Genealogy Jottings

Archive for September, 2021

Daniel Ryan (1829-1863) is proving to be a difficult ancestor to trace. Most information I have collected about him indicates that he lived in various counties in Illinois. But there was a Daniel Ryan the same age who lived in Clinton County, New York. Many online trees have the IL and NY information compiled into a single profile.

Were they the same man? As I gather more information, I find that I doubt it.

I know this about my ancestor:

1. He was born in Ireland in 1828 or 1829.
2. He married Jane Lawless in Peoria, IL in 1851.
3. He had a son Richard born in 1852.
4. Jane died in 1853, and Daniel married Bridget Murphy in Springfield, IL in 1854.
5. He had a son James born in 1855.
6. He enlisted in the Union Army in Illinois in 1861.
7. As a soldier, he died from disease at New Orleans in 1863.
8. His widow Bridget collected a Civil War widow’s pension.

I have collected only a little information so far on the Daniel Ryan who lived in New York:

1. In 1850 he lived with his parents in Au Sable, Clinton County, NY and worked in the coaling industry.
2. In 1860 he was still living in New York, working as a miner, with a wife Margaret.

Merging these two men, as so many online trees have done, strains my credibility:

1. Daniel would have needed to travel from Au Sable (near the Vermont/Canada border in NY) to Springfield and back more than once between 1850 and 1860. During this period, he would have married three times.
2. My Daniel Ryan’s widow Bridget was married to him from 1854 until his death in 1863. She lived in Illinois. Unless he was a bigamist, the same man could not have been married to Margaret and living in New York in 1860.

So why is everyone pulling all this information into the life story of one man? I think I know. I have not found my Daniel Ryan on either the 1850 or the 1860 U. S. census. It would be easy to assume the New York man is him because that is the only record that emerges in a census search for Daniel Ryan in those years. But the facts do not support this conclusion.

The evidence seems to be pointing to separate identities for the Daniel Ryan who lived in Illinois and the one who lived in New York.

Genealogists keep an ancestor’s age in mind when looking for records. A standard question is whether a man was eligible to have served in one of our nation’s wars. If so, did he apply for a pension?

Pension application files can be rich sources of genealogical information. People wanted those pensions. They provided every document they could to strengthen their case. The government saved it all.

I had never been lucky enough to find one of these for any of my family members, until now. Last week I located an application filed by Bridget Ryan, widow of my second great-grandfather Daniel Ryan (1829-1863).

Daniel enlisted for a three-year term of service in the Union Army from Illinois in 1861. He died in Louisiana two years later from disease.

The Fold 3 subscription database has digitized copies of Civil War pension applications, and I was able to find Bridget’s. It is 76 pages long, due to some controversy.

The packet is chock-full of interesting documents:

1. Certificates for Daniel’s marriages to each of his two wives.
2. Catholic priest affidavits attesting to the baptisms of Daniel’s sons with each of the wives.
3. Verification of Daniel’s military service from the U. S. Adjutant General office.
4. Verification of Daniel’s death from the U. S. Surgeon General office.
5. Guardianship information for the first son.
6. Paperwork from the first son contesting the right of the widow and second son to receive a pension.
7. Place of residence for the widow and the first son.

It would have taken a long time to collect these documents individually. Finding all of them in one convenient place saved me a lot of time.

Daniel suffered an untimely death during the Civil War. He left behind a tangled family life. The pension application based on his service gave this descendant a means to begin unraveling it.

Except for my Brick Wall ancestors, I thought I had completed all the U. S. census work on my family. Then I read an article by Kathy Petlewski, MSLS, in the NGS Magazine and found that I had overlooked something in the 1840 U.S. census.

This was the last census that listed only heads of household by name. Everyone else was represented with just a tick mark. Yet, unbeknownst to me until now, this census record had a second page. In 1840 the federal government collected information about veterans, military pensioners, and their dependents.

It listed the name of anyone in the household who was receiving a pension regardless of whether that person was the head of household or not. How did I miss this? Was any military information recorded for my family?

Some of my paternal ancestors lived in the United States in 1840, so I decided to take a look at these third and fourth great-grandparents:

1. Thomas Reed (1783-1852) lived at Ashmore, Illinois. No pensioners resided in this household. Thomas’ son Caleb (1818-1903), my ancestor, lived with him in 1840 and was represented by a tick mark.
2. John Carter (1790-1841) also lived at Ashmore. He was not a veteran, either.
3. Rhoda Hall Dunbar (1784-1850) was a widow in Stow, Ohio by 1840. Her husband and my ancestor Benjamin E. Dunbar was a veteran of the War of 1812 but had died in 1831. His militia service lasted only 3 days, and Rhoda was not receiving a widow’s pension.
4. Gershom Hall (1760-1844) was Rhoda’s father and a Revolutionary War veteran living in Harwich, Massachusetts. He was not receiving a pension.

I have been unable to locate some of my Brick Wall ancestors on the 1840 U.S. census:

1. Daniel Sherman (abt. 1800-bef. 1870). He resided mostly in Kentucky, but two of his children, Eliza (b. abt. 1838) and Thomas (my ancestor b. 1841) were reportedly born somewhere in Ohio. The only Daniel Sherman family I have found on the 1840 census for Ohio does not perfectly match my Sherman family. No one there was receiving a pension.
2. John Davis Riddle (1821-1896). He may have been living in Ohio in 1840, but I have not found a census record for him. Perhaps he was still a tick mark. I do not know the names of his parents nor whether they were living in 1840.

My dad’s remaining ancestral families, the Ryans and Stilgenbauers, arrived in the United States after 1840. My mother’s Scandinavian family did not immigrate until the 20^th century. No use looking for any of them on the 1840 census.

I thought I was on to something when I learned about page 2 of the 1840 census records. Unfortunately, no one in my family made the list.

During the pandemic we have needed to do most of our genealogical research from home. When online databases contain the records we need, all goes well. When those records are digitized but locked and inaccessible from a home computer, things do not go so well.

Family Search has many agreements whereby a researcher can look at a record only from a computer at a Family History Center. Yet these Centers have been closed for months.

I experienced the problem again when I needed the marriage record for Richard Ryan and Catherine Shea who were married in Illinois in 1879. Family Search has abstracted the record, but the image of the record was locked. Every genealogist knows it is better to look at the image of a record than an abstract of it.

I wondered whether to write to the county for this record when I remembered hearing that Family Search has instituted a free lookup service for those records we cannot view from home. I decided to try it.

Using an online request form (https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/library-lookup-service-fhl/), I filled in as many of the fields as I could. One line asked for the image number, but how would I know that when I cannot search the Illinois marriage images? I left that line blank. For all the other fields, I provided as much information as I could to make sure the researcher could zero in on the correct record.

Once I submitted the form, I received a message saying I would receive a reply within two weeks.

Imagine my surprise when I opened my e-mail the next morning. There was a message from Family Search with the requested record attached. Not just the marriage record, but also the marriage license and an affidavit confirming the parties’ eligibility to be married. I also received the researcher’s notes. That’s what I call service.

I am delighted that Family Search has come up with a way for us to gain access to a closed record. The marriage return in this case contained the signatures of Richard Ryan and Catherine Shea.

Now I can compare Richard’s signature found here to the one on his homestead application to make sure I have the right man. No abstract of a record would allow me to do this.

Until the Family History Centers fully reopen, we are fortunate that Family Search is offering this outstanding service.