A Cross and a Creole

This past March 5th was "It's My Park Day" here in Austin, and so I signed up to spend the morning documenting headstones at Oakwood Cemetery.  Oakwood is the oldest cemetery in town, and I'd visited it before to locate headstones of relatives buried there.  In fact, we started out documenting directly across from one of those plots - that of my 3x great-granduncle Dr. William Neal Watt, a North Carolina native who'd followed two siblings to Burton, Texas before moving on to make his home in Austin.

Caroline Deblanc Fortier
July 1 1843 - June 21 1895

While documenting one of the plots, a stone in the one adjacent to it caught my eye.  It was a granite monument about 5 feet high, in the shape of what's known as a "fleur-de-lis" cross.  I like to call them "French crosses", because I always associate them with French Catholic iconography.  The surname on it, Fortier, seemed to go along with that association.  The group working that plot had some trouble with the inscription due to the morning sunlight hitting the wrong side of the stone, so a few of us had walked over to see if we could help out.  Once the necessary info was obtained, it was just about time to finish up and leave for the day.

Only that wasn't quite it.  Not for me.  Something about that stone just wouldn't leave me alone.  I wanted to know more about the woman buried beneath it: who she was, where she came from.  Rainy, overcast weather also kept me from going back to try to obtain a clearer shot of the stone during the week (as it turned out, afternoon light helped me get a much more legible inscription, as you can see).  Fortunately the cemetery's burial registers are easily accessible online via the Austin History Center, so I was at least able to do some preliminary legwork via the internet.  Since I knew the year of death I was able to locate the correct entry despite a mistranscription of the surname as "Fortin".  This was where I was in for a revelation:  Mrs. Caroline Fortier, who died in Austin in 1895, was said in the burial register to be from Liberty County, Texas.  Aha, I thought.  And then, Hmm, maybe...

From a further search through the census records of Liberty County from 1850-1880, I was able to deduce that Mrs. Fortier was née Caroline Deblanc, a daughter of one of the original interrelated Creole families who had come from Natchitoches Parish to Liberty County in the 1840s!  Since my 3x great-grandmother Esilla Rachal and her parents were also some of these Liberty Creoles it's almost certain they even knew each other and may have even been relatives.  Caroline's mother was a Gillard, another of the main Liberty migration families, and I found baptisms matching a couple of Caroline's siblings in the books of Natchitoches records I keep at home, confirming their identities as Natchitoches Creoles.  I don't have a match yet for Caroline in those books, but I'll keep looking and check into a few additional published sources of Louisiana records to see if anything turns up.

Since the Liberty Creoles have been an ongoing genealogical and historical research project of mine for some time, the discovery of one buried so close to my home is nothing short of serendipitous.  And to think, it was all because of that particular style of cross grabbing my attention.  The stone spoke and I listened, and found a Creole kinswoman as a result.

A Tale of Two Hannahs

This particular genealogical rabbit hole I've gone down highlights the importance of exploring every avenue in the search for our ancestors.  You just never know what possibilities a collateral line may open up.

One of my ancestors I don't know much beyond is my great-great grandfather Patrick DeWan, who came from Ireland to the U.S.  Perhaps the most useful information I was able to find came from his Pennsylvania death certificate, filed 1 January 1923, giving his parents' names as Michael DeWan and Hannah Britton.  He was certainly here sometime before the end of the American Civil War, as he appears, aged 26, in a draft registry from July 1863 in Herrick, Pennsylvania.  There was just one problem: I couldn't find him on the census until 1880.  In fact, he didn't seem to be in Pennsylvania at all for the census years of 1860 and 1870.

A new possibility opened up when I came across the obituary of Mrs. Nora McGovern, an in-law of the DeWans.  Nora was married to James McGovern, whose sister Anna was Patrick's wife and my great-great grandmother.  Their marriage record in 1897 showed James as the son of Patrick and Bridget McGovern, which I already knew, and Nora (here as Hanora) was the daughter of Charles and Hannah McKanna.  I hadn't found a death record for Nora, and the obituary told me why.  I was looking in the wrong place - she died in Harrisburg, not Herrick.  Once I knew the place and date, pulling up her death certificate was fairly easy.  Nora's father, according to her death certificate, was named Charles McKenna.  Much to my surprise, I saw a familiar name - Nora's mother was also named Hannah Britton!  It seemed almost too coincidental, so I set about trying to find Nora's family in the records to see if I might be able to make a connection between her Hannah and Patrick's.  Could these two mothers with the same name have been the same person?  Could Nora have been Patrick's half-sister, in addition to a sister-in-law?  (Nora's sister, Ann, had their mother's name as Bridget Britton on her death certificate, but this is the only incidence I've found of her name recorded as something other than a variant of Hannah.)

In the 1870 census for Herrick, I found the family listed under McCanna: head of house Charles, then Hannah, and daughters Anna, Hannah (Nora), and Mary.  Interestingly, below the name of the youngest daughter was written another name: Patrick, aged 25!  Was it possible this was Patrick DeWan, and the census taker simply hadn't bothered to ask if he had a different last name than the rest of the house?  I decided to try to find them in 1860.  This time I found them all under McCamna: Charles, Hanora, Patrick (19), Michael (15), Ann (4), Hanora (3), and Mary (1).  Patrick's death certificate gave his father's name as Michael DeWan, and one of his sons had Michael as a middle name.  Could it be possible that once again the DeWans were listed as McKannas on the census?  It isn't unheard of for stepchildren to be recorded in the census under a stepfather's surname.  There's also quite a large gap in the ages of the children listed, which lends some credence to the possibility that not all these children were full siblings.  Patrick and Michael also are listed as being born in Ireland, and the girls were all born in Pennsylvania.  At this point I double checked for McKannas among the 1863 draft list that Patrick DeWan had appeared in.  I did find a Patrick McKanna - but he was 36 years old in 1863, making him less likely to be the same Patrick who was enumerated with Charles and Hannah's household.  A browse through the 1850 census of Herrick turns up a full household of McKanas - including a 30 year old Charles, who appears to be single, and a 22 year old Patrick who more closely matches the draft register's Patrick McKanna - and no DeWans or Brittons.

Out of curiosity, I went forward, looking for Charles and Hannah in 1880, and found something else unexpected: their household was located directly next to that of Patrick and Anna "Dwan", my great-great grandparents, who had been married within the year.  The lack of the 1890 census means a gap in the records that can't be accounted for, but the death register and cemetery listings for the area do tell us that Charles and Hannah died in the 1890s.

I think my next obvious step is to try to find a marriage record somewhere for Charles and Hannah.  If the 1850 census is for the correct Charles, it seems likely the marriage took place in or near Herrick between 1850 and 1855.  The Catholic records for the area may turn up something.  A search in the probate records may also be useful to see just who inherited Charles and Hannah's farm.