My Irish Ancestors

    Yesterday I wrote about my current projects. I did however leave off the work I'm doing on my Irish ancestors. I have names and dates for all of my 3xgreat-grandparents, except for the parents of my 4 Irish 2xgreat-grandparents. Each of them came from a different one of the 4 provinces of Ireland and I have only limited info on their exact birthplaces (important information to have when trying to go back into Irish records). The Kain's and the Kennedy's lived on adjoining farms in Clinton County, Iowa. 

 John Kain 1819-1893 Province of Ulster

    According to his Clinton County, Iowa grave marker, John was from Armagh, County Armagh. I have no info on who supplied that information, so it's something I need to look into. 

    The info I have on his birth date is very consistent across the years, 11 June 1819. 

    His first-born son was named Thomas, perhaps a clue to his father's name. 

    In 1860 and 1870 a David Kain, born in Ireland, was also iving in Clinton County, Iowa. In 1870, aged 60, he was living and working on the Hampshire Township farm of Catherine Fox, widow of Thomas Fox who may have been Mary Kain's brother (see below). The Fox/Kain connection supports the conjecture of a relationship between John and David Kain.  There are other Irish Kain's who appear in Clinton County records of that time, so these collateral lines are something that I can try to research. 

    I have paid for research to be done by Irish experts in County Armagh based on the info that I have and they could find nothing that was useful. Not a good sign.

 

Mary (Fox) Kain 1823-1819 Province of Connacht  

    Mary and John were married in 1848 in St. Louis, Missouri. The only source for her birthplace of Country Leitrim is her grave marker, which is also the source for her birth date of 20 September 1823. I do not have a name for a parish where she might have been baptized.

     I have no info of possible names for her parents.

    There are two possible brothers for Mary: Thomas and Patrick. A Thomas Fox was living in St. Louis at the same time as John and Mary. He moved his family to Clinton County just before John and Mary. He died in 1863 at the age of 44. There is also a Patrick Fox who was living with John and Mary in St. Louis in 1850. There are 2 Patrick Foxes living in St. Louis at that time; one was a teamster and the other owned a book shop. The teamster seems a more likely candidate to be Mary's brother.  I have researched his descendants ( a very interesting crowd) in the hopes of identifying a surname that shows up in my DNA matches. No such luck.

 

John Kennedy 1826(?)-1913 Province of Leinster

     According to John's Clinton County grave maker, he was from King's County (now County Offaly). I have a document of written notes from one of his descendants that gives his parish as Rosegray. There is a parish of Roscrea in that county, which may be  the one I want. I have not been able to find any records for his birth or baptism to date. His year of birth is very fluid. In 1850 he was possibly 25 and living in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In 1860 he was 35. In 1870 he was 44. In 1880 he was 53. In 1900 he was 65, 10 years younger than he should have been. In 1910 he was 83. At the time of his death in 1913, he was supposedly 93 years old. I think the earlier records are probably more accurate, 

    I know the names of his parents because he left money in his will for masses to be said in their remembrance and HE NAMED THEM right there in his will: Michael and Julia. A maiden name of Noland is given as his mother's maiden name on his death record.

    John has two siblings that appear in Clinton County: James and Mary. John's oldest son, Michael appears in a census record living with his uncle James Kennedy. Mary was married first to Stephen Lawler in Chicago. They later lived in Clinton County, where Stephen died. Mary then married a man named, wait for it, John Kennedy. Yes, that's right, she married a man with the same name as her brother. Her link to her brother is established by his living with Mary's daughter and listed as her uncle. Mary's description of her coming to America differs than the one for her brother. It is possible that the parents came to Chicago from Ireland with their children.

    As you can imagine I have a lot of avenues for research on this line, and so far nothing has turned up.

 

Hanora (Collins) Wallace Kennedy 1830-1888 Province of Munster

     Again the only evidence of where in Ireland she was born comes from her grave marker: Parish of Glenbrohane, County Limerick. Her birth date is given as 25 March 1830. 

    Mary was married to a man with the surname of Wallace in Ireland. They had one daughter in Ireland and one in America. Mr. Wallace probably died sometime shortly after the birth of his second child and Hanora married John Kennedy in Chicago in 1854, in the same church where Mary Kennedy married Stephen Lawler. Wallace's first name is given as John on one of his daughter's death records, but there is a marriage record for a Hanora Collins and a Thomas Wallace in County Limerick at the right time to be this couple. The informant for the death record may have confused her step-father's name for her father's.

    Again there are several possible line of research on Hanora.

 

Summary 

    I have included links to the WikiTree profiles for these four people. John Kain's is the only one that I have worked on cleaning up. The rest are on my Genealogical To Do List.

    As you can tell, I have a lot of research paths on my Irish ancestry. They will require more determination and focus that I can give them at this time. It may be left for future researchers to take up this work and take it forward. Hopefully I have left enough breadcrumbs.

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52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 15 "Solitude"

It was hard to think of an ancestor that I associated with this week's theme of solitude. After some thought I have decided to write about one of my Irish immigrant 2xgreat-grandmothers: Hanora (Collins) Wallace Kennedy (my pamamama). She immigrated from Ireland in 1852 or 1853 with a husband and an infant daughter. After the birth of their second daughter, her husband presumably died. She was left alone in a foreign country with two daughters under the age of two. That sure feels like solitude to me. 

According to her grave marker, Hanora was born on 25 March 1830 in Glenbrohane Parish, County Limerick, Ireland. She married John Wallace in Ireland in about 1850. On 1 August 1852, their daughter Ellen "Nellie" Wallace was born somewhere in Ireland. Sometime between her birth and the birth of their next daughter the family came to the United States. On 31 May 1853, Hanora "Nora" Wallace was born, probably near Beloit, Wisconsin.

I assume that John Wallace died sometime in 1852 or 1853, because on 10 November 1854, Hanora married John Kennedy at Old St. Mary's catholic Church in Chicago, Illinois. I have no idea how or where they met. Shortly before the marriage John Kennedy had acquired land in Clinton County, Iowa, where the newlyweds soon settled. They went on to have four children together--the first born 9 September 1855. 

Hanora died on 24 November 1888. She was only 58 years old. Her daughter Julia, who had become a nun died three years before her. 

Hanora sure packed a lot into her brief life. I hope she found enough happiness to offset all the losses she experienced and that any traces of solitude disappeared with her second marriage and their life together raising children and farming in Clinton County.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 3 "Out of Place"

 In the book "The History of Clinton County, Iowa" from 1879 (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.) my 2xgreat-grandfather John Kennedy (1826-1913) said that he married Honora Collins (1830-1888) on 10 November 1854, but he named no place. It also says that he moved to Wisconsin in 1849 and in 1854 moved to Clinton Co. 

Hanora Wallace (1853-1911), Honora's second daughter, from her first marriage to John Wallace was most likely born near Beloit, Wisconsin in 1853. That puts both John Kennedy and Honora in Wisconsin at the same time. That was where I have spent the last several years looking without success for a marriage record for them. 

Then one day I was looking through the records from Old St. Mary's Catholic Church, the first Catholic church in Chicago. I had determined that John Kennedy's sister Mary (1837-1899) had married her first husband, Stephen Lawler (1831-1866), in Chicago and had found a baptism record for a son of theirs in 1856. I was looking for a record of their marriage when I came across this entry from 1854:

Imagine my surprise! I quickly checked that it was the right date and sure enough I had accidently stumbled across a record of John and Honora's marriage. I have no idea what they were doing in Chicago. That was not where I had expected to find them.

John's sister's obituary says that she came to the US as a child and settled in Chicago. John made no mention of Chicago in his county biography. More research is required into this Kennedy family's history in Chicago. Also I need more information on the movements of Honora, especially after the assumed death of her first husband in 1853 or 1854.

Fearless Females: Day 1

Since I'm trying to keep up the pace of a blog post a day, I guess I'll take advantage of Lisa Alzo's Fearless Females blog prompts for Women's History Month.

March 1 — Do you have a favorite female ancestor? One you are drawn to or want to learn more about? Write down some key facts you have already learned or what you would like to learn and outline your goals and potential sources you plan to check.

My favorite female ancestor is my Grandma Julia, but she is not the one I want to learn more about. If I had to pick someone for that, I'd go with Hanora (Collins) Wallace Kennedy, one of my Irish great-great-grandmothers.

 What I know comes partly from her grave marker and partly from hand-written notes made by her granddaughter, my Grandma Julia's cousin. Hanora or Nora, was supposedly born in the parish of Glenbrohane in County Limerick. Her first husband's last name was Wallace (or Wallis). She had two daughters with him, Ellen/Nellie born in Ireland and Hanora/Nora in the US. She later married my great-great-grandfather John Kennedy and they settled near Clinton, IA and had four children. I've requested a records search in County Limerick for records of Hanora Collins and Ellen Wallace, but they turned up nothing. Her obituary provided no additional clues.

The next steps are county death records to look for parents' names, a search for marriage records in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin and a search in those three state for death records for a male Wallace of about her age dying between the birth of their last daughter and her second marriages. I'd welcome an other suggestions of  how to find more information about her.