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This week I continued trying to find a connection to the Ryan family. Richard Ryan (abt. 1851-1925) lived near my Riddle family in Hayes County, Nebraska during the 1890’s. He signed my great-grandmother Laura Riddle’s homestead affidavit in 1892 and bought her land in 1902 when she left the area.\n<\/p>\n
My grandmother was born on that homestead during that time in 1896. She never knew her father. I am trying to identify him using DNA clusters. The man I seek may have been a Ryan because everyone in one of my dad’s DNA clusters has distant Ryan ancestors. Was the neighbor Richard Ryan related to my grandmother?\n<\/p>\n
I began this week by looking up the Ryan surname to see if its distribution in Ireland would give me any clues. To my dismay, I found it is among the 10 most common Irish surnames, and Ryans today live all over Ireland.\n<\/p>\n
Research on the Ryan family will not be easy.\n<\/p>\n
Undaunted, I jumped in and tried to find out more about these Ryan neighbors.\n<\/p>\n
The household in 1900 included a father, Richard Ryan, and daughters Jennie Ryan Cable Geispert (1880-1961) and Mary Ryan (abt.1883-?).\n<\/p>\n
I quickly lost Mary’s trail in subsequent years. I think she returned to her parents’ home state of Illinois to teach school. If she has descendants, I have not found them yet.\n<\/p>\n
Jennie remained in Nebraska, and her family was easier to trace. I identified surnames for her descendants but did not find any of those names on our match lists at the DNA testing companies I have used\u201423andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, My Heritage. Does this mean we do not match, or does it mean that none of Jennie’s family ever took a DNA test? No way to know.\n<\/p>\n
With no luck tracing descendants, I looked next for Richard Ryan’s ancestors.\n<\/p>\n
His mother was Jane Lawless (abt. 1829-abt. 1853). She immigrated from Ireland to Illinois with her family in May, 1849. She married and died young, when her only child Richard Ryan was just a boy. Richard had no siblings for me to trace.\n<\/p>\n
Richard’s father was Daniel Ryan (abt. 1829-1863). He served in the Civil War and contracted a fatal disease while posted in New Orleans. He is buried in a military cemetery in Louisiana.\n<\/p>\n
I have found nothing about Daniel Ryan’s ancestry. Again, the stumbling block is that all-too-common Ryan surname.\n<\/p>\n
So where does that leave me? Our DNA matches have Ryan ancestors. My family lived near and interacted with a man named Richard Ryan. It is tempting to assume my grandmother’s father was a Ryan. But so far, nothing is linking up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week I continued trying to find a connection to the Ryan family. Richard Ryan (abt. 1851-1925) lived near my Riddle family in Hayes County, Nebraska during the 1890’s. He signed my great-grandmother Laura Riddle’s homestead affidavit in 1892 and bought her land in 1902 when she left the area. My grandmother was born on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogyjottings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogyjottings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogyjottings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogyjottings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogyjottings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/genealogyjottings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2022,"href":"https:\/\/genealogyjottings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021\/revisions\/2022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogyjottings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogyjottings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogyjottings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}