Is this John Galvin "our John Galvin?

I think I found another Galvin family member, a brother for William, Patrick and Honoria (as well as Mary, Michael and Ellen).  I was 100% sure until today but now I am down a few percentage points because I do not have any DNA relatives in Ancestry that match any of John Galvin Jr’s descendants.  It’s possible that none of them have done the Ancestry test but I sure would prefer to have that confirmation. [edited to add: I have since confirmed some DNA matches to this branch.  It IS "our" John.]

From Uncle Herbert O'Conor’s biography, I knew there was a brother named John but I could never find anyone who knew even an estimated birth year for him, much less any spouse or offspring.

I was looking through the Irish Civil records (https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/civil-search.jsp) for any Galvins in the Loughrea district when I stumbled on a “John Galvin” married to Margaret Heavey who were having a bunch of babies in the village of Attymon during the 1870’s.  I checked google maps and Attymon is in the Kiltullagh parish, less that 4km away from the cottage where John Galvin and Honoria Connaughton raised their family.

That looked like something interesting to investigate further but while searching for John and Margaret’s children, I found another “John Galvin” who was married to Anne Hurley.  They had five children around the 1860’s and their village, according to the handwritten civil records, was Gortakeeran.  I checked where that was and after I got back up off the floor, I smiled a lot.  Gortakeeran was the very small cluster of farms exactly where John and Honoria raised their family.  According to the Griffith’s Valuation records (http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/), John Galvin Sr. AND John Galvin Jr. were tenant farmers on several plots of land in that village.  Irish relatives have also confirmed the cottage on one of those plots as their ancestral home.

I have shown below the documentation for this branch of the family.  Let me know if you see any error or hiccups in my thinking.

Incidentally, while I was putting this together, I noticed that the land next to the Galvin cottage was farmed by Patrick Hurley.  I wonder if he had a daughter named “Anne”? 

Fingers crossed, I will try to contact some of John Galvin Jr’s descendants on Ancestry to ask if they have done the DNA test.  I sure hope John wasn’t adopted.

This shows the nearby Thomas Connor lands mentioned in the O'Conor biography

Mary Foley & James Connaughton

James Connaughton's (b. 12 Nov 1820 Co. Galway - d. 10 Jan 1896, Baltimore, Md.) first wife, Mary Kelley, died about 1875 when their surviving children, John and James were about 16 and 11 years old, respectively.  According to the Maryland State Archives, James Connaughton married Mary Foley shortly after 10 May 1877, when their marriage license was issued.

There are many notices in the papers that James Connaughton was the Executor of the will for Michael Foley who died in Baltimore in 1871.  Michael Foley's wife was named Mary according to some of the estate notices.  I had assumed that James Connaughton had married Michael's widow after James' first wife died.  Unfortunately, I could not find any census data for Michael or Mary to confirm this.  Also, many of the details on the Maryland State Archives marriage index cards were not completed. I did know from the 1880 census, however, that James' new wife was supposedly born about 1858 in Maryland.

Again, Michael's census data did not seem to be indexed in the Ancestry.com database and searches for him turned up no results.  Newspapers.com didn't help much either although Michael Foley's name is found many times.  All I knew for sure about him was that he was in the liquor business, occasionally had trouble with the law and died between mid-December 1870 and mid-December 1871. 

A clue to solve this mystery came several years later though.  I found a 13 Aug 1882 death notice in the papers for Annie Foley, "daughter of Michael and Mary Foley".  When I searched Ancestry for Annie to see if she was related to "our Mary Foley", I thought I disproved the theory that James married Michael's widow.  I not only found Annie's 1880 census report but that also linked to her 1870 and 1860 census, showing her parents.  Her father, Michael, died sometime between the 1870 and 1880 census years and was in the liquor business.  It looked pretty likely that I found the right family.  Michael's widow, Mary Foley, appears to have been born around 1835 in Ireland though, rather than the 1858 in Maryland.  Also, Mary Foley was still listed as a widow in the 1880 census and obviously did not marry James in 1877.  

In summary, James Connaughton did not marry Michael Foley's widow.  

That's it.  Case closed.  At least, I thought so.  

As I looked at the Foley census data, something else struck me.  Michael and Mary Foley had other children, in addition to the Annie that I had stumbled upon.  They also had a daughter named Mary.  Born in 1858.  Born in Maryland.  Hmmmm…. 

Some of the documentation

A Family Pretzel - the life and times in a small Tennessee county in the mid-19th century.

You already know that Harriet Jane Carson was our great-great-grandmother, the wife of Hayden Gentry.  Jane’s father was Daniel Atkins Carson and he was a first cousin of Reuben Atkins.  Reuben, like many of the Atkins family, moved from North Carolina to Tennessee in the 1830s and married Lettice Mullins who just happened to be the young sister of Frances Mullins, the wife of Reuben’s older brother, David.  Two bothers marrying two sister was not uncommon at the time and certainly not uncommon in our family.  It’s not the subject of this story but it does set a bit of a precedence.

Reuben and Lettice had twelve children but this story involves only three: James Thomas Atkins (1838 – 1851), Martha Frances Atkins (1830 – 1859) and Susan Amanda Atkins (1844 – 1927).  So far, so good.

In October 1848, James married Luvurnia Elizabeth Chambers (1834 – 1865) and had twin sons, John Chambers Atkins and Reuben Lafayette Atkins twelve months later.  Sadly, James passed away in July 1851 before the twins’ second birthday.  For a while, I could not find out what happened to them or the mother but I eventually found them all with a new family and a father who gave the twins a new last name.  Luvurnia married Wiles Cooke Meeks (1834 – 1918) in early 1853.  I don’t know if the descendants of the twins, John Chambers Meeks and Reuben Lafayette Meeks, know that Wiles was not their blood ancestor but it appears that no one on Ancesty.com has figured it out yet.  Still, that is not the point of this story.

The twins’ mother, Luvurnia Elizabeth Chambers Atkins Meeks, died in November, 1865 just after the boys’ 16^th birthday.  Their adoptive father apparently took care of the boys, just like his own children, their half-siblings.  Wiles Meeks wasted no time in finding a new mother of his children and in January, 1866 married Rebecca Jennie Chambers (1849 – 1929).  Wait!  What?  Was Rebecca Chambers the sister of Luvurnia Chambers?   The answer surprised me greatly.

The answer, technically, was “no”.  Rebecca was the daughter of Cyrus Lafayette Chambers (1829 – 1892) whereas Luvurnia was the daughter of someone named John Chambers.  A little more digging revealed some fun facts though when I saw that the father of Cyrus was also named John.  Cyrus was, in fact, the older brother of Luvurnia so, in summary, his daughter Rebecca was now taking the place of her aunt in the bed of Wiles Meeks.  With me so far?

A little more digging brought up the name of the wife of Cyrus Lafayette Chambers and mother of Rebecca.  Her name was Martha Frances Atkins.  Huh?  Yes, this was the sister of James Thomas Atkins.  A new summary is that her daughter was now married to the second husband of her brother’s widow.  Confusing, right?  Remember though, if you look back, Martha passed away in July, 1859, seven years before her daughter married her brother’s widow’s widowed second husband.  She certainly didn’t care, Right?

To round everything up though, I should point out that two years after Martha passed away, her husband, Cyrus took another wife.  Like everyone else in the story, he didn’t look far.  His new wife was Susan Amada Atkins, the younger sister of both James and Martha.  Summarized once again, Susan’s step-daughter/niece married her brother’s widow’s widowed second husband.

All clear?

William Kendrick Carson, my hero

I had fun figuring out a family today. William Kendrick Carson (1832-1936) was a first cousin of our great-great-grandmother, Harriet Jane Carson (wife of Haden Gentry). William married someone six years his junior, named Mary Ann, around 1862 in Nashville, Illinois. William and Mary Ann had five children that survived infancy before Mary Ann died on 27 August 1877.

William, now 45 years old, wasted little time and married 19 year-old Amanda soon enough that she was able to give birth to a boy, Zenas (!), on 2 June 1878. You do the math. Amanda and William had three more children, two dying in infancy (Smiley! and Landy) before Amanda died at 26 years old on 2 April 1884.

Poor William felt lonely at 52 years-old, with small kids to take care of but waited anyway.... for about six weeks before marrying 18 year-old Vienna in the middle of May 1884. Vienna bore three children who survived infancy but William wore her out too. Vienna passed away at 32 years-old on 12 October 1898.

After a respectable mourning period of about three months, William went on to marry one last time in January, 1899 and, tired from all the kids, married 62 year-old Paulina Anna Snead. In all, there were 16 children that William fathered with only ten of them surviving infancy.

Now, do you want to hear the funny part? It took a lot of digging but I found out Mary Ann's maiden name. It was Ragland. Where had I seen that before? Oh yeah, Amanda's maiden name was also Ragland. It turns out that Amanda's father was a first cousin of Mary Ann. What a coincidence! And what about Vienna? Yep - she was Ragland too. Amanda was her older sister. So far, I can not figure out if Paulina was related to the Ragland wife factory.... but I'm still looking.

[Edited to add "The Rest of the Story"]  I was tired of looking at all the Raglands and Carsons after finding this family story almost two years ago.  I was looking at the family again recently and was reminded of this story.  I had another look at Paulina Anna "Polly" Snead.  It turns out that she was not related to the Raglands.  It also turned out that William Kendrick Carson was her second marriage.  She was a widow when she married.  Her first husband was named Robert Huston Carson... William's older brother.  Who saw that coming?

Finally, while checking out Polly Snead, I noticed her mother's maiden name was Troutt. That's interesting.  Robert and William's eldest sister, Lucinda, married a man named Elijah Troutt from the same county that Paulina came from.  Coincidence??  You decide!

The Doyle / Connaughtons of Kiltulla, The Great Famine and the Land War

At the beginning of the Great Famine in Ireland, around 1845, Ireland had a population of about 8 Million people, of whom two-thirds depended on agriculture to make a living.  Almost all the land was owned by English aristocracy who were absentee landlords, relying on agents to collect annual rents from mostly poor Catholic tenants.  Most of these tenant farmers could only afford small farms, hoping to grow enough crops to survive.  65% of these farms were less than 15 acres with more than a third of those being less than five acres.  At the time, the only available crop that could possibly be grown profitably on such small farms was the potato.  In good years, the potato was a staple food but was also used as fodder for farm animals, either sold to ranchers or to fatten the family pigs.  When the potato blight hit for several years in a row, farmers didn’t have enough food to feed their family, much less to sell any potatoes to ranchers or to pay their rents.  Landlords had their agents enforce the payment of rents as best they could but demanded eviction for those who could not pay in full.  It is estimated that a half million people were evicted between 1845 and 1854 with many more “voluntarily” giving up their farms.  With no income or roof over their heads they starved or were sent to workhouses which were basically prisons for poor people who had to earn their keep.  If they could raise enough money for passage, they emigrated from Ireland with England, Scotland, Wales, America, Canada and Australia taking in almost a quarter of Ireland’s population.  It should also be noted, with sadness, that despite the famine, Ireland was still a net exporter of foodstuff during most the famine years, primarily to meet English demands.

For those farmers that stayed and managed to survive, there wasn’t suddenly any cheap land on the market.  The aristocracy just consolidated these recovered lands into large grazing ranches and brought in people to manage new herds.  The tenants were still stuck on their tiny, unsustainable, rented farms.  Between 1854 and the next time a blight hit the potato crops in 1879, many farmers were agitating for land reform. In the late 1870’s, the Irish National Land League was formed to try to abolish the tenant system and allow farmers to own their land.  In the late 1890’s the United Irish League (UIL) was formed as a political party with the principal aim to compel large grazier farmers to surrender their lands for redistribution to the small Irish farmers, particularly in the fertile areas they exclusively held in west central Ireland around Galway and Roscommon.

Although the UIL was a political party, they also fought for farmers’ rights through agitation, boycotts and demonstrations.  Throughout the UIL’s existence, until a younger, more militant splinter group, Sinn Féin, overtook it, the UIL had a strong following in the small parish of Kiltulla, Galway.  That is where the Galvins, Connors, Connaughtons and Doyles lived… and sometimes “agitated”. 

Michael Doyle, a second cousin of my great-grandmother Mary Ann Galvin [Michael (1852-1937) was the grandson of William Connaughton and son of Mary Connaughton (1819-1891) and Patrick Doyle (1808-1879)] had a price put on his head by the English and was eventually caught and imprisoned in Wales.  Newspaper reports also mention Kiltulla residents William Connaughton, T. Connor and J. Galvin having attended their massive rallies.

Even though Uncle Larry was on our Smith side, he would have been very proud.


 

Herbert R. O'Conor: The Inevitable Success

A lucky discovery that proved me wrong. Again. The Dixon Clan

Crimminy jickets!  I am really bad at this stuff. 

I am not sure if all this work was a complete waste of time but I now know that it was based on an incorrect assumption.  I asked myself “who else could this Joseph Dixon be, other than a brother of our great-great-grandmother, Catherine?”.  Joseph and Catherine were born about seven years apart; both were born in Country Tyrone; they shared the same last name; and for pete’s sake, Joseph and his wife, Anna, were buried in the Catherine’s daughter’s family plot in New Cathedral Cemetery along with nine other known family members?

I can answer that partially now.  This Joseph was not Catherine’s brother.  That means that Sarah Gertrude Dixon Delaney was also not a sibling.  That means I did a whole lot of work to figure out who was NOT our fourth cousins. Maybe Joseph was Catherine’s cousin.  Maybe he was her second cousin.  Maybe he was a complete stranger who snuck his way into the grave and the rest of the stuff is just a coincidence.  Who know?  NOT ME!

That’s the bad news.

Here’s the good news…

I know that this Joseph was not Catherine’s brother and this Sarah was not her sister because I found a portion of a biography of Dr. Joseph Dixon, Archbishop of Armagh.  It turns out that family history of us being related to him is true.  The story of the Archbishop’s early life was previously posted on the website of a school in Coalisland, Ireland that was named for him.  It has since been removed from that website but a cached version is google-able and the portion I saw was a cut and pasted transcript on Ancestry.com. I have now copied that so that it doesn’t go missing because there is some juicy information in there…including Catherine’s real brothers and sisters.

_________________________________________________

http://www.primatedixon.coalisland.ni.sch.uk/Cover.htm

The Dixon family lived in a single story farmhouse at Corrainey along the side of the road leading from Coalisland down into Bush. James Dixon, who was born in 1776, married Jane Casey, who was born in 1777. They are buried in Killyman Churchyard, with a daughter Mary, who died in August, 1827, at the age of thirteen. They had a family of four girls - Catherine (later Mrs McGovern), Sarah (married Hugh Curran, a farmer), Jane (married James Magill, a publican), and Mary (died young) and three boys - Joseph, James and Francis.

They had a farm of 8 acres 3 rood and 35 perches on which there were three houses, let to James Reynolds, Robert Currie and Patrick Hillen.

These were the boom years of the domestic linen industry, between 1775 and 1825, until the factories took over all the trade. Spinners and weavers worked in their own homes and generally worked through an agent to sell their linen at the weekly market in Dungannon Market Square, where the population doubled on market days. It is probable that the Dixon family had an interest in the linen industry. Francis, the heir, certainly owned webs and looms in the homes of weavers in 1860.

The Coalisland of Joseph Dixon’s young day was a growing, developing community. The Canal was completed in 1787 and, for the next Century and a half, carried heavy traffic. Wharfing and warehouses were around its basin. Many industries had grown out of the local coal and fireclay mining. S. Lewis in his 'Topographical Dictionary of Ireland' published in 1837 refers to Coalisland's many aworks, potteries, flourmills, iron works, forges, plating mills, spade mills and works for the manufacture of firebricks. The 1834 map of the area shows tile works, grain mills, a starch factory and bleach greens.

There is a long-standing tradition in Coalisland that Joseph was born on 1st July 1806, in a lodging house, approached by three stone steps, which stood along the back river to the rear of Barrack Street in the town. It seems a reasonable explanation that Jane was on business in the village, when Joseph decided to be born. Sister Mary Cusack who wrote a life of Dr. Dixon in 1878, says he was born in the Parish of Donaghenry. Corrainey is in Dungannon Parish, the Parish of Ballyclog and Donaghenry was separated from Clonoe by Dr. Curtis in 1822 and Barrack Street was in Donaghenry.

Jane Dixon was a woman of piety and was interested in educating her family in days when education was the exception rather than the rule. Joseph Dixon, in later years, referred to her devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 'Take note of my name being Joseph, and what will help you, I am sure, to remember, it is this, that I am not named after a member of my family, but my mother gave me the name of Joseph, because it was the name of the Spouse of the Blessed Virgin.'

Early Education - The Report of the National Commission for Education in 1826 mentions a number of Schools in the area, but there is no record of where he received his early education. It was obviously a very good one. He often told a story of an incident on his way from school one day. He was walking along with a companion when a boy of another religion began to verbally abuse them for being Catholics. The companion took the situation and the miscreant in hand and ended the matter.

Maynooth - At the age of 16, on the 26th August 1822, Joseph Dixon entered Maynooth to study for the Priesthood. He followed a brilliant course and graduated with distinction. His brother James followed him to Maynooth a few years later and was one of the outstanding students of his time. James later left the Diocesan Clergy and joined the Congregation of the Missions - the Vincentians.

At the end of his first year in the Dunboyne Institute Joseph competed with two brilliant classmates for the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in Maynooth College. Dr. Whitehead was successful and the other, Dr. Magennis, was later appointed Professor of Theology in 1830. These three were ordained on the same day in June 1829.

Dr. Dixon was appointed junior Dean in Maynooth in September 1829, and was promoted to Senior Dean in September 1833. As Dean he was said to have been exact on breaches of discipline, but he always tried to be a guide in the formation of the characters of future priests. After an extensive examination in Hebrew, Syriac and Chaldaic, by a panel chaired by Archbishop Murray of Dublin, Dr. Dixon was appointed Professor of Sacred Scripture and Hebrew in September 1834.

He was highly regarded by his peers and by his students, both as a teacher and as a scholar. Evidence of his deep scholarship came when, in 1852, he produced his book "A General Introduction to the Sacred Scripture". He wrote this book for the student of Scripture and for the educated layman, as there was, at that time, no such book by a Catholic author in the English language. It was a very comprehensive, learned and theologically correct work. It was well received and highly praised by Scripture scholars. He was justly proud of the work and on the occasion of an audience with the Pope at the time of the Definition of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he presented Pius IX with a copy.

Maynooth was the hub of Irish Ecclesiastical life and little happened throughout the land that was not discussed there. Dr. Dixon loved the intellectual stimulation of his fellow professors and the opportunity for study. For a man, already of deep piety, it was a place where he could develop and increase his life of devotion. The formation of the minds and characters of future priests was a task he relished.

He was well aware of the turmoil in the Church at the time. Because of the work of the Revolutionists, Pius IX and the Church Government had to leave Rome. Irish Church affairs were handled by Cardinal Fransoni from Naples since 1848. The Irish Church needed time to get itself organised after the ravages of the Penal Law years. The terrible trauma of the death, disease, poverty and emigration of the Famine Years of 1845-49 had also to be dealt with. Concessions granted by the Government after Emancipation had to be examined and viewed with suspicion after years of repression. The Irish bishops were deeply divided on three of these concessions. One group was headed by Primate Crolly and Archbishop Murray of Dublin and the other, by Archbishop McHale of Tuam. The three matters were the National Schools Bill - to give education to young children in non denominational schools - The Charitable Bequests Bill, about what legacies could be left to religious institutions and the most divisive, The Queen's Colleges Bill - the Universities at Belfast, Cork and Galway. It is necessary to mention these to introduce Dr. Paul Cullen, Rector of the Propaganda College in Rome and formerly Rector of the Irish College in Rome. The National Schools and Queen's Colleges disputes were referred to Rome and Paul Cullen was called in by Propaganda as a consultor. This brought him more to the fore-front in Rome when Archbishop Crolly died in April 1849 and the See of Armagh was vacant.

The Appointment of Dr. Paul Cullen - In accordance with the Propaganda Rule of 1829 for the selection of a bishop, the parish priests of Armagh Diocese met in Armagh on 22nd May 1849. They selected, by vote, three priests whom they suggested to Rome as candidates for the bishopric Joseph Dixon (26 votes); Michael Kieran, P.P., Dundalk (12 votes); and John O'Hanlon, Professor of Theology in Maynooth (12 votes). Propaganda instead appointed Paul Cullen to be Archbishop.

The English Catholic newspaper 'The Tablet" on Saturday, 12th January 1850 argued that it was unheard of that at least one of those proposed by the Parish Priests, even if taken out of the order of the voting, was not appointed. They took this as another case of Rome putting in their own man to carry out Rome's ideas. Propaganda had the right to reject the candidates and it was almost inevitable, in the circumstances, that Paul Cullen - the strong, brilliant scholar, astute leader, fully aware of Irish Church affairs, absolutely faithful to Rome and outside the Episcopal squabbles - should be chosen.

He was appointed in 1849 and lived all his time as Archbishop of Armagh, in Drogheda. Archbishop Cullen was moved as Archbishop of Dublin on 1st May 1852 and continued to dominate Irish and world Church affairs until his death on 24th October 1878. He was created Ireland's first Cardinal in 1861. He held Dr. Dixon in high regard and took him to the Synod of Thurles as his theologian. Dr. Dixon also acted as theologian at the Synod of Oscott.

Appointment as Archbishop - Joseph Dixon was reading his office in his room when Archbishop Cullen, with Rev. Dr. Carew and Dr. Callan, arrived to inform him of his appointment as Archbishop of Armagh by Pius IX on 13th October, 1852. Reluctantly, he accepted and, when they left, he wept bitterly. After thirty years in the calm, serene atmosphere of Maynooth he had to face out into the rough seas of a divided hierarchy and the problems already outlined. In a letter of November 1852, he gives some indication of the soul-searching it caused him before he bowed to the Will of God. "You must excuse me for having delayed so long to acknowledge your exceeding kindness to me upon the most trying occasion of my life. This appointment to Armagh has been to me a source of great grief and trouble, and although a part of the trouble is now past, as my consecration has taken place, I still see nothing but a continuation of great grief and great trouble to the end of my life. I was told however, by so many in whom I had confiden…