My Trails into the Past

The last post was about John H. Sullivan (1854-1932). His parents were Jerry and Mary Sullivan. I wrote about the proof for my BCG certification portfolio. His death certificate named his father as John Sullivan. However, through researching his brother, Michael J. Sullivan, I found documentation that helped prove Jerry was John’s father. H ere is what I know about Jerry. His birth date is a bit fuzzy, not uncommon for illiterate Irish immigrants. His tombstone gives the date of death of 6 November 1888, with his age of 77 years, which subtracts to 1811. [1] However, his age ranged all over the place in records he created or were created for him during his life in the United States. I’ll create a table showing the birth years at the end of this piece. 1870 Census in Michigan The first record of Jerry found was the 1870 census, where the family was living in Franklin Township in Houghton County, Michigan, along with his proposed wife and four children. He was a miner with personal prop...

Jeremiah Sullivan, born in Ireland about 1811, brought his family to the United States sometime in the 1860s. [1] The first place Jeremiah, his wife, Mary, and four of their sons, including the youngest born in Michigan the year before, is found is in Franklin Township in Houghton County, Michigan in 1870. He was a miner who could not read or write. [2] Michigan produced most of the nation’s copper and the copper mining drew miners from all over the world. [3] In 1870, 57 percent of the residents in Houghton County were foreign-born and over two thousand in Franklin Township came from Ireland. [4] It is likely Jeremiah mined copper in both Ireland and Michigan. On 27 March 1873, he applied for a homestead in Todd County, Minnesota at the land office in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The total acreage was 80 acres. He signed his name with a mark, a small, dark, x. [5] What brought him to Minnesota, a distance of 375 miles from his home in Michigan? How did a man who could not read and w...