Possible Casey-Cushing connection

[posted 9 Oct '12; added to web site 23 Jan '15] [This is a redacted form of a letter I sent to some Cushing genealogy cousins about a year and a half ago.  I haven't been able to do any more research on the Caseys since.]

For those of you who have looked through census records, you know that there was a Casey family "next door" (can you say that with farmland?) to Dennis and Katherine Casey Cussen/Cushing in Fort Winnebago.  There's an awful lot of information online right now, especially through the familysearch.org website, and through census, marriage, and birth records there, supplemented with Find-a-Grave records and usgenweb files, I fleshed out what I could about these Caseys.  I added them to my online tree, so if you want to take a look, go to my Cushing Genealogy website at http://www.cushings.com/roots/ , select "family trees" from the menu, then "my family", then type in either "casey, james" (select the one born in 1800), or "casey, patrick" (select the first one, born between 1800 and 1803).  Click on "descendancy" to see their family trees, as far as I traced them.

Here's what I know, in brief.  Dennis and Catherine Casey Cushing left Stoughton in about 1847, may have stopped in Madison, Wisconsin, but arrived in Fort Winnebago in about 1849.  James Casey immigrated from Ireland in 1849 and arrived in Fort Winnebago on the farm "next door" to the Cushings.  Patrick Casey immigrated with his family in 1848, was in Lawrence, Massachussetts in 1850, but moved shortly thereafter to Fort Winnebago, to a farm very near the Cushing and James Casey families.  In 1850, Patrick Casey is listed both with the James Casey family in Fort Winnebago and with his family in Lawrence, Mass.  My speculation is that Patrick and James Casey and Katherine Casey Cushing were brothers and sister, born in about 1800, 1803, and 1806, respectively.

Of the few Caseys found in Cushing birth records, John Cussen/Cushing's godfather, in Galbally, was a Patrick Casey.  (John was one of Dennis and Katherine's older sons, who also had a farm in Fort Winnegabo.)  Patrick Cussen's godfather, in Galbally, was Margaret Casey.  (Patrick was another of Dennis and Katherine's sons.  The James Casey who emigrated to Fort Winnebago was married to Margaret Brady Casey.)  There are a few other possible connections, but these are such common names that they are not proof of a connection to the Fort Winnebago neighbors.  My great-grandfather, Francis Cushing, was a witness (best man?) at the marriage of William Casey in Fort Winnebago.  William was the son of nearby Patrick Casey; Francis was the son of Katherine Casey Cushing.  This could be an indication of family, but could also be simply because they had been neighbors and friends for many years.  (I think this is more likely an indication of family relationship because William was seven years older than Francis and in the pre-teen and teenage years they were neighbors, with such large families, I don't think they would have been neighbor buddies.)  That's pretty much all I know about Caseys in Fort Winnebago.

I know of 6 children to Patrick Casey.  I don't know what became of the 5 daughters.  Son William moved with his parents to Rudd, Iowa, then after the parents died moved on to Lake Co., South Dakota.  After James' death, much of his family moved to the Rudd, Iowa area, too.  Daughter Ellen married James Durick and their descendants remained in the Portage area.  Son Patrick F. stayed on the family farm in Fort Winnebago (you may have seen his name on the 1873 plat map next to Dennis Cushing) for a few years, but then moved on to Iowa.  Son James moved on to Watertown, Wis.  More details are in my family tree.

I don't spend a great deal of time on genealogy these days.  I was hoping to find some descendant to contact that might know something about the Caseys, but the free online records only get me to about 1930, so I haven't found families to contact yet.  I'm thinking of looking for Caseys in Galbally church registers, Caseys in St. Mary's church (Portage) registers, land/deed records for the Cushings and Caseys in Fort Winnebago, naturalization records for Dennis Cushing and James and Patrick Casey (Columbia Co. records available through LDS).  There were also some rather prominent Casey descendants - an Archbishop of Denver in the early 70s, and a state representative, I think in Mitchell Co., Iowa, whose families might have some genealogy information, if I can locate them.

My Opinion: Nearly All Cushings from Cork, Limerick, Tipperary Area are Related

The whole point of that table was to show that Cushing (or it's Irish variants: Cushen and Cussen) was not a very common name in Ireland.  The estimated number of Cussens in about 1840 was 800.  To play around with some numbers (I'll try to use more accurate numbers after I do a little research), if a typical family is two parents and six children, 800 Cussens is about 100 families.  Almost all of these, nearly 80%, were in southwest Ireland.  Roughly using the population chart at http://www.mapspictures.com/ireland/history/ireland_population.htm , there were about 50 Cussen families in 1790 and only about 25 in 1700.  We'll never trace individual Irish Cussen families back to 1700, but I think it's certain that the Cussen/Cushen/Cushing families from southwest Ireland are somehow related.