Thursday, January 29, 2015

Catherine Armstrong Leahey (Leahy)

Catherine Armstrong Leahey (Leahy)


The case of the disinherited daughter.... 

I decided for week two to talk about a brick wall that I have been tackling. I choose this for "King week" because this story involves landed gentry.   Let me start by laying out my line from me to my 4x great grandmother Catherine Armstong Leahey. 
  • me
  • my mother 
  • my grandmother
  • my great-grandfather- Joseph Dillon (m. Beatrice Bailey, she is not in the descent line of Catherine, but she is very important to the story) 
  • my great great-grandmother - Catherine Kelly Dillon
  • my great great great-grandmother Johanna Leahey Kelly
  • my 4 x great grandparents  Patrick and Catherine Armstrong Leahey born in County Tipperary Ireland. 
My great grandmother Beatrice Bailey Dillon shared my passion for family history (or rather, I share her passion... she came first) and she worked on both her own side, and her husband's. As a result my grandmother had gobs of family documents and notes from my great-grandma Bea's research... JACK POT. 

Before I got my hands on all of those goodies though, I had been working on my own and through some distant cousins I was given a research document from an ancestry guild in Ireland outlining the Leahey Family. It gave the names of all of Patrick and Catherine's children and when they came over to America and who they married, but it didn't give the names of Patrick and Catherine's parents.

While going through the tub of documents my grandmother gave me I found a typed letter from another set of cousins, it told of their trip to County Tipperary to find the ancestral homelands and how they were told that Catherine and all of her siblings were disinherited by their father, Catherine specifically was disinherited for marrying a Catholic. The father was gentry of some sort, but no title was given and he lived at Farney Castle and he had left the castle to his nephew, for added color they added that Catherine's father died alone.  This was the first time anyone in my family had heard this story (we thought) and we had no idea if it was true.

Then, when going through some handwritten notes, I found a bunch of notes that Catherine Kelly Dillon gave to my great grandma Beatrice about her family tree. These notes were a gold mine with names, dates, marriages, death locations, and stories she had heard from her mother Johanna and other relatives. Included in these stories was this little gem:

"My Grandmother L. was disinherited
she never went to her Father's home
Aunt Ellen told me her father was Lord Armstrong 

I almost fainted when I read this, the Aunt Ellen mentioned in the note is Johanna Leahey Kelly's older sister. I had sort of dismissed the earlier story because it was kind of vague and didn't really include any details. Once I found this I had to get to the bottom of it. Aunt Ellen was about 10 when I think her mother died and 21 when her father died; it seemed to me that she would have some first hand knowledge of her grandparents. 

I searched records in Ireland and when I found this I thought for sure I had found the evidence I needed... 


The Catherine in this baptismal record is the daughter of the William Armstrong who at the time was the heir to the Farney estate, but had leased it over to his brother John.  I thought I had found her!  

However on further review this is unlikely to be my Catherine. According to several editions of "Burke's" including a Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, this Catherine Armstrong married a man named John Bayly, I thought at first that maybe he died and she remarried, we had always thought that my 3x great grandmother Johanna was born when she was in here early 40s, so that could have happened. But it did not, Catherine Armstrong Bayly had a son named Lancelot-Peter around the time Johanna Leahey's older brother Edward was born. Furthermore, there is evidence that Catherine Armstrong Bayley died in 1874, and we believe that our Catherine Armstrong Leahey died in 1855. 

I'm not yet willing to say that our Armstrong family has no ties to the Armstrong Family of Farney Castle. I have personally experienced and seen on all the genealogy TV shows that these family rumors and legends usually have some grain of truth, some basis in fact that may have gotten twisted over time, but is usually not totally wrong. Also, since Aunt Ellen was born in County Tipperary and was old enough to remember her mother before she died, I think she certainly knew there was some family scandal involving the Armstrong landed gentry that lived in her same County. Also, in pouring of what records I've been able to find, all the Armstrongs in Tipperary county seem to be related somehow and are mostly Protestant, it is not a stretch then to think that Catherine marrying a Catholic in the late 1830s would have been a problem for her family. 

I have  three theories as to where the connection may really lie. Perhaps Catherine was a daughter of the William's brother who was leasing Farney Castle at the time my Catherine Armstrong would have been born, This brother was certainly in the family but not the heir.  My other two theories involve going back in the family line further. Perhaps she is a descendant of the original landed Armstrong, but through a son that was not the heir in one of the proceeding generations or perhaps the disinheritance happened further back and it was her "grandfather's" home she didn't go to. 

Hopefully I'll get to the bottom of this. My family and I went to Farney Castle and toured it, at the time we were still convinced that our Catherine was the one in the baptism record above, and touring the Castle had great meaning for us. I hope I can restore our connection to the place for which I now have fond personal memories. 







Thursday, January 8, 2015

Melissa McCleery Richards

Melissa McCleery Richards


Melissa McCleery Richards is not one of my ancestors, she is a collateral relative. More specifically she is my 3rd great grand aunt. She is a member of one of the more colorful families in my family tree, and I have a soft-spot for them. 

Melissa was born in Wabash, Indiana in August, 1861 to William J. and Julia Claspil McCleery (more about each of these folks later I'm sure). Just a few months after she was born, William enlisted in the 47th Indiana Infantry and served for the entirety of the Civil War. 

At some point between the start of the war and 1870, the family moved from Wabash to Bluffton, where her father worked with his brother as a shoemaker. When Melissa was 9 years old, her father was murdered by one of their neighbors in a petty dispute. The trial of William's murderer became a media sensation with all the "leading ladies of the town," in audience each night. This had to be incredibly difficult for the family to bear.  Her mother Julia was left to pick up the pieces and she moved the family to Ft. Wayne, Indiana where Julia and her older daughter Mary got work as domestics. 

A few years later tragedy struck the family again as Melissa's older brother, William Jr. became ill and eventually died, I do not know exactly what killed him in 1873, but I know that in 1872 he was ill with the measles, and this became a source of contention with their old neighbors in Bluffton, Indiana. The mayor of Bluffton sent the notice below to the Ft. Wayne paper, asking the health department to prevent William Jr. from coming to their city, because they had heard he had small pox, Ft. Wayne responded that he did not have small pox, but rather the measles and that he was on the mend. 


William Jr. died 13 months after this exchange appeared in the paper he was 20 years old. 

Melissa and her family had been through quite a lot at this point, the separation of war, the violent death of a parent, and the premature death of a sibling all by the young age of 12. 

In about 1883, Melissa answered an advertisement in the paper from a Virginian gentleman who was looking for a wife. I came across this completely by accident while doing an Ancestry newspaper search for the name McCleery.  The story tells of a two year long courtship by letter, that ended in Mr. Wilbur F. Richards showing up on my 3x great grandmother's doorstep to claim her little sister Melissa's hand in marriage. 


The Fort Wayne Daily Gazette, Thurs, November 19, 1885

But even as Melissa was heading off to make her fresh start with her new husband; it was met with a negative response to the couple in the Ft. Wayne Sentinel, the Cincinnati Telegram, and the Bluffton Chronicle. The Bluffton piece in particular made reference to Melissa's "history." Someone rebutted these stories on Melissa's behalf.

The Fort Wayne Sentinel, Thu, Dec 3, 1885 – Page 1

Fort Wayne Daily Gazette, Fri, Dec 4, 1885, Page 5


This story has always intrigued me. Why did some of the Bluffton citizens have a negative enough opinion of Melissa, or her family to publish these comments in the paper. She was only 9 years old when her father was murdered in the town. I do know that she kept in some contact with her older sister (my 3X great grandmother, Mary) thanks to this news article. 


The Fort Wayne Sentinel, Wed, Jul 30, 1890

Also, among our family pictures are some pictures taken by a Clarksburg, West Virginia photographer. I don't know exactly who these children are, but I think they must be Melissa and Wilbur's children,  as we have no other family in that town. 




I have been attempting to trace Melissa's line, because I am desperate to find other artifacts of the family that may have been given to her and have been passed down. We have a letter written by her father while serving in the Civil War, I'd love to see a picture of him, or get more information about him, and we know nothing of her mother Julia's life before marrying William. I have been wanting to try reverse genealogy and connect with Melissa's descendants, but I haven't been successful yet. 

To Melissa and Wilbur I have found 4 children: 
  • Wilbur (1887- )
  • Evelyn (1888-)
  • Vera (1889- )
  • Sibyl (1891-) 
I have not found if these were the only children, or what happened to Melissa. I have not found a record of her death yet either. I did find a letter her daughter Sybil wrote to my 2nd great grand aunt Sister Rose Beatrice. I was sad to learn that she didn't know much about her heritage, "... you see I have never known anything Mama's people, she never discussed her family."

When I saw the suggested theme was a fresh start, I could have chosen any number of immigrant ancestors, there are many (including William and Julia McCleery) but for some reason, Melissa's story came to my mind and I knew I had to tell the story of Melissa McCleery Richard's fresh start. I hope some down to trace her descendants and reconnect with our long-lost McCleery cousins.








Thursday, January 1, 2015

A place to tell my stories.....


I have decided to convert this old blog from a fledgling genealogy service site to a personal family history blog.... I am terrible at blogging though. I never do that good of a job of keeping up with it. but I have a strong desire to share the stories I've been collected. Hopefully all of these stories will one day end up in a family history book, but until then, I hope this will help me start organizing some of these stories and give me a head start on my future book plans.


To kickstart this off in a big way... I'm taking up a Genealogy Challenge, called 52 Ancestors 52 Weeks. I am not really expecting that I'll be perfectly on top of this. Several weeks might come out at once... and I'm not ready for this week yet as I just decided to do this... hmmm... 15 minutes ago.... nevertheless here we go.


The Amy Johnson Crow, No Story Too Small has issued this challenge and is providing her readers/participants with optional weekly themes. January's themes are:

Week 1, Fresh start —An ancestor that had a fresh start or an ancestor that has been so confusing to research that you’d like to have a fresh start?

Week 2, King — January 8 is Elvis’ birthday. January 15 is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Do either of these “Kings” remind you of an ancestor? OR, do you have a connection to royalty? OR Did you ancestor flee from an oppressive king?


Week 3, Tough woman — Who is a tough, strong woman in your family tree? Or what woman has been tough to research?


Week 4, Closest to your birthday — Which ancestor has the birthday closest to yours?


Week 5, Plowing through — . What ancestor had a lot of struggles to plow through?


I'm going to have to give this some major thought about who I'd like to start with to kick this all off. Stay tuned...