from scarlet fever?  

     The other was a McGarr DNA match who sent me copies of family letters from her great-great-aunt, a native of Baltinglass, County Kildare along with a photo of her great-grandfather standing  in front of the shoe store he purchased in Rochester, New York after immigrating.  I live in a suburb of Rochester, enabling a visit with my new cousin, always a bonus. 

John Quigley left in front of his store

      My latest genealogical blessing came from another DNA match, this time on the Travers side who hailed from the Castledermot area of County Kildare.  Early Catholic records survive there, but many of them are so faded that page after page are completely illegible.  After introducing ourselves at Ancestry my cousin and I exchanged email addresses since Ancestry doesn't allow for sending images.  I sent her death certificates I had, and she sent me typed pages of family reminiscences and interviews along with a copy of the will her third-great-grandmother Catherine Bede, (wife of John Travers), made at Ballyvass; John being the brother of my third great-grandmother Mary Travers O'Hora.

      I'd found the civil registration of Catherine's 1887 death from accidental burns but always wondered about the circumstances.  Those family notes held the answer, Catherine was blind in her old age and her shawl had caught fire while at the hearth or possibly from a lit pipe.  The unfortunate lady died shortly after in the local infirmary whose employee reported her death.  I was never positive I had the right Catherine since no townland was given on the death certificate, just the infirmary's address, but with details from the notes, I now believe it's definitely her.

     There were other personal mentions in the Travers notes, like a reference to a family expression, "the Travis eye".  The author maintained this was a compliment akin to having a twinkle in one's eye.  Interestingly, Travis was the name used.  Another line caught my attention, the quote of an unnamed family member, "I can still look up the hill and see the castle".  There is something wistful, almost melancholic, about this line that captures my romantic imagination.  It was obviously a reference to Kilkea Castle that sits between Kilkea, where my third-great-grandmother Mary Travers was born, and Catherine's Ballyvass.

Kilkea Castle

     

     One could spend a lifetime researching and still not find details like the ones contained in a family's personal memories and letters.  My great good fortune to have connected with such generous researchers, happy to share what they have, more than makes up for all the queries that went unanswered. It also inspires me to keep writing those emails.   

     

The Man Who Vanished

     

Phantom--Something apparently seen, heard or sensed, but having no physical reality.  That definition accurately describes James M. Garner.  Since my visit last week to the first known home of my Garner family, Martha's Vineyard, I've been reviewing the sources of information I've acquired over the years while studying them.  

     Among the most informative is the 72-page War of 1812 Pension Application file for Thomas Garner Jr. that can be viewed free at Fold3.  That is where I found his place of birth and his age, along with verifying information about his daughters Clarissa (Lamphere) and Lucy (Robison), both of whom submitted depositions for the application and who settled in Summerhill, Cayuga, New York along with Thomas and his first wife Prudence Lamphere, who was their mother.  

     Contained in the file is a request dated June 1856 by Thomas asking for a replacement pension certificate, his having been destroyed by fire.  Three witnesses signed the request, his second wife Lany, a neighbor named Aaron Murphy, and James M. Garner.  I'd read those papers many times before, but it was only today I noticed James M. Garner's signature off to the side of the other two.

Signature of James M. Garner; three lines up from bottom on the left

     I immediately set about attempting to identify James M. Garner, but with no success, the man simply didn't exist.  I checked census records and found a James Gardner born between 1811 and 1820 living in Sempronius in 1840, about eight miles from Summerhill, that seemed promising, but he had disappeared from that place by 1850.  The census that year did show a James Gardiner born 1817 living in Niles, seventeen miles from Summerhill, but his birthplace was New York.  Thomas was in Vermont in 1817 where he married Prudence and his other three children were born.  None of the entries I found ticked all the boxes for age, residence and birthplace, ditto the 1855 New York census and the 1860, 1865, 1870, 1875, and 1880 censuses.

     I next checked the public family trees at Ancestry, then tried a search of the entire site--zilch.  Same result at Family Search, Google Books, and a broad Google search.  My favorite newspaper sites turned up nothing either.  This made no sense at all, we weren't talking ancient history here, James was alive in the 19th century.

     I'm at a loss as to where to look next.  I know James M. Garner existed, though it seems just long enough to witness Thomas Garner's signature before evaporating into thin air.  This has happened before; I once found a notice in an 1818 newspaper informing Erastus Galloway that he had an unclaimed letter waiting in the town I knew my Galloway family had recently moved to.  After years of searching, I've still never discovered a single thing about him.  Erastus was a family name, two members in that line named a child Erastus in later years and I'm sure there's a connection, but who the man with the letter was remains as elusive as James M.  But I'll be looking...

A Genealogy Vacation or, Nothing Compares To Being There

     I've just returned home from Martha's Vineyard; beaches, sunsets, and best of all, (other than family time), genealogy.  Does it get much better than that?  No. Unless of course one travels to Ireland.

     Ever since I learned that my 4th great-grandfather, Thomas Garner Jr., was born at Tisbury on Martha's Vineyard in 1773, to Thomas Sr. and his wife Ann Williams, I've been curious about how the family arrived on the island and just as importantly, why?  Martha's Vineyard, and the views it offers, are absolutely gorgeous; but why would a person choose to live in such an exposed and sometimes dangerous spot, (particularly during the Revolutionary War), surrounded on all sides by the North Atlantic?  I doubted it was the scenery that drew them.  Not being a native, I was at a loss as to how to  answer these questions but after much online research I had a good idea where to begin looking... the Martha's Vineyard Museum.

     After trudging through town in 80-degree temps the museum, at the top of a large hill, loomed before me.  There is a bus system, but it's still a hike from the stop to the museum.  Once inside though I easily found the research library presided over by a librarian with the delightful name of Bow Van Ripper.  After some discussion and my mention of another Garner close in age to Thomas Sr. who had married Timothy Coffin on Martha's Vineyard, Bow offered an intriguing insight, maybe Thomas was from Nantucket?  He informed me the surnames Garner, Coffin and Williams were old, well known names on that neighboring island.

     This would actually make sense.  Volume three of The History of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Massachusetts, written by Charles E. Banks and available at Family Search, contains a paragraph about Thomas "Gardner" and his wife Ann Williams.  The author notes they resided on Mill Road in Tisbury but were both strangers to the island with Ann being among the first Williams found in Vineyard records, on the occasion of her marriage to Thomas in 1768.  Looking through the records I could see there weren't many Williams in that place, with none born there until the mid1840's, and those three births were all to the same couple, John and Roxena Williams. 

     The surname Garner has several variations, the most common being Gardner though I also saw it spelled Garnder in Nantucket vital records where there were numerous Gardner's. Those last two spellings were the ones I found in Nantucket records, but from other online sources I could see there were indeed people spelling it "Garner", living on Nantucket in the 18th century; I can only assume they were recorded in vital records under one of the name variants.  Vital records from Martha's Vineyard show the surname was much less common there, there were only two Gardner births, those of Thomas and Elizabeth Gardner, (with Garner in parenthesis), the children of my Thomas and Ann born1773 and1776 respectively.

     One of the online sources that showed Garners on Nantucket is a site picturing the newly restored home Richard Garner Jr., who settled in Salem, built on Nantucket for his son Richard Gardner, a whaling captain who was lost at sea.  A current site including both spellings of the surname! It's conceivable my Thomas Garner was a grandson of the drowned captain or of John Gardner who was a brother of Richard Jr. who also came to Nantucket.

 Built 1722-1724 on Nantucket by Richard Garner, Jr. for his son Richard Gardner 3rd

     Other vital and military records contained many instances where the two names seemed to be used almost interchangeably.  But of course, there were also individuals whose surname actually was Gardner, people not related to me; untangling them would be difficult if not impossible.

     I had hoped to stroll down Mill Road but for several reasons that was not to be.  Firstly, in the year 1892 the town of Tisbury was divided into Tisbury and West Tisbury.  That meant in Thomas' day Tisbury was much larger than now.  There was a Mill Road in West Tisbury, also the area of oldest English settlement, so assuming the road's name hadn't changed in the intervening years, today's West Tisbury is where Thomas actually lived.  The other problem was West Tisbury is largely residential, I didn't spot any tourist buses heading there and it was too far to walk, especially since I wasn't convinced today's Mill Road was the same as Thomas and Ann's Mill Road.  My family had already humored me with a trip to the research library so I contented myself with a glimpse of the West Tisbury area from the ferry.

     Though I didn't learn many new, definite facts about Thomas Garner Sr., I did get to see his island, and the Tisbury librarian telling me my family names were common on Nantucket was major! Who knows how long it would have taken me to figure that out on my own?  Too, I had never considered my family may have included whalers.  Seeing Martha's Vineyard and its sandy soil in person vividly illustrated how difficult farming would have been there and brought home why residents turned to whaling.  By the 1730's however, the whale population around the two islands had been seriously depleted, forcing whalers to search further afield for their prey.  Now voyages could last for years, which might explain the small size of Thomas Jr.'s family.

     Another discovery was the Quaker connection.  One of the reasons the elder Richard Garner left Salem was the persecution of Quakers in that place. Many of his coreligionists did the same, indeed, the birth records of the Garner children were found in Quaker records.  All this gives me several new avenues for research, not to mention a reason to visit Nantucket next year.