John Coughlin's Will & Probate Record

 

After giving myself a month of Ancestry to examine some of the documentation there for ancestors on Donald's Barry lines, I followed a hint to the Surrogate's Court record of the John Coughlin of the Coughlin headstone series.

You may remember that verifying the information for John lead me to Irish Catholic parish records and the discovery of two potential siblings who appear to have stayed in Ireland.

John's first bequest gives some additional documentation of one of those siblings. When I was searching the parish records for the Coughlin family, there was a baptismal entry for a Patrick with same name parents as John and Ann. John has given us further evidence of this relationship.

"First, after my lawful debts are paid, I give and bequeath unto my brother Patrick Coughlin residing at County Galway, Ireland the sum of Five hundred Dollars."

Next, John gives us something new to search for, if this type of record from the Emigrant Savings Bank survives.

"Second - I give and bequeath to my nephew-John Barry my Gold Watch, but I direct the same by [sic] placed by my Executor hereinafter named in the Emigrant Savings Bank for safe keeping until he arrives at the age of 21 years, when the same shall be delivered to him"

John's third bequest gives us more information about the Coughlin headstone. The headstone says that it was erected by John's sisters Ann Tucker and Winifred Barry, so I had pictured a scenario where the sisters had pooled their money to erect the stone after John's death, but his will tells us what actually happened. 

"Third. - I direct that the sum of one thousand dollars be applied by my Executrices towards my funeral expenses & this item is also to cover the expense of a tombstone, Requiem Mass, and other Masses to be said for the repose of my soul after my death & I most earnestly request that my Executrices will obey my wishes in that respect"

One thousand dollars then would be worth about $28,000 today.

When I was researching John for the headstone series, I noted that I wasn't finding anything documenting a wife or children. From the lack of mention of any children in the will, I strongly suspect that he didn't have any, and now we have this new wrinkle.

"Fourth.-My wife Ann Coughlin having deserted me for the last six years without any cause on my part I ignore her in this my Will & leave her nothing, & it is my wish that  receive no part of my Estate"

Mysterious and sad. When my research focus returns to John, I will have to see what, if anything, I can discover about Ann and their marriage. I will also be following up on the mention of a Mary Coughlin as next of kin in the Surrogate's court portion of this record. It is possible that Mary is another sibling who joined John, Winifred and Ann and some of their nieces and nephews here in the states but that remains to be seen.

Stir Up Sunday

I grew up in the Episcopal Church, a member church of the Anglican Communion. In fact, until I was about six, my father was an Episcopal priest.

Today is the Sunday before Advent and the collect for the day in the Anglican Book of Common prayer begins something like "Stir up, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people". Today is also the day that many Anglicans make their Christmas puddings, or, like our family did back when, their fruit cakes. Add these things together and you get Stir-Up Sunday.

Unfortunately, I have not continued this tradition, not being a fan of fruit cake, but I do have some photos of my and my mother stirring up the batter back in the late 70s.

Let the Christmas traditions begin!

Tombstone Tuesday - Barry/Bannon/Fitzsimmons at Calvary

Photographed by me in 2019.

Although I was able to resist renewing my Ancestry membership while I was researching the Coughlin headstone, I broke down about a week ago and have already connected to some interesting documentation. This plot, also at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, has been at the center of the most interesting so far.

After concluding the Coughlin headstone series, I went back to more traditional research on Donald's Barry lines, starting with his maternal grandparents, William Francis (Buster) Bannon and Catherine Winifred Barry and Catherine's parents, Edward Barry and Mary Fitzsimmons. While I was reviewing Ancestry hints, new and old, I saw that I had, years ago, accepted a hint from FindAGrave. I was confused, though, because the headstone photo I saw when I followed the link was not the same headstone that I photographed in the summer of 2019. I almost rejected the hint until I realized that the information on the headstone matched Donald's family, but was missing his grandfather's name.

Used with permission.

This was the original headstone for this plot, replaced after Buster's death in 1985 because his name would not fit. It rested on the back of the new headstone for many years, but when Donald visited in 2003, the old stone had disappeared.

After Donald told me the story, I sent a message to the contributor of the photo, thinking they would never remember it eleven years later, and ended up speaking with him on the phone. But he did remember, having found the stone in 2009 behind some planks of wood in the general vicinity of the plot and photographing it, not knowing any details of course, and putting it up on Find A Grave for the family to hopefully find one day. He was even kind enough to scan a map with the location of the headstone as he found it eleven years ago and email it to me last night.

Late this morning, Donald and I made our way to Calvary Cemetery to see what we could find. As we pretty much expected, we found that the headstone was now gone again, which was a bit of a let down, although I'm not really sure what we would have done with the stone had we found it. I'm sure it was supposed to have been taken by the monument company when the new stone was installed.

The best part for me is that we have this photo of the original headstone and can document the change. You just never know where a day of combing through Ancestry documents will take you.

Verifying What is Written in Stone - Summary & Resources

I've had a lot of fun with this project; trying to verify the information on this headstone from Donald's family. I have relearned some old lessons, like taking the time to understand a new-to-me record set before diving in, I've learned about new records and I have a nice list of things to learn and investigate. And additional documentation is needed for a lot of the information on the stone, so the project isn't really over, just my blog series.

I've loved looking through New York City census records for this time period; these time capsules are a great tool for imagining life in the past. Like the occupations captured on just one page; an embroidery designer and operator, a janitor, two coopers, two vaudeville actresses and a department store detective and a handful of servants. I think you could write a novel using just one page as a starting point.

I want to learn more about Winifred Coughlin; about her life in Ireland if at all possible and her early years in New York City, before she married William Barry. There were some fantastic lectures at the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa conference and I'm hopeful that they can help me add to our knowledge of the Coughlin family in County Galway.

I am also hopeful that learning more about William Barry will help us to discover his home parish in Ireland and open up another branch of Donald's family. I'll be looking for any documents related to his immigration and naturalization as well as records of the Emigrant Savings Bank, which I believe are on Ancestry. The New York Public Library also seems to have some images, but I'll have to look into that further. Investigating William Barry's Civil War service is sure to be another great learning experience. I plan to start with a webinar at Legacy Webinars and go from there.

In the spring I will be on an absolute mission to do two things in New York City that I've been talking about for a while; finally visit the Tenement Museum and spend a day in the Milstein Division of the New York Public Library. A presentation at the New York State Family History Conference by one of their librarians gave some great examples of how their holdings can help you get a picture of what the city was like at a particular time. This is what it is all about for me. And maybe we can get back to Castle Garden, now that we know so many of Donald's ancestors came through those same gates that my own ancestors did.

Like most of you, I would imagine, I have quite a wish list of books and website subscriptions that would greatly help in my research. A couple of months ago, I joined the The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society and can't wait to get my hands on the New York Family History Guide and Gazetteer and the New York City Municipal Archives guide.  But the NYG&B also has some great free resources.

Reading their guide to New York State census records saved me a lot of time searching for non-existent records. You can read it here to learn about the availability of each census, what areas may be missing in any particular year and what information was collected. It's really a must-read if you are researching in New York. At the end there is also a list of links to other articles that you may find useful; like Researching Irish Ancestors in NYS and Surprising Facts About Immigration to New York. NYG&B has a nice collection of webinars for members, they also have a YouTube channel with a few lectures than anyone can watch. This includes five hours of classes from the Fundamentals Day at the recent New York State Family History Conference. That is a must-watch if you haven't already.

In my ongoing research into Donald's family, I also want to learn more about Lutheran church records. Not only was Annie Miller Barry born into the Lutheran church, but I suspect that one of Donald's great-grandmothers, Emma Fredericks, and her ancestors were as well. For this I will need help from resources like the FamilySearch Wiki and a great book that I bought last year; How To Find Your Family in U.S. Church Records: A Genealogist's Guide by Sunny Jane Morton and Harold A. Henderson, CG.

Something I wrote about during this series was the National Library of Ireland website where you can find images from Irish Catholic parish registers. There is no index on their website and you won't get any hints as you may on Find My Past, but if you know your ancestor's home parish, you may be able to find them for free without the index or hints.

Facebook groups are a great way to access the "hive mind" when you are stuck on something. Back in 2013, Katherine R. Willson started a list of Facebook groups for genealogy. Her last update to the list was in January of this year, which you can find here. Since then, Cyndi Ingle of Cyndi's List has taken over and you can find that on her website, here, although as of the writing of this post it is still under construction.

Chronicling America is a free digitized newspaper resource from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. This is where I found the news article about William Barry's mourner who collapsed at the church before his funeral.

One last resource that I thought I would use more, especially for analyzing records in search of Annie Barry's year of birth, was Clooz. One of the drawbacks of this program is the data entry. It did get a bit ponderous and I admit that I lost patience for it, although that may have something to do with the fact that I desperately need new bifocals. Since concluding the series, I have gone back and entered the data for all of the records that I have for Annie, but I was not able to produce a report that would have been any help with this problem. I'll keep working with the software, though, and keep you posted when I've had a chance to watch more of their videos and use it more.

Of course, the most important thing to remember from all of this is that just because information has been "carved in stone," or even recorded in a parish register, doesn't make it correct!

The Honor Roll Project - South Ozone Park/Jamaica, NY

 As part of Heather Wilkinson Rojo's Honor Roll Project, I have transcribed this Roll of Honor at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens County, NY to make the names visible to search engines so that family researchers can find them.

Donald and I stumbled on this roll of honor when we were at Aqueduct Racetrack back in the spring to get our vaccines.

The plaque says that this honor roll is in memory of departed comrades from the Robert F. Mangel Memorial Post 1781 of the American Legion. I was not able to find this post on the American Legion website, so I don't know how this roll of honor came to be at the racetrack, but I am very glad that we noticed it so that I could share these names.

Robert F. Mangel

William Eokes

Rudolph Gleisner

Benjamin Rasoh

Jacob Tishman

Arthur Mayberry

Frederick L. Kennedy

Andrew J. Goldsborough

William Tilt

Joseph S. Dwyer

Benjamin Russe

Frank Ortell

James Frances Griffin

Herman Loonan

John O'Connor

Patrick S. McDermott

Fred E. Sassen

Joseph G. Fields

Louis M. Walger

Joseph H. Pesoe

Samuel Schneider

John J. Farnam

Leo T. Lynott

Howard Storms

John F. Kennedy

Leroy DuBois

Joseph Weissman

Edward Canavan

John J. Reilly

Marcellus Martucci

Luke C. Garvey

Lester P. Gracie

Isadore Nekritz

Leo Gal

Jacob Price

Malcomb Hirsch

Max Meyer

Raymond J. Hays

Theodore J. Hoofnagle

Jas. D. Heatherington

(James D. Heatherington)

Joseph E. Keegan

William M. Brady

James Joseph Ledden

Louis A. Becker

Irving McLean

Frank A. Sullivan

Joseph Berkman

Jacques Taylor

Adolph Davidson

Philip M.P. McKim

John Hastings

Harry J. Wynn

George Murphy

Augustine L. Daly

Jesse Rosenfeld

Albert J. Smith

James Chieco

Clifford Cullen

James Quigley

John O' Day

John J. Bennett

Vincent A. Keough

William Waiss

Theodore I. Mittle

Henry M. Lyle

John A. McDougall

Edward Noonan

Charles Von Stade

Hugh McGinnis

Jacob Lazarus

Stanley O. Brown

Thomas J. Veldron

Charles Fink

Jack Seidelbaum

Morris Roder

James H. McGrath, Sr.

John F. DeBoe

James J. Lynam

Joseph King

James J. Kelly

John F.R. Egan

Lawrence S. Fields

William Duffy

Edgar A. Tompkins

Charles Herman

Edward Neloy

Vincent J. Carroll

Seymour Kossover

John J, Mullen

Joseph M. Ryan

Henry Sassone

Thomas J. Rongos

James E. Kenney

Robert Ettinger

Harry Harris

Walter H. Gillen

Raymond F. Kehoe

Leo J. Kelly

Eugene Hines

Pierce Butler

Patrick J. Devine

William Cohn

Michael M. Goldstein

Ward A. Herrington

John Shields

Joseph M. Murphy

William J. O'Reilly

Peter Mellet

Frank A. Buchheit

Charles Forte

William Bartow

Stephen F. Ryan

James T. Murphy

Martin Zolinsky

Rudolph Bier

William F. O'Brien

Dominick Pellettire

Joseph M. Murphy

Arthur Henretty

Louis Calabrese

Harry M. Stevens, II

Harold J. Richards

Bernard Grossberg

Henry W. Meagher

Frank M. Dogherty

Laine Coleman

Charles J. Serafini

John B. Pawlowski

William C. McMannis

Theodore Kirwin

William H. Safarik

T. Loni Burch

Ernest A. Hennington

Charles H. Hewitt

William Lynch

James V. Long

Charles DeMartin

Charles W. Escher

Frank Fernino

Joseph Pupino

William E. Fey, Jr.

Clifford D. McCartney

Charles J. Ruff

Edward M. McMillen

Roy L. Davidson

Frank J. Smith

William E. White

Harold Kirsch

George Caras

Thomas Caruso