"All the Others Take Nine Months"

 

There is an old joke about newlyweds and expectant parents, with the snide remark that "the first one can come at any time; all the others take nine months."

Somehow, in noticing the discrepancies between baptismal records and civil registration reports for the Irish relatives of my father-in-law's Falvey family, I had been searching for possible explanations. I ran across one online observation the other day that noted the occasional entry of a birth even before a marriage.

Of course, now that I want to share that, I can't replicate that search. But noticing one comment to yesterday's post, in which reader (and blogger) Kat explained that dates given for a child's birth might be, ahem, adjusted so as to avoid any reporting penalties, I wanted to follow up. Hence the search for that missing article. (Where are these tidbits when you really need them?!)

Along the way, though, I did find some additional resources to support Kat's observation. As I had mentioned yesterday, beginning on January 1, 1864, all births, marriages, and deaths were required to be reported to government authorities in Ireland. The difficulty was in getting the word to the right location for an Irish family's jurisdiction. This registration process was overseen by Superintendent Register Districts (now called local civil registration districts).

The problem was that, especially in the earlier years, some Irish births were simply not reported. According to Claire Santry on her site, Irish Genealogy Toolkit, "Some estimates put non-registration as high as 15% in some of the vast rural areas of the west." The reason? It might be a long distance to the closest registration center.

That, in itself, incurred another problem: those who didn't report a birth in a timely manner may have faced a fine for late registration. That, in turn, might have somehow impacted the date of birth reported when the registration was finally made. As was observed in the article at Irish Genealogy Toolkit, "the longer the period between the birth and the date of registration, the more likelihood the date of birth is incorrect."

Being that young Daniel, son of Daniel Cullinane and Debora Falvey, was born in County Kerry—one of those "vast rural areas of the west" of Ireland—I'm guessing his father was almost one of that estimated fifteen percent of reporting parents who didn't quite get there as soon as they could. 

From Church to Civil Records

 

Seeking records for my father-in-law's Catholic ancestors in Ireland presented more than one kind of problem. The first problem was discovering the destruction of so many historic records in that country. The second one was navigating around the problem of the near-invisibility of adherents to the Catholic faith. Civil registration of births and marriages for Catholics did not begin until 1864.

Thus, trying to trace the descent of children in a collateral line related to my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey Kelly, has been challenging. While I have been able to access some baptismal records for the children of this collateral line—that of "Debora" Falvey and Daniel Cullinane of County Kerry—I'd like to also trace them through civil records.

Most of the Cullinane children I've found have been recorded in baptismal records prior to that 1864 date, so there would be no mention of their birth in government records. However, to test the process, I tried my hand at the youngest of the Cullinane children to see what I could find. 

Starting with the youngest, a son named Daniel, I first checked on the index at Ancestry.com, looking for all entries for Cullinane children in County Kerry, delimited by the mother's maiden name. That result was so huge as to be of no help, with the main problem being lack of use of the maiden name. Clicking on one of the specific entries for a Daniel Cullinane gave a readout with little more of use than the identifying number to look up the document in the FamilySearch.org collection.

I jumped over to the Irish Genealogy website, where my search for a Daniel Cullinane, born 1874 in County Kerry, produced three results. Clicking through, a readout of the indexed material indicated a disappointing entry for the item, "mother's birth surname," of "null."

I'm glad I happened to notice a line below that, "View record image." It was hyperlinked, so I clicked through to the actual birth registration image. There, on the top line, was the entry for Daniel Cullinane, son of Daniel Cullinane of Knockauncore, just as we had found it in the baptismal record. Baby Daniel's mother's maiden name was indeed listed as Falvey. The proud papa gave the birth report on the fifteenth of August, leaving for a signature "his mark," an "x" in the proper box.

The only puzzling part was that the date of this son's birth was listed as July 23, 1874—when the baptismal record had listed his birth as July 15 of that same year, and the date of baptism as the very next day, not July 23. Until I can sort out this discrepancy, I'll keep both reported dates in mind, if I can follow each of the later Cullinane children through their later years. I do want to track each of these Falvey descendants, in case any DNA matches turn out to connect with this same surname. I'll repeat this same process for each of the other Cullinane children to note their civil registration information, as well.

Documenting Daniel's Descendants

 

One of my prime reasons for documenting the descendants of collateral lines is to confirm connections to DNA cousins. In this month's research goal of determining the siblings—and, hopefully, eventually the parents—of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey, there are several possible DNA matches who might provide some guidance. That is if, however, I am able to document the line of descent for any of Johanna's possible siblings.

One such possibility would be the family of Daniel Cullinane, who married a Falvey. Daniel's wife was the woman whose distinctly Irish given name—likely Gobnait—we discussed this past weekend. She was the one who showed up in Latin baptismal records for her children with her own name listed variously as Latinized versions of the Irish Gobnait, or even Latin versions of English-language nicknames bestowed upon that Irish name.

The only sign assuring me that Gobnait—or Debora, as she appeared in some church records—was sister to our Johanna was the fact that Johanna herself was named as godmother for one of the Cullinane children. But if Gobnait and Johanna were siblings, now what? How do I proceed with tracing the descendants of Daniel Cullinane and his Falvey wife? The same difficulties plaguing anyone researching Irish roots also make their appearance as we move on to the next generation: missing census records, spotty Catholic Church records. The only positive sign was the beginning of inclusion of Catholics in civil registrations in Ireland after 1863.

It just so happened that, in perusing all my husband's DNA matches, I did find a likely Falvey cousin among his test results. This one, in particular, was said to have descended from Daniel Cullinane and Debora Falvey. In fact, the line of descent was handily outlined for me by Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool.

My appreciation of that fact, however, was short-lived: Daniel's son who was said to have been in that line of descent was someone born in 1860 by the name of Patrick. The baptismal record I had found for Daniel's son born in July of that same year was for a name recorded in Latin as Ioannes—or John in English.

True, ThruLines results, while partially based on actual DNA matches, are only as accurate as the family trees from which the suggested relationships are drawn. There may be something missing from the match's tree. Or John Cullinane's baptismal record could be for the child of a different Daniel Cullinane. Whichever way it turns out to be—and there could be other possible problems, as well—it shows me that we'll need to go back and take a second look. Or even more.  

Some are Faster, Some are Slower

 

When it comes to measuring progress on research goals, some seem to be achieved faster—and others seem slower. This month, so far, seems to be in the "slower" category.

Reaching back in time far enough to enter the realm of foreign research seems to put the brakes on progress for me. Despite having subscriptions to online genealogical services described as "international," I find that accessing records can be tempered by several variables. In the case of accessing documents for countries such as Canada or Ireland, privacy laws and other statutes limit public access to specific sets of records. Whereas the United States, for instance, deems privacy concerns to be protected with a seventy two year limit, some other countries have a trailing limit of a century mark.

This weekend, as I was working on some DNA matches linked to my father-in-law's Irish and Canadian relatives, I realized another research dilemma: information included in obituaries may follow different traditions or customs in other countries. I noticed this in particular as I read obituaries published in Canadian newspapers, which seemed reticent to even mention specific names of adult children of a deceased parent.

This puts me in a difficult position as I try to piece together the line of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey Kelly. Her Irish-born Kelly descendants, having grown up in the United States, gave me ample opportunities to locate them throughout their lifetime here in the States. But tracing the lines of Johanna's siblings, some of whom were said to have migrated to New Zealand, became more challenging because of this same dilemma with public records accessibility. Likewise even for those remaining back at home in Ireland.

It's no surprise, then, to see my research pace slowed in the past two weeks on my in-laws' family tree. In the past biweekly period, I added 204 additional documented relatives to that tree—a decent pace, but far from the progress I had made in past months. The Falvey line has been yet another Irish puzzle for me, though I keep hoping for a records—or even DNA—breakthrough.

Still, that family tree has grown to include 41,263 individuals, an effort reaching back for more than a decade. And even though work on my own family tree has temporarily taken a break until next October, when I return to work on my own father's side of the family, that tree also has topped forty thousand individuals—40,259 names, to be specific.

The main point is to remember the value of steady, consistent work towards a research goal. For some research goals, we may speed onward to the finish line, while other goals seem doomed with roadblocks from the start. There are so many variables impacting progress, not only whether we can find that magical way around that stubborn brick wall ancestor, but even details like accessibility of records from the right place during the right time period. In the case of reaching back to Ireland to trace Johanna's roots—or stretching halfway around the world to inquire of records about migrating collateral lines in New Zealand or Australia—a lot can go into whether we find those answers, or not.

Translating Gobnait

 

When we see a mother's name change from one child's baptismal record to the next, do we presume that the father listed in the documents had remarried? That, after all, was the situation we found when we assembled all the Catholic baptismal records for the children of Daniel Cullinane in County Kerry, Ireland. For some of his children's records, the child's mother was said to have been named Debora. In others, it was either Gubbenelas (for son John), Gubboneta (for Honora) or Gobinetta (for Michael). Where did that come from?

The actual name, as it turns out, should have been Gobnait—at least as far as the Irish are concerned. The trouble is, for those Irish families adhering to the Catholic faith, all church records were kept in Latin, not English, and certainly not in the Irish language. But not all traditional Irish names were translated into Latin—at least not easily. Indeed, translating a name like Gobnait even into English results in some unexpected options.

Indeed, one list found online of Irish given names and their anglicized equivalents—a helpful resource for those of us researching our roots back in Ireland—is quite lengthy and, I suspect, does not include the entire universe of possibilities. Another list provides the next step of translations between English names and their Latin equivalents. Somehow, we are stuck in the middle, juggling the two lists to figure out just whether the baptismal record we just found might indeed be the right one for our Irish ancestor.

In the case of a name like Gobnait—which, by the way, is officially supposed to be noted in Latin as Gobnata—it comes from the name of an early medieval Irish saint. Gobnait's long history, though, does not mean the woman has been forgotten over the centuries; to the contrary, there are regions in Ireland where she is still venerated, one of which is in County Kerry, the same place where my father-in-law's Falvey roots originated.

The difficulty is that, for whatever reason through the more recent centuries, the given name Gobnait attained a number of nicknames which, to an English speaking researcher, might not make sense. Take a look at this list of possible variants, said to include names as different as Abigail and Deborah.

Knowing this now, I can safely assert that Daniel Cullinane's wife, whether listed in church records as "Gubboneta" or "Debora," was indeed the same person. And since I discovered a DNA match who claims to have descended from a son of this couple, it won't surprise me to find more records with these variants for Daniel Cullinane's wife as I seek to verify how this DNA match connects with my father-in-law's family. 

A Johanna Sighting

 

Using whatever Catholic parish records are available to researchers online today, I've been on a hunt for any mention of the name of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey Kelly. Since this search entails finding her name in Irish records in the 1800s, I'm already at a disadvantage, due to the destruction of so many of such documents. 

Coming up empty-handed in so many of these searches, I turned to a new approach: looking for the Falvey name recorded in the mother's maiden name, or even as the name of a baptized child's godparents. Anything to find a mention that could point me back to Johanna's own family in County Kerry, Ireland. And, at last, I spotted my first Johanna sighting.

That first victory came when I was reviewing baptismal records in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin. In an entry dated August 10, 1856, I found the baptism of Mary Cullinane. I wouldn't have otherwise been looking for that surname, but since Mary's mother's maiden name happened to show up as Falvey, I had to take a look.

Mary's father was named Daniel Cullinane, and the mother identified as "Debora" Falvey. The family was listed as having been from the townland of Knockauncore. This was a promising sign, since I had already spotted several other entries linking the Falvey family to that same townland.

My next step was to finish reviewing that church entry to see who was listed as the godparents. In this case, however, there was only one name entered: Johanna Falvey. I wasn't sure why there weren't the customary two names entered for the sponsors, but nonetheless glad to have seen Johanna mentioned somewhere in records from this part of County Kerry.

With that possible relationship in mind, I then went on to find all the baptismal records for Daniel Cullinane's other children. After Mary's 1856 baptism, I located one for son Timothy in 1858, though the family was said to have been located in the townland of Clashnagarrane by then, five kilometers away. I found a nearly illegible baptism for a son whose name looked to be John Cullinane in July of 1860, also at that second townland.

Then, after a gap of nearly six years, suddenly the family was back in Knockauncore for the baptisms of Honora in 1866, Anne in 1868, Michael in 1871, and Daniel in 1874. In only one of those other children's baptisms was a Falvey included as a godparent: someone named Mary Falvey, who was the godmother for Honora.

If we could presume that the age-old tradition of only naming siblings or in-laws as a child's sponsors still held, we could conclude that Mary would be sister to both the mother, Debora, and our own Johanna, but after the years of the Great Famine, that was not necessarily always the case. We'd have to test those connections further.

However, there was something else I noticed in my survey of baptismal entries in the Falveys' home church. For some of Daniel Cullinane's children, their baptismal records noted his wife to be named Debora. But in others, the name appeared to be Guboneta, or Gobinetta. One might presume that Daniel had lost his first wife and remarried, but if we follow the baptisms in date entry, Debora makes an appearance in both the earliest and the later entries. (And, to confuse matters even further, there was one baptism in which the mother's given name was listed as Maria.)

There is a possible reason for this variance, of course, but to explain it will take a bit of time. We'll look into this matter tomorrow.

Possible Patrick Connections

Last week, I explored a possible connection between my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey Kelly, and someone in County Kerry, Ireland, named Patrick Falvey. Could Patrick Falvey and his wife, Anne Fleming, be related to Johanna's own line? It was time to explore what records I could find concerning this couple.

We had originally found the family in records of the Catholic parish of Kilcummin, beginning with their November 24, 1824, marriage record. Now, it was time to branch out to find any mention of them as parents in the baptismal records of their children.

While later records of their supposed daughter, Johanna Falvey, located her in the townland of Knockauncore, the first baptismal record I found for this earlier Falvey couple was in a townland called "Knockmanigh." The record was for the baptism of a son named John, dated June 1 of 1827. The godparents were listed as John and Catharine Connor.

The townland listed in the parish record is now actually spelled Knockmanagh, as I could see when seeking a map to identify the location (see entry #34 here). Checking maps again, I saw that the distance between this townland and the one traditionally established as the Falvey home, Knockauncore, was a bit over six kilometers, or a walk of about ninety minutes.

With the next appearance of Patrick and Anne as parents named in baptismal records, they had returned to Knockauncore. On May 24, 1835, they presented a son named Patrick for baptism in the same Kilcummin Catholic parish. The godparents listed for this occasion were Patrick Connor and Catherine Fleming—with Catherine likely being a sister of the baby's mother.

I was able to find a third baptism in this same church parish for a baby of Patrick Falvey and Anne Fleming. Dated January 6, 1837, the record was for a son listed as Demetrius—not exactly what I had in mind as a distinctly Irish given name. However, knowing that Latin baptismal record traditions in Ireland's Catholic Church sometimes got creative with converting Irish children's names from the vernacular, I went looking for some assistance in "translating" this surprise. Sure enough, according to Claire Santry's (thankfully) still-available website, the "Latinised" name Demetrius in Catholic records could actually signify a child the family preferred to call Jeremiah, Jerome—or even Dermot or Darby.

Whatever the Falvey family chose to call him at home, this 1837 addition to the family could look to John Dugan and Ellen Doody as his godparents.

So far, those three were the only children of Patrick Falvey and Anne Fleming for whom I could find baptismal records. No sign of Johanna—which meant I was off to examine not the names of candidates for baptism, not even their parents' names, but solely the names of the godparents in search of additional Falveys in the Kilcummin parish. Yes, it's hard work, slogging through those handwritten records, but the payoff was that I did actually find something worth following up on, tomorrow.