Of William Ryan, Icebergs In July, And How I Found Them

 

     The newest find here at Ellie's Ancestors is William Ryan, a likely candidate for brother of my third-great-grandfather Cornelius Ryan, or Connor as he was known around South Tipperary.  I've written extensively about Connor and his family so if any of the following rings a bell, please use the search feature on this blog to find more about him.

     I first encountered William Ryan years ago in the 1865 New York State Census of Palmyra, New York and I've been wondering who he was ever since.  That year he, his wife Margaret, and their youngest child Mary were all living with Sarah Ryan and her husband William Slattery in Palmyra.  Sarah was the daughter of Connor Ryan who was himself living in Palmyra by that time. William was the right age to have been Connor's brother, but having no other clues, I set him aside for further research.  Now that research has begun.

     Taking a look at immigration records, I found William and Margaret along with their children Patrick, Catherine, and Mary arriving in New York on 19 July 1864 aboard the ship Wisconsin from Liverpool.  Curious about their ship and journey, I turned to the Marine Intelligence column in the New York Times archives.  This is a great resource, reporting New York harbor ship arrival and departure dates along with input from the ship's captains on topics like weather conditions, ships they passed during the crossing, and deaths onboard.  It used to be free but now requires a subscription.  I found a deal offering access to the current NY Times and it's archives at $4 a month for both, a steal as far as newspaper databases go, with the ability to cancel at any time.  In the column I read that the Ryan's ship experienced strong westerly winds during it's voyage which must have slowed their crossing, and was forced to contend with icebergs, one of which came within 50 yards of the vessel.  Between the storms of winter and iceberg season stretching from April to August, the north Atlantic could be a dangerous place.

     Having found the names of William's children on the ship's list, I next looked for them in baptism records.  I found Catherine and Mary but not Patrick.  There was also another Catherine who must have died before Catherine the immigrant was born and a daughter named Anna, all born at Foilduff in Tipperary and baptized at Kilcommon Parish. Trying to sort out all the Anna Ryan's on ship's lists seemed like a fool's errand so I did not attempted it.  All I know for sure is she and another daughter named Margaret were both residing with their parents in Manchester by 1870 as seen below.

Wiliam & Margaret with their children including son Patrick and his wife Bridget Hayes

     The census done in 1870 showed William and his family living on their own farm in the Town of Manchester.  Looking at old property maps of Manchester, New York, which is located right next to Palmyra, I saw William's place was about a mile from the farm where Connor Ryan was then living, owned by his daughter Anna and her husband James White.  It was time to check New York land records at the Family Search site.  There I found William and his son Patrick had purchased the six-acre farm from James Kelly on 31 March 1868 for $700 plus an existing mortgage of $329.  A few months after William's death in February of 1880 the family sold the farm and purchased a larger one.  They seemed to be the picture of a successful immigrant family, but that was about to change.

     During the pre-dawn hours of  a June morning in 1892, flames lept from the barn on the Ryan farm while at the same time Timothy Cosgrove, another Irish immigrant just a mile or two away, smelled smoke.  His barn was also ablaze.  The fires spread to the homes on both properties but while Cosgrove had insurance, Patrick was not so fortunate.  Newspapers say arson was strongly suspected in both cases, though I found no further mention of the case in newspapers.  In early 1894 Patrick sold his farm at a large loss and moved to the Philander Mott place where he resumed farming.  Disaster struck in September of that year when lightning struck the barn on the property destroying Patrick's labor of the season. The Ontario Repository reported that once again Patrick had no insurance and noted, "He had had hard financial luck recently and was just beginning to feel encouraged".  Shortly afterward he sold his farming equipment, tools, and animals.  Patrick's farming days were done.  The census of 1900 shows him renting a home in the village of Clifton Springs, working as a gardener.

     Taken together, the fact William Ryan and his family were living in the same village as Connor, with his daughter Sarah Ryan Slattery after their arrival in America and then bought a farm so close to Connor Ryan in Manchester is strong evidence of a close relationship between the two.  Foilduff, where William lived in Tipperary, is about 20 miles from Churchfield where Connor resided as an adult, I don't know where the two men were born.  When Family History Centers reopen, I'll be taking a look at Palmyra church records to see if I can find more connections, vis-a-vis marriage witnesses and baptimal sponsors.  As always, I will post any further findings here.

     

New Discoveries

 

     This has been a marathon 6 weeks, so much has been found!  In April while browsing through copies I had made of the marriage register at St. Anne's, I happened upon the page containing the marriage of Jane Quinlan to her second husband, Martin Rigger.  It was just a few lines below the marriage of Dennis Driscoll and Mary White, the niece of my second great-grandfather James White from Queens County.  When I copied that page, I was not yet aware of Jane Quinlan but by happy accident her marriage happened to be on the same page as the Driscoll's, waiting for me to notice it.  This record provided the names of Jane's parents, which are entirely different than the ones Find A Grave has for her.  The church record says her father was Andrew Quinlan and her mother was Anna Bray or Broy, which I happily added to my family tree.

     On the last day of April I recieved confirmation, in the form of the church baptism record for Jane's first child Anna, (after her mother Anna B no doubt), that Jane's first husband was in fact the man I suspected all along, Oliver Hennessey.  I also found his townland of birth, Michaelschurch in County Kilkenny.  Again, Find A Grave has the wrong information concerning Jane's husband.  It names her husband as Thomas Hennessey instead of Oliver. This is what annoys me about that site, I wish they would stick to recording the tombstones, burial records, and obituaries and skip the speculation.

     Speaking of Mary White, I finally found the death date and place of her second husband Martin McDuff.  After much searching, I became aware Family Search has death record indexes from Pennsylvania's Orphan's Courts online.  Martin wasn't an orphan, (as far as I know), but before 1906 Orphan's Court was where deaths in the state of Pennsylvania were recorded.  Martin is in the index along with the date of his death, his age, birthplace, and burial place.  Using that information, I located his obituary which told me nothing more about Martin, but it did clear up the details of his burial.  All the filmed index said was, "Newtown C".  At first I thought the C might be short for cemetery, but the index consistantly used the abbreviation Cem. for that word.  There is an historic cemetery in that place called Newtown Cemetery, but it's a Protestant cemetery and I was quite sure Martin was Roman Catholic.  Martin's obituary told me he was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Newtown, St. Andrew's.  In this case the letter C in the index stood for Catholic.  Finding his birthplace of Ireland in the court's index pointed to the 1875 immigration record for Martin McDuff from Ireland being the likely record, rather than another I had found for a Martin from Scotland.

     Then on May 7th my Ancestry mailbox held this little pearl from a DNA match I had written to-- 

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

    After some research, and a month's subscription to Find My Past, I found the record of Alice's marriage in Australia with both her parent's names, Andrew Dwyer and Hanora Dawson. With that information I searched baptism records in Tipperary and found that couple and their ten children living in Churchfield in South Tipperary. The same townland my 3rd great-grandmother, also named Alice Dwyer, was living in when she married Cornelius Ryan in 1824.  Her father was named Andrew Dwyer too, (of course he was), and I believe the Andrew who married Hanora Dawson was probably his son, given the shared townland and the DNA match with both my father and I.  At FMP I also found Australian immigration records and the manifest from Alice's ship, she arrived in 1875, close to my newfound cousin's date of 1876.  Alice was a remittance passenger, I had to look that one up-- it meant her passage was paid for by someone already in Australia. Who that someone was I have no idea, but I'm searching.

     Perhaps the most exciting find of all, also in April, was proving to my satisfaction that my 3rd great-grandmother on the McGarr/O'Hora side, Mary Travers O'Hora, was a native of Kilkea in County Kildare, close to Ricketstown and Ballyraggan where her son and daughter-in-law respectively were born.  I've been looking for that one for a very long time.  Her baptism record gave me the names of her parents as well, John Travers and Margaret Lawler, my 4th great-grandparents!  I've proved only four sets of 4th greats so far, but I'm told that getting back to the 18th century in Irish research is doing pretty well.