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The Hard to Find Doyle and O’Leary Families

by TerryB on in Irish

I hardly know anything about the Doyle and O’Leary families, other than that they were supposed to have been from Wexford, Ireland. Wexford is the name of both a city and a county, so I don’t know if they were from the city that is in the county, or somewhere else in the county, which seems more likely.  Here’s the link to the family tree for this part of the family https://myfamgen.com/olearydoyle-family/.

Margaret Jane O’Leary was supposed to have been in the US during the Civil War. According to her obituary, she came to the US at the age of 17, which would mean that she arrived in 1858, although the 1900 US Census says she came in 1862. I assume her family also came to the US at some point, but I am not sure if they came at the same time. According to the obituary her father James O’Leary was employed as one of the landscape gardeners for Prospect Park, then under construction. The family lived in Brooklyn which is where the park is. I looked up the park and there was just a 150th Anniversary Celebration on April 1st, 2017, which would mean it opened in 1867. From what I have read, work on the park began in June 1866 and it was opened to the public in October 1867, but was still under construction until 1873.

After Margaret’s marriage to James Patrick Doyle they moved to Jersey City, New Jersey. Margaret was very active in St. Aloysius Church. I believe she may have been a founding member. She was presented with a gold watch by the first pastor of the church, Father Sullivan. I sent an e-mail to the church to see if I can get any more info, but I haven’t heard back yet. Margaret lived to be 96, passing one month before she would have turned 97. Her daughter Mary (Mamie) lived to be 99, passing 8 months before she would have turned 100. I guess that’s where my mom gets her good genes from.  

I have no idea how Margaret and her husband James met. The 1900 US Census says they were married for 30 years, so that would be 1870. It also says James came to the US in 1867. Did he live in Brooklyn too? Why did they move to Jersey City? Again according to the 1900 US Census, it says that their son James who was born in 1875 was born in New York and that their daughter Margaret who was born in 1876 was born in New Jersey, so they must have moved to Jersey City sometime between October 1875 and November 1876. I have found an index to an 1885 New Jersey Census record which I am sure is their family. I need to go to a Family History Center to see if I can see the actual record on microfilm. There is a Mary O’Leary living with the family. Unfortunately those census records didn’t have actual ages, just an age range, so I am not sure if she was Margaret’s mother or perhaps a sister. (I never even knew there were NJ Census records until I found this.)

Honestly I have been working on my family tree for so long, that I don’t even remember where I got all the info I have in my tree about Margaret and James’ siblings, so I can’t say for sure how accurate it is. I do know that James’ nephew Stephen did live with them. He is listed with them on the 1900 US Census and it says he was born in New York. He was only 6 years old at the time, so his parents died when he was young. Stephen was still living with Margaret in 1920 even though his uncle James had passed away in 1910. He is listed as her son on that Census record, even though he wasn’t really. I assume though that she considered him to be like a son, since she had raised him from a very young age.

I have searched in Irish databases online, but with such common names as Doyle and O’Leary I have not had any luck finding anything there. I am hoping that someday someone with more info will show up as a DNA match to help me out.

Who Was Miles Cooper’s Father?

by TerryB on in Bond

So here’s what I know about Miles. He was born somewhere in Connecticut, possibly Haddam or Middletown around 1769. He married Asenath Cowles. (I’ll be writing about the Cowles family at some point in the future.) I am fairly certain that Miles had at least two brothers, Abner and George and a sister whose name I don’t know, but who I think married Moses Austin. From what I have read in several books, it appears that their father’s name was George. There is a book “The Churchill Family in America” which lists a George Cooper who married Mary Churchill. This George was the son of Thomas Cooper and Abigail Whitmore of Middletown, CT. Mary Churchill was the daughter of John Churchill and Bethia Stocking who were also from Middltown, CT, but had moved to Portland, CT. If this George Cooper is Miles Cooper’s father then I can add  a whole bunch of other people to our family tree who go back to The Great Migration time period, as in shortly after the Mayflower! The book lists George and Mary’s children as Abigail, George, Mary, and Elizabeth. There is a big gap between Mary and Elizabeth where Miles could fit in and Abner would have been the youngest. There are trees on Ancestry who do have Miles attached to this family, but I need more than that. My husband also has distant DNA matches with people who have the Churchill family in their trees, so it is possible. BUT I just don’t have any PROOF! I have been in contact with the Haddam Historical Society, since Miles’ father George was listed in one book as being from “Old Haddam”, but they couldn’t find anything. I need to figure out who to contact in Middletown, CT to see if there is information there.

And then there’s the mystery of where Miles and Asenath lived when they first were married. Some books say they lived in Durham, CT, some say Durham, NY, and I even found an obituary for one of their granddaughters that said Durham, Massachusetts. The only problem with that is that there is no Durham, Mass. I really thought it would turn out to be Durham, CT since that is very close to Middletown and Kensington where Asenath was supposed to have been born. But I recently read a genealogy article that talked about looking at NY Census records from 1855 to see what NY county or what state the person was born in. Adams, NY in Jefferson County was settled in 1800. Miles, Asenath, and their older children were among the first families to settle there. They arrived in 1803. Their younger children were born in Adams. But their older children were born in Durham. Their son John Cowles Cooper is listed on the 1855 NY Census as having been born in Green County, NY. Durham, NY is in Green County. Apparently many of the people who lived in Durham, NY had come from Durham, CT. The New York town’s original name was Freehold, but the people from Connecticut called it New Durham, and eventually the name was changed to Durham, NY. Also it looks like Freehold was originally in Albany County, but then Greene County was formed from part of Albany County. I tried looking at land records thinking Miles might show up in Durham, NY as having owned land, but unfortunately I couldn’t find anything. So the mystery continues until I can find more info.

Once they settled in Adams, Miles built a log house on what is now Church St and later in 1811 he built the first frame building in Adams. He also had a farm. He gave land for the Presbyterian Church in Adams. Asenath is listed as a founding member. Miles’ brother Abner was a sea-captain who was taken prisoner by the British during the Revolutionary War. He eventually moved to Pennsylvania.  His brother George was also a sea-captain. He served on a man-of-war in the war and was injured in the thigh.

I am hoping to make our summer vacation this year be a trip through upstate New York to visit the towns and cemeteries of my husband’s ancestors and I certainly want to add a stop in Adams, NY. The Doxtater family were from there too. More about them in another future blog. Here’s the link to the Cooper family descendants https://myfamgen.com/cooper-family/.

So Am I Related To Anne Bancroft (Or Not) ?

by TerryB on in Italian

That’s a question I would really like to find the answer to. Her birth name was Anna Maria Italiano. She changed it when she became an actress. The story in my family was always that there was some family feud and the two branches of the family no longer spoke to one another. Rumor had it that Hugo Vespignani’s partially missing finger had been bitten off in an argument, but I think the more likely explanation is that he lost it in a machine accident. Anyway, when his mother Teresa DiPaolo and two of his younger brothers came to the US in 1911 from Palazzo San Gervasio, Italy (and yes she traveled under her maiden name as women did back in those days) they were traveling with Francesco Italiano. Teresa’s nearest living relative back in Italy was listed as her mother Rosaria Belsante. Francesco’s nearest living relative back in Italy was his wife Angela Belsante. So was Angela Teresa’s cousin, perhaps the daughter of one of Rosaria’s brothers? They were all listed as going to stay with Teresa’s husband, Arturo Vespignani, who was already in the US. Arturo is listed as Francesco’s cousin, although that term is often used loosely. It is more likely that their wives were cousins. So there definitely was a connection to an Italiano family. The story goes that there were sisters who married brothers and that the sisters were cousins to Teresa. Still with me? So there is a possibility that Francesco had a brother who married Angela’s sister and that Anna Maria Italiano, aka Anne Bancroft, was descended from that couple. I haven’t been able to figure out yet if this could be true. I’d really like to know even if it’s not true. I wish her son Max Brooks would go on one of those genealogy TV shows and trace his ancestors. He’s an author, so I tried contacting his publicist and agent, but I never heard back. Like I said, even if the story isn’t true I’d still like to know that for sure.

On a side note, through Ancestry DNA testing’s cousin matching, and finding people with online trees, I have been able to take Teresa’s family back further. I found someone who had done a great deal of research into Italian records. I never just copy stuff from other people’s trees without concrete verifiable proof like actual birth records. Even though I don’t know Italian it is still easier to locate Italian records online to trace my family’s roots than it is to trace my Irish ancestors, but I’ll save that for another blog post. The guy who did the research is related to my cousin’s wife and was doing research for my cousin’s son, so I am not related to him, but very grateful for the information he provided. Then working with other researchers whose DNA I matched I was able to connect the two trees together and figure out how I was related to the DNA matches. I kept having matches with people with the surname Tritto in their families. That was not a name I knew. But it turns out going back further that both the Tritto family and the Belsanti family are descended from the Marchetti family. (Some records have it spelled Belsante and some Belsanti. I think the spelling with the “i” is correct.) The descendant chart is here https://myfamgen.com/marchetti-family/.  I still need to figure out where exactly Angela fits into the tree, so I haven’t added her and Francesco yet.

Some Stories About the Blizard Line

by TerryB on in Blizard

So the first family lineage that I uploaded is the Blizard Family. See it here https://myfamgen.com/blizard-family/

I had created a book for my husband’s mother and her siblings for Christmas. Of course then in January I found more info that I could have added, but that’s how genealogy research goes. The farthest back I have gotten on this line is my husband’s 4 times great-grandfather Oliver Blizard who I believe was born sometime between 1750 and 1760. He bought land in Minisink, New York in 1802. That land purchase record is the picture at the top of this website. There are great land and probate records online for New York, and especially Orange County. I had found Oliver’s three sons mentioned in books about the area, but it was in Oliver’s will that I discovered that he had four daughters too. Oliver’s wife’s name was Mary, but I haven’t been able to find out yet what her maiden name was. Some people have her listed as Mary Evans in their family trees at Ancestry, but I haven’t been able to verify that yet. I believe he is the Oliver Blizard who was in the militia in Ulster County during the Revolutionary War. It’s quite possible that he moved from Ulster County to Orange County although county boundaries often shifted, so it may have been the county that moved and not him. But the big question I still need to solve is where was he born? There is a family cemetery on the farmland in Minisink that was owned by Luther Hallock, known as the Hallock-Blizard Cemetery. I have found the deed for the land being set aside as a burying ground. There were Hallocks who married Blizards. There are many of the Blizard family buried there. (I really hope to get to go see it sometime this spring and take pictures of the tombstones.) I am pretty sure that the Hallocks came to Orange County from Long Island so it is possible that Oliver Blizard lived on Long Island too, but again that’s one of the things I still need to figure out.

Some of the other things I am investigating:

My husband is descended from Oliver’s son Richard. One of Richard’s sons, Coe Blizard (not my husband’s direct ancestor), moved to Indiana at some point between April and August 1858 since he and his wife were listed on deed records as being in Mount Hope, NY in April and Logansport, Indiana in August. He is listed on the US Census of 1860 with his wife and daughters in Indiana. By the 1870 US Census he has a new wife and no children are listed. I just assumed that his wife had passed away and his daughters had grown up and moved out. Well much to my surprise I later found information about his first wife’s death back in Orange County in 1877 and their daughters were back there too. I’d love to know how his wife and daughters made their way back to New York from Indiana, while he stayed out there with a new wife.

I believe the Blizard Hotel that once stood on Front St in Newburgh, New York was owned by another of Oliver’s sons, William. When William passed away he still had a mortgage on the property which was then sold at public auction. The following is info abstracted from the deed. “William had taken out a mortgage with Benjamin Carpenter when he bought the land on May 1, 1837. He still apparently owed $5,518.99 at the time of his death. There was a public auction on Aug 12, 1847 at the Blizard Hotel on Front St. (Was William’s property a hotel?) Notice was sent to Richard Blizard and John Blizard Sr administrators of William’s estate. John Jr, Ephraim, and Juliette Blizard bought the land at the auction for $5,648.11. William died in 1845, which is the year the mortgage should have been paid off, but he still owed a large amount on it.” I haven’t added the buyers to the tree yet, but I am assuming that the people who purchased the land back were William’s children. The question is why didn’t they just pay off the mortgage that was owed instead of letting it go up for auction, since they ended up paying $129.12 more than the mortgage still owed? I also found an article about a fire that “broke out in stables south of Blizard’s hotel” on August 28, 1847, just a few weeks after the auction. The hotel wasn’t damaged, but several other buildings in the area were. I have found later census records with a bunch of brothers and sisters living together who may be William’s children. It looks like Juliette, who was one of the purchasers of the hotel, was one of the oldest of the siblings, so she may have been taking care of her younger siblings after her parents passed away. She is also listed in deeds buying other property.

So that’s my first post with some family stories. I hope you enjoyed reading it and found it interesting.

Welcome to my Genealogy Blog

by TerryB on in Welcome

Welcome to my new genealogy blog. I’ll be writing about the interesting stories I have discovered about my and my husband’s families while doing genealogy research and the brick walls I still have to break though.

I have been researching for many years, but really got into it after having some family members’ DNA tested and uploading our tree to Ancestry. I have found books written about some of my husband’s ancestors who have been in the US since at least 1634! We knew he had an ancestor who was in the War of 1812, but it turns out he is descended from a few Revolutionary War patriots as well. We also found out that even though we had always thought he was only Irish and English that he has German ancestors, which the DNA testing verified. My ancestors haven’t been here nearly as long, making researching my roots in Ireland and Italy a lot more difficult. But I love finding new cousins we didn’t know about and learning about our ancestors. I think it’s good for our kids to know where they came from and some of the cool things that their ancestors have done. Heck we found out that my kids are 4th cousins 6 times removed to Gideon Welles, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy.

This is a list of the family names that I know of so far: Bond, Miller, Hicks, Shepard, Cooper, Cowles, Stanley, Morrice, Hart, Porter, Woodford, Newell, Reed, Doxtater(Dockstader/Dachstatter), Weber, Cunningham, Brodock, Doran, Kelly, Whelan,  Blizard, Finch, Gale, Tooker, Elston, Dye, Spencer, Schoonover, Cole, Foley, Emperor, Lawder, Farrall, Burke, Tynan, Reagan, Doyle, O’Leary, Murtha(Murtagh), Hagney(Heagney), Bigley(Begley), O’Neill, Vespignani, Fanti, Bosi, DiPaolo, Volpe, Barbuzzi, Calzaretta, DiMira, Belsante(Belsanti), Paradiso, Marchetti, Bevilacqua. I am constantly adding new information on my genealogy quest. And who knows maybe someone who has some info to share will stumble across this website and contact me at terrybdna@gmail.com.