The Flanagans

On my previous archive visit, when I first identified the Rolwichs, I found that Margaret Raulinitis had married a Flanagan and had several children.  I ran out of time, though, before I could take it any farther than that.  Filtering through a common name like Flanagan is considerably more difficult.  This time around, I planned to take it one generation further.

The Flanagan Branch

It was actually easier than I had expected.  I just searched for marriage records, and then used the information on them to find their children.  Since the bride and groom's parents appear on marriage records, it's easy to confirm when you've got a match.  I was able to add another 14 people to tree!  And I didn't even turn up anything for 2 of the 5 Flanagan children.  There were no death records for them, though, so my guess is that I just missed them.  But since I've got 11 to locate in the generation between about 1960 and 1980 already, I thought I'd just leave it for now.  The way things are shaping up, I could have dozens of living Scottish relatives!

Eric Rolwich

When I met Brian, Therese, Martin, and Paul at Easter they told me that it had been years since they had had any contact with their cousins or uncle Eric Rolwich.  The best they knew, Annette has passed away a few years back.

Rolwich Tree

I had been hoping that they'd be able to help me make the contact since locating anybody has proven difficult.  Unfortunately, they couldn't.  We all agreed to do some more searching.  For my part, I did some googling, facebooking, and phonebook searching, but came up empty handed.  So yesterday I decided to search at the archive for records to confirm that the others were still living.

Thankfully, it appears that they are.  I couldn't find death records for Eric, Anne, Colin, or Annette's widower Gerald.  Annette did, in fact, pass away in 2004.  I also searched a second time to see if Colin had married or had children.  To the best I can tell, he didn't.  I also couldn't find any record of Gerald re-marrying.  That means the four of them should still be around.  I'm at a bit of a loss about how to locate them, but at least we know they're out there.

Archive Visit

I took another trip to the Scotland's People archive yesterday.  This time I went in prepared (because it's so dang expensive!).  And it paid off.  For 7 hours straight, I was finding new records to expand the tree.  They had to ask me to leave at closing time!  By the end I was just downloading records of people that might be related, so I could review them later.

I've got updates to post about the Flanagan branch of the Raulinitis line, I did some more digging into the Rolwich's descended from Eric Rolwich, I have a stack of Kisielius records to sort through, and I'm pretty sure I was able to jump back to this side of the Atlantic with the McPherson line.

I'll work to get updates posted here.

Annie Raulinitis

When the Rolwichs visited for Easter we talked for a long time about the people in our family tree.  As it turns out, they were completely unaware that Zose had existed.  In fact, they didn't know that Margaret Raulinitis had existed either (meaning the branch that split off and became Flanagan is also "lost" for the time being).  They told me that they only knew of one of Peter's sisters, Annie, and that she had gone to the United States.  Ellen, Peter Jr's widow, recalled that Annie had been in occasional contact with Peter Sr., and she believed she had settled in California.

I had no reason to think she'd left Scotland, so I hadn't searched anywhere but here.  But her departure explains why I wasn't able to find a marriage or death record.  So I made a trip to the Genealogy Centre to see what I could find on ancestry.com.

I didn't find much, unfortunately.  In all, I found three trans-Atlantic transit records.  Annie left Glasgow in 1928, at the age of 18, by herself, on the SS Letitia (third class), with £2 in her possession.  Her name is misspelled as "Rawlinities", but Matthew is listed as her father at 178 Rose St., so I'm certain it's her.  She arrived 9 days later in Quebec, bound for the C.W.L. Hostel in Montreal, and it says she "intends to reside permanently in Canada".  On a side note, she was also apparently neither mentally nor physically "defective", something they deemed pertinent to note on the immigration form.

Arriving in Canada, 1928.

Despite what the first document said, she didn't stay in Canada.  In 1932 she pops up on a ship bound for Glasgow from New York City.  And just 12 days later, she was on her way back to New York.  What could have possibly justified the expense and the time to make that journey for such a short time?!  Especially since she was probably in transit longer than she was in Scotland.  It doesn't appear to coincide with any deaths or marriages, so it's a mystery at this point.

Visiting Home, 1932.

Returning to New York, 1932.

A different mystery might be solved, however.  Her return journey to the US was on the SS California.  It looks like she didn't live in California, but rather traveled over there on a ship by that name.  It's easy to see how knowledge passed through the years can retain bits of truth despite not quite being entirely accurate.  Of course, this doesn't rule out that she may still have eventually ended up in the state of California.  The third document does, however, indicate her "last permanent residence" as Scarsdale, an upper class neighborhood in New York where most households had/have servants.  All three documents indicate her occupation as a domestic servant.

SS California

I have so much more I want to know about Annie now.  Could there be more family in New York that we never knew about?  Unfortunately, I've had no luck finding any other trace of her.  It will take persistence.

The McPherson Line

Annoyingly, the Scotland's People archive at the Register House, isn't open on weekends.  So I haven't been able to do anymore Raulinitis or Kisielius searching for a while.  Instead, I've made a few trips to the Genealogy Centre to use their ancestry.com membership.

The first thing that I did was pursue a lead given to me by the Rolwich's.  Their family lore said that Annie Raulinitis emigrated to the United States.  And I was able to confirm it!  Unfortunately, I couldn't get much farther than that.  More here.

Since I was at the Centre, I decided I'd start looking into my Scottish roots from my mother's side of the family.  The annual gathering of the McPherson Clan is coming up in August, and it would be nice to go with some knowledge of which McPhersons it is that I'm related to.  I started with some very basic information:  my great-grandmother was Margaret McPherson and the family was based in Buffalo, NY for at least a generation before the rest of my family arrived in the United States.

I quickly uncovered hoards of McPhersons in the Buffalo area, and most of them seemed to be named Mary, Joseph, or John.  They were Catholic and they had massive families.  I was confident I was related to most of them, but sorting out who is who is a real nightmare with such common names - turns out I'm related to (at least) five Mary McPhersons.  Two of which were born in the same year!  The other complication is that they were really inconsistent with how they reported names on the censuses.  Also the head-of-household responding to the census taker apparently couldn't keep track of the ages of his all his children!  They're all plus or minus two years from census to census.  This is the tree that I've come up with so far:

The McPherson Lineage

I was conservative in how I connected up the documents to form this tree because it would be really easy to mix in Marys and Josephs of other McPherson families (it's an entirely different game than searching for "Rolwich" or "Kisielius"!).  I'm confident what I've got is accurate.  What was really great is that a couple of in-laws showed up on later census records, which helped to trace back even farther.  Mary J Stanton, for example, shows up on the 1910 census as the mother-in-law of my great-great-grandfather, and her father gets listed with her on 1880 census.  That's my great-great-great-great-grandfather, and he was born almost 200 years ago!

1910 Census:  Mary J Stanton is the mother of my great-great-grandmother Frances.

1880 Census:  William Burke is the father of Mary J Stanton.

I've nearly exhausted the census records because I've gotten back far enough to identify which were the actual immigrants and approximately when they came.  They are John P (born about 1820) and Mary (abt 1826) McPherson, who had two children in Scotland before they came, James F (abt 1852) and Mary (abt 1854).  And Joseph and Mary Stanton, and father William Burke, all came from Ireland.  That was interesting to find because I knew I had some Irish ancestry, just not from this branch.  I found more Burkes in Buffalo too, but I'm uncertain about them because there's a big age discrepancy for William.  I'm pretty sure it's an error on the 1880 census because it says he's only 14 years older than his daughter, but I'm not confident enough to make the connection at this point.  Unless there's two William Burkes who are shoemakers in Buffalo, though, it'll be them.

Now the challenge will be to figure out which towns in Scotland and Ireland they came from.  With that information, I ought to be able to trace them in the Old Parish Records and potentially find some still living here!  Unfortunately, the passenger records that I've seen so far don't give nearly enough information to confirm any of their entry dates or their places of origin.  The one below, for example, could very well be us (names and ages match), but there's just no way to be sure.

SS Glasgow passenger list.  Arrival in NYC, 20 Oct 1853.

I also haven't been able to find any record of them being in New York City yet either, which was almost certainly their port of entry.  The family lore says that somebody from that branch (or maybe the O'Neil branch?) made the journey from NYC to Buffalo by foot.

Who is John Raulinatis?

No, not John Galt.  John Raulinatis.

Way back, on my first visit to the Register House, I came across a death record for a two month old baby by the name John Raulinatis.  Since the spelling was slightly different ("-atis" instead of "-itis"), and since I didn't recognize the other person listed on the document, Jessie Raulinatis, I put it aside.  I figured it was possible there was a family connection, but I was busy uncovering others where the connection was clear.

Recently, I was going back over some of the documents I collected, and I noticed this one again.  One thing stood out this time:  the location of his death is 178 Rose St, in Glasgow.  That's the address where the Raulinitis family, my relatives, lived; it's on the birth records of Annie, Peter, and Margaret, and the marriage record for Zose and Kazimiras.  I've also confirmed that Rose St was renamed Florence St, which shows up on several more of the records.  So we're probably related, but who were John and Jessie?

The various records were a little more clear in my mind this time around, and I recalled that the name "Jessie" had come up previously on the 1911 census.  The census shows a family of 4 at 178 Rose St. in 1911:  Matthew Rolwich, Eva Rolwich, Jessie Rolwich, and Annie Rolwich.  Since I already confirmed that "Raulinitis" became "Rolwich" (evident on the death records of Eva, Matthew, and Peter Sr.), the address is correct, and three of the names match, this had to be them.  The record also indicates that Jessie was 10 years old in 1911, exactly the right age to be Zose, my great-grandmother!  I'm now convinced that "Jessie" was actually an alternate name for her.  It may also explain why I haven't yet been able to find a birth record for Zose - she may have been born as Jessie.

If I'm right about this, it means John Raulinatis was my great-uncle!  Chute's eldest brother.  A brother that she apparently never knew about!  It's possible she never knew about him simply because he died in infancy before she was born, but there's a somewhat more sensitive explanation for it as well.  A closer look at his death record shows that no father is listed - he appears to have been illegitimate!  The birth of a child out of wedlock in that era (not to mention, in a Catholic family!) would have been a really big deal.  Given this, his brief existence was perhaps something that was never talked about later on.  Especially because Zose would have only been 16 at the time!  Maybe it's even part of the reason she stopped going by the name Jessie.

Nevertheless, it's something that I want to get to the bottom of.  On my next visit to the Register House, I'll be looking John's birth record (maybe it will list a father), Jessie's birth record (maybe I can confirm my "alternate name" theory), and a 1901 census record (which could also support my alternate name theory).

First Contact

I've made contact with my distant Lithuanian-Scottish relatives, the Rolwich's.  A couple weeks back I sent a letter explaining our relation with a couple documents from the archive and the family tree.  Just the next night I got a call from Brian, my second-cousin-once-removed.  They were all blown away by what I had uncovered, "gobsmacked" they told me.  I was really pleased to find out that they were as intrigued and as keen as to meet as I was.  There was no way to be sure how they would react.

Paul, Martin, Brian, me, and Therese

We invited them over for a visit to meet.  By chance, the first opportunity we got was today, Easter.  So while I missed out on the Matulis gathering on the other side of the Pond, we had our own over here.  And I did my best to reconnect them to their Lithuanian roots - complete with an egg cracking competition, kugelis, cold beet soup, and a flag for each of them.  It was a really great time.  So much more to say, but no time to say it in!

Saltibarsciai

In honor of Machute

Kugelis!

A flag egg is always essential.

   

Which means we also needed a Saltire.

And one from our side of the Atlantic.

In honor of their favorite football/soccer club.

And something more traditional.

And they really made Jessee's day with these!