John Mooney and his family

 

The recent discovery of my great-great-great-granduncle, John Mooney (1800-1889), helped fill in a hole that didn’t make sense.  I had once read in a biography of one of his nephews that his Uncle John had emigrated from Ireland to Canada but later joined is older brother in Baltimore.  My great-great-great-grandfather, Patrick Mooney (1801-1886) was the only brother that came to Baltimore and that was in 1852.  John, however, likely emigrated in 1821 with his brothers Michael and Lawrence and he doesn’t show up in any Canadian records like his brothers did.  Either he left Canada long before Patrick came to Baltimore or he only emigrated from Ireland in the late 1840’s or early 1850’s.  He didn’t show up in any Irish records in the 1820s to 1850s.  Also, I found very few John Mooneys in Baltimore in the 1850s and 1860s and none of them looked like they were born in Ireland around 1800 or could be linked to Patrick.

Based on DNA and circumstantial evidence, I am almost completely certain that my great-great-great-granduncle, John Mooney is the John Mooney who likely immigrated with his brothers in 1821 to Quebec.  Before the 1830 US census, John moved to the small town of Lorraine, Jefferson County, New York (1830 population - 1,727).  There is no marriage record for John and no birth locations available for his oldest three children but most likely, he came to Lorraine by at least 1824, met and married another Irish immigrant, Priscilla Cambell (~1805-1863) there and started having children in 1826.

John & Priscilla’s children were:

1)    Maria Judith Mooney (~1826-bef. 1855) – Maria married Henry Holley Whitcomb in 1847 and they had two daughters before her untimely death before the 1855 New York census.  There were only two descendants of Maria in my generation but at least one of them had five children.

2)    Elizabeth “Eliza” Mooney (~1826-18??) – Eliza married a man named Hawkins and other than her presence in the 1830 and 1840 census records, the only record I have proving she existed was John Mooney’s will which listed her as a daughter living at 401 West 23^rd Street in Manhattan in 1889.  Note that Eliza was not the Eliza married to David A Hawkins.  That Eliza’s maiden name was Flynn and she caused me a few hours of wasted work!

3)    Sallie H Mooney (1830-1850) – Sallie married Asa Dugan about 1849 and they settled in Lorraine.  They had one daughter, Harriet, sometime in July, 1850 then Sallie passed away on 31 July 1850.  It was a little confusing that on Harriet’s marriage certificate, she listed her Aunt Caroline Mooney Rowell and Caroline’s husband as her parents although I cannot find any record of Harriet ever living with that family. Harriet had only one son who died at 21 years old without a wife or heir.

4)    Caroline H “Carrie” Mooney (1831-1879) – Carrie was John’s first child that there is evidence that she was born in New York.  There was no evidence at all where the older sisters were born.  Carrie married Asa Rowell in in late 1850s and moved to Rome, Oneida County, New York.  There they had three children, William who died soon after his first birthday; Fred who I cannot locate after the 1880 census when he was 7 years old; and Emma who married Jerome Dillenbeck as his third wife.  I mention that because Emma Rowell is often confused with Emma Parmelee, Jerome’s first with.  That Emma was the mother of Jermoe’s only child named Parmelee Dillenbeck.  Young Parmelee was a high school football star but died in an auto accident just a few days before graduation.  He also died exactly one week after his estranged father died.

5)    John Edward Mooney (1833-1897) – John, the first born son, married Ann Elisa Fuller around 1857.  John and Ann had a son, Frank, in 1858 but he appears to have passed away by 1865 along with another child.  The couple moved from Lorraine to Tomah, Monroe Co., Wisconsin about 1866 and that changed their fortune.  A son, Fred Judson, was born in Tomah and lived long enough to have two daughters, a granddaughter, two great-grandsons and three more descendants in the next generation.  John did not participate in the Civil War and I can not find if he ever registered for the draft.

6)    Judson Wade Mooney (1835-1864) – Judson married Clarrisa “Clara” McDaniel by the time of the 1860 census where they were documented as living with Clara’s family.  In 1862, a daughter, Mabel Gertrude, was born. On 1 March 1864, perhaps to raise money for his own farm, Judson enlisted in the Union army and volunteered for the 20th New York Cavalry Regiment (“McClellan Cavalry”) for a $300 bounty.  The regiment spent the end of the war in eastern Virginia as an occupying force.  About ten percent of the regiment died in the final year of the war, mostly from disease.  Sadly, this is how Judson passed away, with typhoid, on 4 July 1864.  Clara married again in 1866 to a veteran of the 94^th New York Infantry, Hayden Strong, and she had two more daughters with Hayden.  The spouses of her three daughters is discussed below because of the uniqueness of the relationships.

7)    David Hawley Mooney (1839-1867) – David never married.  He enlisted in the 94^th New York Infantry on 28 December 1861. David mustered in on 28 February 1862 and during his three years in service, he saw a LOT of action and paid a heavy price.  Two of his more notable events during the war included being captured in Gettysburg on 1 July 1863.  Fortunately, he was paroled on 6 July 1863 when the Confederate Army retreated.  David rejoined the ranks and was later captured again on 5 Jun 1864 during the battle of Cold Harbor.  He survived the final year of the war in the notorious Andersonville Prison.  Sadly, life back in New York and the scars of war must have been very difficult for David.  He died just over two years after mustering out in Sackets Harbor, the location where he first enlisted.

8)    Trivillian Dayrass Mooney (1841-~1904) – I don’t have a clue where that name cam from but Travillian was the first of the Mooney brothers to enlist in the Civil War.  He joined the 94^th New York Infantry on 28 December 1861, three weeks before his brother, David.  Trivillian saw too much action for a twenty year old.  Like David, he was also captured in Gettysburg on 1 July 1863 and paroled five days later.  Cold Harbor, his brothers capture and the frequent other battles that the 94^th Infantry engaged in must have taken its toll on Trivillian.  In August 1864 he was given a furlough to visit his family in New York.  Instead of returning to the ranks, he fled to Canada where he stayed until the end of the war.  After the war, he went to Grant County, Wisconsin where he married Mary E Cook in 1876.  The couple never had children.  Mary passed away in 1903 and the last mention of Trivillian in documentation was in February 1904 in the tiny village of Patch Grove, Grant Co. Wisconsin.

9)    Priscilla Mooney (~1845-??) – I have not found what happened to Priscilla.  She showed up in 1850 and 1855, and possibly in the 1860 census but then fell off the map.

A special note about the daughters of Clarrisa “Clara” McDaniel, the widow of Judson Wade Mooney. Clara had three daughters, one with Judson (Mabel Gertrude Mooney) and two with Hayden Strong (Cora Adell Strong and Lillian Margaret Strong).

1)    Mabel Gertrude Mooney (1862-1941) – On 24 September 1880, Mabel married Joel Emerson Goodrich (1862-1924) from a respectable family originally from Ohio but relocated to Nebraska after the Civil War.  His parents were Joel Phares Goodrich and Mary C Elliott. They had four children.

2)    Cora Adell Strong (1867-1915) – On 3 July 1883, Cora married Henry Albert Goodrich (1855 -1913) from a respectable family originally from Ohio but relocated to Nebraska after the Civil War.  His parents were Joel Phares Goodrich and Mary C Elliott.  That may look familiar to you.

3)    Lillian Margaret Strong (1874-1958) – Thankfully, on 12 October 1892, Lillian married Albert Thomas Jones (1859-1934).  With only three sisters, they all couldn’t marry a Goodrich boy, right?  Lillian and Albert raised a family of five children before passed away at 75 years old.  Only then in 1937 did Lillian fulfill her true calling and she married Abner E Goodrich (1876-1952) whose parents were Joel Phares Goodrich and Mary C Elliott.  Tic-tac-toe!!!

Finding Another Mooney Brother

Usually, genealogy is a slow, difficult process.  Finding older generations and their missing siblings is almost always difficult.  Every now and then though, the genealogy gods smile on me and thrown me a bone with an easy ancestor.

I had spent hundreds of hours looking for the birth family of my great-great-grandfather, Laurence Mooney (1837-1900) and countless more hours documenting his parents and siblings as well as his Mooney grandparents and some of his aunts and uncles.  I had learned that Laurence’s grandparents were Richard Mooney and Margaret Mooney (yes, that’s also her maiden name), likely born abound 1770 in County Kildare.  Richard passed away before 1832 in Ireland.  I also learned the fate of several of their children:

1)    Lawrence (1799-1871) immigrated to Quebec around the 1820s, married Bridgit Byrne (1800-1885) and started to raise a family of seven children there.  Sometime in the 1850s Lawrence moved the family to Wisconsin.

2)    Michael (1803-1891) immigrated to Quebec in 1821, likely with his older brother, Lawrence.  There, he married Catherine McSweeny (1805-1862) and had two sons.  In 1836 he moved the family to Essex County in Ontario where Catherine gave birth to eight more children. 

3)    Patrick (~1801-1886) started his family in Monasterevan, County Kildare, after marrying Hannah Timmins (1807-1863).  In Monasterevan, Hannaah gave birth to at least 11 children although some died in infancy.    In January 1852, Hannah brough half of the surviving children to Baltimore.  Patrick likely brought the other children close to the same time but in a different voyage for safety concerns.  Patrick in my great-great-great-grandfather.

4)    Mary (1802-1863) never married and I know she came to Baltimore in the 1850s .  It is likely that she emigrated to Baltimore with her brother, Patrick.

5)    John – All that I had previously “learned” about John was that he “first settled in Canada but later joined his older brother in Baltimore” according to a biography written about Michael’s family.   The recent discovery of John’s fate is what prompted this post.

6)    Elizabeth – I am still looking for her.

7)    Bridget – I am still looking for her.

8)    Ellen – I am still looking for her.

So, how did I find out John’s fate and how easy was it?  I can tell you that it took less than five minutes and I was still laying in bed, early in the morning, when I found him.  I should, however, mention that I am only 99% certain that I have this John in the exactly correct spot on my family tree.  I am still looking for concrete proof but I am confident of his position.

As I often do when I wake up, one day last week I had a quick look at any new e-mails, messages and new Ancestry DNA matches.  That day, I had a new match who I will call JGG (to protect his identity).  JGG shared a hefty 24cM of DNA with me but he had no tree in Ancestry.  Normally, I would just skip over such a profile but two things stopped me.  First, I looked at JGG’s shared DNA matches he had with me and there were 20 matches, all on my father’s side.  Six of those 20 were known Mooney descendants who I had already documented.  Those were good signs.  The second reasons I decided to look closer into JGG’s connection was that his name was very unique.  In fact, I Googled his whole name and there was only one person in America that I could find with that name.  The top hit was his mother’s obituary that gave all her details including her father’s name, her mother’s maiden name and her full husband’s name, noting that all pre-deceased her.  After choosing where to start looking (by way of a quick “eeny meeny miny moe”), I searched Ancestry for her father’s name and quickly saw that his mother’s maiden name was Mabel Gertrude Mooney (1862-1941).  That looked like a good start!

Less than two minutes later, I saw that other Ancestry members had identified Mabel’s father as Judson W. Mooney (1835-1864) and her grandfather as John Mooney (1800-1889).  Was that really “my” John though?  It appeared so.  I saw documentation that he had immigrated to Canada first and sometime before 1830, he went to Jefferson County, New York.  I saw his will which identified “Mabel Goodrich [Mabel’s married name] of Cameron, Hall Co., Nebraska, the only child of Judson Mooney, a deceased son of the testator”.   Another source identified John as having been born in County Kildare.  Almost everything fits with what we know about the family.  “Almost” everything.

The only doubt in my mind is from the story about “John emigrating from Canada to join his older brother in Baltimore” has to be wrong.  John had settled his family in Essex County, New York before 1830 and lived there the rest of his life. He likely went to Quebec from Ireland in 1821 with his brothers Lawrence and Michael.  My ancestor, Patrick, only immigrated to Baltimore, direct from Ireland, in 1852 and was the only brother who came directly to the US.  Also, I have never been able to identify any John Mooney born around 1800 in Ireland and living in Baltimore between 1852 and 1890 that looked like he might be Patrick's brother.

With that doubt, why do I think that this John Mooney is placed in the right location in my family tree?  As stated, JGG and I have 20 shared DNA matches on Ancestry.  All 20 are on my father’s side where my Mooney cousins are.  Six of those 20 were known Mooney descendants who I had already documented.  If John Mooney is placed where I think they should be, a son of Richard and Margaret Mooney, that would make JGG my 5^th cousin. As JGG and I share 24cM of DNA, that is a more than typical for a fifth cousin.  Of the 67 5^th cousins I have identified on Ancestry, the range of shared DNA is 6cM – 69cM with the average being 19cM and the mean being 17cM.  By comparison, that same numbers for 4^th to 6^th cousins are:

            Number          Range            Average         Mean

4^th           47               9 – 62cM           23cM           20cM

5^th           67               6 – 69cM           19cM           17cM

6^th           133              6 – 34cM           14cM           13cM

While it is possible that JGG is a sixth cousin, it is much more likely to be a 5^th cousin, or possibly a 4^th cousin.  I have ruled out a 4^th cousin though as I have looked at his entire ancestry (I built a tree for him) and I know 14 of his great-great-grandparents and 24 of his great-great-great grandparents and there is only one Mooney in the lot with no other names matching my father’s ancestors.

I am hoping that more of JGG’s closer cousins get tested on Ancestry which will help prove (or disprove) the relationship but I am not hopeful for that.  Despite John Mooney having nine children, those children and their heirs did not produce any other large families.  It appears that John had only nine grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.

In another post in the near future, I will give some details of John Mooney’s children and some of the more interesting stories from that branch of the Mooney family.

 

Our Spaghetti Family

My family is not Italian but sometimes our ancestral lines look a lot like a bowl of spaghetti.

Once upon a time, Eliza E. McMillen (1888-1954) was my Granddad Gentry’s fourth cousin in the Timberlake clan.  She married Aldine Joseph Brenneman (1883-1968) on 13 Sep1905 in Auglaize County, Ohio.  Life got complicated after that.

Aldine & Eliza were “blessed” with a dozen children, but the ninth one is the one who caught my eye.  Robert Dean Brenneman (1922-1999) went on to marry six and a half times.  The interesting part is who and how he married.

Wedding #1 was to Erma Jean Colley (1924-2000) on 26 July 1941.  This was a good start to Robert’s marriage career.  At 19 years old, he had a solid job at the local locomotive manufacturer in Lima, Ohio.  Erma was likely still in school at 16 years old but, you know, “young love”.  Well, young love doesn’t always work out.  Within six months Robert had filed for a divorce for “gross neglect of duties” which was granted in February,1942.  Erma must not have been doing her homework.

Wedding #1.5 is complicated.  I threw it in here because maybe there should have been a wedding.  On 1 April 1946, Robert became a father for the first and only time (that I know of).  The mother was Fontella Newland Downey (1927-1990).  Fontella was also from Lima, Ohio and she had been married to Gail C Downey since 1942 but, “for some reason”, they were divorced sometime after the birth of their son in April 1945 and before the birth of his daughter with his second wife in 1947.  Fontella’s maiden name had also looked familiar to me.  I had previously seen that although Robert and Fontella did not get married when they had a child, the event likely brought the two families closer together.  In 1948, Robert’s older brother, Albert Dale Brenneman (1917-1989), married Fontella’s younger sister, Anna Faye Newland (1930-1995).  Albert and Anna had 22-year marriage that produced six children, including one boy named for his Uncle Robert.  I mention that as it might just come up later.

Wedding #2 was to Josephine Mildred Long Curl (1922-2023) on 3 July 1946 in Montana.  I wonder if Montana was where Robert was hiding out, only three months after his daughter was born.  Both Josephine and Robert were living in the small village of Darby before their wedding.  Anyway, Josephine was also originally from Lima, Ohio and she was a war widow.  Her first husband, Harold Curl, had gone missing during WWII and was declared dead in September 1945.  This marriage lasted longer than Robert’s first one.  After no children were produced but by the time of the 1950 census in April of that year, the couple had separated, and the divorce was finalized in October 1950.  They could go on with their own lives.

Wedding #3 was to Josephine Mildred Long Curl Brenneman.  You might recognize that name.  Josephine and Robert apparently didn’t enjoy living separate lives.  They married again on 13 February 1951 in Lima.  I guess they couldn’t wait until St. Valentine’s Day but four months after their divorce was finalized, they were husband and wife again.  Until, at least, January 1952 when they filed for divorce again. 

Wedding #4 was a surprise to me.  Robert was obviously looking to settle down and raise a family.  On 30 April 1955, Robert tried again and married a woman who was raising a nine-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.  If you haven’t figured it out already, his new bride was Fontella Newland Downey, his brother’s sister-in-law and the mother of his child.  I think this is called the circle of life.  Robert, Fontella and their daughter must have been a happy family as this marriage lasted all the way to April 1962 when the next divorce was finalized.

Wedding #5 was not a surprise to me anymore.  Sometime in 1965, Robert married Fontella Newland Downey again.  This marriage lasted another six years until November 1971.  The only surprising part was that it was Robert who filed for divorce, and it was Fontella who was charged with gross neglect and extreme cruelty. 

Wedding #6 can only be addressed if you are sitting down.  Six weeks after Robert’s divorce from Fontella Newland, on 8 January 1972, Robert married Anna Faye Newland Brenneman.  That’s right, his double (triple?) ex-sister-in-law.  Remember, Anna was the sister of his two-time wife, Fontella, as well as the wife of his older brother. Albert.  Anna was fair game since she and Albert had divorced in September 1970 when Albert was charged with gross neglect of duty.  Somehow, someway, Robert finally found his soulmate.  This marriage lasted until Anna’s death in 1995.  It must have made family gatherings a bit awkward for both the Brenneman and Newland families, but it at least gave everyone something to talk about other than politics.

*** As a bonus twist - After Fontella and Robert were divorced the second time, Fontella married Maurice Bernard Fuerst (1932-2018) in May 1973.  Maurice had been married with eight children, but he married Fontella just ten weeks after his divorce to his first wife.  To come back full circle, a little over five years after Fontella died in 1990, Maurice re-married his first wife.  What a hopeless romantic.  Maurice's obituary did not address his 23-year lapse.  That's okay though; you would not believe what Robert Brenneman's obituary glossed over.

Ancestors of Mary E Gallagher French

      This is a temporary post so a relative can see it.  Click on the tree to enlarge it.

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-?).

(YOU CAN CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM)

 

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.