These Aren't Even My Relatives For Pete's Sake

 

     I wonder how many other researchers do this?  I follow a family member, one I'm not directly descended from, in the hopes that something about my direct ancestor will turn up in their records.  I follow them through their childhood, their marriages, and the births of their children. I follow their career choices, accomplishments and tragedies. Then that peripheral relative of mine dies.  Do I then stop following their surviving spouse?  The one who isn't related to me?  Of course not!  At this point I'm invested, I've probably spent weeks living with these people, I have to know how their story ends.

     Today was a prime example.  I've been trying to figure out who were the parents of Daniel Gray who married my second great-grand-aunt Phebe Galloway in Phelps, New York on New Years Day in 1851.  Both Daniel and Phebe died while their three children were still quite young but I don't know exactly when.  They were last seen in the 1850 census of Phelps, both living with Phebe's parents Russell and Hattie Moore Galloway though they weren't yet married.  Daniel was employed at Russell Galloway's mill that year and resided with him and his family.

     The children of Daniel and Phebe were Charles Henry born in 1852, George Edward born in 1854, and Ella Harriet born in 1856.  I would no doubt find them in the New York State 1855 census, but it appears they had moved to Wayne County by that time, as had Phebe's parents, and the Wayne County census for that year is not online though it can be found at the historian's office for towns beginning with letters A-P.  Several years ago I found Russell in Arcadia in 1855 but Phebe and Dan were not with him.  At that time I wasn't aware of Phebe's marriage to Daniel so I hadn't looked for any Grays in Arcadia.  A surname index for 1855 online shows two Gray families in Arcadia and I believe one of them was "my" Gray family.  At some point I will have to visit the historian.  I've found no mention of Phebe in her parent's or sibling's records after her marriage, so that left the records of her children and of Daniel's parents to be searched, if I only knew who they were.

     I found a David Gray, also living in Phelps at the same time as Daniel and Phebe, who had a son listed in the 1840 census of the right age to be Daniel.  Being a head of household only census I couldn't be sure I had the right family but it was worth checking out.  Unfortunately, I could find no connection between David and Daniel.  Then a fellow researcher with ties to David Gray messaged me that Daniel and Phebe's middle child George Edward could be found with Hannah and Jesse Cole in Hannibal, New York in the 1860 census and that Hannah Cole's maiden name was Gray.  That was promising! That year Dan and Phebe's daughter Ella resided with her Galloway grandparents in Wolcott, New York and Charles was living with John Arnot and his wife Livona Douglas in Huron, New York, not far from Wolcott.  I can't find any connection with that couple and the Grays or Galloways, but at age eight I wouldn't think Charles was working for them.  An online surname index for the Wayne 1865 census here, shows the Arnots still in Huron, but nobody by the name of Gray.

     After much searching, I finally found the man I believe to be Daniel Gray's father living in the town of Ulysses in Tompkins County, New York in 1830; Edward Gray, also a miller, who was granted a patent in 1840 for an improvement to the grinding mechanism of grist mills.  Edward had another son, Jacob S. Gray, who was also a miller as you recall was Daniel.  Edward was living in Kane County, Illinois in 1850 where he presumably died sometime before 1857, the year his second wife, Sophronia Harriman married George Holliday.  The 1850 census of Illinois showed Hannah from New York, (the future Mrs. Cole who would later take in Daniel's son George), living with her father Edward that year. 

     It's Hannah and her family I've been looking at today.  It seems she returned to New York where she had older siblings living and married Jesse Cole in Cayuga County. The New York census of 1865 showed her there in Cayuga with Jesse and their three children and gave her birth county as Tompkins, linking her further to Edward Gray.  The poor soul had three children, all of whom she outlived, and died in a horrible accident when her clothing caught fire.  She raised Raymond C. King, the child of her daughter Ida after Ida's death and he too would perish before Hannah, at age twenty-four.  Part of her obituary reads,  …her early life was passed in the western states but on losing both parents she came to the town of Throop at about age 18 to reside with her brother Jacob Gray who was proprietor of a mill in that place.  The obituary confirms she was living in a western state, like Illinois, and sounds as if her mother had died there, but given the vagaries of newspapers I would need more proof of that.  Hannah was born in 1833 so if she left Illinois at age 18 Edward must have died around 1852.

     I felt terrible for Hannah, and for Jesse.  Losing all their children and their grandson; it was too much. What on earth had happened to Raymond?  And where was his father Ellery King?  I had to know.

     Using the website Old Fulton Postcards and the New York State Death Index I found Raymond died in 1914 in Ulysses in Tompkins County, where Hannah had been born.  What was he doing in Tompkins County?  His obituary gave his cause of death as tuberculosis and mentioned his father Ellery lived in Syracuse, so I began looking for Ellery.  I found him in Syracuse in 1910 living in a boarding house, while he claimed to be married no spouse was with him.  I found his marriage record to Louise McKinley in 1913 and they are together in the 1915 NYS census in Syracuse so perhaps the 1910 census is in error. No obituary has turned up yet but I doubt it would contain any information about his former father-in-law or Daniel Gray.

      I still don't have definite proof Daniel Gray was the son of Edward but I strongly believe he was.  None of Daniel's sibling's obituaries mention him, but early twentieth century newspapers rarely gave the names of predeceased brothers.  That's another reason I need to see Daniel in the NYS 1855 census, that census gave the birth county for those born in New York State.  If his entry says Tompkins, I will be ready to close the book on Daniel.

     

     

     

Update To The Sad Story of Ellen Hennessey & Edward Welch

      

Welch monument in St. Anne's Cemetery Palmyra, NY

     This tale began with a blog about Oliver Ryan, the only child of my second great-grand-uncle Cornelius Ryan. Cornelius came to America from the townland of Golden Garden in South Tipperary with his parents Alice O'Dwyer and Cornelius Ryan Sr. in 1860, settling in Palmyra, New York.  Cornelius met another young immigrant, Anne Hennessey, there in Palmyra and the two were wed in 1869 at St. Anne's Catholic Church in the village.  The following year their son Oliver was born.  Tragically, Cornelius passed away when Oliver was seven and his mother Anne when he was eight.

     In surrogate court held at Lyons, New York, Ellen Hennessey Welch, a sister of Oliver's mother, was named his guardian along with her husband Edward Welch.  Tragedy struck Oliver's young world once again when Ellen died shortly after that.  To say Ellen's much older husband Edward was undone by her death would be an understatement, the grief stricken man fatally shot himself on her grave on 25 May 1879.

     Not surprisingly, newspapers of the time were less than accurate with the facts.  One reported Edward shot himself two weeks after her death, others remained silent on the timing.  I knew two weeks wasn't accurate because Edward had made his will on April 22nd, a will in which he left everything  to Oliver, making no mention of Ellen at all so she had to have been gone by that time.  Yesterday, I couldn't stand staying at home any longer, I had to do some genealogy!  Outdoors of course.  So I drove to the cemetery where Ellen was buried.  And I stayed there, walking up and down until I found her and Edward.  For some reason I hadn't noted the location of their stone on my last visit and the dates on it were so heavily encrusted with lichen back then that I couldn't read much of it.  Yesterday I came prepared with a soft toothbrush and a squirt bottle of water.

     It cleaned up quite well, the photo looks even better than the stone actually.  In the first blog I theorized Ellen had died earlier in April before Edward made his will.  Looking at the photo above you can see it says Ellen passed on Mar 31, 1879.  Edward's epitaph below looks like it says May 29th was the date of his death, though newspapers maintain he shot himself on the 25th.  However, several also report he was still alive when he was found lying unconscious on Ellen's grave so perhaps he lingered a few days before joining her in the afterlife.

     I don't know why it took me so long to go back to the cemetery, but I'm glad I did, it was wonderful to get out!

     

Epigenetics, DNA, And How Did I know That?

     One of my earliest childhood memories is of my mother laughing when she served me a salad with dinner.  Why did that amuse her?  Because invariably the first thing I would do is remove the onions from the salad and place them in my mashed potatoes with a large dollop of butter.  At times some of the lettuce found its way in as well.  It seemed the most natural thing in the world to me, onions belonged in mashed potatoes didn't they?  While we consumed large quantities of mashed potatoes in my family, I had never seen anyone else do this, in fact my parents both found it quite odd, but I was very fond of it.

     Fast forward to my young adulthood.  While browsing Irish recipes for a traditional meal to prepare on St. Patrick's Day I came across a recipe for something called Champ.  The ingredients were potatoes, butter, milk and...scallions or onions!  My mind went back to those family dinners and my childhood version of Champ.  Would it be fanciful to think it could be genetic memory?  I admit it's a trivial thing, but still, I wondered.  I actually looked up the history of Champ, finding it had been eaten in Ireland as early as the 1700's.

     The whole idea of inherited memory is a controversial subject with some scientists dismissing it outright while others believe there is a basis to consider it.  Perhaps memory isn't even the right word to use, it's more of a feeling.  Experiments done with mice have shown that rodents who were trained to avoid a certain scent passed that aversion on to their offspring.  In another study, mice trained to navigate a certain maze were also able to pass that ability on.  That being the case, why couldn't pleasant sensations, like that generated by eating delicious potatoes and onions, pass to following generations?  The famous psychologist Carl Jung thought they could be.  Researchers today theorize environmental influences, such as food, can leave chemical marks on genes that do not alter their sequence, but do modify their activity and could indeed be passed down. This emerging field is called epigenetics.

     Genetics and DNA is a fascinating subject to me, as well as a bit confusing.  My father's DNA changes every time Ancestry does an update, though I understand the reasons for that.  At present his ethnicity is 80 percent Irish and 20 percent Scottish at Ancestry, while FTDA puts it at 72 percent Irish and 28 percent Scandinavian. Scandinavian?  Must be those Vikings.  His maternal great-grandparents were all born in Ireland.  On his father's side, all but two were born in Ireland.  One great-grandfather was born in Warwickshire, England where his Warner family had resided for centuries.  That man's wife was born in America to family that came from Lincolnshire, England in the 18th century.  So it follows, three of his four grandparents were Irish and one was English.  It further follows, his mother was Irish and his father half Irish and half English. Yet neither testing site mentions a smidgen of English DNA.  I guess that's possible if Dad's only genetic inheritance from his father was his Irish DNA, but still somewhat surprising.

     I wish I understood this all better.  I think I need a class or two. In the meantime, I'll just keep enjoying my Champ and believing my affinity for it was a gift from the grands. 

Follow Me Up To Ricketstown

 

     Waking up to another gray morning here in New York, I thought it would brighten my day to take a stroll to Ricketstown in County Carlow; the birthplace of my paternal second-great-grandfather James O'Hora, who arrived at Manhattan's docks on a spring day in 1849. I pulled up Google Maps, did a search, switched to street view, and attempted to set myself down on the red marker that indicated Ricketstown. That resulted in my being bounced right back to the starting point. All right, if I couldn't get to the townland at least I could get fairly close. I set off down R726 near Rathvilly heading south. 

     After a few minutes I came to the road that branched west off of R726 towards Ricketstown and Graney. Moving along it I passed several modern homes, most enclosed by low walls or fences, a yellow dog, and a campaign sign for the "hard working" John Pender.  Ahead was a small cottage, a yellow rose bush blooming in it's gated front yard, then a brick home with laundry drying on a line in the back. The scenery after that consisted of trees and green fields bordered by low stone walls, distant mountains rising beyond them.

How long ago had those stones been piled there by a farmer clearing his land?  Had James passed by them as he traveled to Rathvilly on market days?  Perhaps the last  time he made his way down that lane, as he departed for America, they were there bidding a silent farewell?  Off to the right I began seeing wooden fencing around large fields, horses grazing within. I was now approaching the turn off for Ricketstown as indicated on the map, not sure how much further the site would allow me to go.  As I arrived at the road to Ricketstown, what I saw is pictured below.

          Why was the only road to Ricketstown impassable?  Another view on Google Maps showed a large, three story house sitting on a slight rise to the left of the gates.  It looked as though Ricketstown was now a giant horse farm.  Did that mean I wouldn't ever be able to visit?  How very disappointing, the townland was one of six I absolutely had to see should I ever make it to Ireland.  At least I was able to get a look from afar.  The owners couldn't fence out the views, the same ones that had greeted James as he stepped outside his parent's home.  He saw those same mountains in the distance, topped by lowering clouds.  The same fields were there in the mid 1800's and somewhere across those fields he and his family had once lived though nothing was now left of the cottages that once nestled there.  

     Then it came to me, Ricketstown wasn't that little red marker. That may be the center of Ricketstown, but the townland was all around it, even across the road as can be seen on the Griffith's map below.  Top left underlined in green is Ricketstown North, center is Ricketstown, and bottom is Ricketstown South. The gate pictured above is the green mark right under Ricketstown.  I'm not sure exactly where James lived, the only document I've seen of his that contained an address was his baptismal record and the parish priest at no point wrote anything more than Ricketstown. He made no mention of North or South anywhere in the register though some of his parishioners must have lived in Ricketstown South as Griffith's Valuation identified that place as the most populous. 

     It makes me a bit melancholy the way time moves on, inexorably effacing the past.  Even the little village I grew up in looks remarkably different today than it did when I was a child.  I guess I should not be surprised at this gate...