Locating an Ancestral Homeland in Ireland

In an early Chicago history from 1912, Josiah Seymour Currey mentions James Carney as one of the earliest Irish settlers in the muddy, swampy area that was to become Chicago. He joined with other intrepid and enterprising people (including Native Americans, French Canadians, the offspring of the unions between French and Native Americans, and Americans from other established cities and towns) to build a village that would become a great metropolis in a few decades.

Fort Dearborn & Chicago in 1831.jpg,
probably engraved from a sketch by Juliette Kinzie, wikimedia

James Carney is listed in the Robert Fergus’ Chicago Directory, 1830 as having a “grocery and provision store, 133 Lake Street.” p. 9 A Patrick Timoney is listed as a laborer, boarding with James Carney. p. 33.

As mentioned in a previous post, this James Carney was a merchant, grocer, and finally a brewer in the 1830s-1850s in Chicago. He belonged to a stellar group of early businessmen who laid the economic foundations for the young city. But who was this Irish Chicagoan? Where did he come from in Ireland? Or did he come from Northern Ireland? On the map below, Northern Ireland is at the top right and the rest of the country is Ireland.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/
commons/archive/d/d7/20070313214912%21Ireland.svg

Where did he learn the trading, marketing, operating, brewing skills that brought him such success in Chicago? With whom did he associate in Chicago? This became my challenge – learning as much as I could about James’ life in Chicago from available records and maybe getting some clues as to where in Ireland James Carney was born and lived until his emigration to America. In a later post I will explore possible connections between James and John Carney, my great great grandfather.

If you have done any research on your Irish American ancestors, you have probably faced this obstacle: a minimal number of records both here and across the Atlantic. If you’re lucky, you might have a family bible, oral histories, photos, or maybe an heirloom or two. In my case I had none of the above about James Carney. Despite the scarcity of official records, the fact that James participated in local politics and joined in some social groups earned him a mention or two in some local histories of Chicago. Let’s start there.

James Carney was an early Irish immigrant and successful merchant who recognized that participation in local politics could be an entry into acceptance as an “American.” In 1840 he ran for alderman of Chicago’s second ward and was elected as noted  on p. 102 in M.L. Ahern’s Political History of Chicago: 1837-1887.

In addition to his work as a businessman and his political service, James also showed a passion for the independence of his birth country. In the 1844 Chicago City Directory, reprinted in 1902 by Ellis and Fergus, he is listed as the treasurer for The Chicago Repeal Association. This group’s mission, as was of the original group in Ireland, was to advocate for the repeal of the 1800 Acts of Union that joined England and Ireland into United Kingdom of Great Britain.

James was also active in the intellectual life of his Catholic parish of Old St. Mary’s. The photo below is the third structure of the church which was built on Madison and Wabash in 1842.

St. Mary's Cathedral of Chicago, from Robert N.
Dennis collection of stereoscopic views.jpg;
NY Public Library, digital ID G90F170_001F

The 1844 City Directory lists him as the treasurer of the Catholic Library Society (p. 68) I could find no information about this society after a google search and an inquiry to the Archdiocese ofChicago. But the name of the society, the fact that it met in the basement of Old St. Mary’s Church, and the time of its existence (1840s) provide some clues. At this time in Chicago’s early history, public libraries were non-existent. It wasn’t until after the Great Fire of1871 that a public library system was created. Religious, civic-minded businessmen with an interest in both local, national and world affairs would require a comfortable and private place to read/discuss both Catholic and secular newspapers, magazines, and books.

We now have some knowledge of James Carney’s business, civic, and social footprint in early Chicago, but where did he come from in Ireland? To begin to answer this question, we need to re-visit that research technique called “cluster genealogy” that I discussed in my blog post  Immigrants to America tended to travel from the old country in groups of people known to each other. This historical phenomenon is known as "network migration."  (p. 83-84.) Once in America, they lived near the same people and others from their country of origin. Since we don’t know where James Carney lived in Ireland, maybe we can find out some answers from the people he lived with, worked with, and worshiped with. Who were James Carney’s associates? 

The 1850 Chicago, Cook, IL federal census provides a detailed look at James Carney’s household; we see who worked for him in the brewery and lived in his household: Patrick Timoney, Daniel McElroy, John O’Neill and Mary McGillen. But how long had these families been in community? Let's start with US records.

The earliest documents in Chicago of James Carney and allied families are in the marriage records from Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in its second structure at Michigan and Madison.

Chicago History Museum, ICHi-37096.
J.H. Murphy, photographer

As early as 1836, James Carney and several Timoney family members are witnesses for weddings:

• 10-01-1836 Marriage of Joseph Brown & Elsie Donnelly; Witnesses: Patrick Kelly, James Carney p. 8

• 07-06-1837 Marriage of Denis McCarty & Marguerite McCloghart; Witnesses: Francis M. Crogha, Esther Timoney p. 9

• 12-26-1837 Marriage of Lawrence Dorsey &Jane Strickland; Witnesses: William Dorsey, Catherine Timoney p. 10

• 09-18-1839 Marriage of James Summer & Elleanor Summers; Witnesses: Patrick Duffy, Catherine Timoney p. 13

A researcher, who wishes to be anonymous, on the O’Neill and McGillen lines, found baptism records at St. Mary of the Assumption, (Old St. Mary’s on Wabash,) that reveal more connections among the families:

• 1 Jan 1850 - Marriage of John O'Neill and Ann McGillen; Witnesses: Daniel McElroy & Bridget Carney

• 15 Dec 1850 - Baptism of James Edward O'Neill; Sponsors: Daniel McElroy & Mary Timoney

• 12 Nov 1852 - Baptism of Mary Anne (Mollie) Victoria O'Neill; Sponsors: James Carney & Ann Carney

• 19 May 1854 - Baptism of Alice (Sr. Cornelia) O'Neill; Sponsors: Patrick Timoney & Margaret O'Kane

A pivotal point in the web of familial relationships is James Carney’s kinship to the McGillen line; he was the grand uncle of Edward McGillen, a fact that I found in a 1909 history of Chicago:

“Edward McGillen…came to Chicago (from Ireland) in the early 1830s when he was only eight years old. He was brought here by a grand uncle, James Carney, who was a merchant and traded with the Indians in Fort Dearborn days of Chicago history.” p. 712.

A geographic anchoring for Edward McGillen comes from a death certificate for his son, John McGillen, dated 01 March 1924 in Chicago, IL., stating that he was born in Fermanagh County, Northern Ireland.

Wikimedia, GNU Free Documentation
License, Fermanagh_Ulster.png 2007
(Fermanagh is in red, NI in bright green)

Thus we have established a family foothold in Ulster for James Carney’s grandnephew, our first placing of a cohort across the ocean.

The aforementioned researcher also shared with me that some of her McGillen ancestors lived in Leitrim County, Ireland in the townland of Kiltyclogher near the Fermanagh border. In the 1911 Ireland Census, a Bessie McGillen, age 74, is listed as mother of Patrick McGillen, age 39. Bessie’s birthdate puts the family in County Leitrim prior to 1837.

By Island_of_Ireland_location_map.svg:
Maximilian Dörrbecker (Chumwa)derivative work:
Rannpháirtí anaithnid (talk)derivative work: Mabuska
 (Island_of_Ireland_location_map.svg)
 [CC BY-SA 3.0  (https://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons
(County Leitrim is dark green)

What about the rest of the cohort families: McElroy, O’Neill, and Timoney? Did they originally hail from Northern Ireland, around Fermanagh near Leitrim or Tyrone? Dr. Tyrone Bowes has created a tool that was just right for me to use to begin my search. He made a geographical distribution of surnames in Ireland/Northern Ireland and plotted them on a map, and it is available for purchase on the website. 

To spread out this large map and see the names of your target families jump out at you is truly an awesome experience. Three names (McCarney, McElroy, and O’Neill) appear in the Northern Irish county of Tyrone (bordering on Fermanagh to the north) and the name Timoney is shown just across the northwestern border of Fermanagh with County Donegal.

With this information from Bowes site to orient me, I moved on to Griffith’s Valuation which is like a census in that it recorded where people lived and what property they owned in mid-nineteenth century Ireland. This record is arranged according to the levels of administrative units in Ireland/Northern Ireland: townland (village,) civil parish, religious parish, Poor Law Union (based on neighboring townlands around a central market town,) barony, and county. A civil parish often included more than one barony or county. The website Ask About Ireland provides free access to those who want to search Griffith’s Valuation. 

Where to begin my search in the database? I thought the best place would be the important clue we have: County Leitrim, near Kiltyclogher by the Fermanagh border, where the McGillens once lived. From here we might see if any of the families were in nearby Fermanagh also.

When we look name distribution in County Leitrim near Kiltyclogher and the Fermanagh border, we see an interesting picture. Members of the Carney family are found in two townlands in Leitrim County in the barony of Drumhaire. The first townland is Manorhamilton, in the Civil Parish of Cloonclare, which is 7 miles from the second townland of Cashel, in the Civil Parish of Killanummery. Members of the three of the four associated families all lived in the same barony between 5-9 miles of one of these townlands. One family lived in the barony of Roscloger which is only 6 miles from Manorhamilton. This can be shown more clearly on the map below. 

Map data @Google 2018

When we turn to the locations of Carney and associated families in County Fermanagh, we also find an intriguing picture. Carney family members settled in the townlands of Culky and Laragh, about five miles from the large market townland of Enniskillen. The other families all lived within 8-13 miles of Culky. As can be seen on the map below, Enniskillen is about 15 miles from the County Leitrim border.

Map data @Google 2018

The results of my search were no surprise; members of the five different families were scattered in, around and between the townlands of Kiltyclogher (County Leitrim, bordering Fermanagh) and Enniskillen in County Fermanagh near the Leitrim border.

I started this project with two goals:

• To find out if the four families that lived in the Carney household in Chicago in the 1850 Federal Census might be known to each other before they came to the US

• To find out where in Ireland/Northern Ireland James Carney was born and lived before his emigration to America.

I am very happy with how far I have come in my effort to find the homeplace of James Carney and his associated families in Northern Ireland. I have used Irish records to show that the five families did indeed live near each other in Northern Ireland along both sides of the border of County Leitrim near Kiltyclogher and up to Enniskillen in County Fermanagh. However, more research is needed to try to identify more exactly the Carney townland/village. In a subsequent post, I will explore the possible connections between James Carney and my great great grandfather, John Carney.



Labels: Irish, immigrants, Chicago, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Carney/Kearney, Chicago city directories, cluster genealogy, cohort, collateral families

By Their Church, Ye Shall Know Them

“By their affiliations, you shall know them” to restate a familiar biblical quote. Many genealogical experts urge us to look at the groups our ancestors joined to learn more about them. One of the potentially richest sources of information for genealogists is the church where our ancestor worshipped. The records created by churches sometimes include, and may go beyond, the sacramental records of baptism, communion, confirmation and marriage.

As I have mentioned before in this blog, serendipity along with the steady mining of information from a variety of sources can sometimes result in unexpected and amazing finds. Last year I became aware of the Chicago Genealogical Society On the CGS website, I clicked the publications tab and found the listing of the contents of copies of the quarterly journal of the Society, The Chicago Genealogist, going all the way back to 1969. But the best news of all is that the Newberry Library in Chicago has digitized all the copies of this journal.

It is a two-step process to find articles of interest in The Chicago Genealogist. First, you look at the list of articles on the CGS website. When you find an article of interest (be sure to note the date, volume, number), you search for it on the Newberry’s digitized collection.  From this page, you can click on “Advanced Search” at the top and search for the exact volume.

I made a list of several articles I wanted to read, including “Some Early Irish Residents of Chicago’s West Side” in vol. XI #3 Spring 1979. When I located the article in the Newberry Library's collection, I was astonished to see what it actually was: “A list of contributors to the building of the main altar at Holy Family Catholic Church during the years 1863-65.”

As I looked down the list of names of parishioners, I saw some of my target surnames (J. Carney, Patrick Kearney, J. Duffy), as well as names from their collateral families (Anthony Dinan, Bernard Cosgrove, John Cosgrove, T. Cosgrove).

This find was exciting because I had been stuck in my Irish paternal great great grandparents’generation: my great great grandfather John Carney/Kearney and my great great grandmother Mary Duffy. I had found little information about them. They are identified as my great grandmother’s (Mary Carney/Kearney Kries Lauer) parents only on her second marriage application.

I have found mention of people in John’s and Mary’s  close social circle (collateral families) on baptism records. Julia Mercer Cosgrove is listed as a baptismal sponsor for Patrick William Kearney, the son of John Kearney and Mary Duffy. In the next generation, Catherine Sweeney Brookins Dinan and her son, Charles Dinan, were baptismal sponsors for Henrietta Kries, the daughter of Mary Carney/Kearney Kries and Henry Kries.

With this list of altar contributors, I had moved back a generation. But there was more to be found in this journal article. At the very top of the first page, the transcriber, Thomas M. Cook, gave the source of this list: “…originally published in Holy Family Parish, by Bro. Thomas Mulkerins S.J., Universal Press, Chicago, 1923.” And Cook even tells his reader where to find the book: “A copy of this book can be found in the collection of the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle Library.”

Another caveat to researchers that genealogy experts put forward is that if at all possible, a researcher should always go back to the original source. You never know if mistakes were made by an indexer or transcriber or if information was left out. So I needed to consult Brother Mulkerins’ book on the first parish of my Chicago ancestors.

I went to the University of Illinois Chicago Campus and searched for the book on the UIC library page. I found that there were two copies, one in Special Collections which was non-circulating and one in the stacks. I telephoned the library just to be sure the latter could be requested through Interlibrary Loan (ILL). Fortunately, I was able to obtain this treasure through my local library’s ILL program.You can also read Holy Family Parish online at archive.org. 

One of the key elements of the book is the parish map that is included. I was actually able to locate the area where my great great grandparents lived (Halsted and Maxwell/Hastings) on this map.

 As I looked through the history of Holy Family Parish, I found several items of great interest to me that did not appear in the altar contributors’ list; in fact, although that list was crucial for me to identify ancestral surnames and to tie them to later generations, there was so much more to learn about the church and the community it served:

1. What the land around Holy Family Parish looked like when the     church was built in 1857.
2. Why so many parishioners were included as contributors to the altar society drive.
3. What the neighborhood was like – what kinds of commercial establishments lined the streets.

When Father Arnold Damen began work on building Holy Family Church in 1857, this is what the area looked like, according to Father Mulkerins:

“…the territory allotted to the parish was a prairie during part of the year and a swamp during another with scarcely a structure worthy of the name of house in the entire parish, and only a few scattered cabins here and there.”¹

But it seems that things certainly changed once the church was built:

“Even in those early days it had already become a matter of quite general knowledge that the establishment of a Catholic Church…generally had the effect of drawing people to the vicinity….In an incredibly short time there were numerous families living near the site of the church, and there were numerous additions to the industrial plants.” ² And why was this?

“…wise business men knew well that amongst the Catholic population…there would be many who would make suitable employees.”³ 

The second fact that I learned from reading Holy Family Parish was about the altar society contributors’ list itself. There were about 800 names on the list but most of the donations were only $1.00. What was this all about? Well, it seems that Father Damen preferred to make sure everyone in the parish could enjoy the blessings that came from contributing to the building of the new altar. He and his assistants went door-to-door to see that no one was overlooked. And in addition to the heavenly blessing that a donor would receive, Father Damen added as a further inducement that “each donor was to have his or her name engrossed on parchment and placed under the altar.”⁴ 

The third piece of information I gleaned from Mulkerins’ history of Holy Family Parish is perhaps the most important. The book actually could serve as a “Fodor’s Guide” to Chicago’s Near West Side in the nineteenth century. We learn first about one of the hallmarks of poverty that still exists today: stores that sell alcohol abound in poor neighborhoods:

“Many of the grocery stores in the early days and up to the eighties (1880s), were a sort of combination of saloon and grocery….The grocery stores were very numerous everywhere in those times, and there were no department stores then as now….They were very numerous, sometimes two, three or even four on the corners of intersecting streets and possibly a few more within the block.”⁵  

Between pages 725 and 747, Father Mulkerins takes us on a walk through the neighborhood and describes the commercial establishments, other than grocery/saloons, including: drug stores and shoe stores, bakeries and undertakers, coal businesses and hay stores, candle manufacturers and hardware stores, house movers and dry goods stores, meat markets and ice cream stores, hatters and leather stores, and tobacco stores and livery businesses.

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

 Yes, Holy Family Parish was a magnificent discovery. I learned that before my great grandparents attended St. Patrick’s Church, their parents were members of Holy Family Parish. I had the opportunity, one that is so often out of reach to genealogists, to “tour” the neighborhood where my people lived, shopped, worked and worshipped.

Notes:

1.    Thomas M. Mulkerins, Brother, Holy Family Parish, Chicago: Priests and People (Chicago, IL: Universal Press, 1923), 718.
2.     Ibid., 719
3.     Ibid., 719.
4.     Ibid., 58.
5.     Ibid., 720.

Categories: genealogy groups

Drama in American Colonial Courts

We have all seen the advice in the how-to-do genealogy books that we not forget court records in our research into our ancestors’ lives.

Court House, Boston, built 1713 (engraving 1751 by Nathaniel Hurd; courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Wikimedia, public domain.

One of the standard works on this subject that I find very clear and informative is Courthouse Research for Family Historians by Christine Rose.

In order to fully appreciate the importance of court records for genealogical research, we need to understand the significance of law and the courts in the daily lives of the colonists in early America. Browsing through the new books at my neighborhood library, I came across The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttle by Ava Chamberlain, a scholarly study of how historians have mischaracterized Elizabeth Tuttle, the paternal grandmother of the great Puritan theologian, Jonathan Edwards.

Used by permission of author

 Although Professor Chamberlain wrote this book to uncover the true character of Elizabeth Tuttle, she also gives genealogists a great lesson in how to use court records to study ancestors.

In addition to modeling the use of civil and criminal court records to glean information about people who often didn’t leave other records, Chamberlain also demonstrates another genealogical lesson: “Because Elizabeth Tuttle’s story cannot be told directly, we must adopt an indirect approach.”¹ This means using the records of collateral persons and families, the written trail of those people close to Elizabeth whose actions can give us a glimpse into her life.  I love Professor Chamberlain’s turn of phrase to describe how she will tell the story of Elizabeth Tuttle’s divorce by “teasing it out from the historical records.” ² 

Why are court records so important a resource in studying colonial era ancestors?

In seventeenth century colonial America, the courts played a large part in people’s lives, according to Chamberlain:

“Most colonists, both male and female, appeared in court at various moments of their lives….”³ 

Chamberlain footnoted the above quote which led me to another study of the role of the court in colonial times: Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early Connecticut  by Bruce H. Mann, Professor of Law at Harvard. Checking notes and bibliographies in the books we consult as genealogists is another very important part of research which can lead to information we might never have discovered otherwise.

Used by permission of author

Mann tells us that the main reason people went to court in colonial times was to settle debts. As we are aware today, when people go to court, they often come away with bad feelings about each other. In colonial times, society was quite different from today; it was much more insular so the disharmony caused by law suits was more of a threat to the community than it is today.

In order to understand the role of the court in the seventeenth century, Mann reminds us that we need to remember an important aspect of colonial society. People lived in very small communities, generally of about 100 families. The insularity that resulted from small groups living together resulted in people interacting with each other in many different ways, having “multilayered relationships”:

“Debtors and creditors did not, indeed could not, limit their relations to single transactions. They might also be neighbors, relatives, fellow church members, companions in the local militia company, suppliers of goods and services that each needed, rivals for the affection of the same widow, parents whose children had quarreled or whose livestock had eaten each other’s grain. In short, they were people whose course of dealing with one another stretched across time as well as across several roles.” ⁴ 

As we can see from the description above of the reasons people took each other to court, we have a strong indication of what types of records we might find in courthouse files. The records reflect people’s daily lives and go way beyond the catalog of “facts” that we read in birth, marriage and death records.

What kinds of court records did Chamberlain come across in her effort to reveal Elizabeth Tuttle’s true story? The most telling records were the divorce petitions, and there were several including appeals, that Richard Edwards, Elizabeth’s husband, brought against her. And much earlier in their marriage, Richard had brought a petition of paternity against his new bride.

We have seen that one function of the court in colonial times was to give people a place to air their differences without threatening communal bonds. The judges and the selectmen were the arbiters. But how did early Americans feel about the law?

Used by permission of author

To find more about the role of laws and courts in early America. I did a google search and found a book by Peter Charles Hoffer  entitled Law and People in ColonialAmerica.







Hoffer discusses how the colonists’ attitude toward the law developed and how they used the courts:

“Throughout their colonial and revolutionary experience, Americans developed a passion for law, a legalism that pervaded social, economic, and political relationships. They laid their disputes with one another before the courts of law to an extent exceeding all other peoples. The colonists believed in the possibilities of a lawful world, and their demands for legal redress grew from and sustained this faith.” ⁵

Hoffer underscores again the function of the court as a means of preserving harmony in the small, isolated, frontier communities where everyone depended on one another:

 Pilgrims going to church, published between 1940-1950, Boughton, George Henry, 1834-1905 , artist, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

“Law kept families together with ties of property and obligation. People went to court to reintegrate themselves into towns, parishes, and colonial life. Courts were places of signification. They helped people decide what was important to them.” ⁶ 

The quote above explains clearly why genealogists need to look at court records if they want to build a more complete picture of their early American ancestors’ lives.

Although the law and the court featured largely in the lives of the colonists and served as a means of diffusing friction, it cannot be said that all members of colonial society were treated equally in the court system, as Hoffer makes clear:

“…early American law gave some people and some ways of behaving advantages over others. It forbade certain activities, defining the margins of acceptable deviation from normal or customary conduct. It intruded itself into people’s lives, demanding that they honor commitments, pay debts, serve church and county, and accept pain, shame, and punishment for their crimes. Local magnates, sitting as justices of the peace and on vestries or councils of elders, demanded deference and used law to reinforce their demands. The playing field was by no means level.” ⁷

Colonial kitchen with woman spinning, an engraving, 1885, A Brief History of the United States by Joel Dorman Steele and Esther Baker Steele, 1885, wikimedia, public domain.

This brings us back to Elizabeth Tuttle and why Chamberlain wrote a book about her life. Women, indentured servants, children, slaves and other marginalized people were often treated harshly under the law; they had no voice and so rarely do we hear or even know their side of any story.

 We are fortunate that through Professor Chamberlain’s research, Elizabeth Tuttle’s good name and reputation have been restored.

 

With this new knowledge of the colonial courthouse as a kind of theater where our ancestors played out many significant happenings in their lives, I look forward to looking for records left my Allis ancestors who lived in colonial Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Notes

1. Ava Chamberlain, The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttle (New York and London: New York, University Press, 2012), 2.

2. Ibid., 10.

3. Ibid., 50.

4. Bruce H. Mann, Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early Connecticut (Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 18.

5. Peter Charles Hoffer, Law and People in Colonial America (Baltimore, MD, The John Hopkins University Press, 1998) xii.

6. Ibid., ix.

7. Ibid., ix-x.