Update On Oliver Hennessey Or, We Could All Use A Genealogical Fairy Godmother

 

     This post will make a lot more sense if you read my first blog about Oliver before this one, so here it is.  If not, here is the synopsis-- while pondering how my cousin Cornelius Ryan Jr. and his wife Anna Hennessey, two Irish immigrants, came up with the name Oliver for their son born in 1870, I chanced upon the badly misspelled name Oliver "Hnnisee" in the 1860 census.  Using previously copied church records, I was able to deduce Oliver Hnnisee and Anna Hennessey were siblings, children of Kieran and Bridget Gorman Hennessey.  Oliver passed away in 1868 according to church burial records, not long before his sister Anna's son was born, clearly Oliver Ryan was named for his uncle.

     It was my belief Oliver Hennessey married just a few years before his death,  a young woman named Joanna Quinlan, also known as Jane Quinlan.  Their daughter, and only child, Anna Belle was born in 1866.  I had no solid proof Oliver was Anna Belle's father, just a feeling.  The widow Jane Quinlan Hennessey married again in early 1870 and she and her daughter Anna Belle can be found living with her new husband Martin Rigger in the census that same year.  It made sense that Jane's late husband was Oliver.  The thing was, a memorial on Find A Grave claimed Jane Quinlan had married a man named Thomas Hennessey and that he was Anna Belle's father.  The memorial had no photos or any proof, though photos would have been useless in this case anyway because all the stone in question says is "Father" and the dates.  Church records did show a Thomas Hennessey being buried in 1868.  He wasn't anyone's father though, he was only one year old.  Also, the 1860 census did record a Thomas Hennessey of the right age to be Jane's husband.

     I still believed I was right about Oliver being Anna Belle's father, but a tiny shadow of doubt had crept in.  Maybe the person who created the memorial had more informaton than I did, a family bible?  A copy of Anna Belle's baptism that I did not have?  You never know.  But the individuals posting on Find A Grave are after all, just researchers like you and I and they can be mistaken at times.  I was sticking with Oliver.

     With the Family History Centers still shut due to the pandemic I had about given up on finding the answer to this question any time soon until, while browsing the net to see if there were any updates on reopenings, I found an offer from the manager of one such center volunteering to do look ups!  While I have quite a few I could have requested, this is the one that really nagged at me, so I sent an email asking for a look up of Anna Belle's baptism.  Just a few days later I had an answer from this wonderful lady, complete with an image. Thank you Ms. Volunteer! 

    Anna Belle was born the 16th of January in 1866 and baptized on the 24th.  Her Godparents were Daniel Walsh and Catherine Gorman.  Her mother was Joanna Quinlan and her father...OLIVER Hennessey!   I'll come out and say it, I love it when I get it right.

Down To The Wire

     

     Only one day left, my Rootsireland subscription was about to expire. To what should the remaining hours be devoted? I settled on the Travers family. My third-great-grandmother Mary Travers has long been without a definite birthplace, it was past time to remedy that. When the NLI published it's Irish Parish registers to the net a few years ago I spent hours looking for Mary. I knew she was married to Michael O'Hora at Rathvilly Parish in County Carlow in 1814 so odds were good she had been born near that place but it could have been any of three counties. Rathvilly is uniquely situated on Carlow's borders with counties Wicklow and Kildare.  After a long search the closest I ever came was a Maria Trevers born in 1794 to John Trevers and his wife Margaret Lawlor in the Parish of Castledermot, County Kildare, a stone's throw from Rathvilly. This couple had four other children in the Castledermot baptism register, two Michaels, a William and a John. It didn't help that the pages were so faded they could barely be read, which may be why none of these records were found at Find My Past.  I would bet there were additional children but until the FBI gets around to applying their image enhancement technology to these records, (a long held dream of mine), they remain beyond reach.

Mary Travers O'Hora 1794-1869

    Another clue collected along the way, Mary's granddaughter, Anna O'Hora, married an Irishman named Michael Travers in Auburn, New York in 1868. Mary herself was living in Auburn by that time, and from news articles it was clear Michael Travers spent a good deal of time with the O'Horas, even before his marriage to Anna.  I recall wondering when I found all this if Michael could be a nephew of Mary's?  In later years when Michael Travers found himself a resident of the Onondaga County Almshouse near Syracuse, their admittance form asked his birthplace.  Michael responded he was born in County Kildare!  More information was found in land records in Ireland, many of the Travers families in Kildare were found in the Castledermot area, including John, James and "the Widow Travers", all in the townland of Ballyvass.  Also in Ballyvass were almost all the surnames of sponsors and witnesses contained in the Travers church records I was about to find in this final project with Rootsireland.  It seemed this was a likely area for Mary's hometown. 

    Pulling out all the clues I had for Mary, I opened the site and began hunting. When Michael Travers married Anna O'Hora, their marriage record gave his parent's names as John Travers and Catherine Bede. That seemed like a good place to begin so I tried a marriage search; there they were, getting married in 1836 in Castledermot.  Next stop, baptism records which I searched using only their names in the spaces for parent's names. I didn't find Michael but I did locate his sister Julia Travers who was baptized in 1838 in Castledermot Parish. Julia and her husband James Brennan along with several of their children also immigrated to Auburn, there is a picture of her at Ancestry, copied below...

Julia Travers Brennan 1838-1918

     There was also a Mary Travers around Julia and Michael's age living in the Auburn area in 1860 but I can't locate her after that and cannot connect her to this family.  I'm sure there were more children born to John Travers and Catherine Bede besides Julia and Michael, who wasn't born until 1843, so Mary may well have been another sibling.

     The baptism records of John and Margaret Lawlor Traver's children, John Jr., (husband of Catherine Bede), and the firstborn Michael do not contain addresses.  Those of William, the second Michael, and Grandma Mary however, give the townland of Kilkea, which borders Ballyvass, as their home so I've penciled that in as Grandmother Mary's birthplace.  It feels good after searching all these years to finally know where she was born and I must say, Kilkea seems like a fascinating place.

     Within it's environs lies a ringfort, (where the fairies dwell), sited upon a hill in Mullaghreelan Wood.  Also located there is the imposing Kilkea castle.  Built in the 12th century it became home to the FitzGerald family, prominent landlords in Kildare. One who resided there was Gerald FitzGerald, 11th Earl of Kildare, born in 1525 and known as the "wizard earl", who supposedly practiced magic in the tower.  Gerald reputedly haunts the place, appearing astride a white horse every seven years.  Nearby Castledermot boasts an ancient round tower and the ruins of an abbey.  This must have been an entrancing place to grow up, where a child's imagination could run wild.  Imagine the tales told of the Earl's ghost gamboling through the countryside with his band of horsemen, the stories of the capers of the mischievous Mullaghreelan fairies and monks in their towers.  

The abbey at Castledermot

          The townland of Kilkea, another place now added to my must see itinerary!

The Beauty Of Old Irish Records

 

     While sorting through my files today, something I try to do once a year just to see if any bits of information I came across in the past make more sense today than when first discovered, I came upon the Irish census of 1901.  The person enumerated in the census was Thomas Hughes of Ballyraggan in County Kildare and it really brought home to me what could be achieved sitting here at my computer desk thousands of miles from Ireland.

     It all began with finding my third-great-grandfather Daniel McGarr in land records, Griffith's Valuation and the Tithe Applotment books.  After those discoveries I sent a request to the Valuation Office for their records pertaining to Daniel.  A few weeks later I received copies of the cancelled books held at their office that told an amazing story of Daniel's occupation of the land and revealed he actually had a tenant of his own, Patrick Kane, who leased a tiny portion of Daniel's holding.  It also confirmed the number of his lot.  Using that number and old maps at the OSI site, I located his holding then switched to the satellite map where I could get a bird's eye view of the terrain.  Even on the modern map the outline of Daniel's land as seen on the old map was clearly visible.  Switching to Google Maps streetview, the site took me to the lane where the cottage sat but it wouldn't allow me to travel down that lane.

     Enter dear Dara from the Black Raven Genealogy blog, who kindly volunteered to traverse that lane for me and even took snapshots, which I cherish, of the remains of the old cottage, now transformed as part of a shed.  One of the photos, seen below, shows the remnants of a wall and window sill.  I gaze at it and wonder, how many time did my great-great-grandmother Maria lean on that sill to peer out the window?  Perhaps even sit upon it while waiting for her beau James O'Hora from the next townland over to visit?

Old window sill jutting out from the wall

     So many other records played a part in the hunt, baptism records that allowed me to reconstruct Daniel's family there in Ballyraggan, his daughter's marriage records, Daniel's death registration which I had to send for but which is now freely available online.  They all added up to give me an incredible picture of Daniel's life that I wouldn't have dreamt possible when I began researching my family back in pre-computer days.

     So where does Thomas Hughes fit in?  In the year 1872, six years after the death of Daniel's wife Anne Donahoe, their youngest daughter, Sarah, married Thomas Hughes.  The couple made their home with Daniel and after his passing Thomas Hughes inherited the holding.  The records from the Valuation Office spell that out.  And the census record that so excited me?  There were several forms attached to old Irish censuses, one of which was form B1, the House And Building Return which contains a wealth of information.  

Tomas Hughes at number 6

     While land records showed the size of Daniel's lot, what he paid for it yearly, and when Hughes took it over, this form told me what the house itself was actually like!  I learned the home consisted of four rooms with three widows gracing the front.  It was made of  mud or wood according to the form, but from Dara's photos it appears it was a combination of stone and mud.  The roof was thatch. 

     This is the only instance where I've been able to find so much detail about the home of one of my Irish ancestors.  It was my good fortune that some members of the McGarr family remained in Ireland to create records when most of the others immigrated, along with the fact these wonderful records that allowed me to put it all together not only still exist, but, with the exception of the cancelled books, are online.  And not least, that I made the acquaintance of my generous friend Dara.

Still Enjoying The Hunt Or, Oliver Is That You?

      I've always been a fan of the idea of researching the friends, neighbors, and in-laws of my ancestors in addition to their close family members.  You never know what may turn up that could aid in your search.  That is why I've been looking at the Hennessey family for many years but finding very little.  The youngest daughter of this family, Anna Hennessey, married Cornelius Ryan, the brother of my great-great-grandmother Anna Ryan from Tipperary, at St. Anne's in Palmyra, New York in 1869.  Her brother Edward Hennessey had earlier married Mary Keyes, (Keyes is another surname in my tree), also at Palmyra, thus giving me another reason to be interested in this family.  I must have done hundreds of searches for the Hennessey's over the years and never found their home county, much less a townland.  I knew the names of the older generation from the marriage record of Cornelius and Anna at St. Anne's.

 They were Kieran Hennessey and his wife Bridget Gorman. Bridget and most of her children came to the United States where she died in Palmyra in November of 1868, but I've found nothing to suggest her husband Kieran ever immigrated.

     Since I now have a one month subscription to Rootsireland I thought I may as well do yet another search for the Hennessey clan.  I knew nothing would come of it after all this time, I'd long since decided they were probably from a parish with missing records, but it seemed foolish not to try.  I started with an all Ireland search for Anna's older brother Oliver Hennessey who I've been studying lately.  It's not a very common name in Ireland so I knew I wouldn't have a large number of hits to wade through even without using a place or any dates and I was right, only one came up, that in County Kilkenny.  I clicked on it, knowing it would be yet another disappointment, but to my utter shock the transcription read, father-- Kieran Hennessey, mother-- Bridget Gorman!  I think I screamed, I know my little yorkie Darby jumped, it was them, in County Kilkenny!

     How did I miss them all this time?  A little sleuthing answered that question, only Rootsireland has the parish records for the years I needed.  Just like the Tramore records that I blogged about in my last post.  I quickly did a search in Kilkenny records using only parents names and found seven children of Kieran and Bridget including two who were previously unknown to me, Johanna and Margaret.  I also found a townland for them, Michaelschurch in the Catholic parish of Ballycallan-Kilmanagh. Amazing!

     I have to admit the price of the subscription was worth it considering the new information I've found on the Hennessy and Crotty families.  One caveat however, don't use Rootsireland to search Griffiths Valuation or census records even though you can.  In reading the fine print I found Rootsireland puts a limit on the number of views that can be accessed.  In my case it's 1,300 for the month which sounds like a lot but in eight days I've already burned through 380.  Griffith's Valuation can be searched for free at askaboutireland.ie, and Ireland's census records are also free at the National Archives site.  Death records on Rootsireland are for the most part civil registrations that can be accessed at no cost at irishgenealogy.ie.  There's no point in using up one's allotted views when the records can be easily found elsewhere.

Connolly? Crotty? Or, The Internet Will Drag Those Skeletons From Your Closet No Matter How Old

 

     Last week I broke down and purchased a one month subscription to Rootsireland.  I was a little disappointed to find there really weren't any records there I didn't already have, most all of which were free online I might add.  But then I tried searching their records of Tramore Catholic Parish in County Waterford. What I found there justified the expense of the site.

     A few weeks ago I wrote a blog in which I vented my frustration at trying to track down some of my Crotty relatives who had lived in Cullen Castle, a short distance north of the town of Tramore.  They should have been found in civil registrations but somehow were missing.  In particular, I was looking for the children of Ellen Crotty, who had erected a grave stone in Tramore bearing her name, or rather her nickname Nellie, and the names of her parents and children.  The dates were off but that's not terribly unusual on stones, as I've found in many instances.  The odd part was the surnames. The stone read, Erected by Nellie Crotty, Cullen Castle, but those on the stone identified as Nellie's three children bore the surname Connolly.  The baptism of only one of those children, David Connolly, has ever been found by me until recently when I tried searching by substituting their mother's surname of Crotty for Connolly.  That worked, but left me wondering what was up?  Though I didn't wish to impugn Ellen's good name, it really looked like two or maybe all her children were born out of wedlock.  

     Catholic registers of Tramore are not easy to search.  A large section is missing, and the NLI has only a small number on their site.  Find My Past appears to have baptisms only through 1831 for Tramore.  Rootsireland has later baptisms but they are transcriptions not linked to images so pertinent details are missing.  I'm willing to bet those register pages would answer the question of  the circumstances of Ellen's children's births.  I've seen many entries in Catholic baptism registers with the word "ILLIGITIMATE" proclaimed in all capitals like an inscribed scarlet letter.

     As it is, the limited available information does point to Ellen's children indeed being illegitimate.  Her first child, Patrick, was baptized in 1866.  The transcribed record says he was born at Cullen Castle but in the space for father's name is seen only, "Crotty".  The mother's name is missing entirely.  However, many church baptisms were simply written out in a register without designated spaces or columns for mother or father's names, so it's likely the original contained only the name Crotty and didn't specify which parent that was.  Rootsireland's transcriptions are on a form containing spaces for parent's names and doesn't really allow for the possibility the record did not follow that format. The second child baptized in 1876, David Connolly, was also born at Cullen Castle to parents David Connolly and Ellen Crotty.  Ellen's last child, a daughter named Bridget, baptized in 1877, was born at Monmahogue, in Tramore.  Again, the father's name is recorded as Crotty, while the mother's name is Ellen Crotty.  It's so confusing I sometimes wonder if there are two Ellen Crotty's here, but then I remember that grave stone in Tramore with all those same names literally carved in stone.

     A marriage for David Connolly and Ellen Crotty cannot be found though of course that could be attributed to the lack of records.  It seems the only place marriages after 1840 can be found online is the Rootsireland site, but even those are incomplete.  They require a surname to search, so I did a marriage search for the most common surname in the parish, Power, just to test it.  Only three came up for the entire year of 1876, none for the majority of the 1840's or 1850's even though the site claims to have marriages from 1786-1980; it doesn't.  Which reminded me how annoyed I became the last time I dealt with Waterford Heritage, source of Waterford records on the site.  It was like pulling teeth to get them to confirm several decades of Tramore Parish records, both births and marriages, are missing.

     So--- Ellen had a child in 1866 whose father's name did not appear on the baptism record; in April of 1876 another child was born to David Connolly and Ellen Crotty who were probably not married; a last child was born in December of 1877 whose father's name once again did not appear.

     I have my doubts about Ellen ever being married given her surname of Crotty on the grave stone, and the fact that when "David Connolly Jr." died at the age of twenty-nine, the registration of his death was signed by Ellen Crotty with her mark, (see below).  The name of the decedent was recorded as, "David Crotty".   In the 1901 census, Ellen and David Crotty can be found living in Summerhill, a section of Tramore and the same place Ellen's daughter Bridget had died two years earlier from tuberculosis.  In another five years tuberculosis would also take David.  Ellen doesn't appear in the 1911 census. I'm still looking for her death registration under both surnames, a couple stand out but the locations seem unlikely...

Fairy Tales Do Happen

 

     Not long ago I wrote a blog about Oliver Hennessey and the woman I believe to be his widow, Johanna, or Jane Quinlan.  Jane's story continued after Oliver's death with her marriage in about 1869 to a German immigrant by the name of Martin Rigger.  Jane and Martin became parents to three more girls, Mary, Sarah, and the youngest, Jane who was born in Palmyra, New York in 1878.  The elder Jane passed away in Palmyra in 1881 which apparently was when her last child and namesake was placed in a Catholic orphanage in Rochester, New York, not far from Palmyra.

     Young Jane was adopted not long after by Mrs. Margaret Sholes, who like her biological mother Jane Quinlan, had come to America from Ireland.  Mrs. Sholes raised Jane in Elmira, New York as her own daughter, never divulging the truth of her parentage to her until the girl had reached her twenty-first birthday.  Still living with Mrs. Sholes at age thirty, Jane was about to receive news that would change her life forever.

     That news arrived in 1910 in the form of a message from Father Moriarty of Rochester, the location of the orphanage where Margaret had been left years before.  Father Moriarty had also been communicating with the two older Rigger children, Mary and Sarah in Rochester who had been searching for their younger sister.  The young women had been notified of the death of a relative in Germany whose substantial estate had been left to the children of their father Martin.  Before the estate could be settled however, the whereabouts of the youngest sister, the former Jane Rigger, needed to be ascertained.

     After the church was able to locate Jane, one of her sisters traveled to Elmira to meet her and impart the facts of the case.  It must have been an emotional reunion, Jane was unaware of having sisters or even of her family name.  She was also surprised to learn her father Martin, though in ill health and confined to a Rochester hospital, was still living.  Plans were made for Jane to accompany her sister to Rochester to sign the legal papers to settle the estate and meet her other sister.  I like to think perhaps she was able to spend time with her long lost father as well before he died the following year.

     The papers trumpeted the news of Jane's good fortune with headlines like, "Adopted Girl Gets Fortune And Learns Her Real Name".  As they so often do, the press got some details wrong, asserting Jane had been left at the orphanage where she was adopted by Mrs. Sholes as a baby when in fact she was almost four years of age at the time.  She can be found in the 1880 census of Palmyra, below, still living with her parents Martin and Jane and her sisters, including her half sister Anna Hennessey, at the age of three. 

     Sometimes I think reporters played a bit fast and loose with the truth if they thought it made for a better story.  But it could only be through negligence the reporter transposed the names of Jane and her adoptive mother, stating throughout the article that it was "Margaret Rigger" who was adopted by "Jennie Sholes".

     I've come across similar stories while seeking my ancestors, it happened all too often that mothers of small children died while giving birth to another and the family was broken up, which given the timeline could be the case here.  This was the first time however, that I found them completely losing touch with each other only to be reunited over a small fortune!

    

Death of James Quigley, A Follow-up

     A short time ago I wrote about my search for the birth registration of Mary Quigley and the death registration of her father James Quigley.  The death certificate I ordered since it wasn't available online, arrived last week.  While it took longer than the usual time to receive, it was still well within the thirty days the GRO warned it might require.  The document itself has left me a bit puzzled though.

     For one thing, it says the death of James Quigley, a laborer, occurred at Raheen in the Parish of Baltinglass on 3 January 1869.  For another, it's signed by the mark of Judy Connors who was present at the death.  This presents several problems.  Firstly, all documents I've found for James and his family place him in Baltinglass proper with the exception of the baptism of his first child. There was no civil registration of births in 1859, but the Baltinglass church baptismal register records the infant was born at Ballyraggan, County Kildare. That could be because Ballyraggan was the home of  his mother-in-law Anne Donahoe McGarr, and James Quigley's wife Anna McGarr may well have gone home to her mother for the birth of her first child.

     Then there's the matter of Raheen. There are several in Ireland but none in the Parish of Baltinglass according to Google Maps.  However, other maps place Raheen under two miles from Baltinglass, (thank you Dara)!  Two miles is not a deal breaker, so I'm not ruling this registration out on that basis.

     The occupation of laborer is more troubling.  When the birth of James' son John was registered in 1864 in Baltinglass, James' occupation was given as, "dealer".  Dealer of what I can't tell.  His son Daniel's registration two years later says James was a shopkeeper at that time.  Why would he be a laborer three years later?  I guess it's possible he fell on hard times and lost the shop. But who was Judy Connors?  The death certificate states James was married when he passed, I was expecting the document would have been signed by his wife Anna, that would have made things nice and tidy but it was not to be.  I found what I believe is Judy Connor's death in Raheen in 1873 at the age of fifty-three. She was widowed and there was no mention of a maiden name so I can't determine if she was a relative.  I looked for a marriage for her but nothing promising was found.

     On the other hand, there are parts that do fit.  The name for one, there weren't many James Quigley's in the area and this man's age is what I would have expected given Anna McGarr's age.  A baptism in nearby Hacketstown Parish just across the border of Wicklow and Carlow shows the baptism of Joannes Quigley of Knockagilky on 13 May 1830.  The parents were Joannes Quigley and Sarah Whelan, also what I would have expected.  The children of the Quigley/McGarr marriage, in order, were Anna, for Anna's mother, Sarah for James' mother, John for James' father, and Daniel for Anna's father.  I can't account for James' name being recorded as John, but stranger things have happened in church records.

     Also, I know my James Quigley was indeed married when he died. When James and Anna's last child Mary was born on 30 April 1869 at Baltinglass, her registration notes that her father James Quigley was deceased.  That means he must have died between about August of 1868 and April of 1869.  The date of January third would fit nicely.  Like her older brother Daniel, Mary's birth registration was singed by Kate Haydon, another mystery lady.

     While I plan to spend more time analyzing this, I think it probably is the registration of James Quigley who married Anna McGarr.  If anything changes I will be blogging about it again...