“Houston, we’ve had a problem.” The words of Jim Lovell, Mission Commander on Apollo 13 in April 1970. A masterful understatement! Similar words are used frequently in documentaries in an effort to introduce tension into the narrative. On an almost trivial level, I too have a problem. For some years, I have been struggling to…
All posts in North America
More digging in the graveyard (3)
As recorded in ‘More digging in the graveyard (1)’, John J McHugh married Anna (or Annie) Devereaux in November 1878. Mrs Rose Devereaux and her daughter Beatrice are listed as attending Susan (Kelly) Cronin’s funeral. What is the connection? The American custom of showing a wife’s maiden name on burial records is extremely helpful. Among…
More digging in the graveyard (2)
In Part 1, I looked at John J McHugh, an attendee at the funeral of Susan Kelly Cronin. It is now time to look at Barney McHugh. It was his wife who was present at the funeral. His proper name was Bernard. The death certificate records his date of birth as 7 June 1842. He…
More digging in the graveyard (1)
Apologies for the pun! One of the mourners at Susan (Kelly) Cronin’s funeral was John J McHugh. It has been relatively simple to trace him through the records. The comprehensive nature of records in Michigan and neighbouring Illinois is a great help in this respect. He died in Chicago, Illinois in 1918. He was born…
Obituaries: a good source of information
It seems that name-checking a lot of people helps to sell newspapers. As mentioned in “Benefits of sharing” the article in the Marshall Daily News reporting the death of Susan (Kelly) Cronin in 1907 contained information on her place of birth. The article on her funeral has a list of some of the mourners. They…
Still seeking John Kelly
There is a wonderful piece of dialogue from a radio programme broadcast on the BBC in 1972. Neddie: [on discovering Eccles in the coal cellar] What are you doing here? Eccles: Everybody’s gotta be somewhere… Quite so, Eccles. Everybody does have to be somewhere. But where? I am still trying to discover more information about…
Crossing the aisle
In the post “real people not just names”, I considered matters such as the education, diet, clothing and entertainment of my ancestors. I need to go further. I am also interested in what they believed. Not just about religion. Did they think that the earth was flat? Did they hold with folk tales about the…
Benefits of sharing
A distant relative shared some information about the early days of the Kelly and McHugh ancestors in America. This took place a few years ago. I learnt that members of the family ended up in Marshall, Michigan. Some stayed there, whilst others (e.g. Patrick McHugh and his wife Catherine Kelly) moved south to Missouri. Susan…
Susan Kelly revisited
Having drawn a blank on both Theodore Kelly (see ‘The wrong Theodore’) and John Kelly (see ‘Thank you Thomas Cromwell’), I have looked again at Susan Kelly. Susan married Jeremiah Cronin in Michigan in the late 1850s, just prior to the establishment of a central recording system for the State. She stayed in Marshall, Calhoun…
Thank you, Thomas Cromwell
I have become well used to the absence of records in Ireland. Only fragments of 19th century census returns have survived. Practicing Catholicism was illegal for many years. This is a powerful disincentive to the keeping of records. Even in the subsequent period, there are many gaps in parish records, and a knowledge of Latin…