Ancestors of Mary E Gallagher French

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Many More Mooneys

My great-great-grandparents were Laurence Mooney (1837-1900) and Julia Quinn 1843-1910).  Uncle Carroll had documented those ancestors many years ago.  I have often visited their graves in my walks around New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore.  Despite not giving up completely, I had never really expected to find much about their birth families beyond Julia’s two sisters, Mary & Elizabeth, who had also come with Julia to Baltimore from Monasterevin, Co. Kildare during the Great Famine.  Irish records before 1864 are pretty spotty and often depended on whether or not the particular parish church – if you could identify the correct parish – had a fire, flood, collapse, rodent infestation, etc. during the past two centuries.

As noted though, I never gave up trying to find their birth families and last year, I was over the moon to find not just the names of Laurence Mooney’s parents [Patrick Mooney (~1801-1886) & Hanna Timmins (~1807-1863)] but also those of Laurence’s siblings, the name of their ship that half the family used to emigrate from Ireland, the descendants of two of the siblings as well as what happened to several of the other siblings.  I’m still trying to figure out what happened to the final four siblings.  But I have some bigger news now.

I am once again “over the moon” with another generation of Mooneys and a whole lot of Canadian cousins.

Recently, I was looking at the profile of a DNA match in Ancestry named Jennifer.  Ancestry suggested that I was related to her on my Dad’s side of the family and that she was about a 4^th or 5^th cousin.  Her tree was a bit confusing on her father’s side of the family and there was no documentation or sources but she claimed to be a descendant of a Richard Mooney (1843-1915).  I knew Laurence had a brother named Richard who was supposedly born about 1832 according to the 1860 census but this didn’t match up for other reasons than birth years too.  Jennifer’s ancestor was reported to be born in Sandwich East, Ontario, Canada and my Richard was definitely born in Ireland.

I tried to build the tree for Jenifer from what I could prove starting with her, then her father, then her grandfather.  That got me nowhere. I could not find obituaries for either of the parents she claimed.  What looked to be her step-father did claim her as a daughter though so I figured I had the right mother.  Her paternal grandfather was even more of a mystery – I call people like him ghosts because of their lack of any substantive trail.  With only a name for him as a starting point, I was able to find someone with the same name on two Canadian census records when he was four and 14 years old.  Only today I found his baptism registration which had his whole name (Bernard Benedict O’Connor) and birthday (3 August 1916) as well as his parents’ and god-parents’ names.  That last document sufficiently tied the family together to complete the branch to my satisfaction but earlier – before I found that baptism record – I had giving up on the ground-up approach.

When I started looking at Jennifer’s tree the second time, I tried to document the oldest Mooney’s there, hoping to work my way down to her.  I started with that Richard Mooney, Jennifer’s reported great-great-grandfather.  I was able to document his birth family as well as his wife and all of their children.  Finding information about all the siblings has often provided the most important facts.  That turned out to be very true here.  Richard’s brother, John (1834-1920) was a fairly prominent citizen of Windsor, Ottawa, Canada and his biography ended up in commemorative collection of the town’s who’s who.  That document not only had a wealth of information about John’s family but also a lot about the family of his father, Michael Mooney (1803-1891).  As a bonus, it also had a fair bit of information about the family of his grandfather, Richard Mooney (~1770-?).

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That mention of Patrick “who became a citizen of Baltimore in the State of Maryland” was more than I could have hoped for.  Patrick had to be my great-great-great-grandfather.  I traced down the lines of Michael and his brother, Lawrence, who were easy to identify.  I have found four Ancestry DNA matches from Michael’s branch so far and there are several other likely distant cousins on Ancestry who I am still documenting.

Among the other siblings mentioned, there is a Mary Mooney.  I have long suspected that the Mary Mooney “spinster” who died in Baltimore was a sister of my Patrick Mooney.  Mary (1802-1863), was buried in St. Patrick’s Cemetery – the same small cemetery that Patrick was buried in, and moved to New Cathedral Cemetery with Patrick when St. Patrick Cemetery closed.  Mary’s death notice in the newspapers mentioned that she was born in Monasterevin.  Another sibling in the biography that should be findable is John who “first settled in Canada but later joined his older brother in Baltimore”.  So far though, I haven’t figured out which, if any, of the John Mooneys in Baltimore in the last half of the 1800’s is the right one.

Incidentally, finding that biography of the Richard Mooney’s grandson, John, led me another biography in the same book of John’s brother, Richard Clement Mooney (1843-1915).  That also shed more light on the older Mooney family and led to the DNA matches on Ancestry.

I do this genealogy work so that my son and grandsons don’t need to.  I also enjoy entertaining my brothers and sisters with new finds for two minutes before their eyes start to glaze over.  I love using logic and many different techniques to find my relatives, particularly older generations.  Most of all though, I love finding amazing stories about distant cousins.  There is certainly a good story in this branch too.

One of Michael Mooney’s sons was Edward D. Mooney (1845-1907).  Edward was a prominent businessman in the small township of Maidstone, Ottawa before moving to the larger, nearby city of Windsor, just across the border from Detroit.  There he became a city alderman.

Although successful in business and municipal affairs, Edward’s family life was somewhat tragic.  His third child, John Francis (1881-1886), died from the croup when he was only five years old.  Edward’s older two sons, William (1877-1895) and Thomas (1879-1895) were teenagers when they died in front of his eyes when a speeding train crashed into the horse carriage they were all riding in.  Edward’s youngest child, Francis Edward (1892-1924) died in a smallpox epidemic without having ever married.  Edward’s fifth child and only daughter, Marguerite Loretta (1887-1949), did live a long life and raise a family of her own although one of her five children died in the closing weeks of WWII on a bombing mission over Hamburg.

It was Edward’s fourth son that had the burden on his shoulders of carrying on the family name though and he succeeded in every way possible.  Bernard Richard Mooney (1885-1973) was severely wounded during WWI in Belgium while working as a medical officer.  He was later a pioneer radiologist in Canada.  Bernard did his post graduate work in Paris, Stockholm and London, studying the effects of radium on cancer diseases.  He set up the radiology departments in several hospitals and universities.  In true Irish fashion, Bernard and his wife, Elizabeth, managed to raise a family of seven daughters, four sons as well as two more adopted daughters.  By the way, the family was still so Irish that three of the daughters became cloistered nuns.

One of Bernard and Elizabeth’s daughters, Laura (1919-2002), obviously enjoyed being part of a large family.  Laura and her husband, Robert Lee O’Brien, aimed higher but sadly, Robert died just a few months after their tenth child was born, a few days short of their 18^th anniversary.  With sheer determination, Laura moved the family from New York across the continent to Vancouver where some family could help.  She was a powerful single mom but not for a long time.  Seven years slater, she married Larry Gingras, a widower… with twelve children of his own.  God loves the Irish!

Finally, I should mention that I am still tracking down other DNA relatives in these Mooney branches.  The more I find, hopefully in different branches of the Canadian Mooneys, the more I am sure of the connection.  Also, at the top of the tree, sits Richard Mooney and Margaret Ellen Begg who lived and died in County Kildare near the parish of Monasterevin.  I had seen a few Ancestry members say that Lawrence, Patrick Michael and Mary's parents were "Richard and Ellen Mooney" but there was never any evidence provided and I could not find any previously.  Ellen's maiden name was never mentioned.  The biographies above say that Margaret Mooney was Richard's wife's maiden name.  I don't believe that last name at all. From what I have now seen, some old Irish sources refer to the matriarch Ellen and others as Margaret.  Some use the surname Begg and some say Mooney.  There is no pattern to suggest they are two different women but I have to find more definitive proof one way or the other.  To be continued...

The Herne / O’Herne / Ahern Family Mystery

My great-great-great-grandfather, Martin Gentry Jr. (1789-1827) married Delphia Herne (1791-?) on 12 January 1807 in Garrard County, Kentucky.  Both Martin & Delphia were reported to be from Albemarle County, Virginia.  Martin had moved with his birth family to Madison County, Kentucky (adjacent to Garrard County) in the first decade of the 1800’s, originally to Fort Boonesborough.  Delphia’s family would likely have come to Kentucky about the same time.  According to the book, “The Gentry family in America, 1676 to 1909”, after having at least six children, Martin and Delphia separated and Martin was reported to have two more sons with a second wife in Indiana while Delphia supposedly took her underage children to Pike County, Missouri.

I have been looking for Delphia’s birth family for a long time.  The only clue I had was her marriage registration.  Despite the spelling, it gives the following information: “Martin Jentry was married to Delphy Hern on 12 January 1807 by Peter Bainbridge with the marriage bond provided by John Hern and, because the bride was underage at the time, consent of the father, Owen Hern, was obtained”.

That much of the story has long been known to the family and is pretty well documented on Ancestry.  I could find no documentation or information about Owen or the rest of his family. 

This past month I thought I had broken though that wall but it’s more like a gentle knocking on the door that is slowly getting louder.

While looking in Ancestry at my closest DNA matches who I had not yet identifed, I saw a few that were related to each other with a common ancestors coming from Warren and Edmonson counties, Kentucky.  As I always do with such groupings, I tried to find their common ancestors which, theoretically, should point towards my common ancestor with them.

Here is when I got excited.  I could trace the whole group to the common ancestors, William Thomas Grubbs (1720-1776) and his wife, Susanna Herne (1729-1817).  Thomas and Susanna were married in Albemarle County, Virginia around 1743 and moved with their ten children to Kentucky about 1775.  They managed to reach Bryan’s Station, near modern day Lexington, around 1776 but Thomas soon passed away.  Susanna then took her children southward to Madison County.  It wasn’t long before I found old books on Ancestry that mentioned Susanna’s parents… Owen and Catherine Herne.

That is when I shrieked.  I reckoned that I had found Dephia’s sister and mother.  I happily started documenting the first several generations of Grubbs as well as the lines down to my Ancestry DNA matches.  This expansion of the tree led to other likely descendants of the Grubbs that have had their DNA tested on Ancestry.  I was starting to get overwhelmed by the numbers of people when I finally saw the obvious elephant in the room.  Susanna was born in 1729.  Delphia was born in 1791.  The chance of them being sisters is zero.  Assuming Owen was at least 18 years older than Susanna, he would have been 96 years old when he granted Delphia permission to get married.  That’s even less likely than him fathering her when he was 80 years old.

It’s back to the drawing board with the Herne family.  I can’t, however, deny the DNA matches, nor the geographic connections and similar names.  I’m certain that I'm related to the Grubbs but I don’t know exactly how.  At the moment, I am going with the theory that when Susanna moved to Kentucky with her husband and children, the living members of her birth family stayed in Virginia.  I have seen one completely undocumented tree on the internet that Susanna had siblings named William, Mary and Owen Jr.  This second brother, Owen Jr., who was reportedly born in 1726, could possibly be Delphia’s father.  If that is the case, I have a lot of 6^th cousins who I share 24-29cM of DNA with which is actually more than I share with the 4^th cousins in the Martin Gentry & Delphia Herne branch. Perhaps Owen Jr. was the grandfather instead of the father of my Delphia.  I don’t know.  I'm still looking.

As of today, I have traced, documented and confirmed ten Ancestry DNA matches of mine who are descendants of Susanna Herne Grubbs through four different children of hers.  There are several more matches that I am still working on.  I have also found a transcription of the 1750 will of Catherine Steward (Owen Herne Sr.’s wife) who mentions her children as: Owen Ahern, William Ahern, Susanna Grubbs, Ann Pierson and Mary Hix.  She also mentioned her son-in-law Thomas Grubbs.

More Schmitts and More Generatioins

Proving family connections from 200 years ago isn't always easy with just documents.  Census, birth, death, marriage records and newspaper articles may not be available any longer and family letters were passed on to other descendants or thrown away a long time ago.  Sometimes DNA evidence is all I am able to use.  I guess if it is good enough to convict people of crimes and to identify the remains of distant relatives, it will have to do for me. 

My great-great-grandfather was definitely Joseph Schmitt (b. 8 Mar 1838, Bavaria – d. 25 Nov 1915, Baltimore, Md.).  I recently found six DNA relatives on Ancestry who all descend from three different children of George Schmitt (b. 19 Jul 1844, Baunach, Bavaria – d. 7 Nov. 1900, Baltimore, Md.) and his wife Eugenia Mary Sorg.  The six DNA relatives all share between 17 and 27cM with me.  This much DNA suggests that the Ancestry members are almost certainly my 4^th cousins or 4^th cousins once removed.  If true, that would mean that George and Joseph were brothers – but this is still just assumed as I have no documentation for it.  The only supporting information is that they were both from Bavaria, both were Catholic rather than Lutheran and both reported on the 1900 census that they immigrated in the early 1850’s.  There is also some evidence that they both arrived and settled in New York at first before coming down to Baltimore just before and after the Civil War.

That is enough evidence for me to justify including George & his descendants on my tree in Ancestry but I really would love to find documents to back that up.

If George and Joseph really were brothers, then it was likely that Joseph was also born in Baunach.  Another reasonable assumption is that George and Joseph likely emigrated together, with their parents and any other siblings.  George would have been less than eleven years old when he came to America, too young to emigrate alone or with another minor brother.  Both of these educated guesses are useful to me.

Two other DNA relatives that I have in Ancestry can trace their ancestors to different children of Franz Otto Schmitt (b. 6 Sep 1841, Bamberg, Bavaria – d. 17 Jul 1877, Louisville, Ky.).  Bamberg is the nearest city to the small village of Baunach, only about 12km (7 miles) away.  Franz was documented to be the son of Johann Oswald Schmitt (b. 16 Sep 1818, Baunach, Bavaria – d. 22 Dec 1893 Louisville, Ky.).  At first, I hoped that Franz and Johann were the brother and father, respectively, of the brothers in my tree, Joseph and George.  This does not look to be correct though. 

Johann, Franz and Franz’s wife and children only emigrated in 1882 and, although they landed in Baltimore, they quickly pressed on to Louisville, Ky. Also, Johann is also reported to have had a son named George who was born only a month before the George in my tree was born.  Johann’s George is also reported to have died in infancy in 1845.

I am now working on the educated guess that Johann was the uncle of my great-great-grandfather, Joseph Schmitt as well as the assumed brother of Joseph, George.  The two DNA relatives who descended from Johann and Franz share 17 and 8cM with me.  I believe that they are 5^th cousins and 4^th cousins once removed, respectively.

Even though I don’t have definitive proof of the relationship of all these Schmitts from Baunach, The DNA points to this conclusion.  I am putting them in my tree to help me find further DNA relatives who descended from Johann.