Rosie O'Donnell Tracks Down Her Irish Roots

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, today's post refers to the NBC series "Who Do You Think You Are?" about researching family history - with an emphasis on Irish heritage.

You may remember Rosie O'Donnell from A League of Their Own, her talk-show, or perhaps even from her high-profile activism on Lesbian and family issues. She came from a family that didn't share much concrete information about their ancestors. She had a suspicion, based solely on the surnames of her parents and her mother's parents, that she had Irish roots. (Well, who wouldn't with "O'Donnell, McKenna, and Murtagh?" but alas, there was no proof.)

The episode follows O'Donnell as she goes in search of her roots. In contrast to other "Who Do You Think You Are?" episodes, O'Donnell does a good bit of her own research.

To view the episode, click here.

Notice the variety of sources she uses and places she goes: Ancestry Library Edition (available through all the branches of the Beaufort County Library); newspaper microfilm, printed city directories, and census records in the United States and Canada; and consultations with genealogists, archivists and librarians in three countries. It took time, it took attention to detail, it took being open to where the sources led her. (In some ways, I think a genealogist is the bravest person on the planet to go where pain, secrets, and silence have kept details and explanations to an absolute minimum).

Please note: Most of the records she reviews with the archivists are unindexed. The archivists had advance notice that O'Donnell was on her way. They've obviously done some of the basic review of records in anticipation of her arrival (with the film crew in tow, of course).

To read Dick Eastman's interview with O'Donnell a few weeks after the airing about her family history journey, click here. You can listen to the Eastman/O'Donnell interview by clicking the "Listen here" button at the start of the article.

To read why Nancy Cottrill, a professional genealogist associated with Ancestry.com, believes that O'Donnell's insight about her family history journey is so life altering, click here. (My husband is from Birr, County Offaly, Ireland. Although we have walked by the Birr Work House many times, we've never been inside.)

The image is from the Biography in Context subscription database available through DISCUS.

In Honor of St. Patrick's Day : Book of Kells

To get a taste of how to identify Irishness in census records, please read last year's 16 March and 17 March blog entries. As the entries show, identifying national origin and ethnicity of ancestors is not always an easy task.

Today's entry has nothing to do with the history of Irish in Beaufort County, but it does have to do with my travels in Ireland since the summer of 1976. During that first trip I met my future in-laws, visited more archaeological sites than I can remember, learned to drink hot tea with milk, [I still think that Guinness tastes nasty] and saw the Book of Kells in the Old Library at Trinity College Dublin. Many folks who visit Ireland seldom get out of the pubs or off the golf courses. Not so with me. I am a dedicated cultural heritage tourist who gets a thrill from seeing old books, old rocks, medieval churches, and overgrown cemeteries. The Book of Kells falls into the "old books" category.

It is somewhat ironic that St. Patrick and the Book of Kells are most readily identified as "Irish," when in fact neither truly were.

St. Patrick was a slave to an Irishman for a time. Sources vary on his birthplace (some say Scotland, some say Wales, some say northern England) but definitely he was not an Irishman. [For a charming cartoon, narrated by a young girl with a thick Dublin accent, watch this video.]

The Book of Kells was likely mostly created on Iona, a remote island off the west coast of Scotland probably around the year 800 A.D. by monks of St. Collum Cille. (AKA St. Columba) [As an aside, he is purported to have sighted the Loch Ness Monster on 22 August 565.] St. Collum Cille, born in what became County Donegal, Ireland, founded a monastery on the remote island of Iona in 561 A.D.

Trinity College, Dublin, Eire (Eire is the official name of Ireland) owns and exhibits the Book of Kells. You will notice that the staff at Trinity College Dublin's Old Library change the pages on display frequently. This is to minimize damage caused by light exposure to the fragile volumes.

The Book of Kells and similarly illustrated manuscripts of 7th- and 8th-century England and Ireland are known for their entrancingly intricate artwork—geometric designs so precise that in some places they contain lines less than half a millimeter apart and nearly perfectly reproduced in repeating patterns. Trinity College Dublin has digital images of some of the illuminated manuscripts online. The designs are a wonder to behold.

John Cisne,a Cornell University paleontologist, says that the monks evidently trained their eyes to cross above the plane of the manuscript so they could visually superimpose side-by-side elements of a replicated pattern, and thereby create 3-D images. More

For additional images from the Book of Kells, click here,here, and here.

Entries about the Book of Kells can be found in the online New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia and the online Encyclopedia Britannica available through our library website.

You can view a video about the Book of Kells from the Today Show broadcast on 17 March 2009. [The traditional Irish music is sort of nifty, too.]

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

[Another irony is that we celebrate on the date that St. Patrick died 17 March 461 rather than the date he was born which remains unknown]. Perhaps you've heard that Sigmund Freud stated that "This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."

Having been in wedded bliss with an Irishman for 32 years, I believe it!

Unraveling the Irish: Was Ellen Driscoll Irish born or 1st generation Irish-American?

Yesterday, I mentioned how one had to gather additional evidence to prove genealogical facts. I am going to re-visit the trail of "Ellen Driscoll." She gives her birthplace as "Ireland" in the 1870 and 1880 Federal Censuses. Her husband, Dennis, also lists his birthplace as "Ireland" in these censuses. He works as a "Boat builder" on St. Helena Island in 1870 and a ship's carpenter in Beaufort in 1880. The family's surname is given as "Odriscol" but indexed as "Oduscol." Variations in spelling are always a concern.

I find Ellen and her daughter, Annie, running a boarding house on Charles Street in the 1920 Federal Census. I can't find Ellen (working backwards through time as a good genealogical researcher should do) in 1910 or 1900. The 1890 Federal census was burned so it no longer exists for South Carolina. And, I've already told you I found her living in Beaufort County in 1870 and 1880.

I am going to make an assumption that the length of her residency in Beaufort as reported in her Beaufort Gazette obituary is more or less correct. 65 years is a long time to stay in one place. Furthermore, I am going to start with the assumption that like many older people of the early 20th century, she probably stayed pretty close to her children and/or longterm residence.

Because Ellen is listed as "Head" in 1920 and her daughter, Annie, lives with her -- and not the other way around -- I am going to read the image sheets of the 1910 census for the Beaufort Township hoping to find Ellen on Charles Street again. Some of the census takers were nice and put down the street names in the margin. There are 8079 names listed in the Beaufort Township, Beaufort County, South Carolina portion of the 1910 Census. When I narrow the search to "Ellen", I find that there are 40 "Ellen"s living in town in 1910. According to the index, none of the possible "Ellen"s were born in the 1840s.

A page by page search is tedious, but is necessary when the index fails to work and there is fairly firm evidence that a particular person is in a particular place for a particular length of time.

So, what did I find in the 1910 Census? I find Ellen's daughter, Annie Driscoll, aged 34, boarding with Gretta Levin, aged 48, a Beaufort merchant, and Gretta's two sons, Alexander and Samuel. Mrs. Levin's store and living quarters is on Bay Street. But, I can't find Annie's mother, Ellen Driscoll, in the page by page review of all 8079 names. Drat!

South Carolina started requiring death certificates in 1915. Ellen Driscoll died in 1926. Can I find her death certificate? Yes, because recently ALE has added images of the SC Death Certificates to its 4000+ databases. The informant, her daughter Annie Driscoll, gives Ellen's birthplace as "New York City." Ellen's parents are M. Driscoll and Ellen Mahany, both of whom were born in Ireland. Ellen Driscoll was 86 years old and "lived until vital powers failed." Her birthdate was given as June 16, 1840. You can see the image of Ellen's Death Certificate from the ALE database at the top of this entry.

But the 1880 census and the 1920 census records I found for Ellen indicate that she was born in 1843 or 1844. Which information is correct? 1840 as on her death certificate and tombstone or the deduced birth years of 1843,1844, or 1845? We must search for additional evidence.

If we knew Ellen Driscoll's maiden name, we could follow up and try to find a birth or marriage certificate which might clear up the discrepancy. Take a closer look at Ellen Driscoll's SC Death Certificate above. We do know her father's name -- or at least a part of it: "M. Driscoll." Her mother's maiden name was "Ellen Mahany." Was our Ellen a "double-Driscoll?" Was her maiden name Driscoll and then she married another Driscoll, Dennis Driscoll? A shared surname isn't uncommon in some ethnicities or areas.

Within ALE there are several New York State birth and Roman Catholic baptismal databases. Might I find our Ellen Driscoll in there? Yes. Ellen is buried in a Roman Catholic cemetery so it is likely that she was a Roman Catholic. Is everyone in a Catholic cemetery, a Catholic? Not necessarily, but this is another place the researcher can assume that burial in a Catholic cemetery tends to indicate that the deceased was a member of the Catholic Church or that her husband or parents were Roman Catholic. Unfortunately, I didn't find any leads. Does this mean that Ellen's trail is gone? No. It just means that ALE doesn't include a database with our Ellen in it -- yet. And, then there are plenty of potential genealogical reference sources that are not online!

According to her obituary, Ellen Driscoll was a resident since "soon after her marriage" and had been in Beaufort for 65 years! Doing the math, then, she comes to Beaufort around age 21 with Dennis Driscoll @ 1861 - 1865, the Civil War era. So, we now have other avenues to tred:

When and where did Ellen marry Dennis?
Why did they choose Beaufort?
Was Dennis a Federal soldier?

ALE provides marriage databases and if I were so inclined, I'd probably start with the New York State and New York City marriage databases to see what else I could find out. And there are always military records to weed through. But, I'm getting tired of thinking about dead Irishmen and/or Irish-Americans now. It is hard work gathering, evaluating, and reasoning out what you find and forming the right questions to ask and locating the right sources to help you find out more information. But thinking of dead people makes me think of final resting places which leads me to another resource in the BDC, Inscriptions on Gravestones in Cemeteries: Beaufort County.

Ellen "O'Driscoll" lies next to her daughter, Annie "O'Driscoll" in Section C of the original chapel for St. Peter's Church on Carteret Street quite near to the O'Dell plot. The final resting place of Ellen's husband, Dennis, is unknown. When Mary Ellen Marcil compiled the section on St. Peter's Church gravestones, she did not include a tombstone for Dennis.

When did they add the "O'" back in?
When did they take away the "O'"? Still more ground to uncover.

Was "Ellen Driscoll" a native born Irish woman? Alas, the evidence seems to be leaning towards her being of Irish ancestry, a first generation Irish-American. But, there is nothing conclusive since I did not find a registered birth certificate for her in my rather limited search. And, is being even partially Irish such a bad thing on March 17th?

So today, on the day when everyone almost everyone wants to be Irish, I salute the "Born and Bred Real Irish of Beaufort County" with whom I have a personal acquaintance: my husband, Noel of County Offaly; Connie of County Clare; and Meg and Joe of County Kerry. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

How to Find Irish People in Beaufort District, 1850 - 1950

Note: I re-worked and supplemented the original post. Latest revision: 8 March 2024 - Grace Cordial

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I am going to tell you how to find the Real Irish in Beaufort District from 1850 to 1950 using the Library's subscription to Ancestry Library Edition inside our library buildings.   

Start by coming to one of our Branch Libraries and log onto Ancestry Library Edition (ALE). You can get access to the US Federal Censuses, 1790 - 1950 via ALE. In the main search screen under the "Search Tab", choose "Census & Voter Lists." 

Now start to narrow down your search by selecting U.S. Federal Census Collection list from the "Narrow by Category" box to the right. 

Pick a census year between 1850 and 1950 to search more thoroughly.  The 1850 Federal census was the first census to include where a free person was born so if the answer is "Ireland," Bingo, you have a Real Irish person! -- Maybe. Genealogical data gathering is all about securing documentation to prove a person's identity and relationships. It is a rare family historian who never ever finds conflicting information and/or documents! That written, though, the census can provide you with a clue that someone may have been born in Ireland or that their parents were Irish-born. 

Now it's time to hone in on Irish nativity and residency in Beaufort County, SC. You do that by typing in "Ireland" as the Birth location; and "Beaufort County, South Carolina, USA" as the Lived In Location for each of the decennial censuses: 1850; 1860; 1870; 1880; the 1890 census was destroyed by fire so skip that one; 1900; 1910; 1920; 1930; 1940; and 1950. [The 1960 census won't be released until April 1, 2032.] 

In 1850, there were 38 Beaufort District residents who had been born in Ireland. Surnames represented include: Butler, Cardwell, Connolly, Dailey, Doyle, Dwyre, Kennedy, McCarty, McElheran, O'Conner, and Morris. In 1860, the number of Irish born residents had dwindled down to 28.

Thomas Catherwood was a clerk; Catherine Early, a ship captain's wife; Pat Kennedy, a drayman, Miss M. Cunningham and Margretta A. Clarke, teachers and Harriet Butler was a governess to planter John E. Frampton's 9 children aged 17 years to 6 months old. Ann Hanrahan was a child's nurse. Irish born William Bennett and his South Carolina bride were lighthouse keepers. Richard Egar and James Egar worked on the Light ship. John Gelston was a tailor while Thomas Rooney and William Cullens were painters. Rooney's wife, Mary, had also been born in Ireland. Michael Doyle age 36 and his apprentice William, age 19, were coachmakers. Thomas Rout was an overseer. John Noonan and Francis Cassidy were listed as farmers. The economic well-being of those described as laborers varied. Thomas Winn, a day laborer, had $300 worth of personal property; William O'Bryant, $500; while there was no indication of the value of the personal property owned by Charles Hurley, Patrick Corcoran, or Edmund Fitts. The woman who resided in Patrick Corcoran's household, Agnes, was a nurse. There were no occupations given for Ellen Wallace nor Charles Brown in the 1860 census. 

The only Irish person on both the 1850 and 1860 censuses is "Francis Cassady," 60, a farmer who owned $6000 worth of real estate and $14,500 worth of personal property, including 15 slaves. He lived with his South Carolina born wife, Mary, in the Whippy Swamp area of the District. 

The 1870 Federal Census lists 34 Irish born residents of Beaufort District, but none of the Irish males listed on the 1860 census re-appear on the 1870 census. It's harder to tell about the female Irish because upon marriage women dropped their maiden names. The census takers didn't care what a woman's maiden name was. Interestingly, one Irish born man, by the name of Thomas Farrigan, a Mariner living on Hilton Head, Beaufort is listed as a "Mulatto" in the transcription of the census record. I think, though, that the transcriptionist got it wrong. The family group, Thomas, aged 33 Anna, "Keeping House" aged 42 [also born in Ireland], and John, age 9, born in South Carolina, had "B" assigned to their "Race." The census taker had sort of scratchy handwriting and appears to have replaced the "B" with a scratchy "W" that the transcriptionist interpreted as a "M." 

Tip: Always consult the original image or document. The occupations of Irish born residents of 1870 St. Luke's Parish were laborer, farmer, seaman, carpenter, merchant, and one "Agt. McLeod Bros." 

One of the few Irish people to permanently settle in Beaufort was Ellen Driscoll (variant spellings Oduscol, Driscol, Bliss). Her obituary from the September 9, 1926 Beaufort Gazette, is headlined: "Mrs. Ellen Driscoll Passed Away Tuesday. For Over Sixty-Five Years a Resident of Beaufort -- Loved by All Who Knew Her." The content indicates that she had been born in "New York City." Yet, both she and her husband Dennis, a ship's carpenter, are listed in the 1880 Federal Census as having been born in Ireland. She was a Roman Catholic whose funeral was presided over by Father F. Murphy of St. Peter's Church. Her bones lie in the St. Peter's Catholic Graveyard on Carteret Street. 

The 1890 Federal Census was destroyed by fire so there isn't a quick check to finding out what Irish born people were here in 1890. 

The census for 1900 includes some soldiers stationed at Fort Fremont who had been born in Ireland: Lawrence Sloan; Patrick Gallagher; John Parker and Peter Lynch and some men connected to the Disciplinary Barracks and training school on Parris Island: Joseph McNulty and John Maguire. Irish born residents included Stephen Duane, Patrick Sullivan, Joseph Nevaham; Harry Belcher, Johanna Talbird, Jane Lucas, Mary Lucas, Ellen Bliss, Susie von Harten, Katie Santos, Mick Mehan, Bridget Bero, John Mahony, Timothy Mahony, Anna Nelso, P.J. Keating, James Ward, and Alice F. Odell. 

In 1900 Alice F. Odell, the daughter of Irish immigrants, but herself born in Maine, is working as a Confectioner and her husband James as a baker. However, their daughter, Matilda's parentage is given as "Place of Birth of the FATHER of this person" is given as "New York" but the "Place of Birth of the MOTHER of this person" says "Ireland." How can Alice be born in both "Maine" and "Ireland?"  Another discrepancy that deserves investigation at some point, but not right now. Alice Odell would go on to be the proprietress of the Sea Island Hotel for almost 40 years according to her obituary published in the Beaufort Gazette in 1921. Matilda (aka "Tillie" AKA  Maude O'dell Doremus) would go on to become a famous Broadway actress. 

Men working at the Marine School on Parris Island in 1910 comprise the bulk of the Irish contingent in Beaufort County that census year: Martin Haney, Alexander Henry, Daniel McHenry, Dennis F. Doherty, Michael Powers and John Riordan are all stationed there. Michael and Patrick Gallagher are not connected to military services.  Women in the County stating that they were born in Ireland were Carroll Santos, Mary Leno, Susie M. von Harten, Annie Gray, and Mary McIntyre (?) [Her name is difficult to decipher on the original record.] 

Of the dozen Irish born residents, Catherine Paul, Alice Odell, and Annie Gray appear on more than one census. In 1920 they are joined by Margarete Brown, Anne Cronin, and Peter O'Neill. Counted out on  Parris Island are John J. Fooley, Josephine Pate, William Howard, Nicholas J. Dillon, John Fitzpatrick and Edward A. Mullen.

The Irish born population of Beaufort County shrinks down to nine people in the 1930 census: Katherine Paul, Carl J. Laine, John Murphy, Patrick J. Kehoe, John Mahoney, Mary Brosseau, Annie B. Gray, Margaret Murphy and John J. Murphy. 

It shrinks even further in 1940. Annie Gray is still here but Jeremiah S. Hayes, Patrick J. McAleavey, George J. Hyland, John Kelly, Mary Kelly and Elizabeth Jennings seem to be newcomers or temporary residents at best. 

By 1950 Katherine Paul and Elizabeth Jennings are the only Irish born hold-over residents from 1940. They are joined by Irish born Josephine P. Farthing, her husband James W. Farthing, Ellen C. Harter, Aleck Dever; and Katherine Butler. 

For additional guidance on how to Find Your Ancestors From the United Kingdom and Ireland and Finding Your Irish Ancestors download the ALE flyers. 

If you want to work from home, sign up for a free subscription to the FamilySearch.org genealogy database. The process will be somewhat similar but not identical even though the source data, the US Federal Censuses will be the same.