The Will of Catherine Bonynge of Ratoath

The Four Courts, 30 June 1922
Photo courtesy NLI Commons

30 June 1922:  Three days into the Battle of Dublin, the first conflict in what will become the Irish Civil War, fire breaks out at the Four Courts, home to the Public Records Office, leaving the building a burned-out shell and destroying most of its 800 years' worth of holdings.  To this day the precise point of origin of the conflagration remains unclear; the building had been under heavy shelling by the Free State army for the previous two days while anti-Treaty Irregulars were holed up inside. The one indisputable fact of the destruction of the Four Courts is that much of Ireland's official recorded history went with it, including nearly all of the wills held by the Principal Registry.  This background is necessary to explain why the survival of any of Catherine Bonynge's will, let alone as large a portion of it as we have, is somewhat remarkable.

Catherine Bonynge (or Bonnynge) was one of the two sisters memorialized at Glasnevin Cemetery by Dr. Laurence O'Reilly of Ratoath, Meath, buried in the same plot as Dr. O'Reilly and his brother and (possibly?) sister, James and Bridget O'Reilly.  She and her sister, Bridget Bonynge, were spinsters who lived at Ratoath, and evidently owned quite a bit of Dublin real estate.  Both died within days of one another at Ratoath in 1841, and were buried together in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, beneath a monument bearing their names and Dr. O'Reilly's.  The Prerogative Court, which proved Irish wills until the Principal Registry was established in 1858, did leave a surviving index of the wills recorded there, and shows that both Bridget and Catherine left wills.  Those originals would have been among the records destroyed by the Four Courts Fire in 1922, but a hefty portion of Catherine Bonynge's will survives, published with other Irish charitable bequests, among the Parliamentary session papers of 22 January-28 August 1846.  Unfortunately, whatever relationship existed between the Bonynge and O'Reilly families remains unanswered by this portion, though it is not outside the realm of possibility that Dr. O'Reilly may even be the unnamed executor.  Whatever questions it leaves unanswered aside, one thing it does provide us with is a small historical window into Dublin in the first half of the 19th century.  I have reproduced the surviving text in full and annotated it below:

The Mystery of the Misses Bonnynge

Last October, while I was in Dublin, I took a trip to Glasnevin Cemetery on the northside of the city to visit some family graves.  My great-great-great grandparents, Laurence and Bridget (Treston) O'Reilly, are buried there as are four of their children and two of their grandchildren.  While those plots are unmarked, as many in the cemetery are, I did find a marker on another plot that raised some questions.

In the area of the old chapel (since demolished), the section of graves are still called the Chapel Circle.  My great-great-great grandfather's predecessor at Mount Albion House in Dundrum, James O'Reilly, and his brother, Dr. Laurence O'Reilly, as well as a presumed sister of theirs, Bridget, are all buried in the Chapel Circle section.  Now, I still haven't determined the precise relationship between these O'Reillys to mine, but my working theory is that James and Dr. Laurence are most likely uncles of my Laurence.  The surprise here is that the grave was marked after all (a previous attempt my parents made on an earlier trip had not found the correct location, it turned out), and not only that, the O'Reillys weren't alone.  The marker on the grave reads:

Photo © the author, 2016

Erected in memory of the
MISSES BONNYNGE.
By DOCTOR O'REILLY - Ratoath.
In life respected
In death regretted.
May they rest in peace amen.
J. Farrell F^t 1841

I knew this was the right O'Reilly, because he was a doctor and did live in Ratoath, but the Bonnynge name was wholly unfamiliar to me.  So who were they?  How were they connected to the O'Reillys?  Once I'd arrived back in the States, I emailed the cemetery's office and received confirmation that the O'Reilly plot and the Bonnynge plot were, in fact, one and the same.  I've also since uncovered some more information that superficially answers one of my initial questions - who they were.  That's an entire post in itself, though, so it will have to wait.

Additional historical note: the bottom left of the inscription is the mason's signature.  The "Ft" is probably an abbreviation of the Latin "fecit" - literally "J. Farrell made it".  To this day, the company of Farrell & Son continues to make headstones and monuments just down the road from the cemetery.  The Irish Times published an article on the history of the company back in 2008.

Post-Travel: Dublin

St. Kevin's, Harrington Street, Dublin

As you might have noticed, I've been on hiatus for quite a while.  Longer than I realized, even!  I spent quite a bit of last year prepping for a trip to Ireland at the end of the year, in which I managed to achieve some of my genealogical goals there, missed out on others, and created a few brand new ones.  Since then I've had a bit of a travel hangover, and subsequently got more than a little distracted with current events in America, but the less said of that, the better.

Accomplished: visiting one of the neighborhoods my Dublin ancestors lived in, walking down their streets and even stepping inside their parish church, St. Kevin's (pictured).  This one was a big one for me!  I also got to visit Glasnevin Cemetery, where many of them are buried, and got to see their gravesites as well as the graves of many people who are important to Irish history.

Missed out: visiting the National Library, National Archives, and Registry of Deeds.  Unfortunately, none of the days I was in Dublin corresponded with times any of these repositories were open.  The only weekday we were there was Halloween, which is a big public holiday in Ireland and so they were all closed that day too.  Next trip over I'm definitely staying in Dublin during the week!

Stained glass window, St. Kevin's

Brand new research goals:  I'll leave those to their own posts!  That's honestly been part of the problem picking up again and blogging, I can't decide where to even start.  Let's just say I've uncovered some interesting new research angles to explore with my Irish relatives, including a recent discovery of additional ties to Dublin in another branch of the family.  Of course, my main goal is to go back!  Dublin is an incredible city, and despite it not being "home", thanks to spending much of the last few years researching it, it felt comfortable and familiar.  There's so much to see and do there as well.  It truly is a global treasure and I couldn't help but understand why so many people in my family made it their home.

Photographs of St. Kevin's © the author, 2016.

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.

The Scotts of Scot's Hall Portraits

The idea for this post came from the discovery that several Scott family portraits are now in the collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art.  These portraits were all among those reproduced as engravings in 1876 for the privately published "Memorials of the family of Scott, of Scot's Hall", so I thought I'd go through the portrait list published in the book and see how many I could track down to the present day.  This does not include any of the family memorials, which presumably have not left the church walls and floors they were placed on!  Where possible, I have provided a link to view the actual portrait, as the quality of the engraved reproductions varies substantially.  The provenance of the portraits at least until 1876 can be relatively assured: it was then that the engravings were reproduced with the permission of the widowed Mrs. Thomas Fairfax Best.  Mrs. Best's deceased husband was the son of Caroline Scott and Mr. George Best (per Burke's Landed Gentry) and a grandson of Edward and Margaret (Sutherland) Scott of Scot's Hall.  Portrait locations will be added as discovered.

Portrait of Reginald Scott, 1542 - NC Museum of Art
Portrait of Sir Thomas Scott, 1585 - unknown, though the engraving matches copies in the NPG from 1803
Portrait of Sir John Scott of Nettlested - NC Museum of Art
Portrait of Lady Elizabeth Scott - NC Museum of Art, identified as Emmeline Scott
Portrait of Lady Catherine Scott - NC Museum of Art
Portrait of the celebrated Mary Honywood - NC Museum of Art
Portrait of Edward Scott, Esq. D.C.L. - unknown
Portrait of George Goring, Earl of Norwich, Commander of Royalist Forces, Kent - unknown
Portrait of the Countess of Norwich -unknown
Portrait of Colonel George Goring (may be misidentified; see NPG collection) - NC Museum of Art
Portrait of Sir Thomas Scott - unknown
Portrait of Lady (Caroline) Scott - unknown
Portrait of George Scott, Esq. of Scot's Hall - unknown
Portrait of Anne Pemberton, 1st wife of George Scott, Esq. - unknown
Portrait of Cecilia Dering, 2nd wife of George Scott, Esq. - unknown
Portrait of Commodore Scott - unknown
Portrait of Margaret Sutherland, wife of Edward Scott, of Scot's Hall - unknown
Portrait of the Honble. Lady Mary Compton, wife of Captain Arthur Scott, R.N. - NC Museum of Art
Portrait of Caroline Scott, wife of Thomas Best, of Chilston Park, Kent - unknown
Portrait of Thomas Best, Esq., M.P., of Chilston Park - last sold in 1997, buyer unknown
Portrait (Medallion), Mrs. George Best, Chilston Park - auctioned; buyer unknown

So now let's talk about the attributions provided by the book.

Oceanic: Queenstown to Ellis Island, May 1913

This one's a very special post for me, as it combines one of my favorite things, historic ships, with a truly amazing find in an immigration document that confirms quite clearly my previous research.

To the right is a photo of the White Star Line's Oceanic (II), which was built at Belfast's Harland & Wolff shipyard in 1899.  Until 1901 this ocean liner was the largest ship in the world, and until requisitioned by the Royal Navy in 1914 and run aground that same year off Shetland, she carried thousands of immigrants to new lives in America from the ports of Cherbourg, Southampton, Liverpool, and Queenstown (Cobh).

One such passenger, who boarded Oceanic at Queenstown on 8 May 1913 and debarked at Ellis Island one week later on the 15th, was Laurence O'Reilly of Ballyhaunis, Mayo.  Before I go into what the ship's manifest says about him, I'd like to fill in a little background on him first.  He was born on 2 December 1883 and baptized Laurence Christopher O'Reilly on 5 December 1883 at St. Agatha's, Dublin (Laurentius Christopherus O'Riely in the transcribed record).  His father, Laurence John O'Reilly, a Superintendent in the Dublin Metropolitan Police, was head of the household in the 1901 Irish census when the entire family lived at 5 North Richmond Street.  Laurence Christopher, the oldest son, was 17.  By 1911, Supt. O'Reilly had retired and moved his family back to his home county of Mayo.   27-year-old Laurence Christopher is still in their household at Carrowneden, just outside Ballyhaunis, in the census of that year.

The first page of the manifest of Oceanic's May 1913 voyage gives his age as 28 (he had actually turned 29 the previous December), says he is a shop assistant, of British nationality and Irish origin, last residence is Ireland and his father is Laurence O'Reilly of Ballyhaunis.  It's on the second page of the manifest that things get really interesting: the younger Laurence's destination is Hazleton, Pennsylvania (spelled "Hazelton" on the manifest), his steerage ticket was paid by his father back in Ireland, and the relative he was on his way to was his "Aunt Mrs. Delia Fagan" of Lattimer Mines.  And there it was: my great-great grandmother's name, in black-and-white, confirmed as the sister of this Laurence's father!  Even though I was already sure of her place within the O'Reilly family back in Ireland based on the few records I had, the surviving records contained some inconsistencies in names and dates.  This passenger list explicitly laid out the family relationship, and since it refers to her married name, Fagan, there's absolutely no doubt of her identity.  It was exactly the kind of concrete evidence I'd hoped to find, and in a most unexpected place!  This definitely ranks very high on the list in terms of the most exciting family document finds for me.

The lesson here is that it's always worthwhile to check immigration records for collateral relatives.  You may be surprised what information the passenger lists for these other relatives can tell you about people in your own direct line, and they may provide precisely the evidence you need to link your own family back to their family of origin in their native country.

For more on Adelia O'Reilly Fagan:
What's in a name? Adelia, Delia, Bedilia and Bridget; or check out all posts tagged "O'Reilly".

Image: 'Oceanic' moored at Harland & Wolff shipyard, Belfast courtesy PRONI (via flickr)
Sources:
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
The National Archives of Ireland. Census of Ireland 1901/1911 and Census fragments and substitutes, 1821-51 [database online.]
Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.  Church Records [database online].