Verifying What is Written in Stone Part XI - Richard Barry

 

Here we are at the eleventh and final part in this series where I have been verifying the information on the Coughlin headstone at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, NY.

The final death recorded on this headstone was Richard Barry, the second youngest son of William Barry and Winifred Coughlin. The headstone only has Richard's years of birth and death, but I was able to find documentation and/or clues to both full dates.

An entry in the NYC municipal births index for a male Barry child, with parents of the right names and a date of birth of January 14, 1880 matched not only the year on the headstone, but also Richard's entry in the Baptism register at Immaculate Conception church in Manhattan where he was baptized on February 15, 1880. Although my genealogy budget will not allow for the purchase of all of the certificates for Donald's collateral ancestors, I do plan to get this one. I am curious to see what the original says. Richard's year of birth on the marriage index is also a match to the headstone.

I have found a few clues for documents that may verify Richard's date of death, but I'll have to keep digging for something better. For now, it appears that he died on 15 July 1969 and he was living at what was then a bungalow in the Bay Park neighborhood of East Rockaway on Long Island.

While Richard's is the last burial recorded on this stone, we know of at least one more. Anna Barry, Annie and Richard's only child, is also buried in this plot. Anna or Cousin Anne as I have always heard her called, never married and lived in that home in East Rockaway until her death and then left it to the family member who helped her through her last days, Donald's mother.

Unfortunately, the original structure was severely damaged after taking about four feet of water during Superstorm Sandy. Luckily, the family was able to rebuild and a new home, raised about four feet, sits on the site today.

Although this is my last post in this series I do plan another post or two to share some of the resources that I found useful in this research and what I plan to do next in researching Donald's family.

Verifying What is Written in Stone - Annie Barry - Updated

 

This is part ten of verifying the information on the Coughlin headstone in Calvary Cemetery. William Barry and Winifred Coughlin were my partner Donald's 2nd-great-grandparents.

This is a rewrite of a post that I published yesterday and took down a couple of hours ago because I missed something glaringly obvious in my analysis and decided it was best to start from scratch.

Annie Barry, as her name appears on the headstone, was the wife of Donald's great grand uncle, Richard Barry. Annie was born in New York City to German immigrants August Miller (Muller, Müller, Mueller) and Elizabeth Fleck (Flecke, Fleek, Flege, Fleger,) sometime before 1880. This does not match the date on the headstone for which there is other documentation, but since Annie appears on the 1880 census, she could not have been born on December 10, 1882. This is the obvious bit that I missed for over a week, probably because I was already leaning toward an earlier birth year and because the 1880 census was not among the first documents that I found, but still, wow!

So far, I have not discovered a civil birth record for Annie and it does not appear that a record of her baptism in the Lutheran church is available online. Her first appearance in found records is that 1880 census where her age is listed as 6. The next record I have found is the 1900 census which says she was born in December of 1876 and she is 24. The math here is actually incorrect, she would have been 23 on her last birthday, which is the information requested. In the 1905 New York State census, Annie is 28. These three census records are, so far, the only documents that I have found for Annie between her birth and her marriage.

The next time that Annie is found in available records is when she marries Richard in 1906. The entry in Catholic church marriage records does not capture age or date of birth, but the civil record does and that is the first time Annie is recorded as being much younger, her age is listed as 23 and her birth year (possibly implied) is 1883. Three years later, Annie converts to Catholicism and appears in a baptismal register where her date of birth is recorded as December 10, 1882. Annie appears in six more available United States and New York State censuses before her death in 1956, and they all line up with her "new" date of birth.

Before the implication of the 1880 census dawned on me this morning, I compared all of the birth, marriage and death records for Annie's family members to the census records and found that the birth information in those census records was very consistent with the vital records.

So, why this discrepancy? Why did Annie live her entire married life as a "younger" person? I doubt very much that it was simply vanity. I don't think that nine siblings and two parents carry this secret for you for that. I think that Annie and her family were trying to keep her marriageable. In a city packed with young, single women and with at least one younger sister marrying before her, Annie needed to present herself as younger than her actual age. Even today, many people tie a woman's entire worth to her ability to marry and have a family. There must have been even more pressure in the early 1900s, so if the world wants you to be young, you give the world what it wants.

As for verifying Annie's date of death as recorded on the headstone, I haven't been able to do so with online research at this point. It looks like Ancestry may have something, but that will have to wait until I rotate my memberships again and I will update you when I do.

Verifying What is Written in Stone Part IX - Winifred Coughlin

Part nine of this series to verify the information on this headstone brings us to Winifred Coughlin Barry, Donald's 2nd great-grandmother.

In other posts, I have demonstrated the relationships between Winifred and her children, husband and siblings, but there was one piece of evidence of the relationship between Winifred and Ann that I left out, something I found before I started this series. Winifred appears in four censuses after the death of her husband; two state and two Federal. In 1910 she is living with her son Richard, who is single. After his marriage, in the 1915 NY census, Winifred is living with her widowed sister, Ann Tucker. The only things left to verify are her date of death and her age.

There is an entry for Winifred Barry in the death index for New York City and the date of death matches the headstone; September 23, 1928. I'm still looking for a death notice or obituary but I do have another lead or clue. Winifred had a will. Because she died less than 100 years ago, the images are not online and I will have to investigate further to see if family can obtain a copy now, but the index card in the collection on FamilySearch does have a matching date of death.

This 100-year rule may also present an issue in obtaining a burial record, but first I will have to figure out where to go for that. Although Immaculate Conception, the church where Winifred and William were married, where they baptized some of their children and where William's funeral was held is in Manhattan, part of the Archdiocese of New York, and has baptism and marriage records on Find My Past, burial records are still held by each church. At the time of the 1925 New York State census, Winifred and her son Richard and his family lived in the outer borough of Queens. Catholic churches in Queens belong to the Archdiocese of Brooklyn and are not part of any current Find My Past projects. I learned that this weekend watching Jen Baldwin's session at the New York Family History Conference and was a little crushed, I must admit, since a big branch of Donald's paternal side settled in the Corona neighborhood of Queens.

What about Winifred's age, can I verify that she was 91 when she died? The index entry for her death certificate doesn't provide the name of an informant, but I do know that this person did not provide Winifred's mother's name and did not provide her father's name correctly, calling their knowledge of Winifred's early life into question.

Some other sources we could use to verify Winifred's birth and therefore her age, are either unavailable or will take more time to uncover. The baptismal records from Winifred's home parish in Ireland are incomplete and the baptismal entries from March 1836 to May 1840 are lost. If Winifred was 91 at the time of her death, her baptism would most likely have fallen in that time period.

So far, I have not found Winifred on passenger lists or in the 1870 census, although I believe she came to America in the late 1860s.

• In 1880, her age is recorded as 37 (1843)
• In 1900, she is recorded as being born February of 1837
• In 1905, her age is recorded as 66 (1838)
• In 1910, her age is recorded as 73 (1837)
• In 1915, her age is recorded as 78 (1837)
• In 1920, her age is recorded as 83 (1837)
• In 1925, her age is recorded as 88 (1837)

It certainly appears that Winifred believed she was born in 1837 and that does match the gap in the baptismal registers of her home parish in Ireland. I feel pretty comfortable that Winifred was born in 1837 and was therefore 91 when she died, but unless I can uncover something further about her birth when I do more research in Irish records, we won't ever know "for sure."

Verifying What is Written in Stone Part VIII - Ann Coughlin

 

This is part eight of verifying the information on this headstone and brings us to Ann Tucker, née Coughlin.

Ann was the younger sister of Winifred Coughlin, Donald's 2nd great-grandmother. The stone provides us with her dates of birth and death and elsewhere on the it also says that she was the sister of John Coughlin and the beloved wife of John Tucker.

Ann/Annie/Anna was baptized in the parish of Clontuskert, County Galway, Ireland. I posted about finding those records here. Ann was baptized on June 6, 1842 at four days old according to the original register and the transcription that was done later by a parish priest, which matches the information on the headstone. The parental match also tells us that Ann had the same parents as John, although we don't actually have proof of her relationship with Winifred through the registers, since the entries surrounding Winifred's purported date of birth are missing.

Ann's relationship to her husband is still unverified, but I will keep searching civil and religious records. A 1900 census entry where Ann Tucker and John Tucker are living with a niece with the last name of Coughlin does give me some documentation of marriage and a clue, saying they have been married for 20 years.

An entry in the death index for New York City matches the date of death on the stone, May 7th, 1916. As Ann was predeceased by her husband, I am guessing that Winifred was the informant on her death certificate. Whoever it was provided the names of Ann's parents, and that is also a match to her baptismal record and to her siblings' records. The indexed entry does not provide any details of Ann's marital status or give us a spouse's name.

Although I have not yet found an obituary or death notice for Ann, I did find this interesting item in a paper seven months after her death.

The date and the names of related beneficiaries make it clear that this is our Ann Coughlin. The amount of Ann's estate surprised me, to say the least. According to an inflation calculator, the estate would be worth over $600, 000 today and she left Winifred the equivalent of $90,000! There must be more to uncover there.

For now, though, I feel that the information on this headstone for Ann/Annie/Anna Coughlin is likely correct, but there is still so much to discover!

Verifying What is Written in Stone VII - John Barry

 

This is part seven of verifying the information on this headstone from Donald's family. The next death chronologically is John Barry.

John Barry, although not stated on the stone, was the son of William and Winifred, their eldest child together, born a year after their marriage. Although John lived to adulthood and had possibly been married (his death index entry says he was a widower but I have not yet verified a marriage), his death in 1914 means that poor Winifred buried three of her five children before she died in 1928.

Find My Past has a baptismal record for a John William Barry with a birth date that matches the stone exactly and FamilySearch has a death index entry for a John James Barry with a death date that matches the stone exactly. Both of these documents include the names of John's parents, and John William is the name the enumerator recorded in the 1880 US Census, but importantly, I don't yet know who the informant was for John's death certificate. In any case, I'm mostly comfortable with those documents being a match to this John Barry.

Of course, things may change with further research, but I believe that in this case, the information on the stone for John Barry is correct.

The New York State Family History Conference at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society is over and Donald's surgery was postponed until December, so I should be able to post regularly again. This week I'm also hoping to get my Feedly set up again and read the latest issue of The Record from the NYG&B.

Verifying What is Written in Stone Part VI - John Tucker

This is part six of verifying the information on the Coughlin headstone at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, NY.

John Tucker was the husband of Ann Coughlin whose sister, Winifred, was Donald's 2nd great-grandmother. John's marriage to Ann is really the only information to verify, not even his dates of birth or death or his age, are included on the headstone. Even John's burial in this plot can only be confirmed with expensive interment records.

So far, the only proof I have found of Ann and John's marriage is a 1900 census record. I'm as certain as I can be that I have the right Tuckers because the address matches other records, like John's death record, and there is a niece with the last name of Coughlin living with them. The enumerator recorded that John and Ann had been married 20 years, but so far that hasn't helped me find any further records of their marriage; nothing in the newspapers I have searched so far, nothing in civil records and nothing in church records. I'm sure that as more church records come online from the Archdiocese of New York, I will eventually be able to find a marriage record. 

This is all I've discovered about John so far. His death record does state that he was a plumber and that he had lived in the United States and New York City for about 50 years at the time of his death in 1907. But, as always, my search will continue.

My posting may be a bit sporadic over the next week, Donald is having disc surgery today and I'm trying to watch as many sessions from the New York State Family History Conference as possible before access ends on October 18.

Verifying What is Written in Stone V - William Barry (abt. 1832-1902)

 

Part five of my series where I try to verify the information on this headstone from Donald's family brings us to his 2nd great-grandfather, William Barry.

The headstone provides us with William's date of death, age at death and tells us that he was a veteran of the Civil War, but this information has been much harder to verify than anything up to this point.

The New York City municipal deaths index contains a record for William and the date of death matches the headstone. This entry also says in the notes that William lived in the United States and NYC for 43 years and gave us the name of one more ancestor, William's father, Patrick.

Was William 50-years-old when he died? In order to verify William's age, I need a date of birth, but William was born in Ireland and one of the first things I learned about Irish research is that without a hometown or parish, it will likely be very difficult to get that information from parish records. We also don't have a mother's name, or that of any siblings, to help narrow the search or verify any finds.

Verifying William's Civil War service isn't going to be easy either. I'm going to have to spend some time educating myself in this area, and this week I was catching up on recorded lectures from the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa's conference, since access ends soon.

Of course, I didn't write this post just to tell you about what I haven't found. Yesterday, hoping to find an obituary or death notice for William that might have some of the information that I need, I found something wild about his funeral from the New York Tribune.

James E. North, a veteran who was in William's funeral procession, collapsed as they reached the church and died soon after in an undertaker's across the street.

It's a terrible story and something that I can imagine would have been traumatic for all involved, but it does give us information we might not have otherwise. It documents the funeral and verifies the date as well as the church where the services took place and it tells us that William was likely a Civil War veteran. This is the kind of find that makes newspapers my favorite source of genealogical information.

My research on William will continue and I will keep getting an education while I verify the varied information on this headstone. Next, I'll be posting about John Tucker, husband of Ann Coughlin.

Verifying What is Written in Stone IV - John Coughlin

 

Part four of this series verifying the information on the Coughlin headstone brings us to John Coughlin, brother of Donald's 2nd great-grandmother, Winifred. This turned out to be a much longer process than I had imagined, but if you're new to Catholic parish registers in Ireland, this may be helpful to you.

According to the stone, it was erected by Winifred and her sister Ann in memory of John. When he died in 1884, Winifred had already buried two children in this plot and Ann had buried a son. Of course, records from the cemetery would likely tell us more, but they are expensive as I mentioned in a previous post, and not in my genealogy budget at this time.

Finding a record of John's date of death was fairly simple. He is listed in the municipal death records index for New York City and the date there matches the headstone, so would appear to be correct. But this record also gave us something very exciting; the names of his parents, Edward Coughlin and Bridget Kelly. I felt like Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Finding Your Roots, introducing Donald and his family to his 3rd great-grandparents. It never gets old!

To verify John's age and home parish in Ireland, we moved into a whole new record set, Catholic parish registers in Ireland on Find My Past. Like a kid in a candy shop, I still get excited when I can "try" something new, so I dug right in. In my excitement, though, I breezed past something very important; learning about the records first, so it wasn't long before I had to come to an abrupt stop and do just that.

It turns out that what I was actually looking at on Find My Past was a transcription of the original entries. After some poking around, I found the same images on the National Library of Ireland's (NLI) website where they also had digitized microfilm of the original book, which led to even more questions, of course, but honestly, the whole thing was so absorbing and interesting, I didn't mind at all. I learned so much from this research.

Above is the registry page* from the transcription, with John's information on the last row of my screen clip. As you may have noticed the record is in Latin, as are most of these records. The FamilySearch Wiki was a great help here in translating the column headers, especially where the end of the page was cut off or out of focus. A discrepancy with the father's name is what made me stop to learn more about these records, especially once I realized I was looking at a transcription and not the original register.

Back on the Find My Past website, in their transcription of John's transcripted record, there was a link to the NLI website and there I found the original book and drew a sigh of relief, because guessing about the accuracy of a transcription is not my favorite use of genealogy time.

Here is John's entry from the original register and it is easy to see why I am grateful that a transcription, done by a parish priest familiar with these records, exists. There is some information I would not have been able to understand or guess at without it.

Here is my best guess at a straight transcription of this record:

13th Natus A 17th [Baptizmus] Joannes Coghlin filius Edmundi et Bridiga Kelly [Conjunxti] Patrini Michalis Et Maria Concannon.'

My best guess at the English is: 

Born on 13 April Baptized on the 17th (May is implied from the top of the page) John Coghlin son of Edmund and Bridget Kelly, joined together in marriage. Sponsors Michael and Mary Concannon. 

I put the words Baptizmus and Conjunxti in brackets because they are abbreviated in the record, but I'm not at all sure what that abbreviation is. I learned the meaning of conjunxti from the NLI's Getting Started Guide, a PDF which you can download. Without the transcription by someone familiar with these entries, I would never have guessed that the A after Natus, stood for April. The only thing I'm not sure about is where the transcriber came up with the Coghlin/Coughlin's village of residence, but that is for another day.

The last thing I needed to clear up was the discrepancy with John's father's name. In all four records that I found that appear to be for this family, the father's name is Edmundus, rather than Eduardus. The names are close and I wondered if the Latin translation was the issue, but I decided to put it to the hive mind of Facebook again and asked the question in The Genealogy Squad. What I came away with is that Edward and Edmund were basically interchangeable. I also came away with a great new resource, which you can download from Internet Archive, a book called, Varieties and synonymes of surnames and Christian names in Ireland : for the guidance of registration officers and the public in searching the indexes of births, deaths, and marriages. Which you can find at this link.

So, how accurate was our headstone here? I'm going to give the engraver a pass on this one and say it was the information he was given that was incorrect and not his mistake. John's death record records his age and approximate year of birth. To me that means the informant was asked his age and not the year he was born. If the informant gave his age as 50 for the death certificate, then they probably gave that information to the engraver as well. We'll never know for sure, but it seems logical.

Unlike his niece and nephews, John lived well into adulthood, so there is much more to research and uncover. But for now, I believe that we have John's likely dates of birth and death, his age at death and his home parish in Ireland and that is all the information on the stone.

Next up is Donald's 2nd great-grandfather, William Barry.

*If I have interpreted the Terms of Use at the National Library of Ireland correctly, I am using these images from their records according to those terms. A link to their website is here, and the terms of use are available as a pdf for download.

The Honor Roll Project - Wantagh, NY

 As part of Heather Wilkinson Rojo's Honor Roll Project, I have transcribed these Rolls of Honor in Wantagh, NY to make the names visible to search engines so that family researchers can find them. Please consider finding the Honor Roll(s) in your town or village and transcribing them on your blog or website. Some rolls are long and some are short but there's no deadline, you can take as long as you need to transcribe an honor roll.  I've learned so much about local history through this project and when someone finds the name of an ancestor in one of my posts they are grateful and excited! And even if you don't have a blog or website, you can ask me or another participating blogger. I would be happy to create a post to share your photos and transcription!

This roll of honor was found in Triangle Park in Wantagh, NY, just across from the Long Island Rail Road station.

I could not find any sign or plaque that gave any details about the names found here. The only plaque was this one which tells who contributed to the dedication of the park.

Their country found them ready:

Leroy T. Wells

J. Lawrence Ward

James W. Magee

Lyman Dean

George B. Box

Frank H. Britton

Walter F. Husted

George Siems

John W.E. Bodley

Edwin R. Wendler

John Box

Ralph Haven

Joseph K. Hunt

Michael Colangione

George A. Seaman

J. Erwin Fussell

Paul Lang

Joseph Foster

Otto Helwig

★Bergen R. Seaman

W. Harold Van Tuyl

Lewis E. Ashdown

Russell V. Box

W. Everett Jeffrey

Rudolph Krause

William Nohejl

Grover C.D. Siems

Dunham Norton

Conrad Rogg

Russell Jones

Clarence L. Jackson

Frank A. Link

Corodon Norton, Jr.

Joseph I. Smith

George Soper

Lester B. Weibel

J. Edward Hunt

August Fuhrer

I would think that the star next to Bergen R. Seaman's name indicates that he was killed in action, as it does on other rolls of honor.

Verifying What is Written in Stone III - William Barry (1883-1884)

 

This is part three of my series to see if the information on this headstone can be verified by the records.

The third burial in this plot was William Barry (1883-1884). William was the son of William Barry (abt. 1833-1902) and Winifred Coughlin, and the brother of Mary Ann from Part I. The headstone says that William died on August 24, 1884 at the age of 1 year, 4 months.

William's birth is recorded in the baptismal register from Immaculate Conception church as March 4, 1883, just three days before he was baptized. This is the only birth record I have found for William.  Searches of the NYC birth records have come up empty using so many search combinations, I thought I would fill a notebook. In fact, I have only found certificate information for two of William and Winifred's five children.

A municipal death record does exist, but lists William's date of death as July 24, 1880; one month off from the headstone. A parish burial record may exist, but as of now, according to the website for the Archdiocese of New York Archives and Records Management, burial and cemetery records are still maintained by the individual parishes or cemeteries. I take this to mean that they are not part of the records being digitized by Find My Past, at least not for now.

So, by these accounts, William's death date and age are slightly off on the headstone. At some point I will order at least some of the birth records for Donald's indirect ancestors and contact individual parishes for assistance with burial records, but I would like to have as complete a list as possible of all the records I am seeking before I make contact.

In the meantime, it appears that the information on the stone is slightly off again. Just another reminder that written in stone only makes the information permanent, not correct!

Verifying What is Written in Stone II - Edward (Eddie) Tucker

This is part two of verifying the information on this fabulous headstone from Donald's family. Chronologically, the second burial in this plot, as recorded on the stone is Edward (Eddie) Tucker, the son of John Tucker and Annie Coughlin.

Eddie's death date is recorded on the stone as July 25, 1882 and says also that he was 5 months, 7 days old. The death index entry found on FamilySearch (certificate to be ordered in the future) matches, it says that Eddie died on July 25th and was buried at Calvary Cemetery the following day.

Using the date calculator linked on FamilySearch, because calculations done in my head are not reliable, tells us that Edward would have been born on February 18, 1882 if he were 5 months and 7 days old at the time of his death. Unfortunately, the baptismal record found in Find My Past's catholic church records collection, does not match. The entry in the register says that he was baptized on March 22, 1882 and born on March 18th. Four days old seems a bit early to me for a baptism, but that could be my own experience clouding my judgement. Most of my families waited about three months, but they lived completely different lives. It is also possible that Eddie was sick from birth, motivating his parents to have him baptized as quickly as possible.

So which is correct? At this time I cannot say. Searches of multiple sites did not produce a civil birth record. and even this record was produced close to the event, it could still be wrong. I will add this to the list of things to keep checking for periodically, but for a baby who died in New York City in 1882, we do have a lot of information that we would not have been able to find not that long ago. It isn't vital to know if Eddie was 5 or 4 months old when he passed, just that he was obviously loved and missed and that he will be remembered here, buried with his parents and other family.

Verifying What is Written in Stone I - Mary Ann Barry

I mentioned in my last post that I am trying to verify the information found in this headstone from Donald's family.  I decided to go in chronological order of deaths and the first death on this stone is that of Mary Ann Barry, the daughter of William Barry and Winifred Coughlin, Donald's 2nd great-grandparents. Mary Ann's death is recorded on the stone as March 24, 1880 and her age as 4 years and 2 months.

I started with the 1880 census because I knew I had it and Mary Ann is listed there with her family. It took me a while, but I eventually realized that if the information on the stone were correct, she should not be listed. The 1880 census should only have captured people who were alive as of June 1, 1880.

The stone says it was erected in memory of John Coughlin, Mary Ann's uncle, by Winifred and her sister Ann which should mean it was done in 1884, well after Mary Ann's death as recorded on the stone, not immediately after her burial. We also know that there are other errors on the stone, such as the spelling of Winifred's name, so the information here is just not that reliable. It was time to dive into vital and church records.

New York City research is notorious for its challenges, but I have found records and index entries before with less information, so I was pretty shocked that I came up empty time and time again. I searched FamilySearch for births and deaths using broad date ranges and different combinations of known information, as well as Find My Past for baptisms and Ancestry for basically anything where I repeated those searches. I even looked page by page through the baptismal register from the church where a sibling was baptized. Still nothing. 

I considered contacting Calvary Cemetery for a list of interments, but the fees were prohibitive. I will probably do this at some point, but not right now.

Finally, I decided to turn to the New York City Genealogy Facebook group, not so much to have other people research, but to ask for suggestions for other places to look. Well, shortly after I posted there, I took my car in for an inspection and tires and by the time I got home, a few members had left some suggestions and one had found her baptism (they knew I have a FMP subscription) and her entry in the death records index. Amazing and humbling! I'll have to work on my search parameters, clearly.

According to her baptismal record (in Latin!), Mary Ann was born on December 23, 1876 and baptized as Anna Maria on January 7, 1877. The death index entry says that Marry (sic) Barry died on 14 Mar 1881 and was buried the following day at Calvary Cemetery. The spelling of her first name was incorrect and no parents were listed but there was an address and it was a match.

So how accurate was Mary's information on the headstone? She was about 4 years and 2 months old when she died, but it was not in 1880 nor on March 24th. I feel pretty confident in the records I have found, but I do hope that some day I can back up the church records with civil records and vice-versa.

The next burial, according to the headstone was Mary Ann's cousin, Eddie Tucker. It will be interesting to see if his details will be confirmed or corrected by the records.