Genealogy Jottings

My newly discovered Irish ancestors liked to name all their women Margaret.

This week I began trying to pick apart the threads of several of them:

1. My second great-grandmother Jane Lawless had a stepmother named Margaret (Mrs. Thomas) Lawless. The baptisms for this Margaret’s children give her maiden name as Margaret Lawless, same as her married name.
2. Jane also had a sister named Margaret Lawless, and they were stepdaughters of the above-named Margaret Lawless.
3. When the Lawless family settled in Peoria, Illinois, they joined two other Lawless families there. Both had wives named Margaret—Mrs. James Lawless and another Mrs. Thomas Lawless.

We have, then, four women named Margaret Lawless. Two of them had a maiden name of Lawless. Three of them had a married name of Lawless. Two of them had husbands named Thomas Lawless.

I believe I have the profiles of each of these four Margaret Lawlesses distinguished from each other—The stepmother, Jane’s sister, and the neighbor ladies.

A problem arises when I try to apply pieces of evidence to the correct woman, particularly the stepmother and the sister of my Jane:

1. Ship passenger list for the USS Home, New York arrival on 1 May 1849. My Lawless family included only one woman named Margaret. She was 50 years old. If she was Jane’s stepmother, where was the older sister Margaret? The youngest child in the group, Michael, was just two. Was a 50-year-old his mother?
2. Thomas Lawless household, U. S. census, 1850, Peoria County, Illinois. This record again includes only one Margaret. This woman was 25 years old, likely Thomas’ daughter and Jane’s sister. The household also includes an infant, John. Where was the 2^nd wife Margaret? Was she a 51-year-old mother of this baby?
3. St. Patrick’s Cemetery marker, Kickapoo, Peoria County, Illinois for Margaret Lawless (1809-1853). The marker states she was the wife of Thomas Lawless. This woman was too old to be the wife of the neighbor Thomas Lawless, so was she Jane’s stepmother, the wife of my Thomas Lawless? She was 10 years younger than the ship passenger Margaret Lawless, but much older than the Margaret Lawless named on the 1850 census.

Right now I cannot reconcile these pieces of information. The stepmother and stepdaughter will remain mysterious until I can locate more documentation on the lives of all the Peoria women named Margaret Lawless.