I recently made a DNA connection to a Casey family, and now am fairly certain that what I had suspected from census records, that Patrick Casey (b. ca 1801 in Ireland, married Hanora Norris in Galbally, where most/all of their kids were baptized) was a brother of Catherine Casey Cussen. This is just a note about some resources.
I've spent a lot of time going through church register images for the parish of Galbally, on the National Library of Ireland site ( https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0264 ). The images are not indexed, so searching is like what we used to do when searching through census and newspaper films at local libraries. Except I can do this on my computer at home. I thought this would be a fairly quick job, but it turns out to be enormous. I'm looking for all Cushing and Casey entries to get a pool of candidates for the family in Ireland. It turns out there are about 500 images, most containing two pages from a register. I'm finding about two or three of interest per image. A baptismal record is typically a date, the child, two parents, two godparents, a page number, sometimes a note about the father's profession or town of residence, or that the child was "illegitimate", so typically about nine fields of information, often difficult to read. A marriage record is the married couple, two witnesses, a date (three fields), with occasional notes and a page number. At the end I add a film numbers, too, so that I can easily find the record again, so the whole is typically eight fields of information. That comes out to an estimate of about of about 2500 records and 20,000 recorded fields of information. So I should have expected a lot of work. I think I'm about halfway done.
The interesting part of this near drudgery is seeing all the names, something of a directory of neighbors of my Casey & Cushing ancestors. Many of the names are familiar as spouses of marriages that took place after immigration to the US, so I wonder if many of the Cushing & Casey kids and grandkids married into families the parents knew from "the old country". I've also seen some of these names in DNA matches to my dad, which opens some paths of searching for common ancestors. Some of the names that were very common in the Galbally register were Barry, Blackburn, Bourke, Brien, Butler, Byrrane, Carty, Casey, Clancy, Condon, Connor, Cronin, Cummings, Cunningham, Cussen/Cushen/Quishian, Dalton, Dawson, Dea, Donohoe, Dunn, Dwyer, Fitzgerald, Fogarty, Fraher, Fruin, Gorman, Grafton, Halloway, Hanrahan, Hayes, Heffernan, Henebry, Hennesy, Ivory, Kiely, Kirby, Landers, Lynch, Mahoney, Mara, Martin, Megrath, Moloney, Mullins, Murphy, Neil, Noonan, Picket, Power, Quain, Ryan, Sampson, Sheehan, Slattery, Sullivan, Walsh. And many of these added an O (O'Brien, O'Neal, O'Sullivan ...) or a Mc (McCarthy, McGrath, ...).
Another site I found interesting is the Irish Placenames Database at https://www.logainm.ie/en/s?txt=galbally&str=on . My browser identifies this as Dublin City University, but I don't know what exactly the project is. Often a register record would have a place name associated with a groom or a father, and the strange name and difficult-to-read writing made it difficult to record a meaningful place name. I didn't have a lot of success, but I found the resource interesting for locating on a map Irish place names more generally. This seems to be related to a project to preserve Irish culture by identifying and officially recognized places.
At the top of web page are links to what seem to be (a brief glance) other Irish collections. Above and to the left of the map is a link to "Meitheal Logainm.ie", which seems to be a place for people to submit local place names that may not be officially recognized, yet. But it's also searchable. I don't see any descriptions, but there are lots of places identified if you zoom in close. Some of the site are in the Irish language. ainm.ie seems to be a collection of biographies, but only in Irish. https://www.duchas.ie/en/ is a site collecting items to preserve Irish culture, through stories and photos. For example, I found this in their schools collection: https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922055/4848074/5009531 giving a local explanation of Galbally, which apparently means "town of the strangers".
A last resource, not new but perhaps you haven't seen it, is built around Matheson's statistics (published in a book that people have found very useful) about the Surnames of Ireland. I don't want to go look up the book right now, but from memory he summarized an enumeration of the births that took place in about 1890 throughout Ireland, and it is widely used to find to find families to help focus genealogy research to more likely areas of the country. The country had been decimated by famine related emigration, so the numbers and distributions of names aren't the same as they were in the 1830s and pre-famine 1840s, when most of my Irish ancestors lived there, but it is a valuable resource. Many of us bought the book to look through the tables of names, but now it is searchable online at https://www.ancestryireland.com/family-records/distribution-of-surnames-in-ireland-1890-mathesons-special-report/ . I had to try several spelling variants for Cushen to find the entry in their table, so you might not find your name on a first try. The book will show you all the variants that made up the head count. The book also has some explanation of origins of some names.
I'll post other resources as I come across them. Please post your own in the comments.
Enjoy!
Showing posts with label Casey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Casey. Show all posts
Sunday, September 1, 2019
Friday, July 26, 2019
Evolving Genealogy Strategies and Successes
It has been frustrating tracing the Cushing family back beyond what we already know. In all fairness, we began by knowing a lot, since one of my uncles recorded the family genealogy in about 1931 in a document untitled "Family History (Exclusive of Darwin's Age of Monkey)". My parents, my sister, and some cousins have travelled to the town and visited the church where many of Cussen family was baptized and where Dennis Cussen and Katherine Casey were married. One of the great milestones in American genealogy research is locating a family prior to emigration, and with this family we were fortunately handed that information before beginning our research.
Now, though, finding more information about the Cussen and Casey families is very difficult. There are very few records from the early 1800s and earlier. It could be that Dennis' father was a Francis Cushen who worked land in the Galbally area, but I haven't spent much time pursuing this because tithe applotment books do not list family members. Church records are rare before about 1825, so I've been unable to research there, either.
My principal strategy for extending the family backwards has been to publicly publish what I know about the family and to seek out genealogists in other branches of the family through which more information may have been preserved. While this has not extended my tree back in time, it has been very productive. Dennis and Catherine had about thirteen children. At the time I began my research, we knew descendants of only one other branch of the family. Of the remaining eleven children, three disappeared (appeared in only one record at some point) and one died unmarried at the age of 22. So that left seven branches of the family, perhaps some who had stayed in Wisconsin, to search for. Through the Internet, especially through message boards like Rootsweb and Genforum, I was able to contact four more branches. It turns out that one of the remaining branches left no children, hence no descendant genealogists, and the remaining two were women, for whom tracing marriages and name changes and moves can be very difficult. I was finally able to track the last two branches about two years ago. During all of this, we were able to share our respective genealogies and learn about the spread of the family. A disappointment for me, though, was that there was no documentation about our family prior to our Age of Monkey.
A second strategy I attempted was a search for Caseys. It turns out that a Casey family lived on the farm adjacent to the Cussen/Cushing family in Fort Winnebago in about 1850. I researched this Casey family and found that they had emigrated from Ireland at about the same time as the Cushings, that there was another closely related Casey family that also lived, albeit briefly, in Fort Winnebago, and that the Casey fathers, Patrick and James, were both just a few years older than our Katherine Casey Cussen. I thought there was a good chance these three were siblings. In the years since, however, I have found no evidence of a family connection. Meanwhile, with the explosion of paid membership-based genealogy services, especially ancestry.com, genealogy research has gone largely behind walls and I have made no contacts with the Casey family that I researched in and from Fort Winnebago.
Now, a new strategy has emerged: DNA. I've been researching DNA genealogy for about a year and a half, now, with disappointingly little to show for it. Perhaps that's too overstated. I feel that given the enormous amount of work I've put into DNA research, I should have more to show for it. But I see that I actually have made significant progress in several branches of the tree.
Yesterday, I was able to connect a DNA match back to one of the Fort Winnebago Casey families, one of my most important goals in my DNA genealogy research! The amount of shared DNA makes is very likely that Patrick Casey was indeed a brother to Katherine Casey Cussen. I was more confident of a close relationship between the two Casey men, since they were living together at one time, so James Casey is probably also a sibling. This gives me enormous incentive to start searching through online baptismal records at the National Library of Ireland to locate these Casey families. The kids were mostly born in Ireland in the late 1820s through early 1840s, and baptismal records were widely available.
Now, though, finding more information about the Cussen and Casey families is very difficult. There are very few records from the early 1800s and earlier. It could be that Dennis' father was a Francis Cushen who worked land in the Galbally area, but I haven't spent much time pursuing this because tithe applotment books do not list family members. Church records are rare before about 1825, so I've been unable to research there, either.
My principal strategy for extending the family backwards has been to publicly publish what I know about the family and to seek out genealogists in other branches of the family through which more information may have been preserved. While this has not extended my tree back in time, it has been very productive. Dennis and Catherine had about thirteen children. At the time I began my research, we knew descendants of only one other branch of the family. Of the remaining eleven children, three disappeared (appeared in only one record at some point) and one died unmarried at the age of 22. So that left seven branches of the family, perhaps some who had stayed in Wisconsin, to search for. Through the Internet, especially through message boards like Rootsweb and Genforum, I was able to contact four more branches. It turns out that one of the remaining branches left no children, hence no descendant genealogists, and the remaining two were women, for whom tracing marriages and name changes and moves can be very difficult. I was finally able to track the last two branches about two years ago. During all of this, we were able to share our respective genealogies and learn about the spread of the family. A disappointment for me, though, was that there was no documentation about our family prior to our Age of Monkey.
A second strategy I attempted was a search for Caseys. It turns out that a Casey family lived on the farm adjacent to the Cussen/Cushing family in Fort Winnebago in about 1850. I researched this Casey family and found that they had emigrated from Ireland at about the same time as the Cushings, that there was another closely related Casey family that also lived, albeit briefly, in Fort Winnebago, and that the Casey fathers, Patrick and James, were both just a few years older than our Katherine Casey Cussen. I thought there was a good chance these three were siblings. In the years since, however, I have found no evidence of a family connection. Meanwhile, with the explosion of paid membership-based genealogy services, especially ancestry.com, genealogy research has gone largely behind walls and I have made no contacts with the Casey family that I researched in and from Fort Winnebago.
Now, a new strategy has emerged: DNA. I've been researching DNA genealogy for about a year and a half, now, with disappointingly little to show for it. Perhaps that's too overstated. I feel that given the enormous amount of work I've put into DNA research, I should have more to show for it. But I see that I actually have made significant progress in several branches of the tree.
Yesterday, I was able to connect a DNA match back to one of the Fort Winnebago Casey families, one of my most important goals in my DNA genealogy research! The amount of shared DNA makes is very likely that Patrick Casey was indeed a brother to Katherine Casey Cussen. I was more confident of a close relationship between the two Casey men, since they were living together at one time, so James Casey is probably also a sibling. This gives me enormous incentive to start searching through online baptismal records at the National Library of Ireland to locate these Casey families. The kids were mostly born in Ireland in the late 1820s through early 1840s, and baptismal records were widely available.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Irish Origins
If you're Math-phobic, skip this article. It will explain and demonstrate a proposed method to assist in locating Irish ancestors.
A valuable resource used to trace families back to Ireland is Sir Robert Matheson's Surnames in Ireland (1909). One of my first posts showed how common (or rare) some of the Irish surnames in our family tree were in Ireland in the 1800s, when all of our known Irish ancestors came to the United States. The bulk of Matheson's report is a table showing the number of births registered for every surname (family name) in Ireland in 1890, and the distribution of these births by province (Leinster = eastern Ireland, Munster = southwestern Ireland, Ulster = northern Ireland, Connaught = mid-western Ireland). Some of the important things to know about this index are: (1) related names are combined and reported as the most common name; (2) 1890 is after the Great Famine (aprox. 1845 to 1852) and deaths and the enormous exodus of emigrants from Ireland in the mid and late 1800s had decimated the population (Population was growing very rapidly before the Famine, peaking somewhere around 8 million people, but was down to about 3.5 million at the time of Matheson's data in 1891), so this data may not accurately portray the distribution of families in the early 1800s; and (3) rare family names, for which less than 5 births were registered throughout Ireland, are not included. In spite of the limitations, because of the sparsity of census-like information in Ireland, this is a valuable resource.
I have used this book from time to time to give me a general idea of where a branch of my Irish ancestors came from. Because comprehensive searching of data has not been easy (at least in the past), I have not actually found any of my ancestors using this data. But I hope to.
It has occurred to me that this information can be used mathematically to narrow a search for an ancestor. The listings in Matheson's table are essentially the probability of finding a family with this surname in the various provinces. Using Hogans as an example:
Surname Births in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught
Hogan 193 59 115 5 14
can be recalculated as
Surname Probability of birth in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught
Hogan 100% 31% 60% 3% 7%
[Because of rounding, numbers don't add to 100.] So I would expect that my Hogan family was most likely from southwest Ireland, but may also have been from eastern Ireland. It is unlikely they came from northern or western Ireland.
I recently found a marriage record that Mrs. Hogan's maiden name was Rice. Matheson's data for Rice is:
Surname Births in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught
Rice 99 33 18 48 0
and can be recalculated as
Surname Probability of birth in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught
Rice 100% 33% 18% 49% 0%
Nearly half of the Rice families were in northern Ireland, where there weren't many Hogans, but there were many in eastern Ireland and several in southwestern Ireland. By combining this data, multiplying the probabilities that both families were present in the province, and normalizing:
Surnames Probability of marriage in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught
Hogan-Rice 100% 46% 49% 6% 0%
Note that this method assumes that the bride and groom were actually from the province in which they were married. In this case, a Hogan and Rice married in Ireland were likely from eastern or southwestern Ireland, only slightly different from the conclusion I would have drawn from considering Hogan alone.
Applying this to the other families in our family tree for which I know both surnames:
Probability Start in
Surnames of marriage in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught counties:
Hogan-Rice 100% 46% 49% 6% 0% Dublin
Donnelly-Larkin 100% 38% 7% 50% 5% Dublin, Armagh
Cushing-Casey 100% 6% 87% 0% 8% Cork, Limerick
Casey-Brady 100% 60% 12% 20% 8% Dublin
Shannon-McHugh 100% 5% 2% 56% 37% ?
Waters-Murphy 100% 24% 76% 0% 0% Wexford
Murphy-Stafford 100% 78% 9% 13% 0% Wexford, Dublin
Unfortunately, I don't think the underlying data for this table still exists. If it did, we could further analyze this data by county. In Matheson's table, he also indicates in which counties the most births occured. Using these (unquantified) indicators, I estimated the most likely counties in my table, above. The only test I have on this method is that the Cushing-Casey family is known to come from Co. Limerick, near where it joins Cos. Tipperary and Cork. The table above tells me that the family was very likely from Munster province (correct), and the county notes would have sent me to Cork and Limerick counties.
Unfortunately, at this time, there are very few couples in my tree that were married in Ireland and for whom I know the wife's maiden name. In the table above, only three are direct ancestors, and for the one most strongly placed (Cushing-Casey) we already know where they're from. The other four families are parents of in-laws in my tree to help others connect to our family, but not of enough interest to search their origins.
A valuable resource used to trace families back to Ireland is Sir Robert Matheson's Surnames in Ireland (1909). One of my first posts showed how common (or rare) some of the Irish surnames in our family tree were in Ireland in the 1800s, when all of our known Irish ancestors came to the United States. The bulk of Matheson's report is a table showing the number of births registered for every surname (family name) in Ireland in 1890, and the distribution of these births by province (Leinster = eastern Ireland, Munster = southwestern Ireland, Ulster = northern Ireland, Connaught = mid-western Ireland). Some of the important things to know about this index are: (1) related names are combined and reported as the most common name; (2) 1890 is after the Great Famine (aprox. 1845 to 1852) and deaths and the enormous exodus of emigrants from Ireland in the mid and late 1800s had decimated the population (Population was growing very rapidly before the Famine, peaking somewhere around 8 million people, but was down to about 3.5 million at the time of Matheson's data in 1891), so this data may not accurately portray the distribution of families in the early 1800s; and (3) rare family names, for which less than 5 births were registered throughout Ireland, are not included. In spite of the limitations, because of the sparsity of census-like information in Ireland, this is a valuable resource.
I have used this book from time to time to give me a general idea of where a branch of my Irish ancestors came from. Because comprehensive searching of data has not been easy (at least in the past), I have not actually found any of my ancestors using this data. But I hope to.
It has occurred to me that this information can be used mathematically to narrow a search for an ancestor. The listings in Matheson's table are essentially the probability of finding a family with this surname in the various provinces. Using Hogans as an example:
Surname Births in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught
Hogan 193 59 115 5 14
can be recalculated as
Surname Probability of birth in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught
Hogan 100% 31% 60% 3% 7%
[Because of rounding, numbers don't add to 100.] So I would expect that my Hogan family was most likely from southwest Ireland, but may also have been from eastern Ireland. It is unlikely they came from northern or western Ireland.
I recently found a marriage record that Mrs. Hogan's maiden name was Rice. Matheson's data for Rice is:
Surname Births in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught
Rice 99 33 18 48 0
and can be recalculated as
Surname Probability of birth in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught
Rice 100% 33% 18% 49% 0%
Nearly half of the Rice families were in northern Ireland, where there weren't many Hogans, but there were many in eastern Ireland and several in southwestern Ireland. By combining this data, multiplying the probabilities that both families were present in the province, and normalizing:
Surnames Probability of marriage in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught
Hogan-Rice 100% 46% 49% 6% 0%
Note that this method assumes that the bride and groom were actually from the province in which they were married. In this case, a Hogan and Rice married in Ireland were likely from eastern or southwestern Ireland, only slightly different from the conclusion I would have drawn from considering Hogan alone.
Applying this to the other families in our family tree for which I know both surnames:
Probability Start in
Surnames of marriage in: Ireland Leinster Munster Ulster Connaught counties:
Hogan-Rice 100% 46% 49% 6% 0% Dublin
Donnelly-Larkin 100% 38% 7% 50% 5% Dublin, Armagh
Cushing-Casey 100% 6% 87% 0% 8% Cork, Limerick
Casey-Brady 100% 60% 12% 20% 8% Dublin
Shannon-McHugh 100% 5% 2% 56% 37% ?
Waters-Murphy 100% 24% 76% 0% 0% Wexford
Murphy-Stafford 100% 78% 9% 13% 0% Wexford, Dublin
Unfortunately, I don't think the underlying data for this table still exists. If it did, we could further analyze this data by county. In Matheson's table, he also indicates in which counties the most births occured. Using these (unquantified) indicators, I estimated the most likely counties in my table, above. The only test I have on this method is that the Cushing-Casey family is known to come from Co. Limerick, near where it joins Cos. Tipperary and Cork. The table above tells me that the family was very likely from Munster province (correct), and the county notes would have sent me to Cork and Limerick counties.
Unfortunately, at this time, there are very few couples in my tree that were married in Ireland and for whom I know the wife's maiden name. In the table above, only three are direct ancestors, and for the one most strongly placed (Cushing-Casey) we already know where they're from. The other four families are parents of in-laws in my tree to help others connect to our family, but not of enough interest to search their origins.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
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.
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.
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