Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Your 16 Great-Great-Grands

It is time again for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – thanks to Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings. Somehow by the time Saturday night rolls around, I’m much too tired to assemble one of these — but they’re just as much fun on Sunday afternoon, when I have more brain cells available.

1) List your 16 great-great-grandparents in pedigree chart order. List their birth and death years and places.

2) Figure out the dominant ethnicity or nationality of each of them.

3) Calculate your ancestral ethnicity or nationality by adding them up for the 16 – 6.25% for each (obviously, this is approximate).

4) If you don’t know all 16 of your great-great-grandparents, then do it for the last full generation you have.

5) Write your own blog post, or make a comment on Facebook or in this post.

Well, I’m missing 3 of my 16 great-great-grandparents still, but it’s safe to assume they’re all Puerto Rican, so without more ado–

16. Eloy Diaz y Gotay (8) was born at Penuelas, Puerto Rico, USA. He married Edwigés Yrigoyen y Márquez de Diaz (441).

17. Edwigés Yrigoyen y Márquez de Diaz (441) was born circa 1869 at Puerto Rico, USA.

18. [Belen’s husband, surnamed Silva, is unknown as yet, but most likely Puerto Rican.]

19. Belen Fernandez (498) was born circa 1870 at Puerto Rico, USA. She married Silva (953).

[20 and 21 are missing but can be safely assumed to be Puerto Rican.]

22. Marcelino Gonzalez (1003) was born at Naguabo, Puerto Rico. He married Petrona Valentin y Roman (1004) at Puerto Rico. He died before 15 Apr 1910 at Naguabo, Puerto Rico.

23. Petrona Valentin y Roman (1004) was born circa 1860 at Puerto Rico.

24. Lott J Tierney (635) was born on 15 Aug 1833 at Clare, Ireland. He married Margaret Connell (496) on 27 Nov 1860 at St. Mary’s Church, Lowell, Middlesex, Massachusetts, USA. He died on 9 Apr 1915 at Dayton, Montgomery, Ohio, USA, at age 81.

25. Margaret Connell (496) was born on 1 Aug 1835 at Tipperary, Ireland. She died on 6 Dec 1918 at 1526 Richard, Dayton, Montgomery, Ohio, USA, at age 83.

26. John Kelly (684) was born on 24 Nov 1840 at Tipperary, Ireland. He married Johanna Leahey (75) circa 1865. He died on 16 Feb 1905 at North Union St, Union City, Randolph, Indiana, USA, at age 64.

27. Johanna Leahey (75) was born in 1848 at Tipperary, Ireland. She died on 9 Aug 1894 near Union City, Indiana [but I don’t know which side of the Ohio-Indiana state line].

28. John Kohl (693) was born in Aug 1840 at Hesse Darmstadt, Germany. He married Gertrude Berg (580) circa 1867 at Germany. He died on 5 Jan 1903 at 320 W North St, Springfield, Clark, Ohio, USA, at age 62.

29. Gertrude Berg (580) was born in Feb 1843 at Hesse Darmstadt, Germany. She died on 14 Apr 1908 at Springfield, Clark, Ohio, USA, at age 65.

30. Philip John Weyrich (812) was born on 17 Feb 1844 at Hesse Darmstadt, Germany. He married Mary Engel (397) on 20 Dec 1870 at Dayton, Montgomery, Ohio, USA. He died on 10 Jan 1906 at Dayton, Montgomery, Ohio, USA, at age 61.

31. Mary Engel (397) was born on 15 Jul 1851 at Dayton, Montgomery, Ohio, USA. She died on 1 Dec 1919 at 1232 Xenia Ave, Dayton, Montgomery, Ohio, USA, at age 68.

…. for a grand total of 50% Puerto Rican (16-23), 25% Irish (24-27), and 25% German (28-31). Which I could have told you before doing this exercise, but as Randy points out, it’s nice to have your tree published so searchers can turn it up.

The numbers in parens in the list are each individual’s ID in my TMG database.

My Brickwall Ancestor: John KELLY, (1840-1905) – Madness Monday

Per Miriam’s splendid suggestion, I’m going to attempt a writeup of one of my current challenges in family history. (I’m not overly fond of the phrase “brick wall”.) As a novice genealogist, however, I am modifying Miriam’s instructions, in that I am perfectly glad to be told “you should check database thus-and-so.” I don’t expect anyone to do my work for me. 🙂

What I Want to Know:

John KELLY’s parents, and the date and location of his marriage to Johannah LEAHEY.

Known Timeline:

Searches Done:

Phyllis Crick of the Garst Museum in Greenville, OH kindly sent me their surname files on KELLY. She found an 1865 naturalization for a John KELLY, but in Darke County. A check of KELLY naturalizations in Miami County in this time period only turned up a Samuel KELLY. She also sent me the will and letters testamentary for John KELLY, the purchase and sale records for his farm in Darke County, and copies from extraction books of the Union City newspapers.

Ancestry.com search (exact) for KELLY/KELLEY in Brown, Miami, OH in the 1800s in census and voting records shows three groups of KELLYs: a John born in Ireland which I believe is my subject, a group born in Delaware (includes a John and a Samuel), and a group born in New Jersey.

A Footnote.com search for John KELLY between 1845-1880 in Ohio turns up four Civil War pension file index cards. I dismiss two because they are for widows (we know my John outlived his wife). The other two are for invalid pensions. It seems like an unlikely lead (see my Theories, below), but if someone tells me I should check it out, you should also tell me how. 🙂

Searched http://dcoweb.org and http://randolph.dcoweb.org for KELLY and KELLEY. Found an obit for Thomas Francis KELLY, John’s son. Found a 1902 directory for Union City, IN which lists on Rural Route 5 “Kelley John — Thos, Ed, Maggie, Mary, Robt., Jose, Celia”.

Unchecked Possible Resources:

  • Request Indiana death certificate (in process).
  • Query St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Union City, IN for records.
  • Research extant Catholic churches in Brown Twp, Miami OH during the period he was there, and query them for KELLY records.

Suspicions and Theories:

I have two theories for why his eldest daughter was born in Canada, when all her younger siblings were born in Ohio or Indiana. First: he was ducking the Civil War by skipping north over the border. Second, that he went back to Ireland to marry his wife (I don’t know where the marriage was, or when, except that Johannah first appears as his wife in the 1870 census, and their oldest child was born in 1865) and returned with her through Canada, taking enough time at it that Catherine was born north of the border. Speculation on these lines very much welcome!

My mother (b. 1946) reports being taken, a couple times, to reunions for ARMSTRONG-KELLY-CULLEN-LEAHEY. Of note is that she remembers the older attendees lamenting that the younger generation didn’t have much interest in the reunions, as they didn’t know their cousins. This made me very excited when I determined that Johannah LEAHEY KELLY’s mother was Catherine ARMSTRONG. It also makes me think of chain migration. I have ample evidence that these LEAHEYs originated in Tipperary, which makes me trust the information from Catherine KELLY DILLON’s 1920 census the more.

Tombstone Tuesday: Johanna LEAHEY KELLY (1848 – 1894)

Johanna Leahey Kelly's grave marker

Kelly, Johanna grave marker, St Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Union City, Randolph, Indiana, USA; photograph by Suzanne Stamper-Youmans, 23 Apr 2008. Digital copy privately held by Jean Marie Diaz, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE], Linden, California. 2009.

Johanna LEAHEY KELLY is my second great-grandmother, another of the ancestors I didn’t know I had before I started this project. I have a photograph of her ten surviving children, but none of her. Not yet, anyway. Scanfest ahoy!

I particularly appreciate how these posts make me review my use of the evidence. For example, until I looked hard at this image, I had Johanna’s birth date as ‘c. 1849’. Oops!

Tombstone Tuesday: Margaret Theresa KELLY TIERNEY (1872-1911)


Tierney, Margaret grave marker, St Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Union City, Randolph, Indiana, USA; photograph by Suzanne Stamper-Youmans, 23 Apr 2008. Digital copy privately held by Jean Marie Diaz, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE], Linden, California. 2009.

This photo resulted from my first encounter with the website Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness. The amazing Suzanne Stamper-Youmans looked up obits and took photographs, which gave me not only the death date for great-grandmother Margaret Theresa KELLY TIERNEY, but the link to her mother’s LEAHEY family.

Thanks again, Suzanne!

I had known the family story that my grandfather had been adopted as a small child because his mother had died, but I hadn’t been clear on the relationships involved. The evidence came together bit by bit, but now we know that Margaret married William James TIERNEY in Apr 1908, and my grandfather was born in Dec 1908. Margaret died of TB (“from a bad cow,” my mother theorizes) 11 Sep 1911, but not before she had arranged for her son to be cared for by Will’s sister Nellie TIERNEY MCKINNEY and her husband Herbert Vincent MCKINNEY, who eventually adopted him. The formal adoption played a big part in a family tussle over the estate of another of Will and Nellie’s siblings, but that’s another story that hasn’t been properly researched yet…