How An Assumption Really Stymied my Research

 

     My 3rd great-uncle John O'Hore was born in County Carlow, Ireland in 1819.  He married in 1845, the same year the famine began, not knowing what was in store for him, and for all Ireland.  A year after his marriage, John and his wife Catherine McGarr did what many of their countrymen were doing, they took their newborn daughter and sailed out of there to America.  John and Catherine added to their family in New York, with seven more children born to them in Aurelius and Auburn in Cayuga County, that's a lot of mouths to feed.  In all the censuses except 1870 John was listed as a laborer.  The 1870 said he worked at the stone quarry in Auburn, as a laborer no doubt.  Not much money in that.

     John disappears after the 1871 Auburn City Directory is published.  City directories are not necessarily current.  It takes a while to compile all that data so they are usually being researched and put together the year before they are released.  Another item I found while seeking John's death date was a newspaper article showing his wife in the rolls of the Auburn overseer of the poor in September of 1872.  Another clue that narrowed it down was the 1874 city directory where Catherine is listed as a widow.  It looks to me as though John passed between 1871-1873.  I'm leaning towards 1872 due to Catherine receiving assistance that fall.

     Looking at all that information, I've always been under the impression they were not well off.  Especially after reading about Catherine's reliance on the overseers of the poor.  None of the census records indicated they were landowners either, so given all that, I never took the time to look at land records in Cayuga County.  It never even crossed my mind.  Well, maybe that one time when I saw "J. O. Hoar" on an Aurelius ownership map but I wrote it off as a misprint of the surname O'Hara, of which there were several in the area.  

     Having some time to kill today, I took a look at the NY land records available at Family Search.  They are indexed now so it's much easier than it used to be to search them.  I was astonished to find entries for John O'Hore there!  In Aurelius!  Looking up the deed the index had led me to, I found the purchase of half an acre by John O'Hore from William Stringer in 1854.  Now where did I file that map...

     

     Found it.  In about the middle we see John's property.  The name a bit below his is W. Stringer, the deed described the property as abutting William's property, we definitely have the right land.  But is it really my John?  Looking further at the other hits, in 1860 John sold the land back to William Stringer at a $60 profit.  I found it a little strange that Catherine was not mentioned in the transaction.  In that era, women had dower rights to property owned by their husbands.  Usually, the deed would note that the wife had been examined separately from her husband and had agreed to the sale.

     After that surprise, I decided to search the index for anyone named O'Hore in 1850 -1870 in Cayuga County.  Up popped Catherine in 1872.  She appeared to be selling the very same land to William Stringer again.  Now I was really confused.  The opening sentence was, "I Catherine Hore of Auburn 'widow of John Hore', for $40 dollars to me paid by William Stringer...".  It then described the same land.  How odd.  I went back and read over the language of the deed more carefully, which given the archaic legalese and bad handwriting can be a challenge.  I didn't get it all, but what I did was enough.  It was a release of the property sold by John in 1860.  Why would a release be needed?   The next sentence answered that question, it specifically mentioned Catherine now relinquishing her dower rights.  Which she had not previously done in the 1860 deed.  

     This cleared a lot up.  It proved my John was indeed the man on the map, he did own land, and the date of 23 March1872 on the release is further evidence John passed early that year.  I'm not sure if William Stringer was looking to tie up loose ends, or if Catherine needed cash, but she did get some remuneration for her release.  And I was reminded of the importance of really exhausting ALL the records before coming to any conclusions.