I’ve spent a considerable amount of my research time over the past year on my father’s Italian and Sicilian lines, because of the plethora of information available from online archives that I learned about early last year. So my McHugh line has felt a bit ignored, of late, but while perusing Ancestry.com’s ThruLines, I found potential information on another generation back on Irish family, which led to a few more discoveries of the women in Mom’s family.
ThruLines uses DNA connections, sometimes in conjunction with family trees, to identify potential ancestors. Essentially it says that if I am third cousins with Joe via DNA and that we have DNA connections in common, then it can determine what the likely direct connections in trees may be and then identify that we share these certain GG-grandparents. And if Joe’s tree has that common ancestor(s) and mine doesn’t, ThruLines tells me and offers me the option to compare information. It’s not necessarily accurate, because it doesn’t verify the tree research and there are many DNA variables involved, but it’s a good source for leads.
So, recently I followed one of these ThruLine leads, which lead me to Kevin, a fellow researcher not only with roots to the same part of County Leitrim Ireland that I have, but who was actually born there. He had my gg-grandmother, Bessie Flynn (m. McHugh) and her father Thomas Flynn, my ggg-grandfather, in his tree, as well as Thomas’s father, listed as Daniel, my potential ancestor. Unfortunately the tree didn’t list any sources, so I wrote to him asking for his source of the name Daniel. After a few back and forths, he told me that the information is likely correct, but hard to verify, and is based on a few suppositions about people found in same villages (these are small, rural areas) and who is likely related to whom and how.
The truth is that there are few civil or church records available in Ireland before 1850. As you may know, the 1800s in Ireland was full of turmoil (not unlike the centuries before and after) and it’s not surprising that records would be lost. Strangely, Kevin and I were not listed as DNA relatives, but we do share 2nd cousin DNA connections in common. Perhaps we’re distant enough to not match, and our mutual cousin is mid-way between us. In either case, it seems rather likely we share common ancestors.
Kevin referred me to irishgenealogy.ie which has online databases, images of original records and access to request original records found in their online indices. It became a bit of a gold mine.
So recently over a weekend, particularly on Mother’s day, I hunted through the site, looking for Daniel. I didn’t quite find him, and am not confident of my connection to him. He could be a gggg-uncle, or a distant cousin, but it was still a fruitful adventure, where I learned more about the women in Mom’s line.
Sranagarvanagh is a rural area, and the death wasn’t recorded until May 21.
I found a record for Mary Flynn, who lived to the ripe age of 95 in 1898, and died in Sranagarvanagh, as witnessed by her granddaughter, Kate McHugh. Bessie (nee Flynn) and her husband Michael McHugh, lived in Sranagarvanagh, were the only McHugh household in the village in 1901, and had a daughter Catherine. It seems very likely that Mary is Bessie’s mother, Thomas’s wife, and someone I had known nothing about.
I also found the marriage record of Michael and Bessie, from 1876. I had the date already, based on an index record, but this is the actual handwritten register. From it I learned of a new family village – Derrrinwillin! I’ve never heard of the place before, but it’s very close to Sranagarvanagh and Ballinagleragh. I found it interesting that he’s listed as a widower, a farmer and Catholic, and she is simply the spinster farmer’s daughter. Michael had already had a wife and 5 sons before marrying Elizabeth Flynn, and was about 25 or more years her senior.
I then found another record, from a little over a year later of when their first daughter, Honor, was born. I’d come across other records for “Honor McHugh” born March 7, 1877, but had never found records for who I knew (thought) to be Michael and Bessie’s first child, Annie. Every other record I have matched this same one, and it’s been clear to me for many years, that Honor would become known as Annie.
In 1896, Annie would’ve been 22, and living in that same small home on that Sranagarvanagh hillside where she was born, with four younger siblings, her parents, possibly an older half-brother, and possibly her 93-year old maternal grandmother Mary. That was the year she would immigrate to Chicago, following several of her older half-brothers who had immigrated over the past decade.
In Chicago, she’d meet and marry another County Leitrim immigrant, also with the surname McHugh who had come from a nearby village. They’d have three children, John, Mary Elizabeth (perhaps for the grandmothers?), and Katherine. Sadly, Annie would not survive a surgery in 1913, and would never see her own children fully grown.
Three years after Annie’s demise, back home in Ireland on July 26, 1916, her father Michael died at the age 92.
In the summer of 1929, Annie’s little boy had grown up, married and became a father, making Annie a grandmother. That little girl would be named Anna, in her memory.
One final record I found, confirming info I already had an inkling of: Bessie succumbed to bronchitis, in April 1935, and died there, at the Sranagarvanagh home, at the age of 84.
Fast forward to sometime in the mid 90s and then further to 2013. Both my Mom (that little baby Anna) and I, on separate trips, were able to visit the McHugh homestead in Sranagarvanagh. It’s likely it was inhabited by the family as early as the 1830s as part of the leased land, and remained in the family until my grandfather, John McHugh, as the next of kin, inherited it in 1982 – and had it sold.
July 2013, Sranagarvanagh, Co. Leitrim, Ireland
Today I believe the property is owned by an English couple, who use it as their country getaway. Lots of irony in that, which I’ll leave for a political/historical post at another time.