52 Weeks/52 Ancestors, Week 3 - Anna Martha Myers

This week, I'm taking a little bit of a shortcut by featuring the wife of Week 2's subject. Also, I've realized that I tend to write predominantly about male ancestors, and that needs to change to provide a more complete story.

Anna Martha Myers was born 17 August 1855 in Blair County, Pennsylvania to Harry Bender Myers and Maria Mock, the 5th of 8 children, although it is likely that there were additional children that I have not identified based on the five year gap between Anna and her next older sibling. 

The facts of her marriage and children are covered in the blog post on Thomas Christopher McNally. She survived Thomas by a few years, passing away on 11 April 1915 in Potetown, Blair County 

There are obituaries for her death which support this date, but I have yet to find a death certificate for her, even browsing through the digitized images on Ancestry. I haven't done a comprehensive browse of all death certificates from 1915 in Pennsylvania, but that would be next. 

Like Thomas, she is buried in an unmarked grave, most likely at the cemetery at the Albright Church of the Bretheren in Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania. Neither obituary lists the place of burial, but I have been told she was buried there but the grave was never marked. On multiple occasions, I have contacted the church to ask about burial records for the cemetery, but I have never received a response of any kind. I have not contacted the local funeral director yet, something I probably should do.

One of my long term goals is to verify where she is buried, and maybe at some point arrange to have a marker placed for both her and Thomas. They deserve that at the very least.


Note:  I'm a little behind schedule due to going on vacation last week.  I'll get caught back up in a few weeks.  Thanks.

52 Weeks/52 Ancestors, Week 2 - Thomas Christopher McNally

Thomas Christopher McNally is my 2x Great Grandfather on my paternal name line. He was the son of Christopher McNally and Rosanna Pearson. He was born 6 January 1852 in Bedford county, Pennsylvania, the oldest of Christopher and Rosanna's children.

He married Anna Martha Myers on 28 July 1875 at St Patrick's Catholic Church in Newry, Blair County Pennsylvania. This apparently was not a full Catholic ceremony, as the Church record indicate that Anna was a Protestant and I know from other records she was a life long member of the Brethren Church. They had three children - Richard (my great-grandfather), Thomas Jr., and Augustus.

Besides their three natural children , Thomas and Anna "adopted" a young man named Harry Malone some time before 1900, as he is enumerated with them in 1900 and 1910. I have e-mail correspondence where I was working with another family researcher to untangle Harry's details - maybe I'll do a separate post about Harry to try to sort him out. 

The point of this story is that I think it demonstrates one aspect of Thomas's character - his generosity, which he learned from his parents. It is no small act of generosity to take in a child. 

According to a report in the Altoona Tribune from 1906, a Thomas McNally from Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania was injured by a railroad car, causing the loss of his foot. I have not been able to determine if Thomas Christopher or his son Thomas was the one injured, as they both lived in Roaring Spring and both worked for the railroad doing manual labor at different times.  Thomas Christoper would have been 54 and his son Thomas would have been 26 at the time of the accident, so both are possibilities.  If anyone has ideas about how to sort this out, I'm listening.

Thomas died 16 September 1912 in Taylor Township, Blair County, Pennsylvania.  His death certificate lists asthma as the primary cause of death.  He was buried at the St. Patrick's Cemetery in Newry, Blair County, Pennsylvania in an unmarked grave. Extracts from church records indicate that his brother Richard and his sister Lavina are buried in the same grave.  At the least, there are stones marking those graves, so the location of his burial is not lost.   

The Results Are In - AncestryDNA

The news of the day is that my AncestryDNA results are in. I'm guessing a big batch of results were posted yesterday (3/19), because quite a few of the genealogy folks I follow on Twitter were reporting that they had results in too.

The test results comprise two components - the Ethnicity Estimate and your Matches. Both parts are interesting in their own way and deserve some discussion.

First, the Ethnicity Estimate.  No surprises here.  My estimate is 97% European, with the remaining 3% spread out over other categories. 

The breakdown (in descending order of prevalence) :

• Europe West (37%) - Primarily located in: Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein
• Most of my ancestors on my paternal line (with the exception of my surname line and a few others) are from the German speaking areas of West Europe - many early German immigrants ended up in south-central Pennsylvania, so most people who have roots in that part of the country will have deep German roots
• Ireland (27%) - Primarily located in: Ireland, Wales, Scotland
• Between this category and the one to follow, this covers pretty much entire maternal line as well as the Irish components of my paternal line.
• Great Britain (25%) - Primarily located in: England, Scotland, Wales
• My maternal line is largely predominated by that group of immigrants known as the "Scotch-Irish" or "Scots-Irish", early settlers from Northern Ireland, originally of Scottish and English origin.  More than a few of these immigrants ended up in what is now known as Appalachia.

 These three categories make up 89% of my estimate, based on the averages that Ancestry has calculated (Ancestry describes the methodology used to calculate these numbers in some detail, and I'm not going to try to explain it in detail here, but  the averages are based on a number of trials which define a potential range of values, the listed value being an average of the values in the range).   The remainder of my Estimate is composed of what AncestryDNA calls trace regions - regions that have a positive average but where the range begins at 0% and which could thus appear by chance.

Trace Regions (in descending order with no commentary:

• Iberian Peninsula (4%)
• Scandinavia (2%)
• Finland/NW Russia (1%)
• Asia South (1%)
• Europe East (< 1%)
• Africa Southeastern Bantu (< 1%)
• Melanesia (< 1%)

So, according to AncestryDNA, that's my genetic heritage in a nutshell.

Now, we turn our attention to the Matches component.  At the time of writing, I have 252 pages of  matches, ranging in predicted degree of kinship from second cousin to distant cousin (5th cousin or more distant) - most in the last bucket with verying degrees of confidence.  I have not had the chance to review all of my matches so far, but i've at least browsed most of my closer matches.  I haven't initiated contact with any of my matches, but two of my matches have contacrted me - one whose user name I recignized as a known cousin and a second who AncestryDNA pegged us as 4th cousins, but who has no recognizeable paper trail to connect us at this time.

Some observations:

• I'm seeing a lot of matches on my maternal line, and in quite a few of those the degree of kinship is overstated, primarily due to the presence of Barnabas Curry as a common ancestor. I have, I believe, three Curry lines that trace back to him, so even though he is either my 4x great or 5x great grandfather, his impact on my DNA is somewhat disproportionate
• I need to do more work on my Ancestry Family Tree, particularly on my maternal side to facilitate matching
• I think I need to come up with a handful of templates to use in contacting prospective cousins, one or two for each of my maternal and paternal lines

All in all, still lots of work to do.

One final note - I have located a folder that documents a potential family unit for Christopher McNally back in Ireland.  In the very near future, I'm going to document that on the blog and tie that in to the Y-DNA testing I have going on FTDNA.

A few more genealogical resolutions

For Christmas 2012 (or maybe for my birthday, it falls close to Christmas) I was given the gift of Y-Chromosome DNA testing, in order to try to make the McNally leap back across the ocean.  I chose the Family Tree DNA service, based in part on their extensive history and deep member base.  I received my swabs, took my samples and sent them back to see what would happen.  

A few weeks later, I received my results (in stages, due to the number of markers I had tested).  Between sending my samples and getting my results, I had enrolled in a handful of relevant studies to try to find matches, hopefully still in Ireland who might be able to trace back to Christopher McNally's ancestors. 

When my full results were finally back, I had one good match, a young man in Ireland who carries the McNally surname.  I sent off on e-mail of introduction and waited for his to respond, which he did after a week or two.  He only had information back to his great-gradfather (I think he has an aunt that is the genealogist of the familiy) but he was willing to exchange e-mails and share information as it came available.   We e-mailed back and forth a few times, the last time back in July of 2013.  After that, my genetic genealogy project languished, solely due to my lack of effort.  

Fast forward to last week.  I received in the mail an advertisement for the AncestryDNA test for $79.00.  The AncestryDNA test is an autosomal test, which covers all lines of ancestry, both paternal and maternal, rather than a direct line test unlike the Y-DNA test I have on the books (the Family Tree DNA analog would be their "Family Finder" test"), so I decided to give myself a late birthday present and give it a go.  I have not received my testing kit yet, having just ordered it, but I'll keep the blog updated on that progress.

After looking over my last post, I realized that I had included no resolutions related to my genetic genealogy endeavours, so here they are.

First - I'm going to follow up with my Irish contact to re-open the lines of communication and see if he has learned anything new.

Second - I'm going to be more active at the FTDNA website and on the studies that might be relevant.  

Third - I'm going to be a bit more proactive in trying to confirm or deny a theory I have about Christopher, starting right here - In March of 2012 I proposed a theory about Christopher McNally's parentage, that he might be the son of a Laurence McNally and Mary Dillon.  I would encourage any male McNally's that can prove a line of descent from Laurence and Mary to contact me.  In a subseuent blog post I will post all of the information I have about this family to aid in this.

Fourth - The book "DNA and Social Networking" by Debbie Kennett has some fabulous suggestions about how to make genetic genealogy more effective, so I'm going to re-read the DNA part and follow up on some of her ideas.

Finally - I'm going to do whatever I can with the Ancestry test to cast a wider net for relatives in my extended family to share with and learn from.

Here's to making 2014 a good genealogy year.

Resolutions Genealogical

2013 was a great and productive year in many ways, but not for my genealogical research or for this blog - the demands of keeping up with a pair of toddler boys proved too great to allow much in the way of time or energy in that regard.  I intend to do better in 2014, although admittedly, that wouldn't be difficult, as I only completed one post in 2013.  That said, here are my genealogical resolutions for 2014.

Resolution the first - I resolve to produce a new blog post about every two weeks, roughly two a month.  This resolution shall be aided by one of my Christmas presents - a bluetooth keyboard for my iPad, allowing me to write more efficiently with the pad, as I do not have to resort to the touch screen keyboard.

Resolution the second - I purchased Legacy Family Tree 8 back in early December.  I am going to move my tree into Legacy 8 and source everything according to Evidence Explained.   My sources in my current database are a mess and need to be redone.

Resolution the third - I am going to use either Clooz or Evidentia (or both) to analyze my sources more fully.  I'm trying to take my genealogy to the next level, and I think these tools can help.

Resolution the fourth - I am finally going to get my genealogy workspace set up and organized.  Right now my files are boxed up in shambles, and I have boxes of loose papers to get filed.  Its a big mess that needs fixing.

Resolution the fifth -  I am going to photograph and transcribe the three or four small cemeteries that are within a few miles of my house.  I believe that the local branch of the OGS has done transcriptions, but I am unaware of any photos of these cemeteries.  Where I post the data is still to be determined.

There's more I could tackle (and might), like a McNally one-name study, but the five resolutions I have made should keep me plenty busy in the new year.

Good hunting, and happy new year.

Current doings

The boys have been keeping me busy, not leaving much time for actual genealogical research or posting new stories to the blog. This doesn't mean I've been sitting idle, watching the world go by and twiddling my thumbs. I steal a few minutes here and there to do some looking on Ancestry, and I've started to dig into the 1940 census records. I've found most of my living ancestors, but there are a few holdouts hiding in the paper trail, waiting to be discovered. I've also been preparing for a trip to the Ohio Historical Society Archives, after making some discoveries on FamilySearch.

I've also been doing a lot of thinking about how I want to move the blog forward, to keep telling stories and to keep connecting with far-flung relatives, and I think that the way to best do that given my time constraints is to hold true to the blog title, and start telling stories in the form of a pedigree chart in story form. Using standard pedigree chart numbering, my sons are numbers 1a and 1b, I am number 2, my wife, 3, and so on. Of course, with living people on the tree, those entries will be highly abbreviated to protect their privacy.

The first few entries will be short, so here they go.

1A & 1B. My sons. Although I have countless stories of their antics, some of which are entertaining, the simple truth is that their stories are yet to be told, and while I hope to be a significant part of those stories, they will not be mine to tell.

2 & 3. Myself and my wife (living Bone ) Hopefully, our stories are also largely to be discovered, and maybe one or both of my sons will tell them.

4 & 5.  My father (living McNally) and my mother (living Farley). They're both still alive so in order to protect their privacy, no further information shall be provided.

6 & 7. My wife's father (living Bone) and mother (living Kinder). Same thing applies here.

That gives you a brief outline of the tree so far. While there are still a few more living ancestors to be glossed over, the stories begin in ernest on the next post with number 8 on the tree, my paternal grandfather, Gerald Richard McNally.

Christopher McNally, Part III

A number of years ago, on 7 April 2008 to be exact, I posted a query on the McNally message board at Rootsweb. (link here) Here's the content of the post

Looking for informatin concerning Christopher McNally.
Birth: 25 Dec 1819, Dublin, Ireland
Death: 1903, Bedford County, PA
Married: 1851 - Rosanna Pearson, Blair County, PA

According to his naturalization papers, Christopher arrived in the U.S. in September 1844. The date of birth is from his obituary and is not confirmed by any other source at this time. I've got him well documented once he is in the U.S., but lack any info about his parents, actual date of birth, etc. Possible names for his parenst would be Thomas or his father and Mary or Lavin for his mother (These names are inferred from tradfitional Irish naming patterns - the second son and first daugter match the pattern of being named for wifes parents, and i have no reason to believe that they would have deviated for the first son and the second daughter). Any help or insight would be appreciated. Thanks.

That post might well represent the most important genealogical action I have ever taken, as it allowed me to connect with quite a few other of Christopher's descendants,  many of whom I regularly correspond with to this day.   Besides the odd typo, still present in the post, I made at least one mistake with my query.  Quite simply, I feel like I didn't make clear in a strong enough fashion that with respect to the names of Christopher's parents, my comments were pure and utter speculation, designed to facilitate a potential line of research and not intended to be taken as fact.

Fast forward to last week.   I recently reactivated my Ancestry.com membership, and was taking a look at some of the user generated content, when I came upon Christopher McNally in a tree, listed with "Thomas" as his father and "Mary or Lavina" as his mother.  Five minutes investigation revealed five or six trees, all containing similar information.  I contacted the various tree owners to see if any of them had documentation confirming Christopher's parentage.  A few wrote back, saying that they had taken the information from one of the other trees, some didn't respond, so I couldn't determine the originator or originators of the information, but I have a pretty good idea how it started. 

That said, and my feelings about user trees on Ancestry aside (there are some really great, sourced public trees, and there are also quite a few that are rubbish), last week I came upon some information that I thought might be of interest to Christopher McNally researchers. 

One of the podcasts I listen to mentioned that the Irish National Archives was actively digitizing and posting Irish church records (both Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland) at  the Irish Genealogy web site.  I surfed over to the site, and just for fun, put in Christopher McNally into the search box.  There was one result in particular that I found interesting - an 1816 Roman Catholic baptismal for a "Christopherium McNally" in the St. Andrew Parish of Dublin, baptised in 1816 with parents listed as "Lavi McNally" for the father and "Mara" as the mother.  There was just an abstract, no image or transcription, no further granularity in the date, listing Christopher, his parents and his sponsors (Pat McNally and Joanna McNally). 

This piqued my curiosity, and I performed some more searches. I started with McNally as the surname with "Lavi" as the father with no results.  I switched to "Mara" as the mother and an additional record fell out, an 1826 baptismal (Roman Catholic, St. Andrew parish, Dublin) for a "Mariam McNally", parents listed as "Laurentii McNally", mother as "Mara Dillon", with "Thoma McNally" and "Rosa Dillon" the sponsors. I feel pretty strongly that the Christopher and Mariam listed are siblings - I think that Laurentii McNally and Lavi McNally are one in the same.  These records are in Latin, and in Latin "u" and "v" are represented by the same character ("v"), so it is likely that "Lavi" is really "Laui" - that particular priests Latinized abbreviation for Laurence (the marriage record for Laurence and Mara is for "Laurentium McNally").  

So what I have is a Christopher McNally, Catholic from Dublin Ireland, born in approximately the right time frame with a sister Mary, which matches the note in one background document about Christopher that he emigrated with a sister named Mary who ended up in California.  I could not locate either marriage or burial record for either Christopher or Mary in the database, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, only that no such record has been abstracted.  That gives me a few pieces of circumstantial evidence in support of the possibility that the Christopher I found might be my ancestor.

This circumstantial evidence does not, by any stretch of the imagination, constitute proof that the two individuals are the same, so please don't quote me on this.  I have no evidence linking my Christopher in Bedford County, Pennsylvania to the Christopher McNally in Dublin, Ireland.  At best, I have a new avenue of research to follow to confirm or refute this conjecture. 

I'm going to hold on to these records, keep checking the Irish Genealogy database and gather more information - see if I can unearth any other siblings (another son with an unbroken line of McNally son's would be ideal, as Y-Chromosome testing could be used to confirm or refute a common ancestor).  And I'll continue to dig on this side of the Atlantic to see what I can uncover. Because, ultimately, that's what's important - the act of seeking.

A quick follow up on Christopher McNally

I had a request to post the complete picture from which I cropped the photo of Christopher.

Back Row: Hilda Kennedy; Maggie Kennedy (Kyler); Lavina McNally Kennedy (daughter of Christopher)
Front Row: Collie Kennedy; Christopher McNally; Bessie Kennedy (Reed)

I cannot vouch for the names, but they look reasonable based on what I know about the Kennedys.  Thanks again to Deb Pfieffer for sending me this photo, along with a few others of some of Christopher's descendants through his son Edward.  I'll post those at an appropriate time.

More soon.

Introducing Christopher McNally

It's been a busy week, genealogically speaking. The RootsWeb Blair County mailing list had its annual "Roll Call" and listing of surnames and I spent a few hours corresponding with distant cousins I didn't know existed about ancestors we share.  The folks on the Blair County list are some of the nicest people you would ever want to meet and its a real pleasure making connections with them.  And, as an added bonus, for the first time ever, someone actually responded about my McNally surname. 


Of all my ancestors, I've invested the most time and effort in researching Christopher McNally and his descendants. He is my McNally immigrant ancestor, my great x 3 grandfather and the patriarch of the initial line I started researching all those many years ago.  Over the years, I have corresponded with a few other researchers about Christopher, most of whom I met as the result of queries placed on various genealogical message boards. Every once in a while, I get an e-mail from someone who is just seeing the posts for the first time, asking me what I know about Christopher.


First a picture:

Deb Pfeiffer provided me with this photograph (actually a group photo that I cropped this from), and a few others.  She's one of the nice people I've shared information with as a result of the message board queries. 

Christoper McNally's obituary in the 26 September 1902 Bedford Gazette lists his date of birth as 25 December 1819 and his place of birth as Dublin, Ireland.  The place of birth is consistent with his Delcaration from his naturalization papers.  His date of birth, however, varies between 1818 and 1822 depending on which document you look at (census records and the naturaliztion records, as well as his obituary).  The 25 December 1819 date was also repeated in the article "McNally Family Active In Cove Iron Industry", the details of which seemed to be repeated from his obituary.  Absent finding a birth record from Ireland, at best I think the 1818-1822 range is best that can be said about his date of birth. (The Cove mentioned in the article is Morrison's Cove, a region of south-central Pennsylvania that straddles the Blair County/Bedford County border)

What is not in question, however, is when Christopher arrived in the United States.  His Declaration and Petition for Naturalization both state that he arrived in the United States on 23 September 1844 at the port of New York. Neither document lists the name of the ship on which he sailed, only that it originated in Liverpool.  I have personally reviewed the microfilm avaialable at the National Archives for the entire month of September of 1844 for ships arriving at the port of New York and could not locate any entry that might remotly correspond to Christopher. I do know that prior to 1850, there is not a complete record of arrivals and some passenger lists have been lost, so it is likely that the ship he arrived on might never be known.   His obituary states that he arrived in the United States in 1848, but I believ that to be an error, as his Declaration for naturalization was filed on 28 August 1849 and gives the 1844 arrival date.

He became an American citizen with the completion of the naturalization process on 29 September 1851.   His father and brother-in-law Edward and William Pearson both signed the petition as his character witnesses.  Also of interest from his naturalization documents is that Christopher McNally, as least in 1851, could not write as he signed with a mark.

He married Rosanna Pearson (1831-1896), daugther of Edward Perason, on 6 February 1851, at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Newry, Blair County, Pennsylvania.  Rosanna converted to the Catholic Church and was baptised on that same day.  The Blair County Genealogical Society  has transcribed the records of St. Patrick's Church for the time period 1828-1907 and has made those records available in two volumes.  I have not seen the original church records, only the BCGS transcriptions.

Christopher and Rosanna had six children -

1. Thomas Christopher McNally (1852-1912) m. Anna Martha Myers
2. Edward McNally (1853-1932) m. Atalanda Martha Hainsey
3. Margaret McNally (1859 - ?) m. Herman Goettleman
4. Mary Lavina McNally (1860-1942) m. John Kennedy
5. Richard McNally (1860 - 1934) m. Emma Hengst
6. James McNally (1866 - ?) m. Alice Sullivan

Details about various of Christopher and Rosanna's children will likely be the subjects of future blog posts.

Rosanna Pearson died on 25 March 1896 after being struck by an ore train operated by the Duncan Mines in Bedford County, Pennsylvania.  She was hard of hearing and likely did not hear the train coming from around a bend in the line.  She was buried at the Catholic cemetery at St. Patrick's Church in Newry.

 

 

Christopher's daughter Mary Lavina and her familiy came to live with Christopher after Rosanna's death, and lived with him until his death on 17 September 1902.  It is said in his obituary that he left work at the mines on 11 September 1902, complaining of not feeling well and passed a few days later.

His obituary states "He was every man's friend and had a kind word for all he met, no matter when or where.  He was always cheerful, generous and obliging."  Admirable traits, and I hope that people speak that nicely of me.

There are a few open issues with regard to Christopher-

First - I know nothing about his parents.  I've ran across no documents that name or even hint at his parents, and all I know about his origin is that he was born in Dublin County, Ireland.  From what I understand about Irish research, you really need to know the parish to make reasonable progress.  The wholesale destruction of the Irish censuses prior to 1900 don't make finding this information any easier.

Second - In a document I received from the above-mentioned Deb Pfeiffer (that was compiled by an unnamed great-grandchild of Christopher McNally through Edward McNally), it states that Christopher has a known sister by the name of Mary with some kind of tie to California.  It also states she immigrated with him.  This document is the only place I have ever seen this sister mentioned.  I would love to see additional documentation of this sister.

Third - The St. Patrick's baptismal records show a baptism for a "Georgius Guielmus McAnally" with no listed date of birth and a baptism date of 28 July 1875, with Cristopher and Rosanna listed as the parents and Thomas as the sponsor.   Is this a seventh child, one who perhaps died young and did not live long enough to be reflected in a census, or a delayed baptism for one of Edward or James?  My belief is that this is likely James's baptism and not a seventh child, as there is no burial record for an additional child and Christopher's obituary states that Rosanna bore him six children, all still alive at the time of Christopher's death.


Note - a less narrative version of this account, along with additional citations and such will show up in the near future as a separate page. 

Anyone have anything to add or can shed any light on the open issues?