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.

Rev. Fr. Kennedy and AI

It has been a while since there has been a blog post. In that time, I have been working on my newest presentation, Mining Morning Reports for Genealogical Gold. You can read a review here: https://aweekofgenealogy.com/comments

In addition to getting ready for other presentations, I have also been experimenting with the NARA Catalog API to get an alternate way of searching the catalog.

I did spend some time with AI offerings in my research into the Rev. Fr. Thomas J. Kennedy.

First, I uploaded the sketch that I have of him from the newspaper to ChatGPT and prompted it to: Change this line drawing into a picture

A few liberties were taken by the built-in DALL·E image generation system when creating this image. In the sketch it does appear that he is probably wearing a cassock of the time, but the details of buttons and the notch in the collar are not evident in the sketch.

I may need to try this process again with a stricter prompt to rein in ChatGPT’s creative vision.

I looked up his eye color recorded in a Civil War roster and asked in a follow-on prompt asked: can the image be changed so that his eyes are more grey

The resulting image looked less like the sketch.

Since the Rev. Fr. Kennedy was dying at the time of the column in the Brooklyn Eagle, it finally occurred to me that there must have been a photo of him that was used as the basis of this sketch. I have not located one yet. This image also looks like that of a younger man. My focus has been on the data, but it seems I may need to be searching for the original photo of him. Does the original photo still exist? (Although the Archivist at the Diocesan Archives of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn was very helpful, they did not have a deceased priest personnel file for him at in their archives because he had died in Kentucky and not in Brooklyn.)

Using the original sketch, I did a Google Image search at https://images.google.com, adding the search terms: Kennedy Brooklyn

Naturally, our blog posts showed up, and data about the life of the Rev Fr. Thomas J. Kennedy extracted from the blog posts appeared in the AI summary. Many of the photos that were returned in the results were of men religious of all different faiths.

The “Dive Deeper in AI Mode” button that appeared at the end of the AI Summary made me curious, so I clicked on it. Gemini let me know the number of sites it was searching, and informed me about two sites: our blog and the New York Times. There was an article from the NY Times dated Oct. 5, 1901: “Rev. T.J. Kennedy Said to be Dying.”

Our county library has a subscription to the ProQuest Historical Newspapers, which includes the New York Times, so I logged in and searched for the article using these search terms:

Rev. T.J. Kennedy Said to be Dying 1901

There were three results, two of which were ads from the 1970s.

The New York Times article was succinct and did not offer more information than the article in the Brooklyn Eagle. It was actually published several days after his death in Kentucky. It mentioned that he retired about a year ago, and that his ill health for the reason for his pension. He was in Kentucky, at a Trappist Monastery. He was well-known in the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) circles.

Of course I downloaded a pdf file with the article, a pdf file with the whole newspaper page, and a (brief) citation in Chicago style: “Rev. T.J. Kennedy Said to be Dying.” 1901., Oct 05 New York Times (1857-1922), 9. https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/rev-t-j-kennedy-said-be-dying/docview/96159883/se-2. (Further reproduction of New York Times articles is prohibited without permission.)

There is certainly more to do to fill in this ancestor’s story, but the use of the AI tools ChatGPT and Gemini inspired both my creativity and my next steps in the research.

Thomas Kennedy as a Clergyman

In previous posts I have been relating my searches for and research about the Rev. Fr. Thomas Kennedy. I learned of his existence and connection to my family through a FamilySearch Full-Text Search Finding Amelia Small in FamilySearch Full-Text Search. First, I looked into records about his life in Tracking the Rev. Fr. Thomas Kennedy and then I followed the trail to learn about The Military Service of Thomas Kennedy. Now it is time to see what I can find about his life as a clergyman.

After searching Brooklyn City Directories (both by name, and by Municipal Registers for clergy assigned to Catholic Churches) and censuses, and not finding anything that seemed to fit definitely, it was time try Google. Through Google, I learned about the Diocese of Brooklyn, and its archives. Those archives contained a list of historic churches. These were were good resources, but at this point they did not help me tune into this ancestor.

From the Google results, I followed a link to the text of Priests and Parishes of the Diocese of Brooklyn: 1820 to 1944 which is where I found a big break. There was only one Thomas Kennedy in the alphabetical listing, and his time as a priest fit with what I had learned about him. The entry for him with abbreviations and dates:

Kennedy, Thomas J., ––-, -–– (SBA 6-22-1873) 9-26-01 S John Evangelist-73; S Malachy-74; S Francis Col -78; ILR-83; S Joseph, Hewlett-84; 0 L Sorrows, Corona-85; S Malachy Home -01

I decoded several of the abbreviations, then decided to copy the text that contained the explanation of the coding of the entries into ChatGPT, and told it to use those instructions to decode the Thomas Kennedy entry. Between us, we had a history of his religious life.

• Name: Kennedy, Thomas J.
• Birth date, Birthplace: Unknown/unrecorded
• Death date: 26 Sept 1901 [this is one day different than what I had]
• Seminary: St. Bonaventure, Alleghany [Allegany], Pennsylvania [this is in New York State]
• Ordination: 22 June 1873

His assignments were listed by year (approximately). The entry for “ILL” is for Illness, Leave, Resignation. Presumably it was for illness as he resumed his service as a priest after it. The instructions in decoding the entries included a note that his ordination may not have been at the seminary.

Later in the book his order is given as the Society of Fathers of Mercy (S.P.M.).

With what I learned from the Office of Diocesan Archives for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, I knew that Diocese covered Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island. That helped to make sense of where the churches were (and are). I also learned that their archives contains deceased priest personnel files.

His last assignment was at St. Malachy’s Home, in Rockaway, Queens, New York.

The next stop was the webpage for St. Bonaventure’s University, and their archives. In their digital archives I located an Alumni directory of Saint Bonaventure’s College and Seminary, 1859- published in 1928 (with no copyright restrictions). On page 123 there were several Rev. Thomas Kennedy entries, but the years and Diocese matched what I knew:

In the Catalog of St. Bonaventure’s College there were several other mentions of a Thomas Kennedy who distinguished himself in Logic, Natural Philosophy, and Rhetoric, but I will have to analyze these more to be certain it is our Thomas Kennedy.

With all the knowledge I now had, it was time to go back to the newspapers. Newspapers are one of my favorite resources. They were the social media of past times. I located articles about the Rev. Thomas J. Kennedy in the Brooklyn Eagle.

One article from 1873 how Thomas Kennedy of this city [Brooklyn] was among those receiving orders at St. Bonaventure’s College.

Another article in 1897 celebrating his silver jubilee as a priest included a biographical sketch, which discussed how he turned to religion when being nursed by the Sisters of St. Vincent in a Washington hospital after his left arm was wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run. He had been ordained by the Bishop Ryan of Buffalo. Due to his wound and his health, he had resigned and was stationed at Malachy’s orphanage. (See picture above.)

Then, in 1901, an article titled “Father Kennedy Dying” appeared. (The link to the clipping may not require a free account at Newspapers.com to view.) This column held the answers to so many questions. Some were about details of his service in the military, and why he was absent without leave (his wound). It included other facts, like his studies at and graduation from Notre Dame before attending seminary at St. Bonaventure’s College. He was a member of the Great Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) Post No. 569, which had the distinction of being composed of all priests. Sadly, his health had deteriorated, and in his retirement he had moved to Kentucky to spend his final days in the monastery [the Abbey of Gethsemani].

It also included the fact that he was born in County Longford, Ireland, and immigrated with his parents. This points to where his sister (my great-great-grandmother), as well as my great-great-great-grandparents, came from in Ireland. They lived in Harlem [Manhattan, New York County] after arriving in the United States.

There are many more avenues to follow about his education, his service the military, and his time as a priest in the Diocese of Brooklyn. Other avenues come with limitations in the passenger lists of the time, and the scarce records in Ireland during the mid-1800’s. But finding a county or origin in Ireland is a start!

Without a doubt, I had won the genealogical lottery. You can be sure that I immediately called family members to come into my office to view the column, and his picture!

The Military Service of Thomas Kennedy

The search for the Rev. Fr. Thomas Kennedy began with a FamilySearch Lab’s Full-Text Search Finding Amelia Small in FamilySearch Full-Text Search and continued in Tracking the Rev. Fr. Thomas Kennedy. At this point I wanted to follow the thread about his Civil War service.

My first stop for Civil War veterans is the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors (CWSS) database to learn what I could about his service and his organization. One surprise at CWSS was a note that: “This database is no longer maintained and updated.”

I searched for: “1st Regiment, New York Infantry” AND Kennedy, Thomas. There were three results. (I could have searched for Thomas Kennedy, then selected filters for Union and New York, and searched on results for 1st Regiment, New York Infantry.)

Thomas Kennedy was a Private in Companies A, F and G.

I clicked on the Battle Unit Name to learn more about the history of the 1st Regiment, New York Infantry, in the Civil War.

The second search result was an entry for Thomas McKinley contained a General Note that the original was filed under Thomas/Kennedy, and a Name Note – true name of soldier.

Then third result was for Kennedy, John. Although he might be related, I have no evidence. So I will just keep track of this.

Kennedy, Thomas 1st Regiment NY Inf Co G Invalid Pension Filed 11 Feb 1897 (Dead)

Over to Fold3 to search for military records there, I located three pension index cards for Thomas Kennedy. There was one each for the Companies in which he had served in the 1st Regiment, New York Infantry. Each card had the filing date of 11 Feb 1897 for an Invalid Pension, and the alias of Thomas McKingley. All three cards have been stamped “DEAD.”

Thomas McKingley’s Pension Index showed the alias Thomas Kennedy.

The next stop was the The New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center. They have a variety of online resources. I selected Unit History from the navigation menu, then the US Civil War, 1861-1865.

The 1st New York Infantry Regiment page had descriptions of the Regiment from two sources and gave me other information about its two years of service and the location where each of the companies mustered in and when.

Mustered in: April 22, 1861
Mustered out: May 25, 1863

The history of this regiment includes its service at Newport News, and discusses a noteworthy incident when Merrimac attacked the fortifications on March 8, 1862. Earlier in the war, USS Merrimac had been burned, captured and rebuilt as an ironclad warship, CSS Virginia. The Battle of Hampton Roads, where Virginia fought the Monitor in the Duel of the Ironclads, occurred on March 9, 1862. This story had captivated my son when he read Patrick O’Brien’s book, Duel of the Ironclads, in 1st grade. Finding out an ancestor was there was a big deal. We had visited the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News to learn more about CSS Virginia and USS Monitor as described in this blog post Family History Outing: The Mariner’s Museum, Newport News, VA (where there was also some Pioneer Infantry history).

The page also contained links to other online resources.

The New York State Military Museum had a link to the Adjutant-General Report of the State of New York for the Year 1898. This report contained the register of the First Veteran Infantry, which included these two entries. They presented summary information without all the details found in the muster rolls.

At Ancestry.com, I looked at results in the New York, U.S., Civil War Muster Roll Abstracts, 1861-1900 database. The result for Thomas Kennedy contained 1st Inf for the Regiment, and with an explanation field: “see McKinley, Thomas.”

He was mustered into Company G, then was transferred to Company F.

He mustered in to Company F, then was transferred to Company A. There was a reference in the Remarks about his name being Thomas Kennedy, and a reference to a letter.

On the back of this page, a letter from the Record and Pension Office of the War Department had been attached. It has been determined that Thomas Kennedy was the true name of the soldier who had served as Thomas McKinley.

He was mustered into Company A after being absent with out leave from December 1862 until May 1863, but he was satisfactorily accounted for. In other Civil War records I had seen soldiers who were sick or wounded later rejoin their organization. Tracking these men after battles or while troops were moving was challenging.

With this information, I can create a timeline to compare events in the history of the 1st Regiment Companies with the time that Thomas Kennedy was with each company.

I went back to Fold3 to search for the Compiled Military Service Record (CMSR) Index.

The card for Thomas McKinley was a reference card pointing to the original filed under Kennedy, Thomas, the true name of soldier.

I know that I need to view the CMSR and the Pension file for the Rev. Fr. Kennedy to learn more about him and, hopefully, his family connections. So I ordered them through a NARA retrieval service.

This story is just unfolding.

Tracking the Rev. Fr. Thomas Kennedy

Previously I posted about getting up and running with FamilySearch Labs: Full-Text Search and how I learned about a new ancestor in Finding Amelia Small in FamilySearch Full-Text Search. Everyone is connected to relatives, no matter how isolated they appear to be. It may be that I located a lead to a collateral relative who might help to answer these questions about Amelia Matier Small’s mother:

1) Where was Mary Kennedy born?

2) Who were Mary Kennedy’s parents?

What I knew:

Amelia’s parents were William Matier and Mary Kennedy

How I knew those facts:

Amelia MATIER Small’s death certificate (New York City Municipal Archives D-Q-1946-0009408).

Amelia Small was referred to as Thomas Kennedy’s niece (from the Application for the Letters of Administration for Thomas Kennedy)

What I learned from this document:

JOSEPH N. MATIER, a nephew residing at 226 Bridge Street
FRANK A. MATIER, a nephew
CATHERINE P. MATIER, a niece
CASSANDRA L. APPLEGATE, a niece residing at Gravesend, L.I.
AMELIA SMALL, a niece residing at #364 Hart Street, Brooklyn.
BRIDGET MATIER, a widow of William F. Matier, who died at the County of Kings, on the 24th day of October 1901, residing at 694 Sackett Street, said Borough.
THOMAS MATIER, a grand nephew (son of William F. Matier deceased) residing at 694 Sackett Street, Brooklyn.
WILLIAM MATIER, a grand nephew (son of William F. Matier) residing at 694 Sackett Street, said Borough.

I sketched out a simple tree to combine data from the previous documents into my hypothesis:

Note: Other names and relationships have been omitted from this graphic. (Keeping an open mind, the possibility exists that Thomas Kennedy might be William Matier’s half-brother or adopted brother.)

After reviewing what I knew, I cast a net to find US documents about Thomas Kennedy.

Using Full-Text Search for William Kennedy in Brooklyn, Kings, New York yielded several results, but it can be difficult to connect someone with a common name to a family. One result was the Application of Thomas Kennedy to become a Citizen of the United States that contained the signature of William Matier attesting to his residency and character. William Matier is the name of Mary Kennedy’s husband, so finding this combination of names might suggest that Thomas Kennedy’s brother-in-law was vouching for him. This document is dated 21 June 1882, and there was an interesting notation at the top: “No Charge Clergyman.”

Since I had Thomas Kennedy’s place of death and date, I searched for him on Findagrave.com, but could not locate a record for him.

I turned to Ancestry.com to search for other documentation. Ancestry did suggest a Findagrave memorial. This one was for Rev. Thomas F. Kennedy, buried at the Abbey of Gethsemani Trappist Cemetery. The reason that my previous search did not work was that the first name had been listed as “Rev. Fr. Thomas” in the Findagrave memorial rather than “Thomas.” The name, death date and location of the tombstone matched what was known from the Application for Letters of Administration. From this it seems reasonable to conclude that Thomas F. Kennedy had been a priest. As it turns out, there are two memorials for this ancestor in the cemetery, with different pictures of the tombstone (Rev. Fr. Thomas Kennedy and T. Kennedy).

Photo courtesy of Robin Jordan

Another record that Ancestry.com offered in the search results was for a military tombstone for Thomas F. Kennedy in the U.S., Headstones Provided for Deceased Union Civil War Veterans, 1861-1904 database. This was an interesting development. The name, date and location of the burial matched what we knew about the Rev. Fr. Kennedy. We can now add that he had been a Bugler in Company A, 1st New York Infantry Regiment.

I followed Ancestry.com search results to entries in online obituary collection but none of them matched. (The Rootsweb Obituary Daily Times Index is now hosted on Ancestry.com.)

I did search the newspaper databases to which I had access for Thomas Kennedy in Brooklyn, New York, and in Kentucky, but there was no clear success. It could be my search terms, or the collections of newspapers. There was a mention of a Thomas Kennedy in Brooklyn being ordained at St. Bonaventure, so I kept track of that entry as a potential clue.

Of course I opened up a document and saved the images, citations and notes as I went through these searches. Of course it slows us down when we want to click through and follow each lead, but there is nothing more frustrating that wondering how or where we located a record. Stop, document and save!

I also reflected on how one document found through FamilySearch Lab’s Full-Text Search could launch a whole new avenue of research for me to follow.

The next thread to pull on is what can be found in Thomas Kennedy’s Civil War records. This will be covered in a future blog post.

Finding Amelia Small in FamilySearch Full-Text Search

Researching an Irish family in New York City can have its challenges. Some surnames were very common, and traditional naming patterns often resulted in many individuals with the same names across different branches of the same family group. The passenger lists of the mid- to late-1800s contain little identifying data. It can be difficult to trace these ancestors back to their place of origin in Ireland. With these challenges, one strategy to unravel the stories is searching for family units rather than individuals. The other strategy is to use collateral research.

Of course, I have searched through the unindexed probate and land records available on FamilySearch, but the indexes built into those records will only show the name the name of the main subject. The text of these documents may contain other names and events, and the Full-Text Search helps you find them!

I have been entering the names of these mysterious ancestors into the Full-Text Search and recently had a success connecting one ancestor to another relative who came to the US. This might open an opportunity to do collateral research. You can view a previous blog post describing how to use this tool at FamilySearch Labs: Full-Text Search.

I began at https://www.familysearch.org/labs, and entered the name my ancestor Amelia Small in the search box. Since this search focuses on pattern matching, remember to search for a woman’s birth name and married name. As a reminder, Full-Text Search works better by entering the person’s name between quotation marks into the Keyword field (rather than the Name field).

One of the results was intriguing. My ancestor Amelia Small’s name appears in a probate record, and the address is where she resided.  

Clicking on the record collection name at the top of the result opened a new tab with the record and the full transcript. The search terms were highlighted.

ChatGPT offered a better formatted transcription of the text:

…kin of the deceased, adopted child or children, as far as they are known to your Petitioner or can be ascertained by him with due diligence, are as follows:

JOSEPH N. MATIER, a nephew residing at 226 Bridge Street
FRANK A. MATIER, a nephew
CATHERINE P. MATIER, a niece
CASSANDRA L. APPLEGATE, a niece residing at Gravesend, L.I.
AMELIA SMALL, a niece residing at #364 Hart Street, Brooklyn.
BRIDGET MATIER, a widow of William F. Matier, who died at the County of Kings, on the 24th day of October 1901, residing at 694 Sackett Street, said Borough.
THOMAS MATIER, a grand nephew (son of William F. Matier deceased) residing at 694 Sackett Street, Brooklyn.
WILLIAM MATIER, a grand nephew (son of William F. Matier) residing at 694 Sackett Street, said Borough.

Amelia Small was an heir! I recognized her siblings from the family structure, and from the address listed for her. A list of heirs can be valuable, and in this case, it provided siblings’ addresses, women’s married names, and even a sibling’s death date.

Amelia was the niece of the subject of this document. I followed the back arrow to see the first page of the Application for Letters of Administration for the deceased, Thomas Kennedy, who had died intestate (without a will).

From Amelia’s death certificate I knew the names of her parents, William Matier and Mary Kennedy, both born in Ireland. Some pieces were falling into place. This suggests that Thomas Kennedy was Amelia’s mother’s brother.

There was some other information on that first page.

Thomas Kennedy had died at the Abbe[y] of Gethsemany [sic], Nelson County, Kentucky, on the 25th day of September 1901. This raised questions of whether he was a monk, a priest, or a visitor at the Abbey of Gethsemani is a Trappist Monastery located in Trappist, Nelson County, Kentucky.

While this document contained the explicit information (given by his nephew) that Thomas Kennedy had no wife or children, there might be other avenues to trace his life and connections.

There will be more in this blog to share what more was learned about Thomas Kennedy, and how it was learned.