Of Soppers and Whiteboys

 

     This week I learned something new thanks to Uncle George Gunn, born in 1854 at Ballygologue in County Kerry; another brother of my great-great-grandmother Mary Gunn.  I’ve written several blogs about George, mainly because there’s just so much to say about this man.  He survived only two years after his arrival in New York, which is a real shame, I’m positive he’d have given me a lot more to write about had he lived longer.  George would have set Palmyra New York on its ear.  Unfortunately, to quote the old song, “With a love of the liquor poor Tim George was born”.  After imbibing one evening, he somehow missed his footing while strolling along the Erie Canal, plunging to his watery death--

 Palmyra August 1892--The body of George Gunn, a laborer about 30 years old, was found floating in the canal just west of this village on Sunday morning last, and was taken in charge by Drake & Johnson undertakers.  Gunn was in Palmyra late Saturday evening and the supposition is that he had been drinking and while on his way to Macedon by tow-path he fell into the canal and met his death by drowning.

     George’s rap-sheet in Ireland was impressive with numerous arrests for drunkenness, assaulting a caretaker, bad language, a few for assaulting police officers as they attempted to apprehend him, and a charge of Whiteboyism.  From a stint he did in Tralee Prison in 1888 for drunk and disorderly, we learn George was 5’9 ½”, with brown hair and grey eyes.  The number of times he was arrested previously was eight, but I’m betting there were plenty more cases he got away with.  George was definitely a character, one of those “wild Kerry peasants” I’ve heard tell of.  The arrest that really caught my attention, however, was the one in 1882 accusing him of being a whiteboy.   https://www.askaboutireland.ie/narrative-notes/whiteboys/ I do love a good rebel.

     The newspaper report of the incident read--

Early on Sunday morning a patrol of police discovered a body of men engaged at drill. They captured ten of the party who were brought into Tralee.  The men, who are of the lowest order in Listowel, were brought before the magistrates on Monday.  When arrested they had their faces blackened and wore false whiskers.  The prisoners are George Gunn, Richard Barry, James Kissane, Thomas Hayes, John Browne, Jeremiah O’Connor Denice Bunce…

     A few days later another article appeared in the local newspaper detailing their court appearance--

     The men's defense intrigued me. Their solicitor argued the accused had gone to a neighborhood wedding as, “soppers” which explained their appearance. That certainly required further explanation.  A google search brought up next to nothing, but then I remembered the Schools Collection, which as far as I’m concerned is a national treasure.  In the 1930’s schoolchildren from all over Ireland collected stories from grandparents and older neighbors, which they then recorded in composition form.  It’s amazing what can be found there.  There is no better site to get a feel for life in old Ireland.  I typed “soppers” into their search box and was not disappointed.  Up popped two full pages of results, many of them from County Kerry.  Most descriptions of soppers noted, “To entertain the party, they came with their faces colored or covered so they would not be known. They played and danced and sang”.  In other words, they were expected to be in disguise just as George and the others maintained.

     Resident Magistrate Captain Massey, (in the above article), who comes across as a real prig clearly wasn’t having any of that.  His smug speech stating it was fortunate the prisoners had no firearms about them, has a disingenuous ring to it.  In spite of no real evidence, he still required a £10 surety, (several hundred dollars in today’s money), or two months in prison.  It appears he would have loved to throw the book at Uncle George and his pals and was peeved he hadn't the grounds to do so.  I'm not crazy about his, "men who are of the lowest order", crack as reported in the newspaper either.

     Uncle George had no way of knowing that within thirty-nine years the likes of Captain Massey and his ilk would be gone from Ireland.  Gone from the Free State anyway, and good riddance.  It’s too bad George didn’t live long enough to see that marvelous day.  

 

Richard Gunn's Abject End

 

Killarney District Lunatic Asylum

     Since I've been having such good luck wrapping up loose ends in my Gunn family line, I thought I may as well give my great-great-grandmother's brother Richard Gunn another shot.  I only learned of Richard's existence when I found his 1857 baptism record.  It mangled his name, but the address of Ballygologue in County Kerry was correct, and his parent's names were right for the most part.

     I couldn't find Richard in the 1901 or 1911 censuses, nor in civil registration records.  His was not a common name, so I went for broke and did an all Ireland search of registrations, all events, all locations, and all years.  Amazingly, there were only five registrations under the name of Richard Gunn!  I don't know how that could be possible, but I tried the search several times and there are only five.*  Factoring in his age, there was only one death registration, but it occurred in Killarney, County Kerry in 1885.  I thought it unlikely to be him, he must have died in infancy in Ballygologue before registration was mandated, but I clicked on it anyway and was in for an unpleasant surprise.

Richard Gunn Ballygologue, death at Killarney District Lunatic Asylum, pulmonary phthsis one year

     Richard died of tuberculosis in an insane asylum? I was not expecting that one. This suggested all sorts of questions and called for more research.  It appeared possible he had been a patient for at least a year since the onset of his illness was known to the institution, but that's conjecture.  I wondered of course, how he ended up in that place and what his diagnosis was, but I understand those records, archived in the Kerry Library in Tralee, are sealed.

      I also wondered how hard it was to be admitted to an asylum in Ireland in the late 1800's, the answer seemed to be--not very. The list of causes below is from the Killarney asylum.

     During the period of Richard's stay, there were two forms in use for admissions, one for dangerous and criminal lunatics which required the signatures of two magistrates sitting together, and another called Form E. That form, shown below, required a declaration by friends or relatives, a certificate from a magistrate and clergyman or poor law guardian, along with a medical certificate.

     Another question was, what was the asylum like? Being locked away with mentally ill persons, some of them violent, so far from home would be unpleasant under any circumstances.  Ballydribbeen, where the asylum was located, was almost 40 miles from Richard's home.  In 1885 that would have meant visits from his friends and family were probably infrequent at best.  It surprised me there wasn't a closer option for treatment.  After doing a little reading about the Killarney asylum however, I learned that as a district asylum, it was responsible for the mental healthcare of the entire county.  Like most of the population, Richard had no resources for private care so the district asylum was his only option. But what of Richard's day-to-day living conditions?  One report referred to a chronic problem with wet walls, while another spoke of overcrowding, gloomy rooms, and inadequate ventilation. With those surroundings, it's hardly surprising respiratory illnesses and phthisis (TB), were frequent causes of death, or that they spread rapidly.  What a dreadful place for a suffering, twenty-five year old to spend his last days.

*  One of the five Listowel registrations was of the birth of a formerly unknown Richard Gunn in 1865; his father Francis Gunn could well be a brother of my Richard's father John Gunn, who named a son Francis.   

More About That Lost Son of Johanna Gunn

            My last blog ended with the amazing discovery of Johanna Gunn's firstborn, living in the same townland as his mother, after many years of my believing he likely hadn't survived childhood.  Naturally, after all that searching, I wanted to know more about this man's life.

     Edward Gunn was born December first in 1867 and baptized the fourth day of December in the parish of Listowel, County Kerry.  The church register of baptisms shows the parish priest wrote, mother Johanna Gunn of Ballygologue, godparents George and Mary Gunn.  No father's name was recorded there or on the registration of his birth as seen above.  And there it ended, Edward Gunn couldn't be found in the 1901 or 1911 censuses, nor did he appear in any other civil registrations after his birth.  I had nearly given him up, but while researching that blog about his mother Johanna, it suddenly became clear he had simply changed his surname to that of his father, Edward Burke Sr., and had never left Ballygologue.  Like his half brothers William and John Connor, Edward was a shoemaker; in 1898 he married Mary Denihan, setting up housekeeping in Ballygologue.  Their daughter Ellie was born there in 1899, followed by Daniel Joseph Burke in1902, then four more sons, and daughter Mary Ellen in 1910.

Edward, Mary and Ellie Burke 1901 with Mary's father, all spoke English and Irish

     In studying my Kerry ancestors, I was struck by how bleak and precarious their lives seemed.  Johanna's mother, Margaret Browne Gunn, gave birth to seven children with only three surviving her, Johanna and two others who immigrated.  Johanna had seven children but again, only three survived her, two of them in the states.  Edward Gunn Burke was also father to seven children, three of whom survived him, two in Ireland and one in the states.  Do you see a pattern here?  I know it was not unusual to lose a child, but my ancestors from southeast Ireland seemed to have much better luck with children.  The losses in this family seem staggering by today's standards.  I'm convinced the social and economic conditions in Kerry, one of the poorest counties in Ireland at the time, were a big factor in the death rates and why so many of my realtives left.  In the period after the famine, County Kerry had the highest immigration rate, followed by counties Cork and Clare.

    The only child of Edward's to try his luck in America was his oldest son Daniel.  While putting the pieces of Edward's life together I found an obituary for a Daniel Burke of Palmyra, New York, fifteen minutes from my current home.  That could have been any old Daniel Burke, it's hardly an uncommon name, and yet, this one was from Ireland, was of the right age, and had two brothers with the correct names still living there.  And he was in Palmyra.  Looking at the 1930 census of Palmyra, I found a Dannie Burke from Ireland living with Mary Mahoney from Ireland, (maiden name O'Connor I knew from previous research), and her husband. That had to be him! 

     The census had an immigration date which led me to the passenger list of Daniel's ship arriving 22 September1924 in New York.  Passenger lists from that time period contain a trove of information.  From that single document I learned Daniel was an agricultural laborer, stood 5 feet 3 inches tall, had black hair and gray eyes, and $30 in his pocket.  It showed his father's half-brother William O'Connor, already in America, had put up the money for his nephew's passage.  It further showed Daniel was on his way to the home of his great-aunt, Mary Gunn Power, my great-great-grandmother, in upstate New York, and he had left a father, Mr. Ned Burke, in Ballygologue.  

     It gives me such a rush to make the connection between Ireland and the place where I still live.  A feeling of closeness.  Daniel's destination, the Power home, was a mile from where I would grow up decades later, Palmyra was the next village over.  Daniel eventually landed a good job, married in 1935, and raised two children, Daniel Jr. and Rosemary.  He passed away in Rochester, New York in 1971.  

     Back in Ireland, Edward Gunn Burke lived out his days in Ballygologue, his wife passing in 1928, his mother Johanna in 1930, and himself in 1939 at age 71.  His death registration says he died from toxemia of burns in Listowel Hospital, but even after extensive newspaper searches, the scant information in the registration was all I could find.  By then he had lost his firstborn daughter Ellie to bronchitis in 1902 at the age of two, two young sons to whooping cough at ages two and four in 1907, his only remaining daughter, Mary Ellen at 18 from typhoid fever, along with his wife. His oldest son Daniel was far away, but Edward at least had his sons Mike and Edward Jr. with him until the end.

     

A Singular Sunday, in Which the Mystery of Johanna Gunn is Finally Solved and a Lost Child Found

      

    The damp, cold weather continues here in New York.  Add to that a newly spayed puppy and I find myself housebound.  Since little Suzie is pretty high on pain meds and sleeping, I saw an opportunity to spend the day doing genealogy.

     I've long been curious about Johanna Gunn, the sister of my great-great-grandmother Mary Gunn Power, both of Ballygologue in County Kerry, so I chose her as my subject.  It appears Johanna was the oldest in her family, born around 1850 to John and Margaret Browne Gunn.  Johanna's first child, Edward, was born out of wedlock in the spring of 1867 there in Ballygologue.  I never found another scintilla of information about him and assumed he had probably died young.  

     In 1871, Johanna married Thomas O'Connor and gave birth to five more sons and a daughter. Thomas died in the Listowel Work House in1889, but what of Johanna?  No death registration ever came to light for her in spite of many hours of searching.  She appeared in the 1901 census as a poverty stricken widow living in a two room, 3rd class abode with her mother, three of her children, and a nephew. After that she seemed to vanish.

     Today at the Civil Registration site I pored over every death entry that could conceivably be hers, using all manner of search terms with no luck.  Over and over I tried, growing very discouraged, but a feeling of dejavu was slowly creeping in.  I had run into this situation before with another great-great-grandmother.  I only found her when I chanced upon an obituary naming all her children, the lady had remarried well into her sixth decade and assumed a new surname.  Could Johanna have married again?  Back to the registrations, and indeed, there was a marriage!  In 1910, when she was about 60, Johanna had married John Granville of Ballygologue.  No wonder I never found her death registration.

Marriage of Johanna O'Connor, widow, Ballygologue, father John Gunn-- it all fits!

     Now that I had Johanna's new surname, not to mention her newly found entry in the 1911 census, finding her death date should be a breeze right? Nope. There were three possibilities, one of which I quickly discounted since that lady's husband was a shopkeeper, which from the 1911 census I knew John Granville was not.  That left two Johanna Granville's in Ballygologue, one born in 1849 who died in 1924, and one born in 1858 who died in 1930.  Unfortunately, neither seemed to fit. The registration with the birth year of 1849 seemed promising at first, but the informant was Michael Granville, son of the decedent.  Johanna didn't have a son named Michael. The birthdate on the remaining registration was way off, if Johanna was born in 1858, she would have been nine years old when Edward was born.  Also, the informant was Michael Burke, grandson.  Johanna didn't have a grandson named Michael Burke. Now what?

     I did a little research on the Granville's that's what.  Maybe Johanna's new husband John Granville had a son named Michael who would have been Johanna's stepson? That did not pan out, the marriage record seen above refers John as a bachelor, not a widower, and in the 1901 census he was single. No children for John.  I did find his father Thomas Granville's second marriage to Johanna Nolan.  They too lived in Ballygologue and they did have a son named Michael, probably the 1924 death registration was hers. She was younger than her husband Thomas and was in worse circumstances in 1901than my Johanna was, sharing a one room cabin with five other people.  

     It seemed 1930 must be the right year for my Johanna's death, but who was Michael Burke, grandson? To answer that question, I looked for the birth of a lad by that name in the civil registrations and found this--

Michael Burke, son of Edward Burke and Mary Deenihan, born Ballygologue, 1906

     That was possibly him, but who was Edward Burke?  Or Mary Deenihan?  I needed to see their marriage registration--

Marriage of Edward Burke in 1898

     

     Wait, what!  Could it be?  After all my years of searching?  Edward Burke born in 1872?  Living in Ballygologue?  Marriage witnessed by Johanna O'Connor?  Oh, my Lord!  It was Johanna's firstborn son Edward!  I was sure of it.  Now the "Michael Burke, grandson", on the 1930 death registration made sense.  Edward hadn't died young; he had grown up in Ballygologue with his mother.  Although his parents never married, and he was baptized Edward Gunn, at some point he had adopted his father's surname.  Right there in his marriage registration was his father, Edward Burke.

     I've always seen Johanna as a tragic figure who gave birth to seven children, only two of whom outlived her.  Those two, along with her surviving brothers and sister, were gone to America by 1902, never to return to Ireland.  She had eleven grandchildren living in the states she would never meet.  I used to believe Johanna was left without any close family nearby in her last decades.  Now however, I know she had a husband, her son Edward, and even grandchildren on her side of the Atlantic. Knowing all this makes me feel a small sense of relief for her.  In spite of  Johanna's many losses, she wasn't alone.

     

Today's Forecast - Cloudy with Genealogy

      

     After days of record-breaking high temperatures here in New York, we are back to our usual early spring weather.  Cold and damp ... I refuse to go outside.  Instead, I decided to dive into the O'Hora rabbit hole.  Many years ago, I met a distant cousin from that line on the internet.  Luckily for me, though she resided in Georgia she regularly visited her hometown of Auburn, New York, which was the first stop for the O'Hora clan after they got off the boat way back when.  Today, there are still O'Horas living in that place.

     I live fairly close to Auburn, and while planning to meet one another, we agreed to bring along our genealogy notes and copies to share.  Among the documents Rita gave me was a copy of the report she commissioned from the now defunct Carlow Genealogy Project.  There were pages of Hore/O'Hore baptism records, marriages, tithe applotments, it was absolutely amazing!  At that time none of those things were online.  It kept me busy for weeks, but after copying the data into my software, studying it, attempting to figure out connections, it eventually found its way into my filing cabinet.  Because really, there wasn't much more I could do with it. With nothing online, I had no way to double check the information it contained, look for proof of the hypotheses I had formed while reading it, or build on that research.  Things have changed now, so I grabbed the report, turned up the heat, and sat down to start hunting.

     I soon found that though the document was valuable, there was quite a bit the authors had missed.  Rita knew her great-great-grandmother was Mary Hore, but she could never find proof that Mary was the daughter of Michael Hore and Mary Travers, and the sister of my great-great-grandfather James Hore.  Going through baptisms at Find My Past, I found the baptism of Mary "O'Hara", daughter of Michael and Mary "Travis", born in the townland of Ricketstown, the same place my James and his siblings were born.  (The Carlow researchers really should have found that one, given the address and such similar names.)  This was clearly the proof Rita had been seeking but sadly, when I tried to contact her with the news, I found she was deceased.

The long sought baptism of Mary Hore/O'Hora

     Another omission was the address of the subjects.  Using information contained in the report, I looked up baptisms and marriages now available online and discovered many of them gave an address. That's really important.  It's very helpful to know which Hore families were living in the same townland.  There were also cases where there were actually three witnesses to a marriage, but only two appeared in the report.  Witnesses are also of importance.  I was glad to have the report though. Since many members of the family stayed in Ireland, I'd be flying blind without clues about what to look for.  The online records themselves are far from perfect, whoever indexed the parish of Hacketstown for the Find My Past site had particular trouble with the surname; in one case changing it to "Thara", and in another to "Garcia", Garcia???  I finally found those two baptisms by using just the parish, approximate date, and parent's first names for search terms, though that didn't always work.  In one case the mother's name Rose had been indexed as "Ton".

     It may sound as though I'm criticizing, but I don't mean it that way.  I'm over the moon about all the Irish records that have come online.  Using them and the report Rita gave me I've been able to put families together and even see how they relate to the O'Horas who came to the USA.  And I've had a ball doing it. DaVinci was right when he said, "The noblist pleasure is the joy of understanding". True, I was sad that it was too late to tell Rita I'd finally found the baptism she'd spent years looking for.  And that mis-transcribed "Garcia" surname?  That was exasperating, but at the same time it made me laugh, I doubt there were many Garcia families living in Knockananna in the 1800's.  I point it out because it's something researchers need to consider when that record we know is there just can't be found.

Baptism of Bridget "Garcia"

A New Family Photo!

      I've noticed something about Ancestry, they don't always find obvious hints.  This time it was the photograph of a family member on Find A Grave that the site failed to alert me to.  The name and dates match my tree exactly, and I already had an earlier version of that Find A Grave page in my tree from before the picture was added.  It's not the first time this has happened either.  A few months ago, while viewing the tree of a DNA match, I found a photo of one of my Travers relatives had been posted there with nary a peep from Ancestry.  I enjoy doing my own research, but pictures are the holy grail of genealogy, Ancestry needs to do better.

     Nevertheless, I'm excited to find the image of Arthur Worden, his wife Edna Warner, and their daughter Inez.  They aren't direct ancestors, but I'm related to both of them by blood.  Arthur was my 2nd great-granduncle, and Edna my 1st cousin 3 times removed.  I have a photo of Inez, found on eBay of all places, so I compared that one to Ancestry's.

Inez and her baby sister Gladys

Inez and parents from Find A Grave photo

     The strong resemblance between the older child in the first photo and the one beneath it is indisputable.  I'm always a little leery of online pictures with no provenance, but I'm confident this is a true image of the Worden family. Edna's hair looks a bit odd here, so I copied the picture into my paint program then used the little eyedropper tool to match her hair color from the unfaded, left side of her head and went over it.  The results are below, I think it's a big improvement.

     It's such a thrill to stumble upon images of long-gone relatives.  I wish Arthur's face was in better shape, but it imparts a good idea of what he looked like.  I wonder did he look like his father Paul or his mother Eva Benedict?  Eva was Paul's second wife and much younger than him.  After three children their marriage fell apart; 1892 found Arthur living in the "orphan asylum" while a neighbor adopted his younger sister, changing her surname to McClouth.  His younger brother lived with Paul.  I would love to know the details of how this all came to pass, but so far, I've been unable to even find a record of a divorce.  

     Eva remarried and gave birth to another daughter, but her three eldest children never lived with her again.  The 1910 census shows Eva, aged 54, living with her new husband William Brown, their daughter Ruby Brown aged 19, and a one-year-old child named Arthur Brown, listed as Eva's son.  I've always believed this baby was in fact Ruby's, not Eva's, but had no proof.  However, in addition to the photo, there on the F.A.G. site was Ruby's obituary; among her survivors was her "son" Arthur of Detroit.

     I don't know who posted the photograph to Find A Grave, but I plan to message that person through the site, and also recheck the Find A Grave pages in my trees.  Hopefully, more photos await discovery...

    

     

I Attend Lectures At the National Archives of Ireland, And So Can You

      

     It's true, you can!  I'm a faithful reader of Clare Santry's Irish Genealogy News blog which covers all things pertaining to Irish genealogical research, from databases to site updates, to bargains. Pickings have been slim since covid reared its ugly head, but one helpful thing that did come out of the lock downs was an increase in Zoom accessible lectures.  A while ago on Clare's site I noticed one such talk sponsored by the Archives titled, From Tithes to Griffith's: Property and Valuation Records, given by professional genealogist Michael Walsh and now available at You Tube.  As I happened to currently be working in just that area of my research, I decided to give it a go.

      I've been fruitlessly searching for my third-great-grandfather Michael Hoar/O'Hora, of  Ricketstown, County Carlow, in the Tithe Applotment Books ever since they came online in 2012.  I've found a John "Hoar", another variation, in Ricketstown but no Michael, whose children's baptism records give his address as that place. The tithe book of the Civil Parish of Rahill in County Carlow contains part of Ricketstown; the other part of the townland lies in the Civil Parish of Kineagh, County Carlow.  I cannot find it, and Lord knows I've looked!  

John Hoar in the Rahill Parish book, mistakenly indexed as Hoan at the Archives

     Once again, I pulled up the Kineagh book.  It had 131 images online at Family Search, not bad, may as well look at them all.  The first pages seemed to be a protracted argument about who should get the cash from the tithes, but then the image below came up. Take a look at the heading, it reads, "Particulars of Rent-Charge payable to Thomas G. Maple in lieu of Composition...".  What did that mean? Typically, it would have read just, "Annual Composition", though all the tithe books are a little different.  There was no standard form used, each locality designed thier own format.

Ricketstown is the last entry in the Kineagh Parish book, person liable for rent-charge is J. Hutchinson

     

            This page was followed by more discussion of who was entitled to benefit from the tithes, then suddenly, I found myself in County Cork.  Seems it also has a parish by the name of Kineagh.  Returning to the page, it appears J. Hutchinson, in the third column, was responsible for Ricketstown's tithes so possibly no list of occupiers was done?  Maybe that professional genealogist could help.

     I've hesitated in the past to try these lectures. Attempting to calculate the time differences and navigate the intricacies of Zoom, along with my aversion to attempting anything that might cause me frustration, (like computers) intimidated me a bit.  However, this proved literally painless.  I reserved my "ticket", followed the instructions emailed to me, and I was in like Flynn.  I really didn't even read the instructions closely, which for me is always a last resort, and it still worked.  Kudos to the Archives.

     The program was enjoyable, and it felt quite glamorous to be attending an academic lecture.  I even learned a few things.  There was a Q & A session afterwards, but unfortunately my question about the phrase, "in lieu of composition", wasn't chosen.  

     I remain completely confused by all this, the description at Family Search says the year of the Kineagh book is unknown, but it appears to be post 1837.  For years the british had been floating bills to change how tithes were collected, hoping Catholic tenants could be mollified by lowering their tithes and rolling them into their rent payments. That became law in 1838 and would explain the use of the term, "Rent-Charge", on the document.  Still, I came across a book done in 1850 which still listed occupiers at that late date.  All I know is that the names of Ricketstown residents in Kineagh are missing.  I'm not quite ready to give up though, maybe I should be looking in the Cork film?