Leo Hogan

Leo LaBrune Hogan was born in St. Louis in 1900 to James and Anastasia Hogan. He was a great competitive swimmer.  He began college at St. Louis University, probably in the Fall of 1917.

Alton Evening Telegraph, Alton, IL, April 21, 1918
Leo Hogan of St. Louis in the Navy
   Friends in Alton have received word that Leo Hogan, eighteen year old son of Mr. and Mrs. James Hogan of McPherson avenue, St. Louis, has enlisted in the radio service of the navy and is at the Great Lakes Training Station near Chicago.  Hogan was a student of the St. Louis University and enlisted upon reaching his 18th birthday.
   He is the son of James Hogan, formerly of Alton, and is well known here, where the family visits frequently.  His elder brother, Lieut. Dan Hogan, is in the 432nd Aero Squadron, in the state of Washington.  Miss Marie Hogan, a sister, visits with Mrs. James B. Cahill of Madison avenue very often.

He served at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station for 16 months, first as a radio electrician, then as a hospital apprentice.  He stayed at Great Lakes as a swimming instructor and in 1920 travelled to the Summer Olympics as a men's swimming coach.

Alton Evening Telegraph, Aug 3, 1920
Leo Hogan, son of James Hogan, a former Altonian, but of recent years residing in St. Louis, has sailed for Antwerp, Belgium, as coach for the men from the Great Lakes Training Station at Chicago, who will participate in the Olympic meet.  Hogan is 21 years of age and is the youngest coach at the Great Lakes.  He has been coach at the Great Lakes since 1917.  He will spend the summer in Europe.  Hogan is the brother of Miss Marie Hogan, who visits frequently in Alton.

You can imagine the world wide excitement at the 1920 games.  The 1916 games that were to take place in Berlin had been cancelled in turmoil preceding the start of the first World War.  The 1920 games were held in Belgium, a country that had been occupied by Germany in the War.  [I don't know whether this location had been chosen long in advance, or was selected to symbolize the victory of the Allies in the War.]  Germany was not invited to the 1920 games.  In what must have been the lingering  euphoria of victory, a record number of athletes were sent to these games.  The five ring symbol of the modern Olympic Games was introduced that year. Duke Kahanamoku was the best known of the men's swimmers that year.

In about 1922, Leo graduated from St. Louis University and moved to Chicago.  In 1927, he founded Hogan & Farwell real estate, of which he was president until his death in 1948.  Hogan & Farwell owned some of the most prominent buildings in Chicago.  He joined the Navy again in World War II.  The following is probably from the Chicago Tribune:

One of his nieces remembers Leo saying that the most exciting thing he ever experienced was when his ship returned to the US mainland from duty in the Pacific, having crossed the Pacific Ocean.  When the ship passed under the Golden Gate bridge it was covered with cheering people welcoming them home.  Another recalls hearing Leo's stories of some of his shipmates tortured during the War.  They say he was not the same after his return.

His obituary in the New York Times summarizes some of his achievements:

New York Times, 5 June 1948

Leo L. Hogan, Headed Chicago Realty Men
Chicago, June 4 - Leo L. Hogan, former president of the Chicago Real Estate Board and a prominent real estate broker here since 1927, when he founded the firm of Hogan-Farwell, Inc., died today after a long illness.  His age was 48.

Mr. Hogan was elected president of the Chicago Real Estate Board in 1946 after serving a term as president of the North Central Association, a group of real estate dealers.

He came to Chicago in 1922 after he was graduated from St. Louis University in the city of his birth.  After working as a salesman for five years he established the firm of which he held the presidency until his death.

A veteran of both World Wars, he spent three and a half years as a lieutenant commander in the Navy during the recent war and won the Silver and Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart while serving aboard the carrier Intrepid in the South Pacific.

He was a member of the Racquet, the Chicago Golf, the Tavern and the Mid-Day clubs.

Surviving are a sister, Mrs. James L. Donnelley of Evanston, and a brother, Daniel.

Although he never married and had no children of his own, he spent a great deal of time with his sister's family, also in the Chicago area.  He reportedly drove his big sister nuts, his wild personality the opposite of hers.  But the children loved his antics and his stories.  He passed away at his home in 1948.  In a reflection of both his wild side and his prominence in the business community, his funeral was attended by the mayor of Chicago and the entire kick-line from the Club Alabam, one of the hottest night clubs in Chicago.

Edmond Cussen

[posted 24 Mar '12; added to web site 23 Jan '14] When I first started researching our family, I could find no information on Edmond Cussen, oldest of the Dennis and Kate Cussen kids.  I thought he might have died en route to America, or was left behind in Ireland.  In the last few years, an amazing quantity of historical information has become available, either directly or through indexes of available records, and I've been able to piece together Edmond's life.  At least an outline of facts.  It's always hard to find "color", what he was like or what his interests were.  But he must have been fairly close to his brothers' families in Nebraska.  A few days ago I found a death certificate from Chicago, which I believe to be his.  Here is what I know about Edmond ...

Born in 1828 near Galbally.  Emigrated with the family in about 1841 (13 years old).  Lived with family in Stoughton, Mass. from at least 1845.  When family moved to Wisconsin in about 1847 (19 years old), he remained with younger brother William (17 years old) where they worked as boot makers in the shoe factory.  When William married in 1856, Edmond moved out but remained in Stoughton.  He was living with Maryann Barrett O'Donnell from at least 1865.  They married in 1871.  They had no children.  She passed away in 1882.  Edmund then moved out to a farm in Frontier Co., Nebraska, in an adjacent county and not far from Arapahoe where some of his brothers lived..  Because of later connections between his nephew, J. Frank Cushing, and Edmond, I'm guessing that Adam, Francis and Edmond were quite close, being the only Cushing family in the area.  In 1892, Edmond was committed to a state hospital  for the insane.  Francis had been sent to prison in 1891.  I'm wondering if Francis had been doing something to help Edmond, who may have been suffering from some dementia or something that required some assistance, and that when Francis was incarcerated Edmond could no longer live by himself and, with no local family, was put in the state hospital.  [I don't know where Adam was at this time.  Family records say he died in Kansas in 1893. And when Francis was released and moved back to Nebraska in about 1894, Edmond stayed at the state hospital, so maybe his condition was more serious.]  We know that nephew Frank asked Uncle Edmond for financial help at Notre Dame, I think after Francis died, and Edmond sent him some money.  Frank graduated in 1905 and moved to Chicago, where he married in September of 1906.  A year later, in October 1907, Edmond was released from the state hospital and, if this is his death certificate, moved to Chicago where he passed away just 2 months later.  He was buried in Calvary cemetery.

Keeping Them Straight: Madrid, Potsdam and Waddington

Just for your general information:

Madrid was formed in 1803 and included the current towns of Potsdam and Waddington.

The town of Potsdam was formed from the south east part of Madrid in 1806.

Following that event, the two main hamlets in Madrid were Columbia and Hamilton. In 1859 Columbia became the hamlet of Madrid which exists today. Hamilton was renamed in 1818 to Waddington. There were two Hamiltons in NYS at that time and the Postmaster
 General required that one name be changed. Incidentally, Joshua Waddington, for whom the hamlet was named, was land agent for David Ogden who was the oeiginal land owner as well as being his brother-in-law.

The hamlet of Waddington continued to grow and became an incorporated village in 1839. Town offices remained in the hamlet of Columbia (Madrid) about nine miles away which made transacting legal business difficult for Waddington residents. In 1859 the town of Madrid was divided in half to form the current towns of Madrid and of Waddington with Waddington being the north west half. Of the three towns, Potsdam is by far the largest in population and probably has been for 150 years. Potsdam had excellent water power from the Raquette River, was a center for sawing logs from the Adirondacks and offered higher education in the 19th century. Today Potsdam's major industry is education with SUNY Potsdam and Clarkson University located there. I do not know why Potsdam was listed as the birthplace of two Donnlleys unless Patrick was working in a saw mill or one of the small water powered industries there,
perhaps as a seasonal laborer.

Regards,

Fred from cold and snowy Waddington

The Other Irish

For the McClintock/Pyne branches of the family:  The McClintocks and Pynes came from Ireland, but how Irish are they now?  For the benefit of those who are first cousins you only share half this lineage, so pick your half.  Stan (and his brother and sister) is 1/2 Italian, 1/8 Irish, and the other 3/8 "old American" (which means the families have been here a while, and are probably predominantly of English descent.  Betty (and sibs) is 3/4 Irish and 1/4 "old American". You first cousins will have to add one of these (your side of the family) to the mix from your other parent and divide by 2 to get your own mix.  Their children are then 7/16 Irish, 1/4 Italian, and 5/16 "old American".

How Irish Are We?

The Cushings and Donnellys came from Ireland, but how Irish are we?  For the benefit of those who are first cousins - and you are many - we only share half our lineage, so pick your half.  Dad (and all his brothers and sisters) is 1/4 Irish, 1/2 English (or sometimes I say "old American", since they've been on this continent for many generations, since before there was a United States, and there may be a small mix of other nationalities, including Native American), and 1/4 Welsh.  Mom (and brother and sisters) is 7/8 Irish and 1/8 French.  You first cousins will have to add one of these (your side of the family) to the mix from your other parent and divide by 2 to get your own mix.  For me and my sibs that comes out to 9/16 Irish, 1/4 English, 1/8 Welsh and 1/16 French.

Settling, Part II

How did they get employed, find a home, etc?

This next part will take a little explaining...

Lots of people were moving out of the cities to the wilderness in the west where they could get free or cheap land and get away from all the rules and laws, people and crime and where they could grow and trap their own food, and where they could raise their kids in a more wholesome environment.  In a lot of ways, their motivations were probably the same motivations that parents have today.  When enough people moved to an area, they would need to get more organized about getting rid of garbage and protecting people from criminals and building schools and roads, and would form new states.  Wisconsin became a state in 1848.  So there was a lot of new construction going on and a lot of cheap land to encourage people to come out to the state.  In one part of the state two rivers, the Fox and the Wisconsin, almost meet.  I think they are about one mile apart.  The Fox River goes to Lake Michigan.  The Wisconsin River goes to the Mississippi River.  Back then, rivers were like our Interstate Highways today.  They were very important for selling and shipping goods into the interior of the country.  So factories or importers would ship things (books, clothing, rifles, axes, whale oil (?), etc.) to customers in the West (like Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, etc.) by putting them on a ship up rivers and down rivers and across Lake Michigan and up the Fox River in Wisconsin.  Then everything would have to be unloaded and carried a mile to the Wisconsin River (carrying things across land is called "portage"), where it would all be loaded on to a new ship that could take the goods to the Mississippi and to all the states through which that river flows.  And even though that was alot of work and took alot of time, it was the best and cheapest way to get things from the East to the "West" (at least as far as the Mississippi) and was extremely important for people that lived out there.  By the way, the traffic went both ways.  Lots of animal furs were sent from the wild frontier back East along this same route.  Wouldn't it be great if the two rivers were connected so one ship could make the entire trip?

Eventually, a canal was built to connect the two rivers.  Lots of workers were needed to work on the canal, and homes and farms and towns were needed for the workers and their families to live there for a long time.  So cheap land was offered to attract lots of people to this area.  The Cushings must have decided that this would be a much better place to live and raise a family than the town where they lived.  Also, I think that some of Catherine's family, the Caseys, were coming over from Ireland, and in Wisconsin they could all live near each other.  (I'm guessing this because there were two Casey brothers who came to Wisconsin with their families at about the same time as the Cushings and lived very near them.)   I think that that is why the Cushings moved to Wisconsin.  The town that was built near the canal was called Portage.  The Cushings and Caseys lived a few miles north in an area known as Fort Winnebago.  You can read about most of this on my website, too.

Settling, Part I

How did they survive when they arrived?

How did they get employed, find a home, etc?

 
I don't know what they did when they first arrived.  It could be that there was family in the area.  We think they came to Canada in about 1841 and Dennis (a son) was born in Massachussetts in 1845.  I really know nothing about where they were or what they did between those times.  When Dennis was born in Stoughton (about 12 miles southwest of Boston), his father, Dennis Cussen from Ireland, was working as a cooper for a whale oil producer.  So next time you hear about the whaling ships and burning whale oil in lamps, remember that your family used to work in this industry.  Apparently he built barrels to hold the whale oil so it could be stored and shipped.  I know that lots of people in Stoughton were employed at the boot factory, including some of the older Cussen boys.  So my guess is that the family headed overland from Canada to Boston, where lots of Irish lived, heard about jobs that were available in nearby Stoughton, and found a place to live there.  Mary was born there in 1847, so we know they lived in or near Stoughton for at least a couple of years.  Being new to the area and having come from overseas, and being Irish, they probably did not have much money, so Dennis and Catherine and their ten children probably lived in an apartment, or a small house, or maybe the older kids lived in other houses.  They were from the Irish countryside, so I imagine they worried constantly about whether it was safe for their younger kids to play outside, or whether their older kids would get involved in crime or gangs, or whether they'd get beat up because they were Irish.  And I think that other family members from Ireland wanted to come to America, but it was too expensive near Boston.

Why and How Did They Travel to America?

Why did they immigrate to America?

Let's see if I can give you some quick answers.  I wish I knew more about the family that came to America.  It might seem to you that I know alot, but for every question I can answer there are ten that I can't.  One of the fun things about genealogy is that you gather as much factual information as you can, but then have to imagine the rest because there are many things we just won't ever know.

Why did they immigrate?  One reason was probably the way they were treated in their own country.  They could not own land and had to pay an Englishman rent for the land they lived on.  They probably had to pay a tithe to support the Church of Ireland, which was not their church.  Although the great potato famine was still two or three years away, there were probably plenty of crop failures and destitute Irish in pockets around the country, so they knew that more and more Irish were having a hard time.  Mostly, they probably thought that they had a little money and an unknown opportunity across the sea and they saw a very dismal future for their children in Ireland.  So they decided to put themselves in God's hands and leave behind everything they knew (the Cushings had been in that area of Ireland for at least a couple hundred years) and try to make a new life for themselves (and mostly for their kids) in a wilderness across the ocean.

How did they travel to America?(boat, etc.)
What was their port of entry?

 
I'm attaching that Cushing history document that I mentioned in my last message.  It's more than you want to know right now, but it says a little about their ocean voyage and where they went.  The last page I'm sure was added many years later by Paul, but I'm just keeping it as I received it.

Family Stories: RJ and Uncle Leon

Any interesting family stories? 

Interesting family stories ...   Hmmm.  I suppose the most interesting story is probably how your great great grandfather John worked his way up from a poor kid from a broken family to become a very successful businessman and has a building named after him at Notre Dame.  I'm sure your mom knows that story.  My mom points out that John's father, Francis, must have put a very high value on their Catholic faith and on the importance of education, since he struggled so hard to send his son to Notre Dame, that Catholic school so far away.  Look around at your cousins and aunts and uncles and you can see that these are values that have been passed down to us from them.  The whole family is like a story, too.  Learning about your family is like taking a personal walk through history, which makes history a lot more interesting for me.  I think the story of Francis and his trouble with the law is interesting.  You can see that on my web site.  There are some small interesting stories.  Your aunts would probably have some good stories.  Some of my more interesting tidbits are about your great great grandaunts (great great grandfather John's two sisters, Kate and Mary).  Actually, about their husbands ...

Kate married Leon Jenkins, a Portland police officer who later became the Police Chief and then the Commissioner of the Portland Police department.  I recently found out that Uncle Leon was a very innovative  Police Chief who was responsible for modernizing the Portland Police.  He was the first to use a new technology called radio for police communications back in the 1920s.  Later he tried organizing Police Chiefs around the country to agree on how to write police reports so they could understand crimes in other cities and this work later led to the founding of Interpol, a famous international police department.  But Uncle Vin remembers taking the train from Chicago to Portland to visit, and Uncle Leon would meet them at the station with a paddy wagon (a big police truck where they can lock up lots of trouble makers and take them to the police station) and the kids would get locked in the back while Uncle Leon would turn on the siren and the flashing lights and take them on a ride through town.  I'll bet they were the only ones that enjoyed being locked in a paddy wagon!

Mary married Roderick MacKenzie, oldest son of the so-called King of the Canadian Railway, Sir William MacKenzie.  Sir William (with a partner) was responsible for building the transcontinental railroad across Canada.  Roderick managed some of the railroad construction, but it sounds like he was kind of a wealthy investor who lived much of the time in the United States.  The family story is that Mary (Mary Elizabeth, aka "Lizzie") used to sell flowers at a stand in front of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, where Roderick used to stay, and they met there.  Roderick (or RJ) loved horse racing and used to travel around the country racing his horses.  After the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, he bought lots of property and in 1908 he bought the Pleasanton Racetrack and renovated it into one of the most famous race courses in the world.  He led the effort to make the racetrack the centerpiece of a new Alameda County Fairgrounds.  (I think it's still there.)  After a few years, he sold the racetrack.

Well, that's probably much more than you wanted to read.  I hope there's something in all those words that you can use for your report.  I assume you know that my family history web site is at http://www.cushings.com/roots/ .

BTW, your great great grandmother Harriet Webber Cushing was a Webber.  The Webbers are one of the oldest American families, here since at least 1650, more than 100 years before the United States!  You can read about them on my web site, too.

I'm sending you a genealogy of the Cushings from Ireland down to you.  I've included your closest Cushing cousins to make it more interesting to you.  Genealogy charts and reports are pretty easy to make, so maybe you and/or your mom can tell me if you want something different.  You might also need to tell me if I made a mistake somewhere.

Good luck with your report.

Family Artifacts?

Any family artifact or heirloom?

Artifacts or heirlooms?  Hmmm.  The closest we have would be some old photographs, but there aren't many of those.  Does your mom have a copy of the slide show that was shown at the Cushing reunion in 2006?  I could probably post those on line for you to look at.  I might be able to put them on a CD for you, but I'm very busy getting ready for a trip, so I can't promise that very soon.  Maybe one of your cousins or aunts.  I had hoped to find other Cushing families with heirlooms when I created a Cushing web site about 10 years ago.  Although I did meet many Cushings that we are related to, it turns out that our branch of the family is the only one that knew about the whole family and how they came from Galbally.

Getting From There to Here

Do you have any documents showing our  immigration from Ireland?

I have not found any official documents showing immigration from Ireland.  We're not quite sure of where they immigrated to.  It turns out that while England was trying to eradicate the Irish in Ireland, they also had a huge, mostly unoccupied territory called Canada.  To fill it up with British citizens they would offer really cheap boat passage to Canada and cheap land, so lots of Irish people took boats to Canada, then continued on to the United States.  Some simply crossed the border, while others took boats.  Since our Cushings lived in the Boston area in the late 1840s, which is not that far from Canada, I think they probably came by land to the United States.  (From Canada.  Of course, they traveled by ship across the ocean to Canada.)  Travel across the border was not very well controlled.  There may be a ship register somewhere that shows them on their way to Canada.  There's probably no record of their entry into the United States.  There's probably a court record of Dennis' citizenship.  But I haven't found any of these documents, yet.  (Maybe someday you'll find them!)  If you like, I can send you our oldest family document, titled "Family History (exclusive of Darwin's age of monkey!)".  My dad thinks it was written either by your great grandfather, Paul, or his brother, Jerry, in about 1929.  We're guessing that he must have sat down with his father, John, and written down everything John knew about his family history.  It's about 20 pages long, but if you don't have a copy I can scan it and send it to you.

The Cushing Name

How did the name get changed from Cussen to Cushing?

Dear my favorite name-withheld-to-protect-our-privacy young person,

I can only guess at why the name was changed.  Try to imagine yourself as an immigration clerk or as a census taker in the middle 1800's.  You were probably hired for your job because you could write, because you'd had a few years of school, probably no more than a fifth grader today.  So you walk a half mile from farm to farm and ask all these questions about names and birth dates and when they came to America, and whatnot.  They're farmers, so maybe the smells of animals, dirt, and hard working men & women is offensive to your city bred nose.  And you must certainly think that these people are far less educated than you, so you wouldn't need to ask them to spell anything for you.  If they can spell.  So you go to this farm house and ask your questions, and someone with a very thick Irish brogue says "Cussen".  You can't quite make out all the letters from sound, but you've never seen the name Cussen and you've heard of Cushings, since at least one Cushing family from England had been in the US since 1638.  (As you know, they weren't even states yet, just colonies.)  So you write Cushing.  The Cussens, meanwhile, wanting to be Americans, might just adopt that name to be "more American".  Lots of names were changed this way.

Another factor was probably that the "Cussens" were Irish.  For many years the English tried to take control of Ireland.  (I don't know the exact dates for these actions.)  The Irish (in Ireland) were forbidden to attend school.  The Irish language was banned.  They were forbidden to own property.  Their land was given to Englishmen and Scots (northern Ireland), to encourage these others to populate the island of Ireland.  Their religion was banned, and replaced by the official Church of Ireland.  All of this was an attempt to exterminate the Irish people and their culture.  So in this environment, you can see that it was difficult for Irish to get an education.  (I hear they had secret schools to educate their children, anyway.)  Most Irish in the early 1800s probably could not spell their names, so there are many different spellings, even in Ireland.  Cussen and Cushen were common, and I've seen Cushing in some records.  It just depended on who wrote it down.  When Dennis Cussen, your great great great great grandfather (sometimes we say 4th great grandfather), married Catherine Casey in Galbally, Ireland, the priest spelled his name Quishian, so I suspect this was close to the way it was actually pronounced.  If someone with a heavy Irish accent told an American clerk with a fifth grade education (by today's standards) that his name was "Quishian", it's easy to see how the clerk might not know quite how to spell that and might write down Cushing.  I believe that the most common spelling in Ireland today is Cussen.

That was a long answer to a short question.  Since we can only guess at the real reason, you get to choose what you think is the best explanation!

The Cushings Come to America

A few months ago, one of my younger cousins, give or take a few "removed" 's, wrote to me asking for information on the Cushing family history for a Heritage Report she was doing at school.  She had some great, very practical questions, and it made me think about the information we have and speculate on what we don't have.  Since I rarely take the time to write narratives about our ancestors, I'll share here what I wrote, in the next couple of posts.  These answers were intended for a ten year old audience, but the story is suitable for any age ...

Genealogy software

I haven't been in the market for new software in many years, and there are lots of sites that review genealogy software, so I won't make any comparisons.  Well, not many.  But I can tell you that I use Legacy Family Tree and am very pleased with it.  Information is easy to enter and view.  Keeping track of information sources is easy.  I tend to stay away from proprietary features, like adding pictures and video clips because I assume that it will be difficult to change software, if I choose to do that one day.  But I would recommend this software to anyone.  (And if you're in my family, it certainly makes it easier to share information by using the same file format.)  There is a supplemental charting program to make up for the very limited built-in charting capability.  There may be other features you want that I don't use, like DNA tracking or collaboration over the Internet, or searching genealogy sites for matches with your family tree.  Legacy does all of these things, but I don't know how they compare to others and I personally don't use them.  I think that all of the software companies offer free versions of their software, at least on a trial basis, and I would recommend trying some out.

I also use GenSmarts to analyze my family tree and make research recommendations to me.  Legacy's built in research helper seems less specific and too complicated.  I also use an app called Families to display my family tree data on an iPad.  You can make changes on the iPad and sync with your desktop file, but I haven't tried that yet.

The Other Gormans

[A warning:  I'm new to this, and now I see that this is way to long to be interesting.  I'll try to keep future posts small and easy to read.]

This should be my last Gorman post for a while.  About two years ago, I received some information about a Gorman family that had passed through Madrid, New York.  I'm not a Gorman, but two of my Donnelly relatives married Gormans in the Madrid area, so we have lots of Gorman cousins.  (In theory.  I've only been in touch with one.)  The Gormans interest me for two reasons.  One is because some of us share a common Donnelly ancestry.  Another is because it's been a great puzzle trying to sort out all the Gormans in that area and trying to figure out what the relationship is between the two Gormans that married the Donnelly sisters.    We're fairly certain that Thomas and Christie were first cousins, but have no proof, yet.  So in that context ...

The posted information said that a widowed William Gorman come from Ireland to Madrid, New York in about 1834, bringing his six children (Patrick, Michael, Christopher, John, Bryan, and Catherine), and accompanied by two or more brothers or cousins and their families.  Their years of birth ranged from about 1814 to 1828.  According to the family history, they stayed in the Madrid area until William passed away in 1847, then moved on to Columbia Co., Wisconsin, and some moved on to other locations.  William was buried in Madrid.  I've skipped some of the detail, and reported the rest fairly loosely.

Now come back to Madrid and compare what we know from there.  I find Gormans in the Madrid area in the census beginning in 1840.  The two large families are those of Michael and William.  We know from alien reports and the birth places of Michael's children, that he came to the US in about 1818, when he was about 26 years old.  He married Catherine in about 1819, and all of their kids were born in New York.  Catherine Donnelly married their oldest son, Christie.  I don't know where Michael's family lived prior to 1840. William had seven kids with him in 1840, five boys and two girls, one more girl than in the Wisconsin family history.  We know from alien reports from some of his kids (at least Patrick and Michael) that they immigrated in 1834.  Bridget Donnelly married a Thomas Gorman in the early 1840s.  His death certificate says his father was William Gorman, we assumed the same William buried in Madrid/Waddington.  His alien report also says he immigrated in 1834, the same year as William's Wisconsin family members.  I cannot find a Thomas in 1840, and assume he was among William's children.  The other Gorman family in Madrid was that of 26 year old Connor Gorman.  He reportedly immigrated in 1833, a year earlier than William's family.  My guess would have been that he was another son, the first to marry, and so was living in his own home in 1840.  Connor was not made a citizen with Michael and Patrick in 1844, and I have not been able to find him in other census records.  Perhaps he moved to Canada, or passed away, or used a different given name in subsequent censuses.  I would assume all of these Gormans were one family. There was also a thirty-something Bridget Gorman living in nearby Oswegatchie with three kids.  Other Gormans popped up in subsequent censuses.

Based on all this information, my story would be ...  Michael Gorman came to the US in 1818, married Catherine and they settled in Oswegatchie, New York. [I'm not quite sure about this one, but a John and (possibly) Bridget Gorman came to the US and were in Oswegatchie in 1838.  This family may have moved to Racine co., Wisconsin, near the other closely related Gorman families in Wisconsin.] In 1833, Connor Gorman came to this area, possibly married with an infant daughter.  The following year, his father, William, brought the rest of the family, including Thomas, Patrick, Michael, Christopher, John, Bryan, and Catherine.  Michael relocated from Oswegatchie to Madrid, where William and Connor had settled, in about 1838.  I suspect that Michael and William were brothers.  Upon Williams's death in 1847, most of the family moved on to Racine, Wisconsin, then on to other locations. Thomas had married Bridget Donnelly, whose family still lived in the area.  There's a Pat Gorman in Madrid in 1850, married with children, and I suspect that Thomas and Patrick elected to stay with their young families.  Patrick's wife, Jane, died in 1854, after which, I'm guessing, he elected to rejoin his family in Wisconsin.

My next step would be to try to reconcile this story with that of the Wisconsin Gormans, especially addressing the questions "Were Michael and William brothers?", "Were Thomas and Connor also sons of the William Gorman buried in Madrid/Waddington, whose other children moved on to Wisconsin after his death?", and "Were the John (alien reports) and Bridget (census) in Oswegatchie related?".  Some of this is of interest because I usually include in-laws (Thomas) and their immediate families into my tree, and I would like to know how Thomas and Christie ( the other Donnelly in-law) were related.  The Gorman descendants of the Wisconsin families, and the search for more generations of Gormans in Ireland I'll leave to others, as they are not related to me.  By the way, the Wisconsin genealogy says that William and family came from Ardbraccan Parish, Co. Meath, Ireland.