St. Michael’s Cemetery, Chatham, NB…..Another Grave Yet to be Found……Hopefully Never Forgotten

Where lies James McCarron………… ?

St. Michaels Basilica and Cemetery

There is no new uncovering of facts here but what this does accomplish is raise questions yet to be answered.  It tells a basic story without all , organizing and describing and posting these small facets of our ancestors past comings and goings is that almost every discovered fact very often leads to more questions.  Thus this serves as a place to bring up those questions and hopefully as time goes by some of the unknowns will be resolved.  At least this becomes a place for me to be reminded of what needs further looking into in order to uncover some long lost family information.

To explain, James McCarron is the father of Margaret McCarron, later married to John McGinnis Sr.  This would make James McCarron the Great-Great Grandfather to my generation, the direct descendants of Mary Agnes McGinnis.
The man holds the distinction of the oldest identified ancestor in the McGinnis/McCarron line and the oldest ancestor born in Ireland and buried on North American soil. The actual proof of his existence can be found in but two pieces of documentation found in Chatham, New Brunswick records.

The first piece of evidence regarding his identity is to be found is his inclusion in the 1871 Canadian Census living in the household of what most certainly is his daughter, Margaret McCarron McGinnis.  This was some ten years following the death of Margaret’s husband John McGinnis.      

 Margaret McGinnis Transcription 1871 Canadian Census
Chatham division 3, pages 1 & 2, Margaret McGinnis, 50, Patrick, 23, James, 22, John, 20, Arthur, 18, Sarah, 16, Hugh, 13.  Also in same household, McCarron, James, 80, Mary, 40.  Patrick and James are listed as carpenters, John as a school teacher, Arthur as a laborer.  Sarah also has an occupation listed that is unreadable.
     

Margaret McCarron McGinnis

Circa 1890, She left her Father in the Graveyard of St. Michaels

Note: The dark material outlining her head appears to be the back of a chair or something she is sitting on at the time

The second piece of evidence is his record of death and burial in the archives of St. Michael’s parish church in Chatham.  The death date is followed by burial two days later.  His burial in the church cemetery is undisputable however a search of an hour or two in the rain during my last visit to Chatham, in the summer of 2007, even with the help of two friends, we could not locate his grave.  Is it lost to time, I certainly hope not for it needs to discovered and honored in some respectful way.  

As in many old cemeteries the earliest graves tend to lack maintenance over the years as cemetery funding diminishes and family, relatives and descendants die off or leave the area.  This eventuality very well may be the case for the grave of James McCarron leaving the possibility that his grave marker may have been destroyed by the weather alone.  The museum historical records merely record the death and burial information and the actual grave location was not indicated.  The museum directed me to a caretakers office to see if they had the precise location but that facility was not open the day I was there.  The grave location might be found in those separate records maintained by the parish Sexton or others in the church office with access to the actual records.

James McCarron Death and Burial Record

(lower left entry)

Found and photographed at the St. Michael’s Museum and

Historical Center

The 1871 census really adds more questions than facts. Ten years after her husbands death Margaret has then living in her household, other than her children, what appears to be her father and most likely a sister. What are the circumstances that allowed two family members, most likely rather newly arrived from Ireland, to join Margaret and her brood? Who or what provided the funding for this to occur? Another question for another time.

This all leads to another rather basic unanswered question regarding the family survival after the death of John Sr.. Was Margaret and her children left in near poverty or was it actually the opposite of conditions? However, this needs some additional thought for a posting on the subject at a later date. Of course the primary question in this posting is where in St. Michael’s cemetery does James McCarron lie? Someday I hope to find the grave. 

Chicago St. Valentine's Day……… !

From the department of trivia and a small coincidence to note. I found it rather interesting.

A well told story seems to predictably emerge in all sorts of media every year it seems.  The story is told time and again about the Chicago Valentine’s Day Massacre, the result of which began the long and bloody task of purging the local Mafia of the time from the local streets by honest law enforcement agencies.  At least by those honest lawmen that could be found to be loyal during the twenties and thirties.
It happened on St.Valentines day in Chicago, in 1929?

The struggle between the Italian controlled Mafia of the South Side of the city against the Irish controlled Mafia of Chicago’s North Side.

This is a repeat of an e-mail shared with some family last year.  It really sheds no light on our family history but when I recognized the address in Chicago where the incident occurred it just caught my curiosity.  The murders happened some three months before our grandmother Mary Ellen McGinnis died in Stanwood some 40 years after her and her husband left Chicago for Seattle.  I just wonder if she ever realized when hearing of the event in Chicago, did she ever recognize that it happened in her old Chicago neighborhood. 

From: allie
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 3:59 PM
To: Nancy Robbins; Michael Jones; DON & JENNINE
Subject: TRIVIA

Hope all are having a memorable Valentines day............ !

Here is a bit of trivia discovered today......

As happens almost every Valentines day, some TV channel runs something about the Chicago Valentines Day Massacre of 1929 supposedly masterminded by Al Capone.
The program I watched just now on the History Channel gave the address of the infamous garage where the crimes took place..........2122 N. Clark St., Chicago, very near the lake front. That address really sounded familiar.

It seems, according to an 1885 Chicago City directory, James McGinnis Sr. and his new wife Mary Ellen Donahue were living on that very street, but a block south, at 2022 N. Clark St., some 44 years earlier of course. Our ancestors left town in 1889 and one can naturally assume the neighborhood really went downhill after they left. But it remained an Irish part of the city and eventually was under control of the Irish gangs.

An older brother of our Grandmother, Patrick Donahue, ran a grocery store in the neighborhood, in the same 2000 block of Clark St. He died in late 1930. He was still a grocer in Chicago in the 1920 census I believe. Maybe he was still in business in the neighborhood and if he was close to the mob action, he may very well have wished he had left town with his sister. I hope he didn't die of "lead poisoning" administered by some member of the Italian run South side gangs.

Like I said, it is but trivia, the kind that I really get a kick out of.
AJ

http://www.prairieghosts.com/valentine.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Street_(Chicago)

Irish/English Naming Conventions for Children

It seems that tradition was not faithfully followed by our Irish ancestors and relatives.

There was a tradition, supposedly established long ago, for families to follow in naming their offspring.  If followed faithfully, and that is the big question, if and when it was applied, then it would be possible to loosely construct a family tree going farther back than current documented knowledge would allow.

It was interesting to come across this bit of possible family practice with those of Irish and English descent some years back but until now I never really made a study of our ancestry to see if it was applied in our lines.  The answer to that question, is no, not really, at least not using information that we know to be reasonably correct.

Irish Naming Patterns for Children:

The 1st son was usually named after the father's father
  The 2nd son was usually named after the mother's father
   The 3rd son was usually named after the father
    The 4th son was usually named after the father's eldest brother
     The 5th son was usually named after the mother's eldest brother
 

The 1st daughter was usually named after the mother's mother
  The 2nd daughter was usually named after the father's mother
   The 3rd daughter was usually named after the mother
    The 4th daughter was usually named after the mother's eldest sister 
     The 5th daughter  was usually named after the father's eldest sister 

We only have any degree of confidence in those descendants of our Irish beginnings starting with John McGinnis (1811-1861) and Thomas Donahue (1816-1898).  Coming forth into present times a reasonably accurate accounting for all the offspring of these two and their wives, Margaret McCarron and Mary McKeough, has been established and documented by a few of their descendants.  It becomes rather obvious when looking at a current family tree that after two or three generations coming forward from these ancestors that any possibility of descendants following traditional naming practices for children really went by the wayside by the time of our mother’s generation.  Simply stated it appears there was little or no effort made to follow tradition beginning in the early 1900’s when the younger and modern generations began their families.


Beginning with the Donahue line we have a fairly accurate guess at the names of the parents of our Thomas Sr.  For now I have accepted them to be Patrick Donahue and Mary Connelly.  Nothing to date has been found regarding the names of the parents of his wife, Mary McKeough. So in counting all possible descendants for two succeeding generations a reasonably accurate count of 70 possible descendants can be established.  This includes surnames that previously were never known to be related in any way, many of which lived their lives out in Wisconsin, and were never known to our branch of the family.  The children of John Shimunok, Robert Puls and William Scherer are surnames included in my count of seventy for they too are direct descendants.  All three of these men married a Donahue daughter of the first generation on American soil.


To repeat, coming forward but two additional generations, out of those seventy possible names only 37 have reliable documentation of names of great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts in order to clearly see if a naming convention of a child was actually followed.  When looking at the spouses of the progeny of Thomas and Mary, as well as the son and daughter in laws established by marriage, not enough of their ancestors has been found to really determine any naming pattern for those that married into the family.  Thus the list dwindles by at least half to use to study the possibility of tradition being followed at all.


The result is that out of the 37 names where relatives names are known only 6 seem to have followed the supposed actual system of naming children.  That small amount is enough to state that the system of naming really was not followed at all and if it was it very well may have been by accident and not really meant to be following tradition in any way.


The list of possible descendants in the McGinnis line is far fewer.  A known list of 25 names can be established coming forward two generations from John McGinnis and his wife Margaret McCarron.  However the possibility of following tradition increases in this family line.  Using all known ancestors, uncles and aunts of this group, 14, possibly 18, of these descendants may have been named using the old traditional naming patterns.  That is clearly a larger proportion than the Donahue line.


This is only an exercise of no great importance currently, only something that needed looking at to see if more names might be logically assumed, i.e. the given names of the parents and other close relatives of Thomas Donahue and John McGinnis.  If one has a reasonably accurate guess of the given or Christian name of earlier Irish ancestors that never immigrated it could be a definite help if and when anyone is able to establish the home parishes of both these lines in Ireland.  Looking at old records knowing only a surname is a broad brush approach, however, if all the given names were known in these lines going back to perhaps the mid to late 1700’s, then the process of elimination of unlikely ancestors in old records would be much easier.


But the obvious answer to all this is that in our lines it is rather doubtful that the traditional system can be relied on to aid in making educated guesses of the names of unknown ancestors.  The system should be kept in mind though because one should never say never.

An Excellent Video That Summarizes The Irish Potato Famine Experience

Maybe you might want to know a bit more of your Irish background.  If so, I can recommend this video link.

<sup>I have read several accounts of early Irish history regarding the Potato Famine and the treatment of the calamity by the English rule of the time and this video tends to give a very good example in 45 minutes of just what our ancestors may or may not have experienced. However, the general conditions that prevailed throughout the land had to have impact to some degree on the absolute majority of the citizens that were not major landowners, It had to have affected all in some way.  The farmers, the laborers and the shop keepers were all affected certainly.
   
The video  follows a specific family line and the ship disaster they encountered does not apply to us but it is a typical example of what many immigrants did experience. The video really is well done and thru some re-enactment gives a good overall picture in one presentation. I am impressed with it.

The English defeated the Irish some two or three hundred years earlier and that defeat was a disaster for the Irish beyond all current practices of war, at least to the extent that the English introduced. Their eventual total victory gave them the opportunity to actually seize ownership of land and they were merciless. Eventually the Irish became tenants to English landowners on their very own land and this only helped to bring about wide spread poverty with so many of the Irish natives in the years proceeding the 1845 famine only able to lease very small plots of land. These small plots barely provided enough food for a family. Of course this is a worst case scenario but as the film states it may have involved one in three Irish families.

The film presents one families story and just what our ancestors experienced can only be guessed at but due to the millions that immigrated to North America for various reasons, surely some of the same motivations applied to our lines as well. The failure of the potato crops beginning in 1845 seemingly did not affect the McGinnis's since large numbers of the Irish began to immigrate much earlier. The famine was the crowning blow so to speak. Before that due to wide spread poverty, disease, persecution of Catholics and constant contentious English rule there were many reasons to leave long before the major famine period.

If you watch the video keep in mind what is known today of our lines.  John McGinnis, from County Monaghan, and two of his sisters immigrated in the 1830's. One or more of the sisters may have came alone, or with friends and not family.  A list of passengers of one ship, the Britannia, that is available on the internet, lists one Catherine McGinnis as a passenger to St. John’s, New Brunswick in 1834.  On that same ship was a Buchannan family.  The first wife of John McGinnis was Mary Buchannan.  The name of one Margaret Buchannan on the ships manifest is different but close, and the year of immigration for Catherine later listed in the 1851 census as 1836, the same year for her brother, is also different.  I only mention the similarities here as a future reference to be explored in more depth if and when better records ever do surface.  But the similarities are such that makes me really wonder of the accuracy of the later census data for sister Catherine.  The families the sisters eventually married into also immigrated during this same period or just before. For what reasons we do not know but as stated here there were other reasons besides the famine for there were earlier but smaller famine periods.

John McGinnis married Margaret McCarron, his second wife, in about 1846.  Margaret had immigrated in 1843. Her immigration year was closer to the famine period which spread gradually beginning before 1845 and she may have left during the early period of the disaster. We don't know. She did leave a father and a sister behind, perhaps other family members as well, that eventually joined her in Canada sometime between 1860 and 1870. What the McCarron's that were left behind in Ireland eventually experienced may have been related to the major famine but that is but speculation. Since the father and sister did survive in Ireland during the major famine they may have been much better off than the really poor and destitute families. Maybe we will find out some day, at least that is my hope.

As for the Donahue’s, that story comes closer to the major outbreak of the famine years for Thomas Donahue immigrated in 1845, or just before.  This is based on the fact that he joined the U.S. Army in 1845.  The famine did come on gradually so being from Galway he may have been in search of better times.  Again we don’t know.  He did leave a daughter behind that he also brought to the U.S. in the early 1850’s not very long after his marriage to Mary McKeough and his discharge from the army in 1850,  That portion of Ireland where Galway is situated was not considered the most productive land and sometime during early English rule those Irish that wanted were permitted to migrate to this area of the north coast of the island.  This leads me to believe that the Donahue’s may have had hard times through the years and perhaps poverty was a factor that motivated Thomas to seek a better life in North America.  Just when and where Thomas landed on the continent is not known exactly but I have found a record of his possible landing in Boston.  The record needs more thought so I am unable to really state it as fact at this time.  Time will tell perhaps.

The Irish literally scattered to the four winds, to Australia, North America and even South America where small enclaves of Irish descendants can be found in Brazil and Argentina even today just as in Boston or Savannah.

Anyway I do recommend the video for it paints a picture of the Irish diaspora in a brief presentation and is very well done.</sup>