So a while back I wrote about the Murtha family and some DNA connections. I still haven’t heard from the person who does the family research in John Murtha’s family to confirm that John was James Murtha’s brother.
Another match also turned up who is supposed to be descended from Michael Murtha. It looks like Michael may have been another brother. Michael’s children all settled in the Chicago area. It’s not clear whether or not Michael himself ever came to the US. Unfortunately as it all too often seems to happen, after a few e-mail exchanges with this DNA match, they stopped responding and their family tree on Ancestry is private. Another intriguing part about this story are some other DNA matches that turned up both on Ancestry and FTDNA. These are relatives of a woman who was adopted. They are shared matches with some of the Murtha DNA matches and they also live in the Chicago area. So the question is, are they somehow related to one of Michael’s children?
And then there’s the DNA match who responded over two years after my initial attempts to contact her. This was exciting! Turns out she is my 3rd cousin. She is a descendent of Patrick Murtha, who I wrote about in the aforementioned Murtha blog. She put me in touch with her 90 year old mother who is the genealogist in their family and her mom sent me a bunch of info about Patrick’s family. I have added it to my tree on Ancestry, but I haven’t yet updated the tree on this blog website. Based on Patrick Murtagh and his wife Anne Costello’s marriage certificate that she sent me it lists Hugh Murtagh and Catherine Corley as Patrick’s parents. I have been trying to prove that Catherine Corley was James’ mother and I think this proves it. I tried sending away to the State of New Jersey to get James’ death certificate, but since he died in 1916 and it’s now 2017, and is just past the 100 year mark, I was originally told to send my request to the wrong department. I still need to send it off to the right place to see if it’s available. I am hoping it will list his parents to get my absolute proof that Catherine was his mother. Another interesting tidbit of info is that Anne Costello’s mother’s maiden name was Conlon. My grandmother had a cousin who was a nun who was a Conlon. I have never been able to figure out how they were related. Maybe they weren’t actually related. Maybe Sister Catherine Thomasita was really related to my grandmother’s uncle Patrick’s wife’s family. I remember going to visit Sister Catherine at Saint Anne’s Villa in Convent Station when I was a child.
Here’s a link to the history of St. Patrick’s parish in Jersey City, New Jersey, http://stpats-aasparish.org/history.html. This is the church where Patrick and Anne were married. It also appears to be the church were my grandfather on the Doyle side of the family was baptized. Makes me wonder if this would have been where my grandparents would have met? Later on they were parishioners at St. Aloysius Church. Here’s a history of St. Al’s http://www.staloysiuschurch.com/our-parish.html.
Speaking of the Doyle side of the family, I recently had a DNA match show up on that side of the family. She’s my 2nd cousin once removed. I had hoped that she was slightly more distant and might be descended from one of my great-grandfather’s siblings, which I know almost nothing about, but it turns out she is descended from one of my grandfather’s siblings. Actually I already had her in my tree. We corresponded a bit, but I haven’t heard back from her again. I hope it just means she’s busy. I hate it when people go ghost on me.
And one last DNA connection that I have communicated with recently, this one a 2nd cousin of my husband’s on the Lawder side of his family. Her family moved to Missouri in the 1960s. She sent me a picture of her grandparents. Her grandfather was my husband’s grandmother’s brother.
Till next week, or maybe a bit longer, if I get busy with my vegetable garden.