Daniel Hawes & Charlotte Chappell, Monroe co., NY 1840-1912

Daniel Hawes was born in Westchester county, just north of New York City, in about 1815. Charlotte Chappel was born in "Rochesterville" (now Rochester) in about 1816. They married, probably in the Rochester area, probably in the mid 1830s. They had nine children: one unknown daughter (b. late '30s), Mary, George, Jennie, Frank, Mattie, Nettie, William, and Hattie (b. 1863). Prior to the Civil War, Daniel was a day laborer. Afterward, he was a farmer and a cooper. I know that he served in Company D of the 89th Volunteer Regiment beginning in 1861, but not how long he served or where he may have fought. He suffered an injury for which he, then Charlotte after his death, received a pension. He died in 1885 and is buried in Bushman cemetery in Henrietta. Only 19 year old William was still living at home in 1880, so the kids were pretty much grown and living elsewhere by time of Daniel's death.

I have not found much information on Daniel's Hawes family or Charlotte's Chapell family. I've tracked down some of the kids. (1) George was an out-of-work carpenter living at mom's in 1900. He may have been in the county "Alms Home" in 1910. (2) Jennie married William Weeks, a farmer, in about 1880 and raised two step-children. After William's death in 1892, she lived with Edith, who married in 1901, probably until her death in the 1930s. (3) Frank began waiting tables, then acquired or opened a series of hotels that he operated with his wife, Elizabeth. They married in about 1879, lived and worked in Rochester until the 1890s, then moved to nearby Buffalo, where Frank worked as a real estate dealer in 1900. By 1910, he was retired, and by 1920 he and Elizabeth had moved to Los Angeles. She passed away there in 1926. I lost track of Frank. (4) Mattie married Charlie Hinman, a carpenter, in 1873 in Michigan. (5) Nettie married John Pyne, a mason from adjacent Orleans county, in about 1885. John (Jack?) went to San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake where there was plenty of work for a mason. Nettie followed with the kids a few years later and opened a boarding house. She passed away in there 1937. Nettie is our ancestor (6) Hattie stayed with her mom until Charlotte's death in 1912, then allegedly moved to San Francisco. She passed away there in 1939 and is buried next to Nettie.

Michael & Ellen Connery, Lindsay, Ontario, Canada

Ellen Roche and Michael Connery were born in the early 1800s in Ireland. They married in about 1830, had at least two children then emigrated, sometime around 1840, to Lindsay, Canada, where at least four more Connerys were born. The oldest, Nora, married John Pyne in Lindsay in 1856, then moved to the Buffalo area where they raised their family. One account states that other Connerys moved from Lindsay to Iowa.

Ellen and Michael's children were:

• Nora (b. 1834-42, Ireland)
  married John Pyne in 1856,last found in Buffalo, NY in 1900
• Mary (b. 1838, Ireland)
• James (b. 1845, Ontario)
• Michael (b. 1848, Lindsay - d. bef 1861)
• Richard (b. 1849)
• Margaret Ann (b. 1852)

Ancestry Message Boards

I suppose 20 years after purchasing the great Rootsweb free genealogy site, Ancestry would like all of it's users to be paying Ancestry users and is slowly throttling Rootsweb. My supposition. In recent years, there has been a huge decline in Rootsweb use. Perhaps this is because serious genealogists are now all subscribing to different services - Ancestry, MyHeritage, etc. - and are now using their member-only message boards, essentially fencing themselves off from the greater genealogy community. I just posted a message to Rootsweb and received an almost immediate comprehensive response. Now I see that my post to Rootsweb is automatically posted on Ancestry's version of the same message board, but the helpful very informative reply was posted only to Ancestry's version, though shared with me, the author of the original post. In other words, others researching this family will not see the information unless they are Ancestry members, so will need to post their own queries. This makes the public Rootsweb message boards much less useful. Intentionally, by Ancestry, I would guess. I think this is unfortunate for what used to be an open genealogy community. Sigh.

Garrett & Bridget Kiernan (1st), Ann Gilchrist (2nd), Cranston, Rhode Island

Bridget Dunlavey & Garrett Kiernan were Irish immigrants, born in about 1821 and 1815, respectively. I don't know whether they married there or after coming to the United States. They settled in Cranston, Rhode Island (near Providence) where they had at least 5 children, beginning with Thomas in 1839, before Bridget passed away in the late 1840s. Garrett had 6 more children with his second wife, Ann Gilchrist, in the 1850s. (Ann was also born about 1815 in Ireland.) Garrett was a laborer. He served briefly as a private in Company D of the 2nd Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers (Oct 1864 to July 1865). They may have had a daughter born in the early 1830s. Garrett's mother, also Bridget, was living with them in 1850. Garrett and Ann passed away in the 1870s. Garrett's oldest son, Thomas, our branch of the family, was a musician in the Civil War, after which he came out to northern California with his daughter, Sarah.

Children of Garrett & Bridget were:

• A daughter born in the early 1830s
• Thomas (b. 1839)
  married Mary Ann Rogers in 1860, served as a musician in the Rhode Island 12th Infantry, then moved to northern California with his oldest daughter, Sarah. Died about 1912.
• Bridget (b. 1841)
  married Thomas Russell in 1860, died 1927
• Bernard Burns (b. 1844>
  married Emma Irons 1867, died 1922
• Ann (1845-1913)
• and Peter (b. 1847)
  married Mary Conerton 1863.

Children of Garrett & Ann were:

• John (1852-1932)
• James (1854-1911)
• Mary Elizabeth (b. 1855)
  married Edward Brennan 1878, died 1928
• Catherine (1857-1897)
• Julia (1858, died before 1860)
• and Ellen (b. 1859)
  married Charles Capron 1885, died 1902.

Thomas & Mary Cummings, Rhode Island

Mary Kane & Thomas Cummings were Irish immigrants, born in about 1838. Thomas immigrated in about 1853. They probably married near Blackstone, in western Massachusetts in about 1859. They soon moved to Cranston, Rhode Island where they started their family. Thomas was a stone mason. They had 8 children that I know of, though there may have been a few short-lived children that missed an accounting in the censuses. In the early 1880s, something happened that caused son Daniel to take charge of his remaining siblings. In 1890, Daniel married Sarah Kiernan and they came out to California to start their family. I could not track the remaining Cummings family. The last trace I found was Thomas and his youngest (surviving) son, William, living with a family in the Newport area in 1905. At least two of the kids passed away in the 1880s.

Their eight children were

• Patrick F. (b. 1861)
• Daniel Kane (b. 1864)
  married Sarah Kernan 1890, died near Oakland, Calif. in 1932
• Mary Ann (1865-1882)
• John (b. 1867)
• Katie (b. 1870)
• William (b. 1872)
• Bridget (b. 1874)
• and Joseph Henry (1878-1880).

Mayflower Ancestors

     I finally took some time to search for my Mayflower ancestors, and was surprised at how quickly I identified them.  So many people have researched their links to the Pilgrims that there are many well-researched biographies and genealogies published on line. So unlike my usual detailed search for birth, death, marriage, burial, census and other records, in this case I accepted biographies that show they were well-researched, some posted in recent years, some published over 100 years ago.
     I don't know an easy way to explain the path of the Mayflower ancestry line in words, so perhaps the following picture will help. [Click on the image to see a larger, more readable version.]

It shows the ancestors of Grandma (Harriet) Webber extending back to six Mayflower passengers:

• William Bradford, originally from Austerfield, England, he was repeatedly elected Governor of Plymouth Colony. First elected when 31 years old, probably because so many of the colonists, including the first governor, passed away during their first few months, his leadership and relations with the native Americans were essential to the survival of Plymouth. He was the author of historically important documents describing life in the Colony.
• Thomas Rogers, a fabric merchant, one of the many Puritans who passed away during the first Winter in Plymouth. (A son, John, left behind in Holland, who came to the Colony ten years later, is our ancestor.)
• John Alden, a cooper crewman whose job was to maintain the all-important food storage barrels during the long voyage across the ocean.  John was given the option of staying in Plymouth or returning to England on the Mayflower, and chose to stay.  Alden was one of the founders of the town of Duxbury, Massachusetts.
• Priscilla Mullens, only member of the Mullens family to survive the first Winter in Plymouth. She married John Alden. A famous fictional account of John and Priscilla's courtship is the subject of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "The Courtship of Miles Standish". The Aldens had at least 10 children and have more descendants than any of the other Mayflower passengers.
• William Mullens, Priscilla's father, a shoemaker, and ...
• Alice Mullens, his wife.  Their 15 year old son, Joseph, also perished during the first Winter. 

      Mayflower passengers have been extensively researched and I'll leave the biographical details to those who have recorded them so well.

Mark Mathias Connell 1876 - 1957

   This is the 10th and last post following the family of George and Johanna Cussen Connell of Lodi, Wisconsin.
   Mark Connell, youngest of George and Johanna Cussen/Cushing Connell, was born in Lodi, Wisconsin in 1876. His father died just one year later. I think that Mark was living with his mother in Lodi then Portage until the mid 1890s, but I can't definitively locate him between 1880 and 1910. In 1910 I think he has just arrived in Seattle, since his occupation is listed as farmer, but he's living in a hotel in the city. By 1917, he was living in Burke, an unincorporated location that I cannot find on any map, where he runs a store. He married Loretta Hanson there that year. There was a post office there from 1907 to 1925, of which Mark was the postmaster in 1918. By 1920, they had moved to Eastside, Oregon (near Coos Bay) where Mark was a grocer. By 1930, Loretta and Mark were living in Pomona California, 50 miles east of Los Angeles, where they were running a pool hall and cigar store, which they did for many years. Mark passed away in 1957.  Loretta Connell Walters, remarried, passed away in 1990.  Mark and Loretta had no children.

Margaret Ann Connell 1869- 1951

   Maggie Connell was born in Lodi in 1869. I'm guessing she stayed in Lodi until at least 1885 and, at 16, was one of the two girls still at home with her widowed mom that year. She married John Michael Gorman, probably in about 1893, the year before their first daughter was born. I have lots of unanswered questions about Maggie. Why was she in the Spokane, Washington area where she appears to have started her family?  John Gorman was born in the Wyoming Territory in about 1868, making it likely that Maggie met and married him out west, but I think it unusual that a single young woman would venture so far on her own. Since John was a railroad conductor, perhaps they met far from Spokane. Their first child, Mary Elizabeth, was born in 1894 and Patrick in 1896, both in Hillyard, near Spokane. Theresa was born in April of 1898 in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, about 90 miles northeast of Spokane.  John was killed in an accident near Bonners Ferry just four months later and is buried back in Spokane. In 1892, the Great Northern Railway began service in Bonners Ferry, and John was a railroad conductor.  Also it's likely that John had a brother, Patrick, close to his age, who was an assistant roadmaster - a roadmaster having responsibility for a section of track - for the Great Northern Railway, stationed in Bonners Ferry in 1896. I believe their kids were close in age, so perhaps John had moved with his brother to that town, where Maggie would have some help with family while he was away from home on the trains.

   In about 1902, Maggie brought her family north into Canada. In 1906, 37 years old, she married John Bastian, a 34 year old immigrant from England, in Michel, British Columbia, what used to be a small coal mining town. I can't find Maggie and kids in the 1900 US census or in the 1901 British Columbia census, so I'm not sure what brought Maggie to Canada. Maggie and John (Bastian) had a daughter in 1909.  By 1911, they had moved about 200 miles east and may have been running a boarding house. Five years later, Maggie is again a widow, now living in Edmonton.  Daughter Mary, now 22 years old, is no longer at home.  I only find sporadic traces of Maggie after this. In 1924, she returned to the United States with her almost 16 year old daughter, also named Margaret Bastian. Their destination was Portage, Wisconsin. I can't find Maggie again until 1940, when 71 year old Maggie is living with her oldest daughter, Mary Gorman Gaul in the Los Angeles area.  She (Maggie) passed away and is buried in 1951 in Los Angeles county.
   In 1916, Mary was living elsewhere in Edmonton.  She was a nurse in what appears to be a Catholic institution, together with many sisters/nuns, nurses, orderlies and children (orphans?) under the age of 6. In about 1931, Mary married Fred Gaul, a retired orange grower in Los Angeles county. He was thirty years older than she. How a young nurse in Alberta, Canada meets a widower in southern California, I don't know. They lived in his San Dimas home. Fred had retired by 1920 and I see that he and Mary seemed to travel frequently - to Hawaii, Singapore and Brazil together. She made at least one trip to England after his death. Fred passed away in 1951. Mary passed away in 1988.
   Patrick married Leonora McCafferty in Alberta in 1927. Their only son, Jack, was born in 1929.  Patrick developed a brain tumor and died in 1932. Leonora remarried Dominic Meehan, a railroad conductor with the Canadian National Railway, around 1940. Their son James was born in 1942. Jack went on to become a journalist, newspaper editor and author.  An alumnus of Notre Dame College in Saskatchewan, among his books are a best selling biography of Notre Dame's founder, Pere Murray and the Hounds and an autobiographical novel, Snow in the Vineyards. Jack passed away in Calgary in 2009 at the age of 80. He married and had a family, but I have no details.
   I have found no more information on Theresa Gorman.  My last trace of her was as an 18 year old living with her mother and family in Edmonton in 1916.
   Margaret Bastian, Maggie's youngest daughter, immigrated to the US with her mom a month before her sixteenth birthday, in 1924.  They were on their way to Portage, Wisconsin, where Maggie's mom had passed away the year before, near where she had grown up in Lodi. The only record I've found of daughter Margaret is of her living in a boarding house for women in Milwaukee in 1930.  She worked as a stenographer for a printer.
   Nowadays, we think of nothing of coast-to-coast families. Maggie lived quite the adventure, from a farm in Lodi, to the railroads of the Pacific Northwest, to coal mining in British Columbia, to city life in Edmonton, back home to Wisconsin, and her remaining years in a comfortable quiet (no kids) home in southern California.

Joanna Olive Connell 1866 - 1924

My eighth post in a series on the descendants of Johanna Cussen and George Connell of Lodi, Wisconsin.

Joanna was born in Lodi in 1866. She, too, headed to Chicago.  In about 1897, she married Edward H Kerrigan, son of Irish immigrants.  Their only child, Edward N, was born in 1901 in Chicago.  I'm not sure how specialized Edward's (dad's) work skills were.  In 1910, he is a "foreman in a plumbing supply house"; in 1920 a brass worker in a manufacturing plant. Joanna was a dress maker working out of the house in 1920, and they had bought a home on Gladys avenue, not far from where United Center is now. Joanna passed away in 1924 and is buried at Mt. Carmel Cemetery. Their son married Helen (don't know her last name) in about 1926. Edward H (aka Dad) passed away 1928 and is also buried at Mt. Carmel.

In 1930 Edward and Helen lived in Detroit, where he was an "ice machine" salesman, which is probably those new iceboxes. By 1940 he is selling refrigerators and they have bought a house. They had no children.  They probably retired many years later to Florida.  Helen died in 1987 and Edward in 1988.  They are buried in Largo, Florida.

Mary Connell 1865 - 1937

My seventh post in a series on the descendants of Johanna Cussen and George Connell of Lodi, Wisconsin.

Mary Elizabeth Connell is the only Connell who remained in Lodi. By 1895 she was a servant living in the home of Dr. George Irwin, a physician/surgeon in Portage.  The Irwin family moved to Lodi in the late 1890s and Mary stayed with them until at least 1910.  The 1920 census shows Mary as a 53 year old live-in nurse in the home of Mary Palmer and her unmarried sisters, they between the ages of 65 and 79. By 1920, Mary Elizabeth is renting a room in Lodi and has become a visiting nurse. She passed away in 1937 at the age of 72 and is the last to be buried (as an O'Connell!) with other family members at St. Patrick's Cemetery.

George Henry Connell 1865 - 1902 (part 2 of 2)

Going back to 1915 to follow up on the other kids ...

George and Mary married in about 1914.  Their first child, John, lived only two weeks.  Little George arrived in 1916, Helen in 1918 and Anna in 1920. George had also been working at Wells Fargo, but by 1920 he had found a new job as a foreman in a steel mill. (Read the Chicago Historical Society's excellent article about the history of steel mills in Chicago.) Something didn't work out between George and Mary, ending in divorce. In 1927 George remarried Melba Larsen, stenographer daughter of Norwegian immigrants. In 1930, George was doing clerical work for a machine factory, and by 1940 he and Melba were running a business, a "working man's supply store".  George and Melba had no children of their own. He died in 1963; she in 1980. They are buried, and I presume were living, in the Wisconsin Dells area, a popular outdoor vacation spot (fishing, camping, boating, etc., and in recent years water parks).  Meanwhile, Mary Sedlak Connell raised (or based on their presence in the census at least had primary custody of) the kids. In 1930, the kids aged 9 to 13 and in school, Mary was not working, so I wonder how she supported the family. She did have a boarder, and perhaps some help from ex-husband George or her own family. By 1940, Anna was no longer there. I was not able to find her again.  Mary and Helen worked packing candy, Mary part time and Helen full, though even Helen had only worked forty weeks in the past year.  George had completed high school and was working nearly full time as an accountant in a life insurance office.  They also still had a boarder. That's the last I know about their lives.  Mary was a factory worker at the time of her death in 1957, at the age of 63. I could not find Helen again. I think I found son George buried in Brooks, Wisconsin, just a mile and a half from where his father was buried. Social Security records show a last known address in Chicago, so I have some uncertainty.  Assuming for now that our George is buring in Brooks, he was married to Joanne who died in 2002 and is buried there with him.

That brings me to the John, the third of George and Ellen McCabe Connell's children. In part 1 I mentionned that John married Josephine Huntscha, daughter of German immigrants Emanuel and Agnes Huntscha, in 1917 and was living in an increasingly crowded house with Mom and sister Theresa's family. At that time he was working for the US Army in a Chicago supply depot. By 1920, John and Josephine had found an apartment of their own, John was selling electrical supplies and their daughter, Ruth was a year old. Jack, jr. was born in 1921, Marian in 1921, Chuck in 1924, and Nell in 1931. I couldn't find the family in 1930, but by 1940 John and Josephine had started a "lunch room" restaurant. Josephine and the kids (once they were in high school) waited tables there. Sometime in the late '40s, John and Josephine acquired (don't know whether they purchased or built it) the Parker Lake Resort in Oxford, Wisconsin, in the Wisconsin Dells. I imagine these were rental cabins or a motel on the lake with a swimming area.  They had been operating the Resort for about 25 years when John passed away there in 1972. He appears to be buried by himself near Oxford, so I imagine that Josephine sold the Resort and moved away. (On the other hand, free online burial records are far from complete, so she be buried nearby, too.) Having little information, I can't tell the the order of events in the kids lives. And I don't want to mention the grandchildren as many of them are probably still living.  Ruth and Chuck operated a couple of restaurants: Connell's in Chicago and Murphy's Romeo Cafe in Romeoville.  I can't tell when and for how long they operated the restaurants.  Ruth married John Regan.  She died in California in 2003.  Chuck was living in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, having completed college, when he married in the early '50s. He passed away in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2000. I believe Jack, jr. was living in Chicago in the early '70s, but have no information on marriage or family. I know only that Marian was married with the last name of Healy when she passed away in the Chicago area in 1967.  Nell married in the early '60s, also after completing college. I believe they raised their family in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.  The youngest of John and Josephine's children, she was the last to pass away, in 2015.

George Henry Connell 1865 - 1902 (part 1 of 2)

A fifth post in a series on the descendants of Johanna Cussen and George Connell of Lodi, Wisconsin.

George continued the Connell exodus from Lodi to Chicago. Last recorded in Lodi as a 15 year old school boy in 1880, he married Nellie McCabe in about 1890 in Chicago. I had a hard time finding any information about Nellie. She (10 years old) and three of her siblings - Anastasia (8), Owen (8) and John (6) - were living in St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum in Chicago in 1880. (This is now the Cardinal Meyer Center.) One historical account of such institutions claims that most children in orphanages in the 19th century weren't actually orphans, but rather from single parent families in financial crisis. (Read the Chicago Historical Society's excellent article about the history of Chicago orphanages.) One record indicates that Ellen's father was Pat McCabe, but I haven't found any records of their family.  Nellie and George had three children in Chicago: Tessie (b. 1891), George (b. 1894) and John (b. 1897). In 1900, George was operating a saloon. [This may be a clue to Nellie's family. A Pat McCabe who ran a saloon in Chicago died in 1890, the same year that Nellie married George.  Perhaps they took over her father's bar? Perhaps his wife passed away in the late 1870s and a single barkeeper could not take care of four children under the age of 5, and brought them to the orphanage, expecting to remarry and retrieve them? I'll need more information to figure this out.]  George and Nellie and family lived near the stockyards. In 1902, George passed away.  Spouses dying and leaving widows/widowers with young children to raise seemed to be a macabre pattern in the family: George's father in 1877, one or both of Ellen's parents in the late 1870s, Catherine's husband in 1896, Maggie's husband in 1898, and now George.

Nellie raised the kids in Chicago. It looks like they moved into a smaller home in the Chicago stockyards area, south of the city, shared with meat workers.  The kids were working in 1910: 19 year old Theresa was getting paid to play the piano in "the park" (don't know if this was a park, or the name of a bar?), and 15 year old George was an office boy in a meat packing plant. 13 year old John was still in school. In 1913, Theresa married Daniel Bross, a clerk at Wells Fargo recently transferred (?) from New York City.  In about 1914, George married Hungarian-born Mary Sedlak. And in 1917, John married Josephine Huntscha, daughter of German immigrants Emanuel and Agnes Huntscha. By 1917, George and Mary had moved to their own apartment, but the grandchildren had been arriving at home. The family needed more space and, probably with the help of Daniel's while collar pay, could afford to move down the street.

By 1920, the kids were all raising their own families. Daniel was now keeping books for a meat business. Big changes had taken place in the "express" business (I "express" means fast transportation of people or things, a major part of Wells Fargo's business in the early '20s.) I don't completely understand,  but the US government forced the consolidation of the many express businesses in 1918, for some sort of war-related need. I believe that Wells Fargo had to close many, perhaps thousands of express business offices across the country, and Daniel may have lost his job there.  Nonetheless, their still fairly new quarters was now principally the Bross home, housing Theresa and Daniel, their three children - 5 year old George, 3 year old Helen and nearly 2 year old Bernadette - and Mom/Grandma, 49 year old Nellie. Sadly, young George passed away later that year. Three more kids arrived in the '20s: Daniel, jr. (b. 1921), June (b. 1923) and Loretta (b. 1928). By 1930 Daniel and Theresa had bought a house in the rapidly growing suburb of Homewood. Daniel was now doing clerical work in a dentist's office.  Whether working in the suburbs or riding one of the many new commuter trains into the city, I don't know. Two days shy of her 62nd birthday, in 1931, with 12 grandchildren, Nellie passed away. The Depression hit Homewood very hard, many losing their jobs and some their homes. Many lost their savings when the local bank closed suddenly in 1932. With few passengers to transport, the commuter trains to Chicago dwindled to just a few a day. The Bross family had moved back to Chicago and was renting a home there when Daniel passed away in 1938. In the last available census record, 1940, Theresa and all five kids, ages 11 to 23, are together.  The older kids were probably helping to pay the bills: Helen, Bernadette and Daniel, Jr. were all working in dental offices. Mom/Theresa took care of the home and June and Loretta, (16 and 11), still in school. Theresa passed away in 1978. I have little detail, and don't wish to post names of living children on line, but I do know that all five Bross kids married and have passed away.  All but Daniel, Jr. remained in the Chicago area.  Helen Bross Hattendorf passed away in 1981; Bernadette Bross Kissel in 1989, Daniel in 1995, June Bross Kosmos in 1989, and Loretta Bross McCaffery in 2004.

To be continued ....

Ellen 1861 - 1931 and Alice 1875 - 1966 Connell

Like her older sister, Ellen Connell also left for the Windy City. Since I have no information about them in the sixteen years from 1880, when they were both living at home in Lodi, to 1896, when Katie's first child was born in Chicago, it could be that they went to Chicago together.  When I first find Ellen in Chicago, she is 39 years old and living with her youngest sister, 24 year old Alice.  Both of them are dressmakers and seem to have plenty of work. In 1910, Ellen is still making dresses but living on her own. I can't find any record of her in subsequent years, until her death at the age of 69, still a dressmaker living in Chicago, in 1931. She is buried with her parents in St. Patrick's cemetery in Lodi, Wisconsin. (Her tombstone uses the name O'Connell.)

Alice seemed to live a whirlwind next 10 years. In 1904 she was married to Alfred Feiss in Denver, Colorado.  I haven't extensively researched this, but I believe that Alfred was the son of Adolph Feiss, the founder of San Francisco's Emporium Department Store. In 1910 I find them in Charleston, South Carolina, where Alfred's occupation strangely says just "Income". In 1911, Alfred was buried in Toledo, Ohio, next to Adolph and Laura Feiss, his parents. Alice and Alfred had had no children.  When Alice next appears in public records, she in a 57 year old widow, living in Portage. She remained in Portage until her death in 1966. (Death records say she died in Baba, but I haven't been able to figure out what this might mean.  There is no Baba, Wisconsin.  Perhaps nearby Baraboo?) She is buried by herself - at least, not with her family in Lodi, and not with husband Alfred - in St. Mary's Cemetery in Portage.

Only the Good Connells ... and the Common Connells

There must have been some sort of sickness in the Connell house in 1873. On March 13, 15-month old Frances passed away.  Just 6 days later, her 6 week old little brother, William, died. If not a sickness that afflicted the children, perhaps this was a tragedy related to the recent birth - a post partum depression or an inability to provide adequate care for the infants.  The next Connell born, Daniel in 1874, would also die young.  He was about 14 years old in 1888 when he passed away.  All three of these children are buried with their parents in St. Patrick's cemetery in Lodi. (As with the other family members buried at St. Patrick's, all their headstones say O'Connell.)

Although chronologically out of order, there are two other children about whom there is little to say.  John is 18 years old and in school when last seen with the family in Lodi in 1880. James is a 12 year old school boy that year, then seen just once more as a 31 year old unemployed salesman living with his mother in Portage in 1900. It is likely that they are in census and other records that I have seen, but their names are so common that I can't tell which ones are our family unless I find a mention of a mother's maiden name. For now, they remain unknown.

Katie Connell 1859 - 1944

Katie Connell was the oldest of George and Johanna's children, born in 1859 in Lodi. It's curious that per the 1940 census Katie had an 8th grade education, while the 1880 census says that 20 year old Katie was attending school. She moved to Chicago where she met Henry Heseltine, a recent immigrant from England. They probably married in about 1894, the year he became a US citizen.  Their daughter, Elizabeth was born in March of 1896 and Henry died just three months later.  The census says Catherine was a "compositor" - a typesetter for a printer - until at least 1910. I assume that Catherine struggled financially, since they moved from town to town, always near Chicago - Cicero, Oak Park, Harvey, Chicago, Villa Park - and her work changed to housework/servant/janitor. Elizabeth attended two years of college and became a public school teacher, living with her mother until her marriage in about 1921.

Elizabeth married Herman Kaehler, a Chicago cab driver.  Herman was a military veteran, though I don't know which conflict, if any.  He was a widow with four children - Ruth, Hazel, Marjorie and Patricia - aged 11 to 4 when he married Elizabeth.  They had all been living with his parents in 1920, and the kids were not with him in subsequent censuses, so I wonder if they were raised by their grandparents. I may have found Hazel (married name Miller) living in Deerfield with her husband and about four kids.  I believe she passed away in 1998.  I could not find the other kids as adults.

Herman Kaehler and Elizabeth Heseltine married in about 1921 and by 1930 had four children.  I'm not posting their names since some of them may still be living.  I think that life was hard for Herman and Elizabeth, too, though this may have been the norm during the Depression.  I can't find the family in 1930 in the census.  In 1940, Herman claimed a profession of brick layer, but had not worked in over a year. He was receiving some income, perhaps from a veteran's pension.  Elizabeth had a public works job as a nursing (?) school director.  Their 17 year old daughter was still in school, but their 16 year old son was not.  With an occupation of "new worker", not having found work in 13 weeks, with a 9th grade eduction, and being only 16 his prospects were probably not good. I was not able to find the kids as adults, nor death information for Herman and Elizabeth.  Elizabeth's mother, Katie Connell Heseltine, passed away at the age of 85 while living in Villa Park, near Elmhurst.  She may have been living with the Kaehlers. She is buried in Mt. Carmel cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

George and Johanna Cussen Connell in Lodi, Wisconsin ca. 1870

I sat down for a few hours to gather more information on the children of Johanna Cussen Connell.  Four days later, I'm posting some articles about these families.  As usual, dates and places only tell me where they lived. If you are related to any of these families and can share stories or more information, please contact me (find my e-mail in my "profile" link) or post a comment.


Johanna Cussen was born in Galbally, Ireland in 1836, travelling with her family to Newfoundland, Boston, and Fort Winnebago by about 1848. In about 1858 she married George Connell/O'Connell, I believe a recent immigrant from New Brunswick, Canada, and they settled in Lodi, about 25 miles south of Fort Winnebago. They were farmers. From 1860 to 1876 they had thirteen children in Lodi.  George died in 1877, leaving Johanna with 11 children between the ages of 1 and 18. Information is sparse, but I assume that life was difficult. Usually, someone stays with the elderly parent and works the farm, but by 1895 Johanna had moved to Portage, presumably having sold the farm, where she remained until her death in 1923. She is buried in the Catholic cemetery there with her husband, George, the three kids who died as children (Frances, age 2, William, age 1 month, Daniel, age 14), Mary, the lone daughter who remained in Lodi as an in-home servant and nurse her entire life, and Nellie, the only child to be returned to Lodi for burial.

I initially thought this family name was O'Connell.  Indeed, I stumbled across Johanna on FindAGrave.com, where volunteers post inventories of cemeteries, usually with photographs. Johanna Cushing O'Connell's grave marker is shown there, in St. Patrick's cemetery in Lodi, Wisconsin, as are five other members of the O'Connell family.  Having just extensively searched for George and Johanna's descendants, however, I now know that the cemetery is the only place where the name O'Connell was used. All appearances in the census, newspapers, birth, marriage and death records, etc., use the name Connell. The use of O'Connell in the cemetery is a mystery to me. I would suspect that a well-meaning descendant just got it wrong when they replaced headstones, but the stone for George appears to be an original (at least it looks very old), and it does say O'Connell.

I'll trace their descendants in the following posts.