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 4th or 5th 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.
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 18th
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...
