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.

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.