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.