End of the Line: Stuck at Irish & Polish Research

I had worked on my Hork research first, finding great German Catholic church records in Westphalia that took me back several generations. I thought, cool, Catholic church records really are great. I learned full names, birth and baptism dates, and parents' and sponsors' names.

Then it was time to move to my Irish families in County Cork and County Tipperary, and German families who lived in Posen, an area of Poland. They were Catholics, too, so I was looking forward to seeing the same kind of records with lots of information. Not!

Irish Research
Jeremiah Sullivan and Mary Sheehan brought their family to the United States sometime in the mid-sixties depending on who reported their arrival.[1] A ship list has not been found for them. It is possible that the family did not come together. They had nine known children, born between 1843 and 1869, the last child, Michael, was born in Michigan. Jeremiah was a miner and perhaps the family managed to live through the potato famine without much loss, except there are a couple of larger gaps between children where there may have been a childhood death or two.

A distant cousin and I hired a local researcher in County Cork to research this family.[2] The parish church book where they may have married is missing. He found the baptism of the first two children, Mary and Julia Sullivan, which suggested the marriage was likely in the same parish.[3] He also found the baptism of the sixth child, Jeremiah, and the eighth child, Peter. But nothing about the middle children, suggesting the miner likely moved from mine to mine to find work. I have not been able to locate the baptisms of any of the other children. None of the records made in the U.S. have pointed to any other family in Ireland. Sullivan and Sheehan are very common surnames in County Cork.

Polish Research
Another distant cousin of mine paid for research on the Sievert family who were from Schneidemühl, which was in present-day Posen.[4] He was able to locate the parents of Vincent Sievert and his siblings, John, Eva, and Henrietta. This researcher was a descendant of John, so there was no mention of Vincent’s wife, Susanna Raduntz’s parents. This is the end of the line for me. Susanna’s sister, Wilhelmine, also immigrated to the U.S. and settled near Susanna. I should do more research on her to see if there is a clue to her parentage. She married Joseph Hartung in Joliet and the church records would give her parents’ names, however, the marriage records for St. John the Baptist Church only have marriages from 1857 to April and no other later marriages until 1860. These early marriages were written in prose style and not in the register form as later marriages were, which included the names of the groom and bride’s parents.

Conclusion
Maybe someday when we have more records digitized and the ability to “every-word” search, I might find something to help me get back further.

 

#52Ancestors-Week 31: End of the Line

This is my seventh year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/) at Generations Cafe.

I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

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[1] Jeremiah’s obit in 1888 said he came 27 years ago (1861). Daughter, Mary’s obit said she was 12 when she came (1859). Eugene indicated in 1900 he came in 1864. John indicated it was 1866 on 1900 census and October 1865 on his intent to naturalize. Son Jerry gave 1865, however, he would have been 4 years old.

[2] This was Riobard O’Dwyer, who wrote books about the Beara Peninsula.

[3] The parish was Eyeries in the townland of Cahirkeem.

[4] It’s unfortunate, but the cousin can’t find the paperwork of this research, so I don’t know the researchers name nor where he conducted the research.

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