Genealogy Jottings

This week I continued the search for information on Cornelius J. Ryan and his father Edmund/Edmond/Edward to see if I could locate a link between them and my second great-grandfather Daniel Ryan (1829-1863).

Edmund Ryan’s family settled in Putnam County, Illinois, next to LaSalle County where Daniel’s son Richard grew up. Richard Ryan knew Cornlius Ryan. It is not a stretch to surmise that they were cousins.

I want more information about Edmund and his family. I had already collected some census records and his FindAGrave page. I did not find a biographical sketch for him in the county history

The Genealogy Trails website for Illinois (https://genealogytrails.com/ill/) has links to several databases for Putnam County. One is a list of all burials in St. Francis Cemetery in Putnam.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at this list. It included a transcription of Edmund’s tombstone saying he was a native of the parish of Nicker in County Limerick. The FindAGrave site fails to mention this birthplace even though the name of the townland is the Holy Grail of Irish genealogy.

Daniel himself provides one other clue for a connection to this place.

He married at Kickapoo in 1851, and serveral Ryans are buried there. They were from Pallasgreen in the same area of Limerick as Edmund Ryan.

Now I need to do three things.

First, I should organize all my Ryan material and distill it into a chart of some kind. This means correlating everything I have on Edmund Ryan with the information on the Kickapoo Ryans.

Second, with this assembled information, I can look for records of the Nicker parish to see if brothers Edmund and Daniel Ryan were baptized there in 1827 and 1829.

Third, if I have a successful search, I should plan a trip to Ireland to look at this place.