Lost Uncles

Did you ever lose an uncle? In genealogy research I have encountered at least four "lost" uncles. One of them, Richard Corbett, was the subject of a previous post. (See Lost in the California Gold Rush entry)  But there are others: Andrew Bresnahan, Michael Farrell and brother John Farrell and William Corbett.  I found Richard Corbett through a website that carries an  index of the "Missing Friends" ads that were placed in the Boston Pilot by immigrants seeking their lost relatives. Patrick Corbett brother to Richard, placed two ads looking for him after he had gone to California. (This resource full text is available on Ancestry.com and the index on Missing Friends Ads Index Boston Pilot )

Andrew Bresnahan is a "double uncle". He occurs only in his marriage record in 1854 to my great grand aunt Mary Leary (sister to my great grandfather James Leary)  Perhaps my great grandfather met his future spouse, Andrew's sister Julia, at that wedding. They were married in 1863. Andrew and Mary had only one son Cornelius Andrew born about 1856. After that Andrew disappears - he is not in any US census including the 1860 one. His immigration record has not been found. He doesn't appear in a city directory for either Manchester, NH - where they were married or Fishkill where his son was born or Concord NH where his wife's family lived. Where did he go? The mystery deepens when a search (for entire US) of the 1860 census for a child named Cornelius Andrew Bresnahan with mother Mary and father Andrew does not come up with the family. If Andrew died before 1860 where are his wife and child? Both wife and child are alive in 1860 since they are in subsequent census records. The family only surfaces in the 1870 census when Cornelius is living with his aunt Julia and uncle James Leary in Concord, NH. His mother is working nearby as a maid and is a widow. There is no death record in NH that fits Andrew.

Michael and John Farrell are brothers to my great great grandmother Mary Agnes Farrell Shea. She and her sister Bridget Farrell Flanigan, placed a "Missing Friends" ad in the Boston Pilot in Sept 1855 looking for Michael  It says that their brother left Limerick in July on the ship Clare in 1850 which docked in  New York City. That ship's passenger list has a Michael 22 but also a John 13 accompanied by a Mary, age 40 who might be their oldest sister Margaret (Mary seems to be part of all the girls' names)  It is odd if this is true that the sisters did not name them also in their ad. It says that Michael is from Mungret about 2 miles from Limerick city. They indicate his mother Mary Catherine had received a letter 9 months ago from him from Ohio. (This would indicate she might have also immigrated and a Mary Farrell of right age died in 1854 in Burlington VT. )They thought he was in "Creamwell, Paulding Co Ohio" There is no town of that name but there is a Carryall in Paulding Co. There, however, the trail gets cold - four men named Michael appear in the Ohio marriage records between 1854 and 1864 and some of them can be tracked in the census but which one, if any,  is our Michael? There may be some Farrell cousins in Ohio but where is a question?

William Corbett is youngest child of several listed in the 1860 census living with Anastasia Corbett mother of Patrick, Richard and Dominic Corbett (my great grandfather) I can verify the identity of the girls Johannah and Ellen from baptism records in their hometown in Kilkenny but there is no William baptized in that town born around 1842. It is possible he is not the son of Anastasia. I do not know when the family immigrated but in the Massachusetts state census in 1855 only the two sons Patrick and Dominick are listed with their mother. Johanah, Ellen and William disappear from records after 1865 when these three appear with their mother under an incorrect last name of Champlin rather than Corbett. A number of William Corbett's live in Massachusetts but marriage records show none with a father and mother than match this family. What happened? Did William die in the Civil War? of disease? His sisters are harder to find since they probably married and none in Massachusetts records have parents that match this family. 

Warriors

Ohio from Robert N.Dennis' collection of stereoscopic views

Some families have a strong military tradition. That wasn't true of mine - a cousin who served in Vietnam, an uncle by marriage who was a medic in the Pacific during WWII and another who was gassed in France during WWI. When I started doing family history research I discovered more collateral relatives: four great granduncles from my father's side who served in the Union army, one of whom died in the second battle of Wilderness, VA. On my mother's side there was a brother of my great grandfather who served in the Civil war but the closest to action he had was guard duty in Washington DC. Then I began to research a clue from my mother who vaguely remembered that her grandmother Mary Shea Corbett had received a military pension. Her sister, my aunt,  7 years younger, strongly denied that.

My great grandfather Dominic Corbett had enlisted in the US Navy in Boston in what is now the Boston ship yard. He had trained there perhaps on the relic of the war of 1812 the Ohio .

Massasoit

a sister ship to "old Ironsides" still visible today in the navy yard of Boston. He was assigned to the Massasoit - a river gun boat an early steam powered vessel see in the photo to the right. Such vessels were used to blockade river ports. At that time he became the ship's carpenter. In the summer of 1864 the navy was refitting a captured Confederate blockade runner in the Charleston navy yard. .The Tristram Shandy built in 1864 in Scotland was iron hulled and steam powered. The USS Kansas had pursued the British ship for two hours capturing it trying to take a cargo of cotton, tobacco and turpentine from Wilmington NC to fund the Confederate states When the refitting was finished Dominic was assigned to the Tristram Shandy starting again as a landsman -  a person with less than a year's sea service but soon became the ship's carpenter. .

Officer with artillery 

Looking at the Navy records using Google books to find correspondence and histories, Dominck’s movements during his Navy career can be followed. His pension record includes a record of wounds received around Dec 5 and of his treatment on Dec 7-10 on board the Tristram Shandy. It is possible that Dominic was injured during an incident which began on Dec 3 when a blockade runner ran aground near Wilmington near Fort Fisher. The Tristram Shandy, armed with a Parrott rifle and 3 pounders , destroyed the disabled ship before she could be used again. The report of the incident said that although the ship was in range of Fort Fisher guns and was bombarded it escaped injury. Injury on a vessel of this trip in such an engagement could come not only from enemy guns but as a result of  steam burns and injury on board his own vessel. The Navy report in his personnel record gives no indication how Dominic was injured..His wife noted he was wounded in left thigh and side and she attributed his later heart disease to this war experience. (since his father and at least two of his brothers appear to have died before the age of 50 probably from heart disease  the cause was probably genetic) 

A Parrott Rifle

The medical record from the log of the Tristram Shandy quoted in the pension record says that the cause of the illness was not noted. His wife indicated that they were wounds not just an illness, The treatment appears to have been only a cathartic pill and another medication which is hard to read and may be “doveri or Dovers grx with the notation “at nightly rush”. After three days the notation is “much improved, Whiskey duty”. 

A sidewheeler ship similar to the Tristram Shandy

A study of the movements of the ship Tristram Shandy show that it is part of the North Atlantic Squadron which blockaded the North Carolina coast and was situated off Wilmington, NC.  Navy correspondence during this time including some from the Tristram Shandy captain and from other ships mentioned the capture of a blockade runner. In the pension records it is noted that Dominic received “prize money” and the incident that led to this, capture of the blockade runner Bleinheim coming from Nassau to Wilmington, is described in the Navy reports.. The Blenheim was active Oct. 1864 to Jan 1865, 4 for 5 in successful trips; and captured by the U.S.S. Tristram Shandy at Wilmington on Jan. 25, 1865 Although it does not say how much Dominick received another sailor (John Dunlap alias Isaac Babb a former Confederate soldier) who also served on the Tristram Shandy as a Landsman received $18.26. This sailor also enlisted in Boston and served on many of the same ships as Dominick Corbett.  

In the diagram of the battle the Tristram Shandy is third from the top in the outermost ring of ships

      

        The diagram of ships for the 2nd assault on Ft. Fisher shows the ship as part of the “reserves” behind the main warships. This second battle of Fort Fisher NC was designed to totally cut off the crucial Confederate port of Wilmington, North Carolina and was successful. The Atlantic blockade which Dominic's vessel participated in made expansion of the Navy from a small fleet of about 90 vessels to a large fleet of "hybrid" vessels that used both steam and sail, gunboats that patrolled the rivers and the beginning of the US submarine service. See this link for more information  
More about the development of Naval warfare in the Civil War
For more about the ship Tristram Shandy see Google Books on Tristram Shandy history

Dominic return to Vermont after the war, married and had five children. My grandmother, Kathryn was the youngest of the four girls. Although she had little memory of her father since he died when she was a toddler, she did remember her mother getting a military pension which led me to research Dominick's military service.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Lost in the California Gold Rush: Where is Uncle Richard?

I was surprised when I learned that I was not the only member of my family who lived in California. My great granduncle Richard Corbett was a ship's carpenter who had preceded the Corbett family, my great-grandfather Dominick, his widowed mother Anastasia and big brother Patrick to the US. They were settled in Taunton, Massachusetts by 1855 where Patrick and  Dominick followed the trade of carpenter. They appear in the 1855 state census. However brother Richard is not with them in either the 1855 or 1865 state census or the 1860 US census when they were joined by three other siblings, Johanna, Ellen and William.

Two ads posted in the Boston Pilot http://infowanted.bc.edu/ gave me information allowing me to trace the family back to their place of origin in both Ireland and the US and recover baptism records for my great grandfather and some of his siblings. Richard was baptized March 21, 1830 in the parish of Oning and Templelorm, Fiddown, Kilkenny. His family was living nearby in Turkstown, Kilkenny when he was a young man. That town had a ship building business run by the Dwan brothers who lived on the same property as the Corbetts. Perhaps Richard and his brothers gained their carpentry skills working in it. He also may have experienced the lure of the sea since vessels could come up the Suire river from the seaport of Waterford as far as this small town.  The ads note that he “followed the sea for some years” . He had arrived in the US “some years before”. 

I believe that based on that information Richard appears on a passenger list, a carpenter coming into NYC  on the Siddons Jan 6, 1851. Did he jump ship there and decide to travel to the gold fields influenced by the many ads for travel there and stories of quick riches?

If so It is possible he is the R. Corbett listed on one of the ships heading for the Isthmus of Panama (where passengers crossed on foot or riding donkeys to meet a ship on the other side to head to California.) 1849 gold had been discovered and a "gold fever" seized many miners seeking to hit it rich. Ads like this one  in newspapers promised a swift journey instead of the long one round the tip of South America or the long and arduous one across the US by wagon. All the family knew was that he had arrived and was working in San Francisco when they wrote the ad looking for him in June 1855.

San Francisco early 1850's

If Richard signed on as a ship’s carpenter (on the Siddons or another) to get free passage,  he might have taken the much longer and more dangerous passage via Cape Horn. Whichever way he traveled Richard apparently reached San Francisco between 1852 and 53 and wrote to his family. He is not listed in the California State census of 1852. By the time he arrived in San Francisco the nearby fields were overcrowded and not producing the prodigious amounts of gold that they had in the early days. He  lost no time heading north – perhaps by stage coach or coastal boat for northern California writing from Shasta Co to his family that he was heading from Shasta to Yreka in Siskyou co. In June of 1855 the family was trying to get in touch with Richard and referred to his letter of May 1854. This much the family knew when his brother Patrick tried again to find him in another ad in 1857 searching for him in Yreka.They had evidently had at least two letters from him - the original from San Francisco and a later one from Shasta.

Stage Yreka California

Gold was discovered in Yreka in 1851 at a spot called "Thompson's Dry Diggins". Miners poured into the town which was called Shasta Butte City. Residents found this confusing with the town of Shasta, in Shasta County, so the name was changed.  Joaquin Miller described Yreka during 1853-54 as a bustling place with "...a tide of people up and down and across other streets, as strong as if in New York". More stage lines used the town for a stage stop than any other community in the state. The Deadwood district of Siskiyou included the towns of Liberty, Sawyers Bar. The miners produced a steady stream of gold until late in the 19^th century.

The rugged area on the California Oregon border

Chinese andCaucasian miners in No California

In the 1860 census for the Deadwood district in the town of Liberty there is a Richard Corbett of about the right age living with three other miners. All are Irish ranging in age from 33-22 and each has a total of $250 in property.  In that census the miners are mostly living in groups of less than 10 grouped perhaps by language. There are men from all over the US and from Europe. The town is predominately male and young. Large groups of Chinese miners are also listed, sometimes only listed by one name or only "Chinaman" and one age for all in the group. They were perhaps 1/3 of the population. Only 3 Chinese women appear none of them married.

There are only 13 families in the town 7 of whom have about 24 children between them in the 14 page census. Women and children are a definite minority. For the most part the census taker didn't bother to total them correctly in the tally at the end of the page. A recent widow runs a hotel with her California born children, the youngest of which is only a year. There must have been enough of school age children for a schoolhouse since one of the women is listed as a schoolteacher. All of the other white women are married most of them to miners.

Rare woman at a mining site

Those who run a business such as a hotel, a stable or a blacksmith shop, are considerably better off than the average miner like Richard with real estate and personal property worth $1000 to $10,000. The wealthiest persons in town are the lone lawyer, merchants and hotel owners. The presence of many Irish like Richard led to the  location of Catholic places of worship at Liberty and Sawyers dating from the mid 1850’s. There are two other Corbet(t) in town: a Mike also from Ireland and a William born in Massachusetts. If they were related to Richard they are not living with him. 

Since there were no other ads by his family one wonders if they were hearing from him by this time or had given up hope of finding him? Unfortunately the correspondence did not survive the death of his older brother Patrick around 1870 or his mother in 1873. His younger brother Dominick, my great grandfather was in New London, Connecticut in 1860, later moving to Vermont and fighting in the Civil War as a ship's carpenter in the Union Navy. He married in Vermont in 1867. My grandmother had little memory of her father who died in 1877 and never mentioned an uncle or her grandmother Anastasia. Dominick had named her older sister Anastasia “Annie” but evidently she didn’t know the connection.  Dominick named his his only son, John Richard,  after his father and Richard after the long lost brother.

John R. Corbett nephew

Richard does not appear on any of the Voter Rolls for California but then again he may not have become a citizen. Richard’s who appear in 1870 and 1880 in US census in California are not likely matches because age is too far off and most live far south of where he was in 1860. There is a Roger Corbett who settled in the Liberty area and is buried in the Catholic cemetary of Sawyer's Bar but he is younger and born in 1844 in Massachusetts. There are Army enlistment records for several Richard Corbetts, from Kilkenny who served in the 1860-1875 period. Is one of them Richard? In the 1870 census for Boise, Idaho there is listed a Richard Corbett,  born in Ireland, about the right age, now a US citizen, working as a miner. It makes sense that Richard would follow the mining lure still hoping to “strike it rich”.

So where is Richard? Even what I have discovered shows me that he was a person who liked adventure and was a risk taker.

 It is possible that Richard died before he was 50 as did his father and three of his four brothers. There appears that some congenital defect – perhaps heart trouble plagued these men. No record of death has been found in Idaho but their death records start in 1890.A search of California death records also came up a blank.record.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/californiagoldrush.htm

Let's hear it for the Irish matriarchs!

On Mothers’ Day it is appropriate for a genealogist to look at her matrilineal lines – the mothers of our mothers and grandmothers. In the family tree I am working on,  my Irish female ancestors are few as the line only goes back to the late 18^th century. 

Mary Margaret Leary & Maureen

,

Mary Margaret Leary (1907-1994) married Elphege Chicoine 1935, St. Albans, VT. Born in Concord, NH. Graduated high school in St. Johnsbury, VT and worked as a bookkeeper there for the Fairbanks Scale factory.Moved to St. Albans in the 1920's and worked for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.Met her husband through her brother. They had two daughters Maureen and  Sheila named for the Irish version of family names Mary and Julia. She lived in Schenectady NY when her husband started working for GE during the second World War. She was a stay at home Mom, When she was 75 she fulfilled a life long dream of visiting Ireland. When her husband retired she moved to Glenville, NY and then to Reston, VA to be near her daughter Sheila and her family.

Kathryn Grace Corbett ca. 1893.

Kathryn Grace Corbett (1873-1961) Mary Margaret’s mother married James T. Leary 1904 St. Johnsbury, VT. Kathryn worked as a maid for one of the Fairbanks family (as did her sister). Her father was a carpenter in the Fairbanks scale factory. She had at least an 8^th grade education. Loved to travel, write letters and wanted her daughters as well as her sons to have more education. She attended the Chicago exposition in 1893 traveling by train. She was married in a double wedding with her sister Mamie and the couples traveled to the 1904 St. Louis World’s fair on their honeymoon.

Mary Bridget Shea Corbett with Mary Margaret

Mary Bridget Shea (1844-1924) Kathryn’s mother,  married Dominick Corbett 1867 St. Johnsbury VT. Born in Limerick and immigrated with her family when about 3 or 4. Family tradition is that she and her mother were midwives. She was left a widow with 3 small children to raise in 1877 and took in boarders to supplement family income (Civil War pension from her husband) Her daughter Kathryn probably met her future husband James T. Leary when he boarded in her mother’s house.

Mary Agnes Farrell (1815-1888) Mary Bridget’s mother, married Michael Shea ca. 1839 Limerick Ireland and  immigrated from Mungret, Limerick in the famine years 1848-1850. She came with her husband and at least two small children: Michael and Mary Bridget. They brought with them a white lace trimmed baptism gown still used by the family today.

Mary Catherine Supple (ca. 1790-abt 1850) Mary Agnes’ mother, married Michael Farrell ca.1813 Limerick Ireland. He probably died in Ireland. She immigrated with sons Michael and John to US when in her 60’s. She may have died in either Ohio where Michael settled or in Vermont where her daughters Mary Agnes and Bridget were living.

Mothers and grandmothers of James and John Leary, Dominick Corbett

Julia Bresnahan, (1839-1926) mother of James T. Leary, was born somewhere in Ireland and immigrated in the 1850’s with her mother Margaret and sister Honora. In 1860 she is living in Manchester, NH working in a textile mill with her mother, sister, and two other probably related Bresnahans. She spoke Irish. She may have met her husband, James Leary through her brother Andrew who married his sister Mary. She settled in Concord NH after her marriage. She raised her deceased brother’s son and cared for her elderly in-laws and seven children.

Abbie (Gobnait, Juliana) Callahan (1800-1875) grandmother of James T. Leary, was born either in Kerry or Cork. She married James Leary’s grandfather, John in Ireland about 1828 and they had at least 6 children. Two of her daughters Mary and Hannah left for America perhaps accompanied by  John around 1848. One son died in Ireland. She, John with sons James and John, and daughter Catherine  immigrated  in 1853. They landed at the current South Street Seaport in New York City and traveled to New Hampshire to join her other daughters Mary and Hannah. She spoke Irish. When she died in 1875 she left nearly $500 in the bank in her own name. Her husband and son went to court to get access to the money and used it to buy a burial plot, pay for her funeral and erect a monument that says: Abbie Callahan (large letters) wife of John Leary (smaller letters). Unfortunately her death record does not give her parents names.

Hannah Walsh (Welsh) (ca. 1770-1840) mother of John Leary who was born in Kerry about 1798. She and her husband James may also have been from Kerry or may have moved there at the end of the 18^th century from Cork. They were married in Ireland and may have had other children. She did not immigrate to the US. She probably was an Irish speaker.

Margaret Fleming (1799-before 1870) mother of Julia Bresnahan married Corneilius Bresnahan around 1825 in Ireland. She may have been a widow before she immigrated with her two daughters. She probably worked with them in the textile mills. She spoke Irish. She had at least three children.

Anastasia (Anty) Grace (1792-1873) mother of Dominick Corbett had lost her husband John sometime before 1850. They were probably married around 1825.  She immigrated with Dominick and son Patrick  from Turkstown, Kilkenny Ireland about 1854 to Taunton, MA. Her mother was Mary but no maiden name was written on her daughter's death record. She was not an Irish speaker. She and her sons seemed to have had some education. One son, Richard, a sailor went to the gold fields of California, three other children immigrated between 1855 and 1860 and are living with her in Taunton that year: Ellen, Johanna and William.

How I got started

Kathryn G. Corbett

For over 40 years I have been working on researching my family history but the inspiration for my interest was the influence of my grandmother “Nana” Kate Grace Corbett Leary (1873-1962) who shared with me many family tidbits. She knew her maternal grandparents: Mike Shea (1812-1881) and Mary Agnes Farrell (1815-1888) both born in county Limerick Ireland. She did not remember her father, Dominick Corbett (1837-1877) born in Turkstown, county Kilkenny, who died when she was around 4 nor his mother, Anastasia Grace (1798-1873) who died when Kate was 3 and who probably never saw her granddaughter.

When I was older and studying history I realized that her memory connected me back to the beginning of the 19th century. Although I did not know her husband, as my grandfather died when I was an infant, I did know his sister my aunt Annie, who shared some of that side’s stories with me. A serendipitous discovery of a newspaper clipping from the early 20th century led to more information from his side. Both my mother Mary Margaret Leary and her sister Julia passed down other oral traditions to me.

On my father Elphege Chicoine’s side I did not know his parents, Paul Marcel Chicoine (1870-1921) and Ida Emma Desrosiers (1873-1924) who died before I was born, but from aunts, great aunts and other relatives and from my Dad I collected family memories and histories dating back into the 18th century. I began to understand, especially as I grow older, how many oral cultures consider the story teller an important source of tribal memory and history. From my vantage point here in 2013 I can reach back through the stories and memories to people who lived around the time of the American Revolution.

I do not know how often I will post this blog but I will use some of the research I have collected to highlight the stories of the ordinary people who lived through the larger events of history. Immigration, war, famine swept them up and influenced not only their lives, but those of their descendants. I plan to attach pages for many of the ancestors, the first being one for Nana. I also hope to attach pages for the different locations I have researched where these families lived.

Some of my “brick walls” in research occur in this generation and I do have hope that someone else’s research may shed some light to help me break through them. If in the process I can help another family historian in their search (as others have already helped me) I will be very happy.