Irish Census Records

Having found seven siblings for my great grandmother Elizabeth O'Leary in Ancestry.com's extracted baptismal records, I wanted to see if I could confirm that they were indeed her siblings.  I had already traced her sister Ellen O'Leary Ford to San Francisco and identified her children and grandchildren. I needed to work out her other sister who I was told was named Polly, but records turned up as Mary.  I also needed to look for at least five brothers.

As I have throughout the process of working on the family tree, I looked for other sources for records beyond Ancestry. I had found a source for the 1901 and 1911 census records of Ireland through the National Archives of Ireland. Their search functions and digitizing of records isn't as clean as Ancestry, but it's pretty good. The biggest headache being that each digitized image of the census record is a separate file and with the way the Irish censuses were recorded I had to open multiple files to gather all the information. (As opposed to the US census records where all the information for multiple families is recorded on a single page which were digitized in groups so I could scroll through pages to see neighbors, etc.) The next biggest headache is understanding the land divisions in Ireland as they definitely don't make a whole lot of sense to someone like me who has lived her entire life in urban/suburban United States of the late 20th/early 21st century! It's definitely not as neat and easy as knowing my relatives lived at 6 Harry Place in San Francisco in 1880, but I think I'm getting a general idea.

As I mentioned in my last post, I believe I found my great great grandparents Jeremiah O'Leary and Mary O'Looney in the 1901 census. Only daughter Mary was living with them in 1901, so I set off to look for the five sons and my great grandmother who was still living in Ireland in 1901. I started with oldest brother John. According to the record I'd found on Ancestry, he was born January 16, 1865 which would make him 36 in 1901. I entered that information and up popped a record: John O'Leary, age 36, teacher, in Fahanalooscane, Ballymartle, County Cork. Living with him is his sister Eliza O'Leary, age 24! Well, that matches up with the family story that Lizzie O'Leary's older brother was a teacher who worked with Daniel Coleman's sister. According to the census record, John O'Leary is married, but his wife doesn't appear on the census form. Unlike the US census records, which recorded the usual residents of the enumerated houses whether or not they were at home on the day the census was taken, the Irish census is based on who was in the enumerated house on a specific date (e.g. March 31, 1901)

Having found John in 1901, I decided to see if I could find him in 1911. He appeared again in Fahanalooscane, and this time his family also appears on the census record. Wife Hanora (age 43), sons Jeremiah (10) and Denis (5), and daughters Mary (7) and Hannah (10 months.) Ah-ha! Well that's loads of useful information. I now have John's wife's name so I can look for her in the 1901 census. His oldest son is 10, so he was likely an infant when the 1901 census was taken, so perhaps Hanora was staying with family when the census was recorded. Denis is 5 in 1911, which would mean he was born in about 1906. That matches up with the information I found about Dennis O'Leary in San Francisco, whose wife and daughters attended my parents wedding!

Well, that certainly was a promising start. It got a bit more difficult after that. I had very little information on the other brothers beyond birth dates, so identifying if I'd found the right people would be quite difficult. I found five different William O'Learys living in County Cork in 1901. One was born in the United States, so that left four options, but none were living in Ballincollig. None of them had any clues to indicate I'd found the right one, so I'll have to go digging some more there. Next on my list was Edmund. No Edmund O'Learys showed up in the 1901 or 1911 census records. I did find a couple of Edwards, but none of them appeared promising. So what happened to Edmund? Is he indeed a brother?Thinking he might be the mysterious "Arthur" from Ellen's death notice, I tried that name with the age I'd found for Edmund. Again, nothing promising. There was an Arthur O'Leary who was about the right age and living in Ballincollig, but he was illiterate. Since all the other O'Learys could read and write, I doubt he's the Arthur I'm looking for.

I set Edmund and Arthur aside and moved on to Jeremiah. This is a brother I knew existed, so what could I find about him? I turned up 19 Jeremiah O'Leary's in the 1901 census that were within 5 years in age of the Jeremiah I was looking for. Two were born in Cork City, so I eliminated them. Another was born in County Kerry, so I eliminated him also. That left 16 possibilities, one of which was living in Ballincollig. I clicked on his record and he was living with an aunt, Ellen O'Leary, and a sister Hannah O'Leary. Drat. That probably isn't the right one either. It's going to take some time to weed through the remaining 15. Okay, let's see if we can find Daniel O'Leary. There are 34 Daniel O'Learys in County Cork in 1901. Arrgh!

So, I've got a lot of work ahead of me weeding through the various census records to see if I can figure out if any of the people I've found are Lizzie O'Leary's brothers. I'm not even completely certain that they all are brothers. John at least matches up with the family stories and I know there was a Jeremiah. As for William, Edmund, and Daniel, it's hard to know for certain. That doesn't include the mysterious Arthur who may be one of those three or a completely different person! I need to see if I can find out more on those birth records I found on Ancestry.

Onward with the O’Learys

As I mentioned in my last post, I managed to get a couple of leads to start tracing out some of my O’Leary relatives. I decided to start with the names from the invitation list to my parents’ wedding in 1965. Who were A. Ford and J. Ford and what could I find out about Catherine Dwyer and Mrs. Dennis O’Leary?

My first step was to take a closer look at the items I had taken from my parents’ house. The card from Mrs. Dennis O’Leary was signed May O’Leary and said that she and her twin daughters would be attending the wedding. Okay, so that’s four people to find: Dennis O’Leary, who presumably has died by 1965, May O’Leary, and their twin daughters. I plugged the information I had into my family tree and went on to the next. Mr. & Mrs. A. Ford also responded to the wedding invitation that they would both attend, but their daughter would be unable to join the festivities. The card was signed Mr. & Mrs. A. P. Ford, so no full name, but another initial. I plugged them into the family tree also. Mrs. Catherine Dwyer also accepted the invitation, but by 1965 she appears to be widowed. There wasn’t a card from Mr. & Mrs. J. Ford, but they and their daughter were on the invitation list, so I entered their information too.

Before I continue, I should pause to mention that I decided when I started this blog not to mention any living people directly by name.  Now I’m at a point where I am discovering some of my father’s second cousins and as such they are probably within 10 years or so in age of my father, which means in all likelihood a good number of them are still living. Until or unless I have sufficient evidence to prove otherwise, these cousins will be referred to indirectly (e.g. Dennis O’Leary’s twin daughters.) While it is possible that some of Nana’s cousins are still living, they would all be near 100 years old or more so I’m figuring that it’s not likely.

Once I entered the information I had, I headed off to take a look at the San Francisco City Directory for 1965. This is different than the phone book that just lists name, address, and phone number for the registered owner of the telephone. The city directories often listed spouses’ names and occupations as well as home and often work addresses. A very useful tool that I was surprised to discover continued into the early 1980s! I was able to find J. Ford quickly – his full name was John J. Ford and his wife’s name was Verna and he worked for E.F. Hutton & Co. Using this information I was able to check census records to learn that in addition to the daughter that was invited to my parents wedding, they also had a son. I’ve not found out much yet on these two beyond their names and approximate birth dates.

There were several different possibilities for Mr. & Mrs. A. P. Ford, but none of the names I found in the city directory matched up with the address I had, so I decided to go back a bit further. I knew he was the son of Ellen O’Leary and the brother of John J. Ford, so I searched the census records and I found the Ford family in the 1920 census. This helped quite a bit. A.P. Ford is Arthur Ford and he was born in about 1913. John J. Ford is his older brother, born in about 1905 and they had a sister, Catherine, born in about 1906. Ah-ha! Catherine Dwyer is likely Catherine Ford! Their father’s name is also John J. Ford, born in about 1868 in Ireland. The elder John Ford worked as a galvanizer.

I haven’t been able to identify Arthur Ford’s wife as yet, but know that they had at least one child, the daughter who was invited to my parents’ wedding. I’ve also been unable to identify Catherine Ford Dwyer’s husband, but it’s been entertaining looking for him as I keep hitting records for my Dwyer grandparents and great grandparents! My mother says that there is no direct relation to her Dwyers and Catherine’s husband, and she’s probably right at least as far as we can easily identify, but perhaps somewhere in the far distant past there is a common root. I haven’t been able to learn if Catherine and Mr. Dwyer had any children.

My next search was for Dennis and May O’Leary. Since they were living in Burlingame (or at least May and her daughters were) in 1965, I knew I wouldn’t be able to find them in the San Francisco City Directory, so I worked with what I knew and looked for twin girls named O’Leary that were about my father’s age. It took a few tweaks to find them as they were a bit younger than I thought, but in looking for them I was able to find four older brothers. Having these brothers enabled me to find Dennis in the 1940 census where three of the four boys also appear.  Dennis was born in about 1907 in Ireland, unlike Nana and her Ford cousins who were all born in San Francisco.

As I was gathering more information on the Ford family, I was able to find a death record for Ellen O’Leary Ford that came from a collection of San Francisco funeral home records. Ellen died in 1932, and when I found this record I was working on my iPad, so the image file attached to the record was hard to read. When I took a look at the image on my computer I learned two things. First, that Ellen died from second and third degree burns over one half of her body area. That seriously stunned me for a bit. As I’ve been going through the family tree I’ve been finding out how various relatives died and for the most part they’re fairly common causes: childbirth, heart attack, etc. But second and third degree burns? What an awful and painful way to die. I am going to assume there was some kind of house fire as that would seem to be the most likely cause, and will definitely start digging through old newspapers to see if I can learn more about that.

The second thing I learned from the death record I found for Ellen was much more mundane, but definitely useful. There was a clipping of her death notice from the San Francisco Examiner and it said she was the “dearly beloved wife of John J. Ford, loving mother of John J. Jr., Arthur Patrick, and Catherine H. Ford. and beloved sister of Arthur O’Leary and Mrs. D. Coleman.” Ah-ha! I’ve found the missing brother!

Or at least, that’s what I thought. I’d yet to begin searching on my great great grandparents Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney. What I’ve found in those searches has me a bit more puzzled. We’ll save that for another post.