More O'Learys?

Back in September, I started looking through the Irish Census records and the church records that are available on line for County Cork to start piecing together some of the O’Leary branch of the family tree. I started first looking for my great great grandparents Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney. When I found them in the 1901 Irish Census, I culled the information available and added it to my database. Similarly, when I combed through the baptismal records looking for my great grandmother Lizzie O’Leary and her siblings, I added the information found there to my files.

Those searches gave me approximate birth years for my great great grandparents and possible aunts and uncles for my great grandmother. Using that information, I went back to the Irish Genealogy site that has the pre-1900 church records for Counties Cork, Kerry, and Carlow to see if I could track down more information on that group of ancestors. I started with Jeremiah O’Leary. According to the 1901 Census, he was 76 years old which means he was born in about 1825. I plugged his name and approximate birth year into the search engine for the Cork & Ross diocese church records, and up popped 34 baptismal records. Not all were for a child named Jeremiah O’Leary, so I immediately eliminated them. That left me with five possibilities, only one of which was in Ballinhassig (the parish where my great grandmother and her siblings were baptized.) The other parishes I found were Kilmurry, Ovens & Aglis, and Cork South Parish. I looked at the record for the Jeremiah (Jerry) O’Leary who was baptized in the Ballinhassig parish first. His parents’ names were Timothy O’Leary and Joney Neville, so I used that information to see if I could find any siblings that matched up with the names I had found as godparents to my great grandmother and her siblings. I didn’t find any certain siblings. Hmmm. If my guess that the godparents for my great grandmother and her siblings were aunts and uncles, I needed to find a Patrick and Edmund O’Leary. Mary O’Leary was another possibility, but as she and Edmund were both godparents of my great grandmother’s brother (also named Edmund) I suspect Mary is Edmund’s wife.

What I needed was a map. While I’ve visited Ireland, I am not familiar enough with the geography beyond a general knowledge of where the various counties are. The parishes (both civil and religious) and towns are harder to identify without a map. Unfortunately, the Irish Genealogy site doesn’t have a map of the various parishes, so I had to go search for one. I was able to find a variety of maps at the Irish Times. It would be easier to work out which parishes border each other if the Catholic parishes map weren’t broken into three regions, but from what I could work out Ballinhassig parish is bordered by Ballincollig, Innishannon, Clountead, Douglas and Carrigaline parishes. None of those turned up in my search for Jeremiah, but I did notice the parish Ovens located next to Ballincollig. I had a Jeremiah O’Leary baptized in the parish of Ovens & Aglis in my search, that seemed like a good one to check out, so I clicked on his record. His parents were John O’Leary and Joan Mulcahy. I searched again using those options and found an Edmund O’Leary whose parents were named John O’Leary and Joannah Mulcahy who was baptized in the Ovens & Aglis parish in 1829. Hmmm. Joan and Joannah are fairly close, and Edmund O’Leary was one of the godparents I found.

While I’m not completely certain I’ve found the right family, it’s a strong possibility, so I noted down all the information in both baptismal records for Jeremiah and Edmund. I’ll have to do some more digging to see if I can confirm this find, which will definitely be challenging without census records, but hopefully some of the census alternates will prove helpful.

I had no luck searching for a Patrick O’Leary who was about the same age as my great great grandfather Jeremiah. There were several, but none with the same parents or in the same parish.  Perhaps Patrick was a cousin instead of a brother or maybe the record is missing. I don’t have enough information to know either way yet.

Having had reasonable luck with Jeremiah, I turned to my great great grandmother Mary O’Looney.  According to the 1901 census, she was 58 years old which would have her born in about 1843. Nothing turned up with that information, so I looked at the 1911 Census record. The Mary O’Leary I found there is a 73 year old widow which would have her born in about 1838. I tried that date, again no luck. I tried searching with out a date, which gave me many more options and the ability to filter by parish and decade. I found a Mary Looney baptized in February 1835 in Ballinhassig parish. This might be a possibility. Her parents were named Timothy Looney and Lydia Johnson.

As I did with Jeremiah, I did a search on those two last names to see if I could come up with any of the suspected siblings. I came up with 6 names – all children of Timothy Looney and Lydia Johnson in Ballinhassig parish: Mary Looney (17 Feb 1835), Lidia Luony (24 Jan 1837), Timothy Luony (15 April 1838), Eliza Luony (31 March 1841), Margaret Looney (13 June 1847), and George Looney (30 Nov 1852.)  I had found an Eliza Looney in the baptismal records as the godmother of my great great grandmother’s brother William.

Again, I’m not completely certain I’ve found the right family, but it is a strong possibility and I’ve noted all of the information I found. I definitely have some digging to do this year to see if I can find any other information that will support these finds.

I’ve yet to do the same kind of searching on the Colemans, but have that on my to do list for this year as well. That to do list is getting longer by the day!

Other O'Learys

After having found some O’Leary relatives in California, I went to look back to see what I could find in Ireland. I had learned that my great great grandparents were Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney, so I plugged those names into my family tree and did a search of Irish birth records looking for my great grandmother Elizabeth O’Leary. What I had been told by Aunt Margaret was that Lizzie had two brothers and two sisters, so I expected to find some siblings when I searched on Lizzie’s name. What I didn’t expect was to find was SEVEN siblings!

The Irish Births and Baptisms database I found on Ancestry.com let me search for children of Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney born between 1865 and 1885. My first searches came up with too many names to easily sort through, so I narrowed my search to include only children whose father’s first name was Jeremiah and were born in county Cork. That gave me a much shorter list to look through and what I found was the following:

John Leary, born 16 Jan 1865, Ballincollig, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

William Leary, born 12 Feb 1867, Ballincollig, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

Ellen Leary, born 4 April 1869, Ballincollig, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

Edmund Leary, born 23 December 1870, Ballincollig, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

Eliza Leary, born 18 March 1873, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

Mary Leary, born 29 April 1876, Ballincollig, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

Jeremiah Leary, born 1 September 1877, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Leary Looney

Daniel Leary, born 25 June 1880, Ballincolby, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney Leary

I didn’t find an Arthur O’Leary as referenced in Ellen’s death notice, but now there were five names that didn’t match up with the information I had. I had Lizzie’s two sisters as Ellen and Polly, but this shows them as Ellen and Mary. Based on my experience with Mary/Mollie Murray, I suspect Mary is Polly’s given name. So, that would explain the sisters.  What about all these brothers though? There are five when I expected to find only two, and only one matches up with the names I had. It’s possible that Arthur is one of the brothers I’ve found who went by a different (middle?) name or there’s one more sibling I’ve yet to find. The birthplace definitely matches up with the family history and the dropping of the “O” in O’Leary and O’Looney isn’t anything surprising, so I’m sure I’ve got the right family.

Well this is a surprising find indeed. A good thing to do then would be to check the Irish censuses. One small problem with that however – there is no census information available for Ireland prior to 1901. The records were all destroyed. Fantastic. The other issue is that these records I’ve found are extracted records. That means that volunteers copying from microfilm and other original records compiled the database but there isn’t a way to view the original records directly on line (at least that I’ve found yet.) It’s quite possible that some of these records are transcribed incorrectly.

I’ve yet to go completely through the two Irish censuses that are available for 1901 and 1911, but I have found what I believe are records for Jeremiah and Mary in 1901 and another record in 1911. According to the 1901 census, Jeremiah O’Leary was 76 years old and working as a farmer. Mary O’Leary was 58 and their daughter Mary (Polly?) was 21. That is four years younger than the Mary/Polly I found in the baptismal records, but close enough to probably be the right family. There were also 11 lodgers/boarders living with the family. Two soldiers and their wives, one with a daughter; three men that I’m guessing were farm hands (their occupations are listed as “groom” and “joiner”); and a young widow and her two children. The original form lists the O’Learys with the “O”, however Jeremiah signs the form as the head of the family, and he omitted the “O” in his signature. That would match up with the baptismal records then.

I couldn’t find Jeremiah in the 1911 census, so I looked for Mary. I found a Mary O’Leary living in Ballincollig who was listed as age 73 and is a widow living with her daughter Marianne, age 30. Again, the ages are a bit off, so I’m not completely certain. Also, according to the record, this Mary O’Leary had given birth to six children and all six were still living. I found eight children, so that’s a conflict. This Mary is working as a shopkeeper, so I’ll have to puzzle this one out a bit. And, of course, I'll have to see if I can find the five O'Leary brothers in the Irish Censuses.

A few other things to consider. According to Aunt Margaret, Lizzie’s brother Jeremiah fought in World War I. He was born in 1877. World War I started in 1914 when he would have been 37 years old. That seems a bit old to be joining the military. It’s possible he was already in the military when the war broke out. I should probably add studying Ireland’s involvement in World War I to the list of things I need to learn more about. Also, one of these brothers is the father of Dennis O’Leary whose wife and twin daughters were invited to my parents’ wedding in 1965, but which one?

As always, answering one question opens up the door to many more questions. I look forward to delving more into these.

O’Learys and O’Looneys – Oh My!

After about seven months of working on my family tree, I decided it was time to see what I could find out about my grandmother’s side of the family. Nana was born Elizabeth Coleman, the fourth child of Daniel Coleman and Elizabeth (Lizzie) O’Leary. Daniel was a merchant sailor who eventually became a ship’s captain, and, according to family lore, his father John Coleman was a lighthouse keeper in Kinsale, Ireland.  Lizzie O’Leary was born in Ballincollig, Ireland and was about 10 years younger than Daniel. Again according to family lore, Lizzie’s brother was a schoolteacher who worked with Daniel’s sister Margaret and they were introduced to each other via their siblings. The story also goes that Daniel courted Lizzie for about 10 years before they were married. According to census records I found, Daniel was living in San Francisco by 1900 and Lizzie joined him there in 1904. I found a record of their marriage license in the San Francisco Call dated July 12, 1904 (which is also how I learned my great grandmother went by the name “Lizzie”.) I’m not certain where in San Francisco Lizzie and Daniel were married, but again going on family lore, think it was St. Phillip’s.

According to the stories told by Aunt Margaret (Nana's sister), Lizzie had two brothers and two sisters and she was in the middle. Her older sister Ellen married a Mr. Ford, younger sister Polly remained in Ireland. Her older brother (name unknown) was the schoolteacher who introduced her to Daniel and her younger brother Jeremiah fought in World War I and died shortly thereafter while living with Lizzie and Daniel when they were in New Jersey.

That was everything I knew when I started out looking in to the O’Leary side of the family tree. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I was recently contacted by one of my father’s Coleman cousins who is also looking into the family tree, and her questions about what I knew prompted me to do two things: (1) ask if she knew the names of Lizzie’s parents and (2) dig up some of my notes. I was delighted when she responded with the names of my great great grandparents – Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney. (O’Looney?  Well, that certainly explains a few things about the family!) That will help a bunch in trying to dig up some records from Ireland.

Getting in to my notes, one I found was an email I’d sent to my mother several months ago asking about digging in to her wedding invitation list to see if there were any relatives on Dad’s side of the family that I should look in to. I called Mom to ask if I could come over and look for the list. Mom said she didn’t think she had a list of who she invited to her wedding, but I knew I had seen one several years ago when I was putting together a scrapbook for her and my father’s 40^th wedding anniversary.

I went over to my parents’ house and Mom was convinced that there was no such list, but she’d help me go through some of the boxes she had stored in the closet of my old bedroom. We pulled out the boxes that looked most likely to have what I was looking for – the repurposed shoe and gift boxes – rather than the nice photo boxes. The first couple of boxes didn’t have what I was looking for, but the third box I opened had a repurposed plastic bag that was filled with cards. I pulled one out and it was a congratulatory card for my parents’ wedding; other cards were responses to the wedding invitation. Okay, maybe what I remembered finding was this bag of cards and not a list of names. I started digging through the cards and asking Mom who people were for names I didn’t recognize. I soon found a card from a Mrs. Dennis O’Leary who lived in Burlingame. Bingo! When I spoke to another of my father’s cousins a few months ago, she mentioned visiting “some O’Leary cousins in Burlingame.” I set that card aside and kept digging through the bag. A few more cards came out that my mom identified as “someone your dad invited” and I set those aside too. Towards the bottom of the bag I pulled out several sheets of paper. A-ha! I’d found it, the invitation list I had remembered seeing a few years ago. The reason my mom didn’t remember it was because it wasn’t the list of everyone invited to their wedding, but the list that Nana had given her for Dad’s side of the family! Woo hoo! This was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. There were actually two versions of the list – one that Nana had written out by hand (that also had hand written notes by my mother and someone else – either my father or his older brother from the handwriting) and one that was typed up. There were also a couple of other, shorter lists, but those names were mostly family friends.

I scanned over the list and noted the first page was mostly names I knew – Nana’s brother and sisters and their families and a couple of family friends. Page two had a couple of interesting names – Mr. & Mrs. A. Ford and Mr. & Mrs. J. Ford. These should be Ellen’s sons, Nana’s first cousins. I also had the address for Mrs. Catherine Dwyer who was not a relative from my mother’s side of the family, but a cousin of Nana’s. Three names of people I knew to be Nana’s cousins, complete with addresses for 1965. Woo hoo a place to start searching!

The handwritten list is 4 pages long with about fifty names written on it, about half of whom I recognize. The other half I’ll have to figure out with my parents and then start digging on the names that we can’t readily identify. I did get a start on the three names and addresses I had and think I have found about two dozen O’Leary relatives who are about my parents ages or younger. I’ve also done some preliminary searching on Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney and may have some interesting information there too.  More on these items in another post!