This Took Me Most Of The Day/The Story Of Margaret Steine And Thomas O'Hora

     

     This past week I've been busy getting the information I've collected on the extended family of my 3rd great-grandfather James O'Hora, who was born at Ricketstown, County Carlow, into my online tree. James and his brothers came to America during the famine, settling in Auburn, New York with James later moving on to Manchester, New York.  Things were going fine until I began entering data for his brother Michael and Michael's wife Margaret Welsh, who remained in Auburn.  In my old PAF, which was the genealogy software Family Search used to offer, I had Michael's son Henry O'Hora (1872-1909) married to Margaret Steine with seven female children.  But all the trees on Ancestry had Margaret married to Thomas O'Hora, with the girls being his daughters???  And there was a census record, 1910, to back this up.

    However, I had baptismal records from Holy Family in Auburn copied by a cousin which named Henry and Margaret Steine as the parents of the seven girls.  Since I didn't compile the list of baptisms myself, I wondered if perhaps my cousin had made a mistake in copying them.  But all seven?  Also, there were two Auburn censuses, 1900 and 1905 showing Henry and Margaret O'Hora as the girl's parents.  Then too, I had the index on Cayuga County GenWeb showing the marriage of Margaret Steine to Henry O'Hora at St. Mary's in Auburn in 1892.  Luckily, unlike most of the numerous O'Horas in Auburn, Margaret and Henry had chosen some unique names for their girls, among them were a Gertrude, an Agnes, and a Josephine.  The census records ALL showed the correct names and correct ages for the girls--but with two different fathers with the same surname.  And, Thomas was enumerated with his parents in 1900 while the oldest daughter of Margaret's was born in 1893, Thomas couldn't be their father could he?

     Something was really off here.  I spent an hour, (at least), looking for other census records and hints on Ancestry but nothing got any clearer. I then began reading through the notes in the PAF file to see what might turn up.  I hadn't done anything with this branch in years and could easily have forgotten something.  I studied Henry first and saw that I had noted a city directory of Auburn which gave his brother Thomas' address as the same as Henry and Margaret's.  Could it be...

     A theory began forming in my head, if Thomas and Margaret were already living together at the time of Henry's death perhaps they had married?  I turned to the New York Marriage Index but couldn't find an entry for the two.  Darn, a perfectly good theory debunked.  But!  I kept at it and found this, a Margaret "Stine" had married Thomas "P. Ohora" on 30 September 1909, in Auburn!  The search engine must have been temperamental today and refused the surnames Steine and O'Hora even though I did not check the "exact" box.  There it was in black and white; fifty-five days after Henry's death his widow Margaret had married his brother Thomas.  Which brings up a whole new set of questions, but I'm NOT going there.

     Margaret's marriage to Thomas lasted a little less than nine months.  On the afternoon of June 18, 1910 an explosion rocked the Auburn quarry where Thomas was employed.  With nearly every bone in his body broken, he lingered until the next day leaving Margaret a widow once again.

     So what did I learn from this?  Don't believe the trees on Ancestry until what they contain has been proven, they all claimed Thomas was the father of Margaret's seven daughters, (I said we're not going there).  Secondly, don't doubt myself, or cousin Rita's copying skills, until the research is done, (I admit I started changing parents on the girls before I came to my senses and looked harder at the question; that being another reason it took so long to accomplish this.  Also, read those old notes!  If you're like me you forget things.  Besides, clues that made little or no sense when you first found them may be clear now.  Lastly, census takers were not always diligent in their duties and those being enumerated were sometimes less than forthcoming.  The relationships and ages in the census could be quite inaccurate.