The Marriage of John Kennedy and Hanora (Collins) Wallace

 One of the pieces of information that I have spent years looking for is the location of the marriage of my second-great-grandparents (pamamapa and pamamama) John Kennedy and Hanora (Collins) Wallace. I had the following information from the 1879 book of Clinton County biographies:

JOHN KENNEDY farmer Sec 29 P O Lyons he was born June 2 1826 in Ireland in 1848 came to New York in 1849 to Wisconsin in 1854 he came to Clinton Co he owns 160 acres of land Has been School Director and Township Treasurer Married Honora Collins Nov 10 1854 she was born in March 1830 in Ireland had five children four living Michael Julia Maggie and John lost one child in infancy (1)

I had an unconfirmed date of their marriage but no location. Based on census records, I knew that this was Hanora's second marriage. Her first marriage was to a John Wallace in Ireland where they had one daughter, Ellen. Their other daughter, Hanora/Nora, was born, according to the census records, in Illinois, Iowa, or, the most-often-cited Wisconsin.

I considered Nora's birthplace important because she was born in 1853 and her mother remarried in 1854. I thought that it was possible that the two events would have happened close to each other. I have an 1850 census record for a John Kennedy in Kenosha County, Wisconsin that might be my John Kennedy. I eventually obtained Nora's death record which lists her birthplace as Beloit, Wisconsin. I could not find any record of a Wisconsin marriage in either county in 1854 or any other year. I also looked in Illinois and Iowa and found nothing. 

I had stopped looking for the information when one day I was doing some research for my wife on her Chicago Irish ancestors. I was looking through unindexed Family Search images of the records for Old St. Mary's Catholic Church, the first Catholic church in Chicago. My wife's great-grandmother was baptized there in 1840. As I scanned through the records the following entry from 1854 caught my eye.

I recognized the names John Kennedy and Nora Collins. But could it really be my John Kennedy and Nora Collins? I went and found the marriage date I had from  the county book. The dates matched! I had stumbled across the information I had been looking for purely by chance. The genealogy gods had smiled upon me! I did a very happy genealogy dance, right then and there. 

Further evidence that this was the right marriage came from the last name of the witness Johanna Lawler. John had a probable sister, Mary Kennedy, who was married to a Stephen Lawler at the time of this wedding. The Lawlers were living in Chicago in 1860, so they were probably also at the wedding. 

And that is the story of how I accidently found the long-sought-after location of the 1854 marriage of my second-great-grandparents. More research is need to explain how they happened to get married in Chicago of all places.

(1) The History of Clinton County, Iowa: Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns &c., Biographical Sketches of Citizens. United States: Western historical Company, 1879.