McGann Genealogy
I've been working on my genealogy lately. This is a task I started about 20 years ago and stopped when I ran into a brick wall. I knew that every census record available said my great-great-grandfather, Micheál McGann, was from Ireland. But that's the most specific information I could find. Where in Ireland was a mystery. No record I could find was more specific than "Ireland".
You see, I didn't grow up with any McGann relatives. I am the only child of an only child of an only child (try THAT in an Irish Catholic family!) My father's father was paralyzed in a mine riot when my Dad was three. No more kids in that family. And my great-grandfather died of an infected knee when my grandfather was three (three is not a good age for McGanns). My great-grandmother remarried and never spoke about her first husband out of respect to the new one.
So there are no "old country" stories in my family. I mean, there might be, but I never heard them. And neither did my Dad. He was raised by his Polish mother's family. Genealogists tell you that your first steps should be gathering the stories from your family. But it took looking at census records to find my great-grandfather's given name because no one in my family spoke about Winnie's first husband.
Just as I was hitting this wall in the mid-90s, I got an email from a stranger named Paul McGann (no, not the Eighth Doctor!). When the internet was young and ancestry.com didn't exist yet, I posted my information to a genealogy message board. Paul saw it and contacted me! Turns out he is the grandson of one of my great-grandfather's younger brothers.
And in his house, they told stories! There weren't tons of stories, but he at least gave me the tidbit that Micheál was from County Roscommon and his wife, Margaret Walsh, was from County Galway. I'd always suspected that we were Northerners because McGann is the Northern variant of McCann. But it looked like we were Westerners instead. I have a soft spot for Galway and her beautiful boats, so this was no letdown for me.
However, that's all we got. No proof that Micheál was from Roscommon. Just a family story. No solid date of arrival. And certainly no town name or parish name. Nothing specific.
I gave up the search at that point. My life took a turn and I kinda left our family's history in the hands of cousin Paul.
A couple weeks ago, I was having a chat on Facebook with a friend who's going to Ireland this summer and he told me his family was from Cavan. I told him mine was from Roscommon. And of all things, a Facebook friend from Roscommon commented, "Where in Roscommon?!" Of course I have no idea and I told her so. Instead of just being disappointed, she sent me the email address of a professional genealogist she knows in the US who has specific experience finding ancestors in Roscommon.
Unfortunately, all my genealogical research got destroyed at the house in PA and I had none of my records.
Not to be defeated, I jumped on Ancestry.com and tried to find cousin Paul's family tree. I didn't find it, but with an evening's worth of work, I found all the census records, birth certificates, death certificates, et cetera that I had to drive back and forth from the Philadelphia Archives to the Schuylkill Country Historical Society to accumulate. Everything is online! It's awesome. I was even able to search some records that I couldn't access before!
And because Ancestry.com compares your family tree with others that have similar names and dates, I was even able to find the names of Micheál's parents who came over from Ireland when Micheál was about 4 (or 7, depending on the source).
Well... here's where we hit the wall again. Guess what year that was. 1847. Ever heard of the Coffin Ships? Yeah. Passengers lists from 1847 are notoriously sketchy.
And frankly, even if I found Micheál McGann on a ship arriving in the US in 1847, there's no way to know if it's my Micheál. The ship's records look like this:
There's not much there. I did a little paging back and forth and pasted the info from the start of the book to the page that lists my great-great-grandfather:
So this is definitely him. Despite the commonality of the name Michael McGann, he's on the passenger list at age 6 (we thought he was 4 or 7) along with a younger brother Peter and an older brother Tom. These we find on the 1850 census too, so that's good. And there are mother May (Mary?) and father John, both the right ages. And there's even an older Michael who I'm guessing was John's brother or something (he doesn't show up on the 1850 census with the rest of the family, but he may have gone somewhere else or even died on the journey: they called them Coffin Ships for a reason).
(Wow. Serious chills. The Great Hunger and the Coffin Ships were always known to me, and I always assumed they were part of my family's history. But to have it proven, to KNOW that your people came over on one of those overcrowded, typhoid-infested vessels, is just... eerie.)
But what doesn't it tell me? Well, the column that tells what country the passengers are from is completely blank. In any case, it would have only said "Ireland", not the county they were from and certainly not the town or village.
So I'm stuck. I've gotten farther than I've ever gotten before. I put them on a boat! But I still can't place them in Ireland.
I found cousin Paul on Facebook over the weekend. =) But he's slow to respond to messages. I asked him if he ever got any further - if he could put Micheál on a boat or if he found what town he came from in Ireland. No reply yet.
You see, I didn't grow up with any McGann relatives. I am the only child of an only child of an only child (try THAT in an Irish Catholic family!) My father's father was paralyzed in a mine riot when my Dad was three. No more kids in that family. And my great-grandfather died of an infected knee when my grandfather was three (three is not a good age for McGanns). My great-grandmother remarried and never spoke about her first husband out of respect to the new one.
So there are no "old country" stories in my family. I mean, there might be, but I never heard them. And neither did my Dad. He was raised by his Polish mother's family. Genealogists tell you that your first steps should be gathering the stories from your family. But it took looking at census records to find my great-grandfather's given name because no one in my family spoke about Winnie's first husband.
Just as I was hitting this wall in the mid-90s, I got an email from a stranger named Paul McGann (no, not the Eighth Doctor!). When the internet was young and ancestry.com didn't exist yet, I posted my information to a genealogy message board. Paul saw it and contacted me! Turns out he is the grandson of one of my great-grandfather's younger brothers.
And in his house, they told stories! There weren't tons of stories, but he at least gave me the tidbit that Micheál was from County Roscommon and his wife, Margaret Walsh, was from County Galway. I'd always suspected that we were Northerners because McGann is the Northern variant of McCann. But it looked like we were Westerners instead. I have a soft spot for Galway and her beautiful boats, so this was no letdown for me.
However, that's all we got. No proof that Micheál was from Roscommon. Just a family story. No solid date of arrival. And certainly no town name or parish name. Nothing specific.
I gave up the search at that point. My life took a turn and I kinda left our family's history in the hands of cousin Paul.
A couple weeks ago, I was having a chat on Facebook with a friend who's going to Ireland this summer and he told me his family was from Cavan. I told him mine was from Roscommon. And of all things, a Facebook friend from Roscommon commented, "Where in Roscommon?!" Of course I have no idea and I told her so. Instead of just being disappointed, she sent me the email address of a professional genealogist she knows in the US who has specific experience finding ancestors in Roscommon.
Unfortunately, all my genealogical research got destroyed at the house in PA and I had none of my records.
Not to be defeated, I jumped on Ancestry.com and tried to find cousin Paul's family tree. I didn't find it, but with an evening's worth of work, I found all the census records, birth certificates, death certificates, et cetera that I had to drive back and forth from the Philadelphia Archives to the Schuylkill Country Historical Society to accumulate. Everything is online! It's awesome. I was even able to search some records that I couldn't access before!
And because Ancestry.com compares your family tree with others that have similar names and dates, I was even able to find the names of Micheál's parents who came over from Ireland when Micheál was about 4 (or 7, depending on the source).
Well... here's where we hit the wall again. Guess what year that was. 1847. Ever heard of the Coffin Ships? Yeah. Passengers lists from 1847 are notoriously sketchy.
And frankly, even if I found Micheál McGann on a ship arriving in the US in 1847, there's no way to know if it's my Micheál. The ship's records look like this:
There's not much there. I did a little paging back and forth and pasted the info from the start of the book to the page that lists my great-great-grandfather:
So this is definitely him. Despite the commonality of the name Michael McGann, he's on the passenger list at age 6 (we thought he was 4 or 7) along with a younger brother Peter and an older brother Tom. These we find on the 1850 census too, so that's good. And there are mother May (Mary?) and father John, both the right ages. And there's even an older Michael who I'm guessing was John's brother or something (he doesn't show up on the 1850 census with the rest of the family, but he may have gone somewhere else or even died on the journey: they called them Coffin Ships for a reason).
(Wow. Serious chills. The Great Hunger and the Coffin Ships were always known to me, and I always assumed they were part of my family's history. But to have it proven, to KNOW that your people came over on one of those overcrowded, typhoid-infested vessels, is just... eerie.)
But what doesn't it tell me? Well, the column that tells what country the passengers are from is completely blank. In any case, it would have only said "Ireland", not the county they were from and certainly not the town or village.
So I'm stuck. I've gotten farther than I've ever gotten before. I put them on a boat! But I still can't place them in Ireland.
I found cousin Paul on Facebook over the weekend. =) But he's slow to respond to messages. I asked him if he ever got any further - if he could put Micheál on a boat or if he found what town he came from in Ireland. No reply yet.