Progress is progress right?

I haven’t had a lot of time lately to work on my own family history so I made a special effort to get some time in last night. I wanted to check at least one of my grandparents’ DNA tests and see if they had any new important matches (ideally one that would help me break through one of my brick walls). Since my paternal granoda’s Gibson and Cain lines remain my most stubborn brick walls, I checked his account at 23andMe.

His closest matches are descendants of his maternal uncle, Elmer Joseph. Then there are a few matches on his father's side, descendants of his aunt Annie Condon and uncle Thomas Gibson (one of which turned out to be an adoptee). Then there's a mix of maternal and paternal matches that are a little more distant - descendants of his maternal granduncle Gottlieb Joseph and paternal granduncle Anthony Cain. There's a whole group of descendants descended from his grandaunt Tina (Joseph) (Leistiko) Levick, seems that branch of my family got into DNA testing! There are a couple that I know which side of grandpa's ancestry they belong to, but I don't know exactly how yet (mostly because they haven't responded so I don't know anything about their ancestry).

As I worked through these matches, it struck me how much I've learned about my grandpa's ancestry since he did his first DNA test back in 2012. The fact that I can pinpoint where a lot of these matches fit in my grandpa's family tree is amazing to me. I didn't have as much luck with his matches at FamilyTreeDNA. Part of that is because his matches at FTDNA are much more distant, and their common ancestors are back further than I can go at this point. Because of that, I've spent most of my efforts on grandpa's matches at other websites, like 23andMe and Ancestry.

Ancestry has made some great improvements in their DNA offering, with the addition of color-coded groups and Thrulines to help see where you and your matches may be related (provided you have public and searchable trees attached and linked to your test). There are a lot of matches here related to Tina Levick, more than are at 23andMe, and quite a few Gibson and Cain matches too. I'm hopeful that I will eventually break through the brick wall on my Cain side and find where in Ireland Dennis Cain was from as told in Irish records. My biggest breakthrough so far thanks to Ancestry was help in identifying the maiden name of my grandpa's great-grandmother Pauline. We thought it was Rosen, based on the death certificate of grandpa's mother, Augusta (Joseph) (Staffen) Gibson, but it turned out to be Rosenke. That led me to find Pauline's parents in German records in Volhynia, which I still can't believe I found. I need to pursue that some more at some point. Along with about a billion other leads...

One exciting lead I followed just today was from a match at Ancestry, who turned out to be a Gibson match. She is a descendant of Sarah Gibson, a sister of my grandpa's grandfather John Gibson. Sarah Gibson married James Harris, a native of Nova Scotia who was 17 years older than she was, and they had six children that I know of. One of her grandchildren, George Aubrey Harris, left Canada in 1922 and sailed to Boston, where he married Gladys Moriarty and raised his family. As a fan of the classic Sherlock Holmes stories, I loved the fact that I now have Moriarty relatives. I even found an old postcard of the ship he sailed to Boston on, the SS Governor Dingley. 

I wish I had more time to work on this, and I do get frustrated at these stubborn brick wall ancestors sometimes. But I'm grateful for all I've learned so far and I'm excited to see what else there is still to learn. 

Genes Day Friday - Fred Gibson's Top 20

I'm going to try a new blog post series, I'm calling it the Top 20. I'll be going over my relatives' top five matches from each testing company they've tested at, and what that match shows me about our family. Of course, the Top 20 will only include matches that I didn't test, because what would be the point of talking about my grandpa matching my dad? That was kind of expected. So to kick of the series, I'm starting with my paternal grandfather, Fred Gibson. Of course, I won't be using their real names, because they haven't consented to being spotlighted like this in public like this.

Ancestry
1. His closest match at ancestry is on his mom's side. She's a granddaughter of Heinrich Joseph, Sam Joseph's older brother. Their common ancestors are Fred's great-grandparents, Ludwig Heinrich Joseph and Justine Witt. That makes her Fred's second cousin. She shares 347 cM with Fred, which is right in line for a second cousin. The cool thing is, everyone on their shared match list is connect to Ludwig, Justine, or their descendants. Now if only I had a chromosome browser to map those sections of DNA...

2. His next match is another Joseph relative. She doesn't have a tree up, and I can't find her online anywhere, but she looks like a second cousin (283 cM), and she shares a ton of Joseph relatives. Some of that Joseph DNA carried down to my dad, my sister and me too, so that was cool to see.

3. The next match is really interesting, and would be even more interesting if I knew her name and family tree in full. She matches on Fred's dad's side, and is a shared match with both Gibson and Cain relatives. That means she is likely a descendant of John Gibson and Catherine Cain, Fred's grandparents. They have 205 cM of DNA in common, so she's still pretty close. If only she'd log in to the Ancestry account and respond! But at least I can use her shared match list to find more Gibson connections.

4. Next up is another Joseph side match. She's a great-granddaughter of Christina "Tina" Joseph, Sam Joseph's sister. There's actually quite a few of Tina's descendants that have tested at Ancestry, so piecing together her family has been pretty easy. But it's great to have so many Joseph relatives to talk to, because when I first started out in researching my family history, the Joseph side was one that I knew the least about. Not any more!

5. Number five is actually the son of match 1. Every generation gets about half of what their parents have. This match shares 162 cM, just under half of what his mother shares with Fred. It's cool to see the laws of genetics play out like that right in front of you.

23andMe
1. The closest match at 23andMe is a granddaughter of Fred's uncle Elmer Joseph. It was pretty cool to find out that Elmer's descendants have tested, as grandpa knew Elmer pretty well, and has talked a lot about him. She shares 515 cM with, perfect for the first cousin once removed relationship they have.

2-4. I'm lumping these together because they are all children of Elmer's granddaughter.

5. This match is Fred's closest Gibson match at 23andMe. She is a great-granddaughter of Fred's aunt Annie Condon, his dad's only sister. One day I hope to get a picture of her, as Fred knew her really well and has lots of stories about her and her sons. It was from one of the Condon's that Fred heard about how his grandfather, John Gibson, would wait outside the Catholic church his wife Catherine (Cain) Gibson attended, never going inside, and walking home with her afterwards.

FamilyTreeDNA
1. The closest match at FTDNA was a real surprise. This cousin has ancestry from the same part of New Brunswick, Canada, that the Gibsons lived in for 40 years. He matches my other Gibson line relatives, but not the Cain ones, so he's gotta be connected to the Gibsons. As near as we can tell, he's descended from one of John Gibson's brothers, but we don't know which one. I'm thinking of trying to trace the lines forward and find some people to test, but it's been tough going to do that. So far my only success was tracing one of the sister's lines to about the 1980s. Not giving up on solving this one though! He shares 144 cM of DNA with Fred, so the match is real.

2. This one, I have absolutely no idea how she's connected. She doesn't match any of the Gibson or Joseph matches at FTDNA, and she shares just over 100 cM, so this one is a real puzzler.

3. Now this match was really exciting. He is a Gibson side match, and he has recent ancestry from Ireland! His grandmother's surname was Stephenson, which I found out not long ago was the maiden name of my 3rd-great-grandmother, Ann (Stephenson) Gibson, and she was from County Fermanagh, where my Gibsons emigrated from! I was hoping to hear back from him and see if he's found any more, but nothing yet. Maybe I should email him. He's another match over 100 cM so worth pursuing.

4. This one is another puzzler. Only 66 cM, but he doesn't match any of the Gibson or Joseph matches on here, including the cousins I've had tested. No idea where he fits in.

5. The last one at FTDNA is a Gibson match, and is a shared match with 1 and 3. She doesn't have a tree, and she shares just under 50 cM, so unless she puts up a tree, I probably won't pursue this one anytime soon.

MyHeritage
1. Fred's closest match here is another descendant of his uncle Elmer Joseph, making him a first cousin twice removed. I should point out too that Elmer's original name was Emil Joseph, and he (or his dad) anglicized it after they moved to Montana. He shares 467 cMs, so a great way to confirm Joseph side matches.

2. This is the same as #1 at FTDNA. He did the smart thing and tested at multiple companies (also at Ancestry and I think 23andMe as well).

3. Next up is another Joseph match. She doesn't have a tree on her account, but I can see she matches some of Fred's closest Joseph matches. She has 147 cM of shared DNA, so maybe 2nd cousin once removed, or first cousin twice removed.

4. This one turned out to be the same as #2 at FTDNA, but she had a tree attached to this account. The tree only shows most of her dad's side and none of her mom's but luckily we match on her dad's side. Turns out she's another descendant of Sam Joseph's sister Tina.

5. This one was amazing!!!! Turns out, I hadn't see her before today, so I went and checked out her tree to see how she matched up. Turns out, she is a descendant of Henry Gibson and Ann Stephenson, my 3rd-great-grandparents, through their daughter, Sarah Jane Gibson!! This is the first time I've found a DNA match to a cousin descended from Henry and Ann!!! She is Fred's second cousin twice removed, and shares 107 cM of DNA with him, which is perfect for that relationship. I have been wanting DNA confirmation that Henry and Ann were my people for years, I've had paper trail confirmation for a long time now, but I've always wanted to find another descendant and test them. Now I don't have to! I can use this connection to look for other people who are related to Henry and Ann, and maybe find some links to Ireland. I am bound and determined to find more info on my Gibson over there and then visit the country. One step closer!

So, in conclusion, this was an awesome and fun way to go through some of my grandpa's top matches, and it led to an amazing discovery! I think next time I'll do this with another grandparent's test. But which one?

What difference can one DNA test make?

When I got into DNA testing and genetic genealogy a few years ago, I learned about the "fishing in all ponds" philosophy. Basically, you test everyone you can, everywhere you can. The more tests you have out there, the more hooks in the water you have so to speak, and the more matches you're likely to make. So I tested my three living grandparents and my mom (my maternal grandfather passed away before I was born) at 23andMe, and transferred their data to FamilyTreeDNA, and then to MyHeritage. I tested my wife, my sister, a maternal aunt and myself at Ancestry, and counted myself covered. As mysteries began to unfold and my desire to see what DNA could really tell me grew, I tested additional relatives - my maternal aunt and uncle, my wife's parents, some more distant cousins, all at 23andMe or FamilyTreeDNA (I even sprung for one for a guy in Ireland I met through a mailing list, though he turned out to not be a match). Through these tests, I've found some amazing people, and learned incredible things about my family's past and present. Then, as I've started to do more genetic genealogy as a career, I've come to see AncestryDNA in a whole new light - the light of "we have 14 million people who have taken our test." For those who are adopted or for whatever other reason have no knowledge of their parents or other close relatives, AncestryDNA has become an absolutely essential test, primarily because of the sheer number of people who have tested there. The tools they offer are pretty good (though I would really love a chromosome browser) but since DNA testing is often a numbers game, you need to test where the chances of finding a match are greatest.

With that thought burning in my mind the last few months, I decided to expand my AncestryDNA testing group to include my parents, my paternal grandfather, and my mom's cousin Renne't (there's a mystery ancestor in her line I want to identify). For Renne't, I'm really excited about finding matches on her mystery line, and figuring out who that guy was. For my mom, it's more about finding people with new info and maybe some stories or pictures. For my grandpa, it's all about finding close matches to help me get past some brick walls, primarily on his Gibson/Cain side. I'm stuck at his great-grandparents, and DNA seems to be my one hope in getting past them. I have been waiting on the edge of my seat for the last week or two, waiting for his results to come in. I even saw him during the day today, and when he asked about the test, all I could say was "it's almost there." Then, when I came home tonight, the results were ready! At last!!

I started to dig in and was immediately shocked - he had 3 matches at the 2nd cousin level I had never heard of, and 16 matches at the 3rd cousin level!! I started working on determining how these close matches were related to him. His closest 2nd cousin turned out to be a descendant of his grandfather Samuel Joseph's brother Heinrich Joseph. Another 2nd cousin is a Joseph relative, though I'm not sure how yet. The third is a Gibson/Cain match, so I'm thinking she is a descendant of John Gibson and Catherine Cain somehow. So far so good!

This is where it gets really exciting. As I was scrolling through his 3rd cousins, one of them has the last name of Rosenke. My jaw DROPPED. Rosenke is one of the variations Samuel Joseph's children gave in various records for their mother's maiden name, along with Rosen, Rozinko, and Rossenke. Sam's wife Pauline was probably from Volhynia, and I know she was born on 15 April 1868 (based on her death record), but I have no info on her parents, siblings, or any other relatives. So to see a DNA match with that name just made my heart jump. I checked and the match did not match with the more distant Joseph matches on Ancestry, which was good, as they shouldn't. I looked for shared Gibson matches, and didn't see any of those either. So I emailed the match, and am crossing my fingers for some good results.

In addition to the Rosenke connection, I found two matches with trees going back to Dennis Cain and Catherine Mulhearn, my grandpa's great-grandparents. I found another match with the Gibson surname, who I think is descended from my grandpa's uncle Thomas Gibson, who lived in Idaho. Then the one that got me most excited of all - a match with a Gibson ancestor from County Fermanagh, Ireland!! Her ancestor, Ann Gibson, was born in 1844 and married in County Fermanagh in 1866. Ann's father was Andrew Gibson, and he would have been about the same age as my grandpa's great-grandfather, Henry Gibson. This is the first time I've found anything about a connection to someone outside of Henry and his wife Ann (Stephenson) Gibson in the same place in Ireland my ancestors came from! There's a shared match that also descends from the same Ann Gibson. I emailed the matches, and while they may not have much info beyond their ancestor Ann, at least I have DNA matches with Gibson ancestry from the same location. That's a lot more than I had yesterday!

All of this came from one DNA test, and just the first couple hours of looking into the match list. I can't wait to see what there is to see when I really get into it! Plus my dad's results are pending, as are Renne't's, and with a little luck, I may get a couple of my dad's siblings to take a test for me as well, so my grandmother's DNA gets more representation on Ancestry.

So to answer the question I posed in the title - one DNA test can make ALL the difference. Even after 6 years of genetic genealogy research on my family, it seems I've only scratched the surface!

One more for the Cain family

As I was wrapping up my last post on the Cain family history, I did some quick searching on Ancestry to confirm one or two of the dates as I was writing about. While searching, I came across this little gem.

It's an immigration record for Mary Patricia Kane, my 2nd cousin twice removed, and a great-granddaughter of Dennis and Catherine Cain. What's crazy is that this is an immigration record for her to enter Brazil! She was 50 years old at the time, and traveling to Brazil, though I'm not sure why. I haven't tried to Google translate it yet, so maybe the record itself will tell me something about why she went there. I know she came back to the States, because she died in 1992 and is buried in the same Tacoma cemetery as her father, Joseph Patrick Kane. I want to go visit that cemetery now and see where my Kane relatives are situated there. Maybe there's a Kane family plot?

What's really cool about this record (aside from the connection to Brazil) is the photograph. It's rare to find something out of the blue for a cousin that has a picture attached, and so much family info as well.

Cain history page 10 - The descendants of Dennis and Catherine

We come now to the final page of the Cain history. This is the shortest page of the whole thing, but it does have some really good information on it.

This page basically serves to list which of Dennis and Catherine's grandchildren were alive at the time the history was written. The author lists 8 - Anthony's son Joseph; 4 of John's children, Alice Jewel (aka Julia), Arthur, and Cyril; and three of Catherine's children, Annie, Tom and Fred. This list helps determine when this history was written, as shown below.

Anthony Cain had 5 children that I know of, Joseph, Isabel, Clara, Alexander, and Catherine. Joseph was the oldest, born in 1873, and died in Tacoma, Washington (not far from me!) in 1967.  I don't have death dates for any of his other children, but apparently the author knew or believed they'd all died before then. It's definitely possible since they were born in the 1870s-1880s.

John Cain had 9 children - Alice, Catherine Irene, Julia/Jewel, Arthur, Francis Joseph, John Francis, John Elliott, Anthony, and Cyril. Alice died in 1953, Francis and John Francis died in 1888 and 1889 respectively as infants. John Elliott died sometime before 1940, and Anthony died in 1942. I don't have death dates yet for Catherine Irene, Julia, Arthur, or Cyril, but apparently Catherine had passed away before the history was written, so presumably sometime before 1953.

Catherine had 5 children - Annie Condon, John Henry, Thomas, John Frederick, and David. John Henry died as a baby or young child sometime before 1900. Thomas died in 1954. David passed away in 1960, Fred in 1967, and Annie last in 1971. If the history was written before Alice died in 1953, then David should have been listed as a living grandchild as well as Tom, Annie, and Fred. My guess is she either didn't know he was still alive or forgot to include him. Sorry, Dave.

All in all this has been a very interesting history of my Cain family. I have some really interesting leads to follow up on, especially in New Brunswick. I need to go back through these posts and compile a list of them for easy reference, and just start checking them off, one by one. Then it's on to the next project or lead. I love this stuff!

Cain family history page 9 - End of an era

Today's post goes over the penultimate page of the Cain family history, which discusses the last few years of Dennis's life.

The author starts off by discussing how opportunities for education difficult for the non-wealthy to obtain. Some of Dennis and Catherine's children apparently went to a public school taught by a schoolmaster named McCann (except for Catherine, who attended the Sacred Heart convent). The younger children, she says, had a better chance to go to school. There only four boys that I know of that could have gone to school, and the author doesn't say which were taught by McCann and which had the "better chance" (whatever that meant). 

Catherine is said to have had a "very lovely soprano voice," and a natural talent for music, being able to play anything she heard. My cousin Tyeler has a natural talent for music, being able to both play and sing really well. It would be pretty cool if that was a talent he inherited from Catherine. What I don't understand is the part where it says music teachers weren't very good in those days. I find it hard to believe that good music teachers are a recent development, given the quality of music that has existed for at least the last several hundred years. 

The author says Dennis's wife Catherine died in the early 1880s, and that is accurate - she died in 1881, not long after the census was taken that year. She mentions how the family scattered after her death, with sons Anthony and John going to Minneapolis, Catherine and Dennis going to Montana, and sons David and Thomas following Catherine. She says David died just a few years after leaving Saint John. It looks like I had a record of David Cain's death in Montana in 1889, but I can't find it now. I'll have to get that back. I learned a while ago that Thomas died apparently unmarried in Seattle in 1935, though the informant was apparently a relative named J.P. Kane from Tacoma. 

The family did scatter like the author says. I have made contact with a descendant of John Cain, that's who sent me this history. I've traced some of Anthony's descendants down to the 1920s, so that line was still around back then. I think Anthony, John, and Catherine were the only children of Dennis and Catherine to have children of their own. I wonder how many of us there are in total. I think I'll do a descendant count, and see how large a posterity Dennis and Catherine have, at least that I've found so far.

Cain family history page 8 - Don't you wanna be somebody?

Today we look at page 8 of the Cain family history, which focuses on the relationship between Dennis and Catherine Cain.

This page picks up where the last one left off, with the death of Dennis and Catherine's son Dennis, who supposedly died as an adult, saying Catherine never got over his death. The description the author gives of Dennis (the dad) is interesting - not happy in his work, a dreamer, loved books and beauty, but forced into a job he hated because it was the only way he could provide for his "growing family and an ambitious wife." I can relate somewhat - it took me a looooong time to get to the career I dreamed of, but I didn't hate the jobs I had along the way. I rather enjoyed them for years, until the parts that made them enjoyable where changed or removed. The author also says Dennis retired early (though no year or age is given), but since he began working at the age of 14, and was forced into work he didn't like, he was probably worn out at an earlier age and "entitled to quit."

Her description of Dennis's wife Catherine (Mulhearn) Cain is interesting as well. She calls Catherine "a proud woman," but then says she had reasons to be proud - her upbringing in a well-bred family, her education at the Sacred Heart Convent (which she calls the "select school of the day"), and mentions her ambitions for their children, though those are described on the next page. She reminds me of someone I dated many years ago, who I wouldn't describe as proud in the same sense, but definitely had ambitions for her future family. I personally don't really have a burning need to climb a corporate ladder, obtain recognition and renown, or any of that. I just want to make enough to provide for my family, and enjoy the work I do. She asked me once "Don't you wanna be somebody?" I can kind of see this depiction of Catherine doing the same thing to Dennis. If this is what they were really like, you almost wonder what drew her to him in the first place - he had little to no education, no training or skills, no money, no large family - basically the polar opposite of what she is described as having. They say opposites attract, but in terms of people, so do likes - people with similar backgrounds, views, religious beliefs, goals, etc. So far in this history, the only point of commonality I see between Dennis and Catherine is their faith. If that was really the case, it seems to have been enough, as they were together until Catherine's death in 1881, two and a half months after their 41st wedding anniversary. He outlived her by 25 years and never remarried as far as I can tell. That couldn't have been an easy way to live for a quarter century, but he did it.

Cain history page 7 - Dennis has a family

We're getting close to the end of the Cain family history here. In this installment, we look at the beginnings of Dennis's family.

 

Starting off, the history says Catherine Mulhearn's (unnamed) father was a minor government clerk, and apparently a poorly paid one at that. So much so, that Catherine's (unnamed) mother had to take in boarders to make ends meet. The cause for the insufficient pay was apparently the Mulhearn's choice of religion - Anglicans got all the "plums" when it came to finding work. I know the Irish in general got a bad rap in the US for a long time, I've seen the pictures of signs and newspaper ads from back in the day that said "Irish need not apply" and such. But this seems to be more religious discrimination than national or ethnic discrimination. I don't know much about how New Brunswick society treated Catholics in the 1840s, I'd have to look into that. Knowing how members of my own church were treated in the US in that time period, it's not hard to see that such ill treatment was very much possible. 

The income brought in by Catherine's mother bringing in boarders was apparently enough to send Catherine and her brother Anthony to school and receive an education, something Dennis was denied. I've never heard of Catherine having a brother, and the name Anthony is interesting, given that was the name of the first son Catherine and Dennis had. As Dennis was apparently both an orphan and an only child, the only family names he could pass on would possibly be his parents or extended family, and as far as I know extended family weren't in the traditional Irish naming patterns. It's interesting too that there's a specific name for the Catholic school Catherine attended, the Sacred Heart convent (again with the convents - I thought those were for nuns only?). Like the name of her brother, that's something concrete I can look for in New Brunswick records.

The only part that really confuses me about this page is where Dennis and Catherine got married - it says "it was a little difficult for a common mill hand to aspire for the hand of the talented Miss Mulhern but before he did they were married." It sounds like they were married before he even tried to woo her? I think something got left out. The history says Dennis and Catherine were married in 1844 and had six boys and one girl. This I know is a little off because I have a copy of Dennis and Catherine's marriage record, showing they were married on 26 January 1840 in Saint John, New Brunswick. I have records for six children total, 2 girls and 4 boys. The boys, Anthony, John, Thomas, and David, all lived to adulthood, though David died at age 27 in Montana. The girls were Eliza and Catherine, with Catherine being my ancestor. Eliza I have no record of after her baptism record as an infant, though since I can't find the family in any census records before 1881 she could very well have lived and married, and I just don't know where she ended up. There's also a seven year gap between Anthony and Eliza, so the two kids mentioned on this page of the history, Arthur and Dennis, could have been born in between and just weren't recorded in the baptism records where I found the other kids. My New Brunswick research is still a little rusty, so I'd really have to jump back in and try to find them. 

I like that the history gives me some concrete people and places to search for. Just wish I had the time to go looking for them. But then, that's part of why I keep this blog - to remind me of leads I need to follow. I will get around to it at some point!!

Cain history page 6 - a new start and new love

We get some interesting developments in Dennis's life from page 6 of the Cain history.

Dennis is now all on his own, but as he grew up on a farm, he has no marketable skills, and takes work at a saw mill. The history says he worked on the farm for six years, implying he came to live with the Darrahs as soon as possible after his parents died.

The history then talks about how the church was the center of social life, and that there was a revival of sorts in presenting Irish plays. Acting in these plays is apparently how Dennis met his wife, Catherine Mulhearn. It says he had a minor role in one of the plays, while Catherine had a leading role. Catherine was apparently very popular, and had a nice soprano voice and sang in the choir (guessing that it was a Catholic church choir). This little detail interested me greatly. If I could find some kind of searchable database of New Brunswick newspapers, I would search for corroboration of these play productions to see if there is any mention of Catherine, or perhaps even Dennis.

There is an interesting parallel between Dennis and Catherine's story, and that of his reported parents, John O'Kane and Mary O'Neill. John and Mary met while John was working or campaigning for some kind of civil rights group, and ended up marrying a schoolteacher who was held in high esteem. Dennis, a poor orphaned farm boy, fell for a popular, talented soprano. Both marriages seem to have been cases where the man married above his social standing. Makes me wonder how often that sort of thing actually happened.

It's also interesting that Dennis supposedly turned down a farm, and by extension a secure livelihood and family, and instead left his relatives to be a common laborer in the local saw mills. An event like that won't make it into the papers, so there's no real way to verify it. But I did have a somewhat similar experience earlier this year. While I was still working my way towards a full-time genealogy career, there was a point where it got pretty tough. One of the supervisors at the office where I worked suggested I could always go back to working full-time at the office. I realized then that I had a choice to make - I could pursue my dreams, and continue stepping out into the unknown, or I could fall back on my nice, cushy office job where I had steady work, good work with great people, but not where my heart wanted to be. I chose to keep stepping out into the dark, trusting that it would work out eventually. And it did! So if Dennis did step out on his own like that, not knowing how or if things would work out in the end, I'm glad he did. For one thing, he found a wife, which led to descendants like me getting a chance at life. But it also gives me a sense of pride in knowing that I followed in my ancestor's (hypothetical) footsteps.

Cain history page 5 - burning bridges

This page of the Cain history covers some very interesting ground.

It continues the story of Dennis living with his aunt and uncle Darrah in New Brunswick, saying that the faith and conviction instilled in him by his mom helped him "withstand all their arguments," suggesting they tried to convince him to convert, but he wouldn't. Religious discussions with family can be difficult, but arguments to convince someone to convert are just painful, especially when neither side is willing to budge or agree to disagree. It's interesting that the Darrahs were supposedly willing to force him to walk several miles to his own Catholic while giving everyone else a ride in the family buggy to their Episcopal church, and all to show their disapproval of his mother. It honestly makes me think of Harry Potter - an orphan, living with an aunt and uncle who mistreat him because of the lifestyle choices of his mother. I have to say I love the description of a "spanking team of horses."

Then comes the turning point in the family relationship. When Dennis was 20 (so about 6 years after the deaths of his parents), the Darrahs offered him a farm of his own, but on the condition that he marry a woman of their choosing. And of course, that woman was "Protestant to the core." This was apparently the last straw, so he turned down the offer and severed all connections to his aunt and uncle's family. He then set off on his own down the St. John River to the city of St. John, New Brunswick.

When I first got into the genealogy, the first discovery I made was finding my great-great-grandfather John Gibson, his wife Catherine Gibson, and their little daughter Annie, living in the home of Dennis Cain, his wife Catherine Cain, and their children in Saint John, New Brunswick. What's interesting is that Catherine Gibson (Dennis's daughter) married an Anglican, and Dennis was apparently fine with that. Not only that, when the Gibsons later moved to Montana, Dennis followed after them after the death of his wife Catherine. If the farm and wife story is true, it puts a very interesting spin on his relationship with his daughter and son-in-law. Almost like he was determined not to do to them what had been done to him, even if he may have disapproved of her choice of spouse.

My grandpa Fred Gibson told me a story he heard from his cousin Jack Condon (one of Annie (Gibson) Condon's sons) that Catherine was a faithful Catholic and went to church every Sunday, while her husband John waited for her outside the church. John never went in, but he never opposed her worshiping the way she wanted to. It doesn't seem like the religion was passed on to Catherine's kids, as Papa Fred's dad bounced around from religion to religion throughout his life (even spending a few years as a member of my own church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).. Really makes me think how easily my family could have turned out differently. What if Catherine had decided to marry a Catholic? Or what if John had converted and raised his children Catholic? My uncle Randy is a Catholic, but he wasn't raised as one, and no one else in my family is, on either side so Catholicism feels distant to me. Catherine (Cain) Gibson, and my great-grandma Rosie (Zitzmann) Wagner on my grandma's side are the closest ancestors in terms of generations away from me that were Catholic, but I think grandma Rosie stopped practicing later in life (I'll have to ask my dad or his siblings about that though, I don't know for sure). I attended a Catholic wedding earlier this year, and it felt so completely foreign to me. There were some familiar elements, but a lot of the ceremony and procedure were so different from what I was used to. It's kind of fascinating that something that played such a big part of my ancestors' lives is as foreign to me as Japanese would have been to them.

Cain history page 4 - and now for something completely different

Page four of the Cain history features a number of changes. First and foremost, the copy quality is SO MUCH BETTER. It was a struggle to read some of the earlier pages, but this one is clear and clean and so easy to read. My eyes just went "aaaaaahhhhhhhh."

The epidemic mentioned on the previous page was apparently sweeping the country, and claimed the lives of both of Dennis's parents. I can't imagine the impact of losing both parents at such a young age. The history never mentioned what kind of work John O'Kane did, but it doesn't seem like the family was wealthy. An orphaned teenager in pre-famine Ireland probably didn't have a lot of options available to him - no one to pay for schooling, no one to provide for him. Being in that situation, the history says Dennis's paternal aunt "sent for him," and his uncle paid for his passage to New Brunswick. It makes me wonder - how did a relative an ocean away become aware of Dennis's situation? Steamships or steam-sail hybrids started crossing the Atlantic around 1815 (per Wikipedia at least), but getting word to the aunt of John and Mary's passing, then sending a response back to Ireland would have taken weeks, if not months. When was he sent for? What did Dennis do in the meantime? Was put in a poor house, an orphanage, something else? The history doesn't answer these questions.

So Dennis crosses the ocean to live with his Protestant (and unnamed) aunt and her husband, John Darrah, on a farm on the Saint John river in New Brunswick. Apparently his relatives tried to win him over to his father's former religion, but Dennis was no "turncoat" (a word he his reported to have used) and stuck with Catholicism. In describing his desire to stay Catholic, Virginia leaves off of retelling history and begins adding commentary - "the fine Irish faith instilled in him by his wonderful mother, the prayers she taught him and his love for Our Blessed [Mother]" reveal Virginia's Catholicism (or pro-Catholic leanings at least). That's not bad, it's just interesting to see how her perspective influenced the way she told the story.

There's not a lot of information to go on to find Dennis's relatives that supposedly took him in. Census records don't really begin for all of Canada until 1851, 11 years after Dennis married Catherine Mulhearn. If the aunt and uncle were about the same age as Dennis's parents, they would have been born around 1780. If they lived to be enumerated in the 1851 census, they would have been at least in their 70s. Records that early in New Brunswick are kind of spotty, or were the last time I really tried looking. It would help if I had more to go on. But at least there's a name and a place, that's something specific that can be checked for and verified.

Cain family history page 3 - love changes everything

Today we're looking at page three of the Cain family history.

So John O'Kane's wife was revealed to be Mary O'Neill. She was apparently a school teacher, which Virginia says was a highly esteemed and enviable position. Maybe it's my upbringing and societal conditioning speaking, but teachers never seem to get the respect they deserve for all the work they do. Maybe 1800s Ireland was different?

The history also says Mary was educated at an unnamed convent in Dublin. Again, that's across the island from County Mayo, on the eastern coast of Ireland. Were there convents for young single girls? It just seems like Virginia is naming big cities - Dublin, Belfast - for the locations of these events. Granted, there were people who lived in those big cities, but now John and Mary are both said to have crossed the continent for their education and occupation, and it has me wondering if that was really a common thing to do? If Mary was a school teacher and was trained in a convent, was it a religious school? The history doesn't say.

John and Mary's marriage was opposed by her parents due to John's Protestant faith, so he apparently converted, if not for the wedding then sometime after. Dennis's daughter Catherine married an Anglican, so religious differences in that time weren't always a bar to marriage, but I can see how it would be. Catherine had to get a special dispensation from the local authority in New Brunswick to marry John Gibson, but she did it. It's strange to think her grandfather may have left the faith she married into.

Dennis Cain was apparently the only child of John and Mary, born in 1811 according to the history. That's a few years earlier than what I found in census records, but censuses have a way of being wrong about a lot of things, so I'm not bothered by that. He was supposedly taught Catholicism by his mother, and was apparently an altar boy and loved his religion. His continuing association with the Catholic Church in Canada and Montana certainly bespeaks a deep level of commitment to it.

The bottom of the page mentions an epidemic of black lung fever when Dennis was about 14, so about 1825. I couldn't find any explanation online of what disease "black lung fever" was referring to. Black lung was a disease caused by chronic inhalation of coal dust, but fever wasn't a symptom of that. There were outbreaks of cholera and typhus around that time, maybe one of those are what she meant? Dennis did live through at least a couple epidemics, though depending on where he was, he may or may not have been directly affected by them.

I think to corroborate the stories thus far, I'd have to locate the marriage of John O'Kane and Mary O'Neill sometime around 1810, and probably somewhere in Northern Ireland. If that much checks out, then I can look into the political movement and religious conversion parts of the story.

Cain history page 2

Today we're taking a look at page 2 of the Cain history from my cousin.

This paged focused on John O'Kane's life prior to his marriage. Surprisingly, the history says John was not born a Catholic. I know from my research that Dennis and his family were active Catholics. All his children were baptized in New Brunswick, and his daughter Catherine, my ancestor, had most of her kids baptized (couldn't find the baptism of her son John Frederick, but all four of the other kids were baptized). When Dennis moved to Montana following his wife Catherine (Mulhearn) Cain's passing, he remained active in his faith until his death at age 94. So the idea that his father may have come from a Protestant background is really interesting.

The page also talks about John's involvement in some kind of political movement aimed at restoring Irish rights of land ownership. This involvement is attributed to his growing up in Belfast, and being exposed to different people and ideas. He also traveled "for the cause" to County Mayo, where he apparently fell in love and forgot all about "the cause." The exact movement he was part of isn't named, but Virginia (the author) seems to think it was the predecessor of the "Fremen Movement."

It's been a few years (cough 16 cough) since my last class on Irish history, so I had to look through my Short History of Ireland to see what she could have been referring to. The closest thing I found was the Society of United Irishmen, which grew in the 1790s and culminated in a violent uprising in 1798. If John O'Kane was born in 1785, he would have been 6-13 years old while the United Irishmen thing was going on. There was another United Irishmen uprising five years later, though that seems to have been localized to the city of Dublin. Daniel O'Connell led a group with a more constitutional approach to independence, but that seems to have taken off in the 1810s, after John had already gotten married and become a father. So I'm not sure what "movement" he could have been campaigning for. It might have just been for Irish independence in general? I'll have to look into that a little more.

One other thing that stands out is that John started out in County Antrim, where Belfast is, and travels to County Mayo, where he falls in love. County Antrim is part of Northern Ireland now, and as I understand it, was pretty heavily Protestant back then. So the idea of John being born a Protestant if he's from up north makes sense. My Gibson ancestors were Anglicans from County Fermanagh, also part of Northern Ireland, so I have evidence of that kind of thing in my family already. Dennis Cain's obituary said he was from Strabane in County Tyrone, not too far from County Antrim. So how does County Mayo come into the mix? Would Dennis's parents have settled so far from both their points of origin? I'm sure it's not unheard of, but it just sounds odd. Then again, my knowledge of Irish history and culture is really limited, so any apparent oddity may just be my ignorance talking. There's also the fact that all of this information is third-hand at best, the recollections of the recollections of what was told to someone decades earlier. So details could have been lost, muddled, or even invented. 

So far, this history has generated more questions than it's answered for me. But it at least gives me something concrete to look into, and that's exciting. Next time, we'll look at page three and see just who won the heart of John O'Kane and changed the course of his life.

Cain, Kane, O'Kane - which is it?

I know I haven't posted on here for a few months, but it's for a very good reason - I switched careers! I am now employed by Legacy Tree Genealogists as a researcher on their DNA team! I could not be happier with the change in jobs, getting to do something I love and being able to support my family with it is literally a dream come true for me. Making that dream come true took some doing, and in all the hubbub, blogging had to go to the back burner for a few months. Things are still a little crazy, but I wanted to take just a few minutes tonight because it's Family History Month again.

A little over a month ago, I received an email from a cousin of mine on my Cain side, the Irish great-grandparents of my grandpa Fred Gibson. The email contained the scans of a handwritten history, written by a descendant of Dennis Cain, which detailed Dennis's origins in Northern Ireland, named his parents, told how he met his wife in Canada, and other juicy tidbits. It also said his last name was originally O'Kane, not Cain as it was written in Canadian records, or Kane as it was spelled in the US. It makes me wonder which was the real name? If I could find original records in Ireland to corroborate the O'Kane name, that would be really cool.

One interesting thing I noticed on the first page, is there is an Arthur Kane listed as one of Dennis and Catherine's children. I have records for Anthony, Eliza Jane, John, Catherine, David, and Thomas, but no Arthur. I wonder where that name came from? For Eliza, I only have her birth record, so I think she may have died as an infant or toddler.

Last bit of analysis of this first page. First off, it's written by the granddaughter of Dennis Cain (I'm sticking with that spelling until I see different in other records), Catherine Irene (Cain) Taraldson, who also went by Veronica (because you can never have too many names, right?). It's Catherine's recollection of her father's recollection of his father's story. At best, we're two tellings removed, and who knows how many years. Not to cast doubt on her story, but some things stand out right off - John O'Kane, the alleged father of Dennis, was born in Belfast in 1785. Belfast (according to Wikipedia) boomed a few decades after John's birth, but it was still a big town then. From what I've learned about Irish genealogy, you have to go beyond big town names, and drill down to the teeny tiny townlands to find out where folks are really from. Belfast is so big, it makes me suspect that it's too general to be entirely accurate. Who know, I could be wrong though. Bears looking into at least.

Next time, we'll look at page two!

I am from Gortnagullion, Drumkeeran, Fermanagh

This is my first ever blog post that's not really about people; it's about a place. That specific place is the townland of Gortnagullion, in the civil parish of Drumkeeran, in County Fermanagh, Ireland. This is where my ancestors Henry and Ann Gibson were living when their first two children were born, and presumably where they were living when they left Ireland and immigrated to New Brunswick, Canada.

Map of Ireland in Google Earth

County Fermanagh (pronounced fer-MAN-uh) is in Northern Ireland, two counties south of the tip-top of Ireland (Londonderry and Tyrone are above it). County Fermanagh is circled in black in the map above. Finding this out was really interesting, as Henry and Ann's son John married Catherine Cain, whose father was from County Tyrone. The Gibsons and Cains wouldn't have exactly been neighbors in Ireland, but they wouldn't have been that far apart either. I wonder if that shared point of origin played into their getting married?

According to IrishTimes.com, English and Scottish settlers moved into County Fermanagh in the early 1600s. I have to wonder if that's when my Gibson line moved to Ireland. The Gibson name isn't a native Irish surname, and when I looked at my grandpa's Y-DNA results at the 12-marker level, for those matches that list country of origin, most of them are in England. Interesting to think about, but because of the lack of records, ultimately unknowable one way or the other.



Civil Parishes of County Fermanagh

The civil parish of Drumkeeran is the northernmost in the County (it's number 10 on the map above). It was originally part of Magheraculmoney parish (#18 above) but according to one website was split off around 1770.

I'm still trying to find more info on Gortnagullion itself, as it seems it's not longer extant as a town or townland. The nearest settlement seems to be Drumskinny. I'll keep researching to find out what I can about Gortnagullion.

It still amazes me that I have a place in Ireland that I can point to on a map and say "the Gibsons originated here!" I'm looking forward to learning all I can about my ancestral homeland, and hopefully seeing it in person one day.

Surname Saturday - Gibson origins

I blogged a while back about my great-great-grandfather John H. Gibson. I've pondered for years whether Henry and Ann Gibson were the parents of my John Gibson, and though I've looked for proof one way or the other, I've never really found any to answer my question. Until today. But first, a little back story.

I've had a thought in the back of my mind for some time that I needed to contact the New Brunswick Genealogical Society for help in finding info on my Gibson and Cain ancestors. I don't know much about the area, and getting help from those on the ground there would be invaluable. But I kept putting it off, and putting it off, until finally this week I decided to give it a shot. I sent two emails, one asking for info on John Gibson, and the other about the family of Catherine Cain, John's wife.

Within 24 hours, I got a response from someone at the society with info about the Cains, He has some Doherty ancestors that married some Cains, and had Cain godparents or witnesses for their children's baptisms and weddings. That sounded interesting, so I took his info down and looked at my own files. Turns out, his Dohertys appeared in my Cain records, as witnesses for their children's baptism! After searching for years for anything on these families, this is huge! We've emailed back and forth and are still trying to figure out where we might match up. I'm wondering if our people knew each other back in Ireland, or developed these relationships after they got to Canada. Exciting to think we may have more ties back to Ireland to look into and learn from!

While I was pondering on these connections, a thought occurred to me. While pulling up info on the Cains and Dohertys at Ancestry.com's huge database of Catholic records, I realized I've never looked in there for my Gibsons. I guess my assumption was that John was Church of England and Catherine was Catholic, so John probably put his foot down and raised his kids in the Church of England, and left Catherine the lone family Catholic. But what if that wasn't the case? What if Catherine had her kids baptized in the Catholic church? Time to go check!!

I went looking for Gibsons, and within minutes I found a baptism record for Thomas Louis Gibson, John and Catherine's son! I couldn't believe my luck! I went searching for more, and soon found the baptism for his older sister Anne as well. (Incidentally, I'd seen Anne listed in many records as Anne M. Gibson or Anne M. Condon, her married name, but nothing ever revealed what her middle name actually was. Her baptism record reveals it - Martha!)

But the biggest discovery of all was the third record I found. It was for the baptism of John Henry Gibson born in November 1881. I was expecting to find John Frederick Gibson, the name of my great-grandfather, who was reportedly born in January 1884. I did search the records for 1883-1885, and found nothing that could be John Frederick, which I thought was odd since Thomas and Anne were both in there. It seems unlikely that Catherine would have two of her children baptized but not a third. It's always possible that the record was missed, but the fact that the other two were in there, as well as John and Catherine's marriage, makes me think that that's unlikely. Plus it's not impossible that, with the passage of time, moving to Montana, and lack of necessity in maintaining an exact record of birthdates, that they either forgot or misremembered the exact day of his birth.

The hardest part to reconcile is the name - John Henry vs. John Frederick. It could be that they wanted to change it later, or that Fred was given as a nickname or pet name (I do have a relative named Donald Roscoe Wagner that went by "Bill", so it's not unheard of in my family). If John Henry is not the same as John Frederick, then they must have reused the name, and I don't know if Irish families did that. I've seen Germans and Norwegians do it, but haven't heard of the Irish doing it. I'll have to check on that.

But whether John Henry and John Frederick are the same or not, the biggest part of the discovery was the child's name itself - John Henry Gibson. I know that John and Catherine's last child was named David Henry Gibson, but seeing another child with the name Henry immediately reminded me of the Henry and Ann Gibson I'd come across years ago as possible parents for John. Why use the name Henry twice if it's not a family name, and probably a close family name? Also, John Henry was born in 1881, which would have made him John and Catherine's second child and first son. Thus their first two children were named Anne and John Henry, with David Henry following years later. This seems to me too much similarity to be just a coincidence. Maybe their deal was Catherine got to have the kids baptized Catholic if John got to pick the names. Either way, I feel much more confident now that Henry and Ann Gibson were in fact John Gibson's parents.

This is doubly exciting, because I already have statements from New Brunswick newspapers telling me where in Ireland Henry and Ann are from. So with that settled (unless future evidence proves otherwise), I can move forward in searching out information on their family in New Brunswick and back in the little town of Pettigoe. Can't wait to get searching!

My favorite family history documents

I recently saw a Tweet from FamilySearch asking people what their favorite family history document was. That was a really interesting question to think about, and the more I thought about it, the more favorites I came up with. It was impossible to narrow down to just one document, so here are my top five favorites, in no particular order.

1. The marriage certificate for Christ Hoffman and Mary Sitzman (Maria Zitzmann)
When I got started in family history, I was dismayed to find out my great-great-grandmother Mary Sitzman had left this world with sealed lips as to where she and her family came from. Her daughter Rosie said nothing, and her granddaughter, my grandma Blossom, knew nothing. Years of searching based on the few clues I did have yielded nothing. This marriage record proved the key to blowing that brick wall to smithereens. Mary gave her birth town as Rosshaupt, a tiny village in western Bohemia (now called Rozvadov and part of the Czech Republic), and that one clue led to many, many, many discoveries. I've now got information on Mary's ancestors going back to 1700s and even 1600s on some lines. All from one little marriage record! It taught me that seemingly insurmountable brick walls can be overcome, even with one simple document.

2. 1910 US-Canadian border crossing of Samuel and Helena Joseph
For years, all we knew about my great-grandmother Augusta (Joseph) Gibson's family was that they came from "Germany". They were Germans, spoke German, and came to Canada before moving to Montana. Records pointed to Berlin and "Toran", Germany, but those leads proved to be dead ends. Then a few years ago, at a Family History Fair up in Bellevue, I was going over my recent discovery of this border crossing Augusta's father Samuel Joseph and sister Helena made in 1910 (Sam and Helena are listed on lines 17-18). It lists a lot of great information - relatives in the country they are leaving, name of person and address they are going to, when they first came to Canada, name of the ship, and (best of all) birthplace. Sam's birthplace was listed as "Gitomar, Russia", and Helena's as "Ulanowka, Russia". I went to the display table for the SGGEE and asked their representative to help me figure out what these places were. She figured out Gitomar was actually Zhitomir, a pretty big city in the Volhynia region of what's now Ukraine. Ulanowka is a smaller village a few miles west of Zhitomir. Boy was I excited! That piece of info led me to other discoveries, allowing me to trace Sam's family back to his grandparents in Poland. This was the first time I'd ever traced a line of my family back to their point of origin in the old world, and it felt great! This was my first real breakthrough, and I still feel the deepest genealogical connection to my Joseph ancestors, largely in part to this discovery.

 

3. Bergstad family Bible page
Several years ago, I got a phone call from someone who said they were related to me. They'd gotten my cell number from an old genealogy website I'd put up, and wanted to send me some info on my/our Bergstad ancestors. I was really excited, but didn't want to get my hopes up too much, because she wouldn't say exactly what she was sending. The package arrived, and the contents knocked my socks off! Picture after picture after picture of my ancestors and their families, with people identified clearly; typewritten histories of various people; and this - a scan of a page from the Bergstad family Bible! This was the first time I'd ever heard of there being a family Bible on any of my ancestral lines. This page covers one generation, and I don't know whose handwriting it is, but it's all in Norwegian, and doesn't even mention the Bergstad name (which first appears as their surname in 1880). It was fascinating to see them listed in the old Norwegian patronymic style. It just drove it home in my mind that these were new Americans, still living their old culture in their new home.

 

 4. Harris family photos
When I was 19, I was serving a mission for my church in Japan, when I got a letter from my Grandma Sally Crawford. In it, she sent me a pedigree chart she put together of her ancestors, the first of any genealogy-related document I'd ever seen for my family. Attached to the unfamiliar names were actual photos, including the two above (Thomas W. Harris on the left, Frank and Charlotte (Scribner) Harris on the right). I'd never heard of these people or seen these pictures, and I had a sudden, intense desire to know more about them. I had to wait a couple years until my mission was finished, but when I got home, I delved right into researching my family tree, even making a presentation on the subject in college just a couple months later. It was fascinating stuff, and I'm even more captivated by it 17 years later.

5. John Gibson family - 1881 New Brunswick census
If I absolutely had to pick one favorite document, this would be it. This was my very first discovery in family history research. My mom told me my paternal great-great-grandparents, John and Catherine (Cain) Gibson came from Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, and that my great-grandfather John Frederick Gibson was born there about 1884. I somehow found there were records for the area for the 1881 census. I pulled out the microfilm for Saint John, sat down at a microfilm reader and started cranking. Within just a few minutes, I found them! I thought to myself "this genealogy stuff is easy!" If I only knew... I am glad that first discovery came so readily, because it encouraged me to start really researching my family history.

So there you have it, my top five favorite family history documents. Let me know what your favorites are and why.

Why I am a bad genealogist

I first got into genealogy research back in 2000, when I started school at BYU. My grandma had sent me a pedigree chart of her ancestors while I was on my mission in Japan, and I had been excited to get into researching my family history and see what I could find. My first find came way too easily, but I'm glad it did. I went looking for my great-grandfather, John Frederick Gibson. I didn't know when he was born, but I was told it was around 1880, that he had been born in the city of Saint John in New Brunswick, and his parents were John and Catherine Gibson. I went to the Family History Center at BYU (the largest in the world by the way, next to the FHL itself in Salt Lake), pulled out the microfilm for the 1881 census for Saint John, and started rolling my way through it, page by page. It didn't take long before I found John and Catherine Gibson, with a 1-year-old daughter named Annie. I excitedly called my family and said "I found them!" From that moment on, I was hooked. I soon started pulling up everything I could find on every relative and ancestor I knew about. But more than anything, I wanted to know one thing about my Gibsons in particular - where in Ireland did they come from?

Since that very cold day in January 2000, I have found a lot of info on John's later life and descendants, but nothing about his earlier life or ancestry. I found a census record in 1871 that might be him, if he only aged 3 years between 1871 and 1881 (or the informant got his age completely wrong on either census, or both of them even). John said in later documents that his parents were both born in Ireland, but I had no concrete proof of who his parents were. Since I couldn't trace my Gibsons back to their origins in Ireland, I've also tried tracing my other Irish line back to Ireland - that of John Gibson's wife, Catherine Cain.

I knew from the same 1881 census I found John and Catherine in that Catherine's parents were Dennis and Catherine Cain. Dennis and Catherine were both listed as having been born in Ireland, so that gave me more immigrants from Ireland, and this time, I had names. I've tried for years to locate some document that would help me find Dennis and/or Catherine's point of origin in Ireland, but no luck. Everything that lists birthplace always said just Ireland.

Two years ago, I met a cousin of my grandpa Fred Gibson through Ancestry.com, one who descended from Dennis and Catherine Cain (or Kane as it was spelled in America). This cousin said that they were told by an old relative that Dennis's parents (names unknown) had died in Ireland of the black lung, and that Dennis had immigrated to Canada to live with an unnamed aunt on his father's side. The cousin didn't know (or at least didn't say) where this older relative had obtained this information, so I read the information she had on Dennis in her Ancestry tree and wrote it down in my Rootsmagic database, and moved on.

That is why I'm a bad genealogist. The info that this cousin had on Dennis included a transcription of his obituary, taken from the Helena Independent Record the day after his death in May 1906. Because I couldn't find a copy of that original obituary to verify its contents, I just copied the transcript from Ancestry, and promptly (and stupidly) forgot about it. I say stupidly, because the obituary contains this sentence: He was born in Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland and in 1833 crossed the water, locating in St. John's, New Brunswick.

The holy grail of my genealogy research - a connection to a specific point of origin in Ireland - has been sitting in my Rootsmagic database for almost two years now. Completely untouched. The only reason I came across it today was I happened to be poking around Newspaper Archive looking for an obituary for - Dennis Kane. And I found one - a copy of the one from the Helena paper, reprinted in the Anaconda Standard the next day. And guess what? The wording is almost identical to what my cousin had in her Ancestry tree.

 

 

I have spent every spare moment today joining every County Tyrone group on Facebook I could find, plus a mailing list for Tyrone, and bouncing around various websites that members in these Facebook groups have been kind enough to point me to. I'm grateful that I have this information, but kicking myself that I didn't act on it two years ago when I first came across it. Who knows what progress I'd have made in the last 20 months? All I can do now is try to make up for lost time, and hope that whatever answers might have been out there 20 months ago are still there, waiting for this (now formerly) bad genealogist to find them.

 

Why my genealogy is so awesomely hard to trace - part 1

As you've probably noticed lately, my posts (and the research behind them) have been pretty random in terms of content. That's because I'm having a hard time pinning down what lines to research and what I want to know about them. I thought I'd post about each of my lines and try to sum up what I know about them, what I still need to look into, and maybe (gasp) pick a line to work on for a while. This may end up covering multiple posts, since my writing time (and attention span) are limited. Here goes.

1. Gibson - My Gibson line stops at John Gibson, b. 1850 in New Brunswick, Canada, and his in-laws Dennis Cain and Catherine (Mulhearn) Cain, immigrants from Ireland who married in New Brunswick. I would LOVE to find out where in Ireland they came from, but so far my attempts have been unsuccessful. I've gone so far as to apply to be on Genealogy Roadshow to help me track down my Irish roots on this line. I'd hire a specialist if I had the money. For this branch of my family tree, I think I need to write to the Montana Historical Society and the genealogy society or historical society of New Brunswick and see what they have on John and Dennis. I know the Montana Historical Society charges for lookups, so it might be cheaper to join for a year and then request research, or to have a Montana-based relative submit it for me (they charge less for residents).

2. Joseph - When I started researching my family history, Samuel Joseph, my grandpa Fred Gibson's maternal grandfather, was my brick wall. We didn't even know the name of Sam's wife. Now we know her name - Pauline Rosen - as well as the names of two other wives that no one in my family knew about, Elizabeth Ackermann and Julianna (Kublick) Lorenz. I've also got names and some info on all four of Sam's grandparents. What I need to do next is order the FHL microfilms for the parish in Poland where the Josephs are from and see what else I can find in there. I saw a lot of people named Arendt in connection with the Joseph records I found there, and I want to see if the Arendts and the Josephs are related.

3. Wagner - A few years ago, a friend of mine was able to gather some info on the Wagners in Chicago for me, which helped me flesh out the Wagners of my 2nd-great-grandfather Charles Wagner's generation. I'd like to revisit that info, go over it and make sure it all fits as neatly as it should. I'd also like to see if I can really, officially jump the pond and trace them back to their supposed origins in Mecklenberg.

4. Shute - One of my long-standing goals is to very the info I found on the Shutes on FamilySearch years ago when I first got started. It supposedly goes back hundreds of years, and since I don't have as much experience dealing with pre-1850 sources, I've put it off and put it off. One day I will get around to it though!

5. Groff - Thanks to the military records at Fold3.com, I found some letters written by and on behalf of my ancestors Paul Groff, as well as one that was written by his mother, Hannah (the only source I have for her name at this point). These documents say Paul came from Monroe County, New York, and that his mother lived in Michigan while Paul was in the Army. I haven't really followed up with those leads yet. I'd love to push that line further back, and having his mother and a brother's name (Isaac) will hopefully help.

6. Zitzmann - When my great-great-grandmother Maria Zitzmann came to the US from Europe, she forbid her girls to speak German or say anything about where they had come from. I thought for years I'd never be able to learn where they were from or anything about her ancestry. However, thanks to DNA testing, mailing lists, and especially the help of some very, very, very helpful people found through both, I've taken my Zitzmann ancestry back to the 1700s and even 1600s in some lines. I do need to flesh out the families, some of them just have my direct ancestor, a parent or two, and that's it. I would like to translate (or have someone else translate) the documents I have so far collected. That's a task a bit beyond me though, I still have trouble with the old German script, and don't know German well enough to recognize words that are written poorly. Still, it could be very educational to even make the attempt.

Well, that about covers what I'd like to do with the research on my father's side. I'll go through my maternal lines in the next post.