FamilySearch Full-Text Search for the Win!

Recently I followed up on an Ancestor hint relating to a branch on my maternal line, which led me to interesting discoveries.

In my family tree, Maria, a seemingly abandoned Irish woman and her three children entered a workhouse in England. Fortunately, she and the children left it in a year. At least one of the children (my great-grandmother, Mary Ann) made her way to Providence, RI, where she married my great-grandfather. (I have previously blogged about finding an ancestor in a 19th century workhouse in https://aweekofgenealogy.com/found-ancestors-in-the-workhouse/).

A death certificate record was located in Providence, RI, for a woman whose data seemingly matched Maria’s. Standing alone it was certainly of interest, but no other records had been found to put her in that place and time. I admit to being somewhat skeptical. Knowing Irish naming patterns, causing the repetitive use of names within family units, I wondered if this might be a relation rather than Maria herself. Were these common names where she originally hailed from in Ireland? Or was it coincidental?

The Ancestry hint sent me to a family tree that contained a person with the same name of my great-great-grandmother along with her two sisters. The documentation for those two sisters was more detailed than that for my great-great-grandmother, suggesting the owner of the tree was not along the same line as I. I followed the suggested records and built out a detailed pictures of two women who had immigrated to the United States and came to call Providence, RI, their home.

I always look for the records that document facts in a person’s life, link people, and tell a story, and I found some. In my own family tree I added these two women without connecting them to Maria in the main tree When I found records on Ancestry, I attached them to these women, downloaded them, and copied the source information. I also took snipped screenshots of the relevant data and captured it in a timeline built in a Word document. So far, so good.

Margaret, the elder of these two sisters, had come to Providence and married before Ellen. Ellen arrived in 1880 and was shown in the census of that same year, living with married Margaret. (This suggested a chain migration.) Ellen worked in Providence and married several years later in 1889. Sadly, Ellen died in 1899 at age 38. At that time, she was already a widow, and she left behind two young daughters. Margaret died in 1904, leaving behind a husband and six children. My great-great-grandmother, Maria, died in 1902. The records for all three women that contained parents’ names were consistent:

Father, William Connaughton

Mother, Bridget

As I searched through the records Ancestry suggested, a standout was the Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. Old Stone Bank Records, 1844-1924 at https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62959/. Both Margaret and Ellen had bank accounts, and along with other identifying information, there was common data:

Birthplace: Co. Roscommon

Margaret’s entry contained additional data:

Mother, Bridget Murphy

So, parents had the same names. If Maria was in fact their sister, I would then know the county where she was born, and the maiden name of her mother.

I looked at Maria’s death information again and noted the address where she had died. It was the house owned by Margaret and her husband. Evidence was mounting, but I was still wondering if she might have been a cousin or another relation.

Contacting the owner of the tree was a good idea, but had I tried before? I checked the messages on Ancestry and viewed the messages exchanged 2019. (I could have consulted my correspondence log, but this was more convenient. I admit to being on a fishing expedition rather than focused on answering a research question.)

Based on that previous correspondence, I doubled checked DNA matches. By my calculations, we were fourth cousins, once removed. Yes, this contact did know more about Margaret and Ellen than Maria.

At this point, circumstantial evidence was being built, but I wanted one record to connect Maria with one of her sisters. Searching for Maria, or her daughter Mary Ann, in the Old Stone Bank records and the 1900 US Census in Providence (and Rhode Island) was not fruitful.

It was time to move laterally to check other indexes and other databases. I decided to search on FamilySearch for records that would be helpful in connecting Maria to these two women.

I decided to jump in and use FamilySearch’s Full-Text Search to find those records that might have mentioned Maria, even if the record was not about her. Full-Text Search has moved out of the FamilySearch Labs and can be selected from the Search Menu.

As a reminder, the best way to search for a person is to enter their name within quotation marks in the Keywords field.

Carefully reviewing results…there was result contained a death record I had not yet seen.

The same address was in the record, namely the home owned by her sister and brother-in-law. The parents’ names were there (without her mother’s maiden name).

In this record there was data that was not included in the register:

Name of Informant and Relationship to Deceased: Thos. Kelly Brotherinlaw

Thomas was Margaret’s husband! He and Margaret owned that house. Since he was Maria’s brother-in-law, that made Margaret her sister. (None of her late husband’s people were identified in the proximity.) FamilySearch Full-Text Search for the win!

That was the definite piece of data I needed to call my brother and tell him that we had roots in County Roscommon, and that our great-great-great-grandmother’s name maiden name was Murphy. (Even though he lives in time zones behind mine, it was so late that I waited until the next morning to make the call.) It was also a good reminder:

Always look for all the records related to an event, focusing on the ones made closest to the event.

The details in Returns of death were recorded by a physician. The data on them was used to make an entry in the register. Death indexes and death certificates draw data from the ledger.

Engineers are known for being belt-and-suspenders people. Being that way meant that in addition to downloading the records, saving sources, and extracting the information into my timeline document, I added the record to my tree (my part of the one family tree) on FamilySearch.

That is where the middle-of-the-night surprise occurred.

A brother to Maria, Margaret and Ellen is shown in that tree! Back to the drawing board to see if the records prove out James Joseph Connaughton’s relationship to these sisters. (The first record I looked at was his Intention to Marry in Providence in 1883, with his parents: William Connaughton & Bridget Murphy.)

But right now it is time to connect Margaret and Ellen to their sister and parents in my family tree on Ancestry.