Alphabet Ancestry

One of my favorite authors – and the person who inspired the structure of this blog – Sue Grafton died last night. RIP.

Chicago – obviously – played an important role in my Mother’s family. Here the Hennessys and O’Garas got together, and here the Hennessys and Berens got together before spreading to so many other cities.

But what brought those families to Chicago in the first place? And how did Chicago shape their lives as Chicago itself kept evolving? It is easy to repeat all the PR about the early bustling, growing metropolis. Was that the only reason that so many immigrants came to Chicago?

Germans in Chicago:

For many decades, Chicago had more Germans than any other nationalities. The Encyclopedia of Chicago has a very insightful entry for the German immigrants to Chicago. The timing of the different waves of German immigration reflected their different origins in Germany, beginning with Germans from the southwestern areas in the 1830s. The economy, the politics, and the industrialization in Germany were often the driving forces behind German emigration.

Johann Behrens, Joseph Behrens and his Voss relatives arrived in Chicago in the early 1870s. It’s difficult to define their exact reasons for emigrating, but they did arrive to find many German institutions already in place to welcome them. Did the 1870 unification of Germany and its requirement of military service for all males prompt their coming to America? Our Dinse forebears arrived nearly ten years later with the early part of the 1880s immigrations from the agrarian, northeast regions of Prussia and Pomerania. These areas contained large estates and the tenant farmers who fled to America were probably much like the evicted Irish landholders. Many Germans came to Chicago, saved their money, and then moved to other states frequently buying their own farms.

Our Behrens and Dinse families, on the other hand, stayed in Chicago along with the growing numbers of their countrymen. Their early years in Chicago were probably full of opportunity as the city was rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1871. They worked hard, saved their money, and around 1890 moved out of the rented flats and bought into the new housing developments of Hyde Park, mostly on Escanaba Ave. They arrived in Chicago because of the opportunities the city presented and they probably stayed for the same reason. The German community was also very influential: Germans rallied against the Sunday Closing laws and temperance – think William Golsen and his whiskey ring – and German was taught in the city’s schools unless funding became tight.

Unfortunately, some of the same factors which prompted many to leave Germany, influenced German employment in Chicago.

There was a lot of turmoil in the US.

The Chicago Haymarket Labor Protest on Tuesday 04 MAY 1886, which began as a peaceful rally for an eight-hour workday, turned into a Riot after someone through a bomb at the police. Tensions were already heightened due to the killing of several working men that Monday by the police. Several of the men arrested were either born in Germany or of German descent. The labor community – especially Germans and Bohemians – fell under police suspicion and then raids and what we today call harassment.

Feelings about this event were so widespread and pervasive, that when Alva Hennessy Berens related to her daughter Carol Berens Dalton many years later about her aunt Kate O’Gara’s husband William Ward, she described him as “a disturbed person as well as an anarchist. He wanted to blow up the government.” Kate and William were married on 12 JUN 1887, about a year after the Riots.

Then, the modernization and automation at the turn of the century caused the unemployment of many skilled German immigrants and their children. I’ve often wondered how this affected John Behrens and his family, especially if he was the sawyer and carpenter working for furniture manufacturers before he became a teamster.

Almost immediately following that upheaval came that little war in Europe which grew to consume the United States. Once again Germans were distrusted. Now even those German Americans whose ancestors had arrived in Colonial times were suspect in America. Germans were required to register; newspapers as distant as Dallas and Salt Lake City criticized the continued teaching of German in Chicago’s elementary schools. Hotel owners in Chicago Americanized the names of German dishes on their menus; and many German Americans anglicized their names. Alva convinced Lou to drop the “h” to sound less Germanic: Behrens to Berens.

~ April 2017

Next: Irish in Chicago: Hennessys and O’Garas

Brick walls – as many of you know – are those seemingly impassable spots in genealogy where it seems impossible to find the parents of a distant – or not so distant – ancestor. Sometimes the records are simply not there. Whether they weren’t kept at the time or have been destroyed through war, natural disasters, or fire, often we don’t even know where to look for them.

Last Spring, I broke through two such brick walls in my Mom’s family. It seemed initially that Johann Behrens’ – father of Louis Berens – home city or town in Germany had at last been discovered. What I had discovered was that we had been spelling Frieda’s maiden name incorrectly. She was Fredericka Dinse not Dense. With that, though, her family, their immigration to the US, and part of their lives in Chicago opened up. Several of the Dinses thought that their families had come from Berlin, which agreed with what Bruce Berens remembered. But that origin proved to be not quite true. The Dinse story will be properly told under D for Dinse in a few posts down the road.

Johann “John” Behrens: what we know so far:

When I first heard about John Behrens, it was via the old family stories. How he tried to keep his horse in the basement; how his son, my Grandfather, kicked him out of the house. Imagine my surprise to find him in records from 1880 through his death in 1928. He seemed to be a regular family guy, living and working in Chicago, and supporting his family. He was Godfather to his wife’s niece, Emma Johana Christine Dinse, when she was Baptized at Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church, Colehour Chicago, in May 1881. Finding him enumerated in the censuses from 1900 to 1920 yielded definite information about him. He was born in Prussia – not Alsace-Lorraine, Bavaria, Hesse, etc – in September 1848.

When did John come to America? There must have been a gazillion Johann Behrens who immigrated to the US over the pertinent years, so it becomes even more important to zero in on an accurate year of immigration for Johann. Birth years can only be guidelines sometimes simply because people fudged on their ages. Finding immigration data can often lead to finding an immigrant’s home in the Old Country or finding family members who emigrated with him.

There are only three censuses that asked for an immigration date that could give us a clue to that for John Behrens: 1900, 1910, and 1920. Here’s how the various census enumerators recorded John and Frieda’s immigration years.

CENSUS YR        JOHN    FREDERICKA “FREIDA”

1900                1871     1880

1910                1880     1880

1920                1871

1930                NA        1880

The 1880 date is accurate for Freda and the rest of the Dinses – they arrived in New York City on 29 NOV 1880 on board the Silesia from Hamburg.

I tend to think that John came to this country in 1871. The 1910 information could have been given to the enumerator by Frieda. Incorrect information like that often happens – sometimes even a neighbor reports what he or she knows or think they know. Narrowing John’s immigration years to 1970-1872 would, of course, narrow the number of possibles. More on that in another post.

Another way of discovering the birth place and family of an ancestor, is to use what is called “cluster genealogy”, where you look at all the relatives that you can find and all the neighbors too. Immigrant families often “clustered” together or lived in the same neighborhoods and attended the same churches. It requires tracing these individual families and ultimately untangling family relationships. Often, a child or a sibling will give the sort of information that you seek. Studying these siblings and cousins is called collateral research.

A likely candidate appears using a version of this approach by scouring pertinent years of the Chicago directories.

A Johann and John Behrens first appear together in the Chicago directories in 1872 – which would support an arrival about 1871 – living at 198 Rebecca. Johann is a machinist and John a sawyer for Charles Tarnow, furniture manufacturer and later Alderman. They may be the same person with two entries. John lives at #198 until 1877 when his address changes to 200 Rebecca. On the 29 DEC 1880, when John marries Ricka Dinse, he is still listed (1881) at 200 Rebecca. By 1890, the John Behrens family has bought or rented a house on the corner of 85th and Exchange Ave which later is numbered as 8500 Escanaba Ave in South Chicago. Is this the same family?

Oddly enough, a Joseph Behrens buys the house next door to John and Freda at 8508 Escanaba Ave. Relatives of Joseph Behrens’ wife, Carl and Minnie Voss, bought a house a few doors up on Escanaba. Minnie Jensen Voss and her husband Carl/Charles Voss lived at #8510 later renumbered to #8512. They originally lived in Colehour, Cook, IL according to the 1880 census. Colehour is where the Dinse family lived and their children were baptized.

This morning I was checking over my notes and noticed a name that I had not researched.

When Carl/Charles Voss was naturalized 06 OCT 1892 in the Circuit Court of Cook County, his witness was Henry Meincke of 8505 Buffalo Ave. There was no Henry Meincke in Chicago prior to 1892 – why would Charles Voss choose a relative newcomer for his witness? The answer lies in the word relative. In 1895, Henry has also moved to Escanaba Ave with the Vosses and the Behrenses. Finding the Meincke family in the 1900 census, reveals that three of Henry and Annie’s children were born in New York. Their birth registrations show that Annie is actually Anna Jensen/Jansen. Anna was Fredericka Jansen Behrens’ and Minnie Jansen Voss’s sister.

So now we have family connections between John Behrens-Freda Dinse and the Blohm family, but still no solid connections between Joseph Behrens-Fredericka Jansen and John Behrens.

~ More about John Behrens in a later post.

~ February-March 2017

Ballincarroona

A second brick wall in our family’s ancestry was Daniel Hennessy. While we knew he was from County Limerick from Alva Hennessy Behrens’ recollections and found him in the City of Limerick with his wife and children, we still did not know where he was born or who his parents were.

Townlands and parishes are one of the most important pieces to finding Irish ancestors because Irish records were organized that way under British rule. When the National Library of Ireland (NLI) released its long-awaited digitized Catholic baptism and marriage records in the summer of 2015, they were – alas – not indexed. If you didn’t know your ancestor’s parish or townland, you would have to wade through an entire County’s records if you knew which county to look in! However, indexed records became available in 2016 through the genealogy websites Find My Past and Ancestry UK. These were offered free in March that year, which gave many family genealogists a way through many brick walls!

Daniel Hennessy, Robert’s father, was born in the townland of Ballincarroona in 1826. Sometimes spelled Ballincaroona, it is a townland in eastern County Limerick Ireland, part of the Catholic parish of Hospital, Civil Parish of Kilfrush, Barony of Smallcounty, and the Catholic Diocese of Cashel Emly. While most of this Diocese is in County Tipperary, Ballincarroona lies right up against the Limerick-Tipperary border wholely within County Limerick. It is a small townland of about 610 acres, just under one square mile. By contrast, the NJ township that I live in is just over 100 square miles.

In the 1800s, Ballincarroona was mostly farmland and grazing with few landholders. Today, Ballincarroona, from what I can tell, is still mostly grazing land with houses clustered along its main roads. Originally, I was taken in by that Mythology of Ireland, all incredibly green, peaceful and beautiful. But what was the reality.

Population in Ballincarroona

Great Britain began taking censuses in Ireland in 1821, although there are references to earlier censuses. The Government worried about Irishmen who would not want to comply with the census or even those magistrates who were supposed to take the census. With good reason. The Uprising of 1798 was just one generation away and there were Irish grumblings still – especially in the rural areas and centered in Limerick and Cork. There had been so much unrest that Robert Peel had established the “peace preservation force” in troubled areas in 1814 – to be paid for by the locals. Thus, there were already outrageous taxes and rents, unpopular tithe collections, and evictions before the Great Famine. The result was the 1821 Uprising, centering in Askeaton, one of the oldest towns in Limerick, southwest of Limerick City. The attack there led to the arrests of over 400 men, with executions and men sent to New Zealand. (The list of prisoners included one Daniel Hennessy! Perhaps that’s where that story began?) This violent suppression by Major Going led to his assassination in October and that act plus others led ultimately to the Insurrection Act of 1822 in Limerick (28 FEB 1822).

Thus the censuses gave the British a much more accurate way to both count and determine where the Irish lived, and also to tax and tithe (to the Anglican Church of Ireland) them, especially now that the population had increased about 1.8 million from 1800 to 1821.

While there are only remnants of these early censuses, much of the pertinent material exists in collected reports to the British Parliament.

It is hard to believe, but these are the facts for Ballincarroona abstracted from three of those volumes:

YEAR     HOUSES            POPULATION

1841     19                     148

1851     9                      68

1861     4                      27

1871     4                      23 (14 males; 9 females)

1881     7                      37

1891     10                     47

1901     11                     57 (30 males; 27 females) [1 Hennessy family: 6 people; 3 males, 3 females]

1911                             97                                 [1 Hennessy family: 8 people; 4 males, 4 females]

The differences in both houses and population between 1841 and 1851 show the effects of that terrible Famine in Ballincarroona. Evictions soon followed. In 1861 and 1871 there were only four house and less than thirty people in the townland!

How many Hennessys?

While there appear to have been Hennessys all through the Cashel Emly Diocese and Co Limerick in the early 1800s, Ballincarroona was the home of our Hennessy family branch til about the mid-1800s, when Daniel first moved to Limerick City and then emigrated to the US.

There are several other ways besides censuses to estimate a count of Hennessys in the townland. By counting Baptisms in 1820, about seven Hennessy families were landholders in Ballincarroona although there were about twelve families altogether. In the 1833 Tithes list, there were six families listed but only those who held or rented land were tithed. By 1840, the total is back to about seven families, but by the 1851 Griffith’s Valuation, there are only five Hennessy families holding land plus an additional two working families according to Baptismal records. These included Daniel’s parents and brothers and one sister.

During this same time, the Carroll, Conneely or Connelly, English, Gleeson, Kirby, Leddin, McCarthy, Meagher, Molouny, Power, Regan, Rourke, Ryan, Tracy, and Twohy families lived in Ballincarroona. Some of them were Godparents or sponsors to Hennessy children, and Hennessys were Godparents to some of their children. Why care? Some of these Baptismal relationships give clues to family members and part of the fun is to untangle the different families!

~ January-February-March 2017

A few years ago in an interview, Sue Grafton, author of the Kinsey Millhone series often known as the “Alphabet Murders”, replied that she did not plan to continue the series after finishing the alphabet. Oh no!

Why couldn’t Kinsey find her true love at long last and try to give up the PI business, not missing the physical abuse but oh so longing for that Happy Dance that comes after the intellectual, intuition flashes, and sometimes serendipitous experience of the hunt? She was an ace at finding people and connections, often wading through dusty tomes and acres of records at various courthouses and archives. And then analyzing what she had found, using her infamous index cards to untangle the mess and solve the mystery.

Sound familiar? Why couldn’t she be a genealogical PI??

Last week, it occurred to me that – since Sue Grafton would not be using my idea – maybe I should. Using the alphabet would help to structure the presentation of stories and discoveries. It would also help to mix things up rather than dishing up an enormous eye-glazing casserole of each family!

It also allows for topics that had an impact on various families such as the 1871 Chicago Fire and the Iroquois Theater Fire just to name two. Places and the times lived in are important too.

Recently I have broken through two brick walls on Mom’s side of the family so it looks like those families will be the first focus of this blog – my happy dance! Please feel free to offer information, stories, photos, questions, critiques, etc. This is an ongoing exploration to revisit our families.

~ Spring – Summer 2016

A lot has happened since last Spring. There have been a few false starts including unwieldy blog sites, but here we are.

~ Spring 2017