Genealogy and the fluidity of surnames

 

                                                             The building at 82 Wentworth Street as viewed in 2019

When searching for family links, researchers rely heavily on surnames. But are surnames as reliable as we think? I ran into something the other day that made me question that.

I signed up for Diahan Southard's Your DNA Guide Study Group and this week we had our first class. We did a more in-depth dive into Ancestry's ThruLines than I've ever done. Not that that's saying much. I hadn't done more that get my toes wet with that tool before.

ThruLines uses DNA plus family trees to bring up likely scenarios for how you connect to your DNA matches. That's a good argument for why I should expand my family tree. But when I clicked on my great-grandmother, Charlotte Arment, I noticed something. I'd only added the children of her second husband to my tree. I say husband but I've never found a marriage between Charlotte Arment and Henry Cavanagh. That's probably because they never wed as she was still married to her first husband, John James Petherick, who was still living. Divorce was not an easy option in those days.

The problem was that I hadn't entered Charlotte's marriage to John James Petherick or her child from that relationship, William James Petherick, on my family tree. Without the Petherick information, some interesting DNA matches came up in ThruLines. Without the first marriage entered, William James Petherick/Cavanagh was my possible match, Charlotte's first child with the addition of her second husband's surname.

A check of the 1881 census shows that the conflation of the two surnames was easily done. At 82 Wentworth Street in Whitechapel, Henry Cavanah was listed as head of household, Charlotte as his wife and William, at the age of 16, as son. Henry and Charlotte's other children, Charlotte, Ellen, Nat and Jane followed as did Henry's mother-in-law, Ellen Armond.

By 1891 the family at 82 Wentworth Street had expanded into different units in the building. The census showed Charlotte's sister, Mary A Wright, with her children in the first unit. In the next unit were Henry and Charlotte Cavanagh and their offspring. Next door there appeared to be an unrelated couple, William McArthur and his wife Mary R. Living in the unit next to that couple, was W. James Petherick (our William James, son of Charlotte who was now Henry's wife). W. James Petherick was a widower of 26, living with his daughter Alice, aged 7 and his sister, Jane, aged 11. Was his sister, Jane, looking after his daughter? It was interesting to see all of these relatives living close together, an illustration of close East End family ties.

I was left with a favourable impression of Henry Cavanagh's character especially with what I know about the later history of the family. William James probably thought of him as his father, in deed if not in fact. The problem was that ThruLines brings together genetics with family trees and some of my possible matches through William J Petherick carry the surname Cavanagh and have for generations. As any matches on William J's line would be half relationships to me the amount of centimorgans would be different than that of a full relationship which a researcher might look for given the common surname of Cavanagh. Not only that, the ease with which one surname changed to another makes me wonder if it happened anywhere else in my family tree, perhaps on the Cavanagh family line which showed a propensity to mess about with surnames. 

Sources:

Ancestry.ca DNA ThruLines

Find My Past 1881 census for London, St Mary Whitechapel

LDS film 6095389 1891 census for London, St Mary Whitechapel

Adding depth to an ancestral story

 

                                                                                    Back lane in a Dorset village 

I've finally started adding collateral relatives to my Ancestry family tree and new information has already come to light. One ancestor who fascinated me ever since I realized her last child was born out of wedlock is Mary Rideout née Maidment, my 2 x great grandmother.

Mary Maidment married Thomas Rideout in Ashmore, Dorset on the 25th of April 1833. Their son George was baptized on December 1st of the same year. Maybe he was a premature baby or had they anticipated their marriage? The couple went on to have two more children, Harriet in 1836 and Charles in 1839. The 1841 census showed the family living in Green Lane with Thomas working as an Ag Lab. Also living with them were Harriet Maidment aged 20 and Henry Maidment 1 month old. That Harriet looked to be Mary's younger sister. Mary's age was given as 30. Interestingly, Thomas was listed as being 25. The ages of adults on the 1841 census are noted for being rounded up.

Thomas's age on the census might have been accurate, at least according to his death record. He died the following year, 1842, on March 26. His age was given as 26. Such a young age to die. What must it have been like for Mary left to pick up the pieces with young children to take care of? Her oldest, George, would have been 8 by then, her youngest, Charles, 3.

I felt bad for Mary all these years later but, until I started inputting the children I didn't realize the extent of the devastation Thomas's death would have brought. I knew from the 1851 census there were two more children. But because of the oddity of John's birth three years after Mary's husband's death, I hadn't really clocked the birth of Silvia born the same year that Thomas died.

A search for Silvia's baptism turned up nothing so I turned to Find My Past to see if I could find a listing for a General Registry Office birth record. A possible entry was for that of a female with the last name Rideout for the district of Shaftsbury, which was the district where the other registrations for this family were made. The birth was registered in the third quarter of the year, so July, August or September. That would have been a scant few months after Thomas's death. It makes sense that things like baptisms and naming the baby went by the wayside for a while.

When someone young like Thomas dies, initial thoughts might be that the cause was accidental. Not in his case. He was felled by typhus, a disease spread by lice. So, while not contagious per se, infected lice can spread it. The disease caused its victims to become listless, dim-witted, feverish and foul smelling. Thomas would have been unable to support his family for a time before he finally succumbed. Which meant that Mary, pregnant with young children to care for, would have had to find a way to keep the family going. It's a hard story which makes me wonder if I can find out more.

Sources:

Dobson, Mary Disease: The Extraordinary Stories Behind History’s Deadliest Killers Quercus, London, 2007

General Register Office death certificate for Thomas Ashmore

LDS film 1279479 Bishops Transcripts for Ashmore 1732-1879

LDS film 241341 1841 census for Ashmore, Dorset

Rounding of ages on the 1841 census https://durhamrecordsonline.com/updates/2010/09/added-explanation-of-1841-census-age-rounding/

More research clues for criminal links

                                                                  A ship in Portsmouth Harbour

I have a lot of books in my own personal library. Many of them are reads that I tell myself I'm going to get to someday. That works okay for fiction most of the time. Although sometimes I lose interest in the writer or the subject before I take the book off the shelf. It's the nonfiction that I really should get to. Not that most of it will go out of style. The problem is that I tend to buy books about subjects that interest me, like histories of places where my ancestors lived or events that many have affected their lives. But, every once in a while, I take one of those nonfiction tomes off the shelf and I'm blown away about the information that I find.

Often I need a good reason to delve into one of those books. As a member of LibraryThing that reason often comes from the need to meet a challenge posted on one of the group member threads. Recently, the challenge was to read a book about an empire. One about a business empire wouldn't do. It had to be about a geographic empire. I found an intriguing title on my shelves, Condemned: The Transported Men, Women and Children Who Built Britain's Empire by Graham Seal.

I had a special reason to buy this book, as one of my London based families fell afoul of the law back in the 1840s. My 3 x great grandfather, Thomas Arment, and his son Thomas were sentenced to be transported, a punishment that was gone into in detail in the book. I covered the story of my criminal ancestors in a series of posts https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2018/08/ . Those posts began in August of 2018. I found out quite a bit about the two Thomases before I wrote about them. Now that I've read the book about transportation I have more questions. 

One question should be easy to answer. On page 171 of the book, the author wrote about young prisoners up to the age of 22 transported from Pentonville and Millbank prisons who were treated differently once they arrived in Australia. I'm wondering if the younger Thomas would have qualified as that's where he ended up. A bit of digging in the records I have on hand should answer that query.

As for the older Thomas, he was held on a hulk in Portsmouth Harbour. Until I read the book, I was not aware that prisoners on the hulks were used as forced labour. In many cases, they were forced to build infrastructure in the various places that those old unseaworthy ships were parked. I wonder if his labour was used for any construction at Portsmouth Harbour. I was not aware of that possibility when I visited there. I'll have to look into that further.

It was interesting to find more clues by reading a book already in my possession. Perhaps I should read a few more of the tomes on my shelves. You never know what I might find. 

Sources:

LibraryThing http://librarything.com

Seal, Graham Condemned: The Transported Men, Women and Children who Built Britain’s Empire, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2021

DNA update

 

In January, I wrote about my plan to figure out my connection with the DNA match who contacted me. During our initial email correspondence she indicated which grandfather on her tree we linked through. Narrowing by location back further in the line that contained that grandfather, at her 3 x great grandparent level the maternal side came from Dorset and the paternal half of the couple came from Ireland. Not knowing where the Irish part of my own family came from, we chose to concentrate on the possibilities in Dorset. There was a problem with Dorset, however. When it came down to the town and village level there were no location matches between our trees. Our people seem to have lived on opposite sides of the county. My plan was to expand my Dorset family tree to include collateral lines; a lot of work since both of my parents had links to the county. The task seemed daunting. It's a task I haven't begun yet.

I really wanted to narrow down the search before I began. Helpfully, Ancestry has tagged the shared DNA I have with my match and her mother to the paternal side of my tree. That means I only need to deal with half of my Dorset links but it adds another wrinkle. The paternal side of my tree is my Cavanagh side, the one that I know must link to Ireland. Apparently my match's 3 x great grandfather came from County Carlow, a finding that added extra interest to the Irish presentations I've seen lately. It seems likely that my Cavanaghs might also have come from that area of Ireland.

Still looking for a short cut, I saw that the match I was investigating had also recently joined my match list on FTDNA. Perhaps using the tools on this site would provide a break through. I knew there were various ways to look at matches on the FTDNA site but wasn't clear how to go about it. That's when I found a blog post about sorting tricks on FTDNA https://whoareyoumadeof.com/blog/ftdna-family-finder-matches-cool-sorting-tricks/  . I eventually found where the matches "in common with" button had been hidden when the FTDNA website was revamped and checked through the matches I had in common with my target match looking for those with family trees. I check out the ones that I was able to access but still found no familiar names but it's a cool tool to use. It would have been even cooler if it had worked for my problem. It seems there are no short cuts. It's time to get serious about sorting and labeling my DNA and family links. Also probably past time to start adding those collateral ancestors to my family tree. 

The search for my Irish connection, part 3

 

                                                         The green of Ireland - this was in the vicinity of Trim Castle

Last week, I wrote about how attending an Irish talk at my family history society's online seminar gave me visual proof that there were Cavanaghs in Carlow. That was a fact that agreed with my feeling that my Irish origins were in the south of Ireland. It was also a thrill to see the correct spelling of my family name of Cavanagh up there on my screen. I've since checked out the Down Survey of Ireland, a listing of land owners taken in the mid-1600s. My search found lots of Cavanaghs listed especially when I took it down to the parish level. Lots of possibilities are good in one way but they will also make it difficult to pinpoint a specific family.

It looks too, like it's more than County Carlow that was awash in potential Cavanagh ancestors. At another presentation, this one put on by BIHFSGO, Shirley Monkhouse gave a talk entitled There was a shot; after that everything's confusing. With a title like that, how could I not attend? Besides, at the beginning of the meeting she gave another talk, one about DNA. I'm always interested in information on that subject. Her second presentation, the one about the shot, turned out to be about an incident that happened in a village in Ireland. In present day, the place is called Bunclody. Back at the time of the incident it was known by the name of Newtownbarry. No matter what it was called, the place was right next door to County Carlow.

In fact, the name Bunclody was familiar to me. A few years ago, I signed up to attend a meeting of Clann Chaomhánach to be held there. Unfortunately, the meet up was cancelled as were so many in-person events at that time. While looking into the event, I wondered why on earth it would be held in a place called Bunclody. Well, in Ms. Monkhouse's presentation, I found out that the land around Bunclody was acknowledged to belong to the Clann Chaomhánach. Looks like my search area just got wider.

If you're wondering about the presentation with the intriguing name, the event that took place in Newtownbarry was called 'The Battle of the Pound'. It took place on June 18, 1831 and was one of the conflicts in the Tithe Wars which affected Ireland during the 1820's and '30s. That sounds interesting because, where there was a conflict, there were often records left behind.

Sources:

BIFHSGO – British Isles Family History Society of Ottawa –  https://www.bifhsgo.ca

Clann Chaomhánach https://www.clann-chaomhanach.com/

The Down Survey of Ireland https://downsurvey.tchpc.tcd.ie/

The search for my Irish connection, part 2

 

                                                         A view of Dublin taken from the other side of the River Liffy

Some Irish surnames are more likely to come from particular parts of the country than others. Surname maps can give pointers as to where Irish roots come from. There are other names that defy placement and one of them happens to be Cavanagh, the one I'm looking for.

Not that Cavanagh is the only spelling of the name. The original Gaelic name, Caomhánach, has been anglicised in many ways and can often be found starting with a "K" rather than a "C". In fact, once when my father was signing in at a hotel in Dublin he was taken to task for the spelling of his name. When signing in with the surname Cavanagh, he was informed that his spelling was wrong. That the name was correctly spelt with a "K" as in Kavanagh (or perhaps Kavanaugh, he didn't mention the "u" controversy as part of the tale.)

That story cast doubts on my hunch that my family roots came from the area around Dublin. The English records I'd found for the family consistently spelled the name with a "C". There were variations, of course, Cavanagh, Cavanaugh and sometimes even Cavanah. But if the common spelling in the vicinity of Dublin was Kavanagh, maybe I was on the wrong track. So I let the search stall.

Sometimes though, nuggets of information show up unexpectedly. I'm a member of the BCGS (British Columbia Genealogy Society) and they had seminars planned for the spring. (Around Vancouver, spring is usually considered to start in February.) I debated whether to attend the one about Ireland. The speakers were from the Ulster Historical Foundation and I wasn't really interested in Northern Ireland. What could they possibly tell me that would help my personal research? I signed up anyway.

The sessions were informative and covered all of Ireland. So that was good. But it became more than good when Fintan Mullan shared an example slide from The Down Survey on the screen. The landowner featured was a Cavanagh spelt the right way! Moreover, the survey itself was taken in the mid-1600s and the example shown was in Carlow, a county to the south of Dublin. This looked promising. Now to figure out how to track down any possible links to my family. 

Sources:

BCGS  https://www.bcgs.ca/

Clann Chaomhánach https://www.clann-chaomhanach.com/

The Down Survey of Ireland https://downsurvey.tchpc.tcd.ie/

The search for my Irish connection, part 1

 

In the 1891 census my Cavanagh family was enumerated at 82 Wentworth Street, Spitalfields, London. This photo was taken in 2019 and shows the building at that address in that year.

I probably have more than one Irish line in my ancestry but the main one is particularly problematic. Irish genealogical research has a reputation for being difficult as so many records were lost in the Four Courts fire in 1922. The main advice I've seen for doing Irish research, is to know the location your ancestors came from before you start researching in Ireland. The usual suggestion is to look for clues in records at the place to which the family immigrated. I saw that advice work out well when researching a Hickey family whose immigrant progenitor ended up in Halifax in the 1830s. Those Nova Scotia records showed his origins in Kilkenny. That information made taking the search back to Ireland easy. I don't think I'll have the same luck with my main Irish line.

The problem with my Irish family is that I caught the earliest glimpse of them in East London, a place where sheer numbers and endless mobility combine to create a huge morass of information almost impossible to wade through. At least, that's how it seemed when my search started way back in the pre-internet past. The hunt has become easier as records moved online. The advent of indexed databases made exploration of the records even better but, search as I might, there was still no joy.

Why do I think this vexing family line originated in Ireland? After all, I started this search before DNA evidence weighed in to show ethnicity. With a surname like Cavanagh, how could the family be anything but Irish?

Immigration history from Ireland leans heavily on the numbers of refugees from the great famine years in the 1840s. But the records I've uncovered predate that Irish exodus. I've traced the family back to the London birth of Benjamin Cavanagh in 1816. His parents' names were Benjamin and Matilda. Because of the early date that the first Cavanagh in this family line left Ireland the search becomes more difficult.

As the Cavanaghs ended up in London, rather than Liverpool, I surmised that they originated in the southern part of Ireland rather than Ulster; a case of sound reasoning or mere prejudice on my part? I've never been drawn to Northern Ireland. A county south of Dublin seemed more likely to me, perhaps Wexford? Silly really because they were Protestants. Still Google informs me that there are a minority of Protestants in Southern Ireland, mainly Presbyterians and Anglicans. My Cavanaghs were in the Anglican camp. Maybe I'm on the right track after all?