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. 

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...