Breaking Down a Brick Wall Part 2 | Our Prairie Nest

by Wendy, December 14, 2019

If you started at Part 1, the story continues here!

After being told by one genealogical research company that the prognosis for finding my great-great-grandmother, Emma Anna (Murphy) (Reagan) Shaw, was “poor,” I thought maybe they were right.

However, I had Research Consultation time I had banked with the New England Historic Genealogical Society (American Ancestors), because for the past few years, I’d been renewing my membership at the Friend level, instead of just the Research level. The Friend level includes the benefit of 15 minutes of Research Consultation time and you may accumulate it up to a certain amount. I decided it was time to use it.

After filling out the details on their website, the coordinator scheduled me to talk to Melanie McComb, also known as The Shamrock Genealogist. NEHGS connects you with the genealogist best suited for your query based upon various factors and I was excited to finally have someone take an in-depth look at over two decades of my hard work!

Melanie requested anything and everything I had, so I made sure she had access to everything I’d collected, from vital records to newspaper articles to the timeline I’d drawn up with my verified facts and tentative dates, places, and people, and so much more. Having someone else analyze everything was what I’d been wanting for such a long time, and now I was finally getting the new perspective I needed.

During our call, Melanie offered numerous suggestions and, even though I was taking notes, she also sent me a comprehensive follow-up with her analysis and ideas. *A side note to say I would highly recommend this service through NEHGS. It is well worth the Friend or higher-tier level memberships, or paying for out of pocket!*

I set to work immediately, prioritizing Melanie’s recommendations and reaching out to people. One of the first things I did to follow-up after her call was dig deeper (no pun intended) to find out where Margaret was buried.

As Melanie pointed out, it could be useful to know if she was interred in a Catholic or Protestant cemetery, because the records for my Emma were all Protestant. The records for that Guysborough Murphy family were all Catholic. A mixing of religions within the family seemed unlikely and Melanie was gently skeptical of Emma being connected to the Guysborough Murphy family because of this, giving more weight to the possibility of her being born in Maine based on the censuses and death record. Also, there are many Murphy and Reagan families in Maine, and she suggested I really delve into them.

All this time, I’d given more weight to the Guysborough family partially because of the 1871 Canadian Census entry for Emma Murphy being the only one “left” for me, partially because of the name Laurence, and partially because in her 1888 marriage to grandpa Erastus, Emma had given her place of birth as Nova Scotia. However, it was the only time in all records pertaining to Emma that Nova Scotia was ever mentioned, except in the death of her son, my great-grandpa Harrison Shaw. Therefore, Melanie’s skepticism was entirely appropriate.

Digging Up a Burial

So, going back to Margaret’s death record in Massachusetts Vital Records, 1841-1915, the entry didn’t list her place of burial. However, I somehow stumbled upon the Undertaker’s Return of Margaret’s death and it did list her place of burial. Voila! She was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Boston.

I visited the Boston Catholic Cemetery Association and conducted an Online Burial Search on their website. Sure enough, there was a Margaret Murphy who died in 1890, buried at Calvary. So did this confirm she was Catholic and perhaps not the Maggie Murphy with whom Emma purchased land in Middleborough in 1889? Was I instead dealing with two Murphy women, (potential sisters?) who’d simply landed in Middleborough by 1888/1889, and then one disappearing without a trace?

I took a deep breath and emailed the contact person for the Boston Catholic Cemetery Association, and hoped for… Well, I didn’t know what I was hoping for. Margaret’s death record and Undertaker’s Return did say she was a widow and had a husband named William Murphy, so I guess that, at the most, I anticipated receiving a record stating that the two of them were buried in the same plot. And such a record would be another dead end for me.

When 2 months passed without a response, I reached out again with a gentle follow-up request. I know people are busy and genealogical inquiries don’t take priority when you’re writing to libraries, churches, cemeteries, and other organizations, and I try to always acknowledge this when writing to people. Patience and good letter or email-writing technique and etiquette are as important as ever, even in 2019!

On the morning of December 5, 2019, I woke up bright and early. It was 2 days before my 45^th birthday and we were leaving that day for a long weekend. You know how the night before something you’re anticipating – a holiday, an event, a vacation, etc. – it can be difficult to sleep? That was my issue the night of December 4, so when I rolled over at 7 a.m. on the 5^th, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep. I picked up my phone to glance at my email.

There was an email from the contact person Boston Catholic Cemetery Association. She had sent me a JPG and a PDF, apologized for the delay, let me know there was no fee for the information, and wished me Happy Holidays.

And a Happy Holiday (and Birthday) it was about to become, because the PDF and image showed that the plot for Margaret Murphy had been purchased on December 24, 1890 by none other than my great-great grandmother, Emma A. Shaw!

What happened next, however, was what I’d been waiting to find since 1993… Find out how the story ends – and begins anew – in Part 3!

Breaking Down a Brick Wall Part 1 | Our Prairie Nest

Breaking Down a 26-Year Brick Wall: Part 1

by Wendy, December 14, 2019

After 26 years of wondering and guessing, digging and hypothesizing, flailing and sometimes giving up, it happened.

When I originally posted “2019: The Year I Find Emma” on January 4, 2019, my entire focus was on DNA. Would you believe that, after all these years, DNA was not what led me to answers? Instead, it was 3 of our most-often overlooked genealogical resources: burial, probate, and land records. I think we often focus on births, marriages, deaths, and census records for facts, but this experience is a reminder that all records are valuable.

I’d been trying for several years to get someone to take a critical look at my research and timeline on Great-Great Grandma Emma Anna (Murphy) (Reagan) Shaw, wife of Erastus Bartlett Shaw of Middleborough, Massachusetts. Sometimes another perspective will give us fresh insights and ideas. My questions were: 1. When and where was Emma born and 2. Who was her first husband? It was getting this outside perspective that led me to the records I needed to dismantle the wall I’d been staring at since I was 18.

From her 1888 marriage to Erastus to the 1970 death certificate of my great-grandfather Harrison Shaw, every piece of evidence offered conflicting information on her place and date of birth. Was it Nova Scotia, Maine, or Massachusetts? And were her parents born in Massachusetts, Maine, Canada, England, Ireland, or Scotland? And there wasn’t even a spark of hope when it came to the elusive Mr. Reagan beyond the entry in the 1930 Census stating that Emma was first married at the age of 16. Only nominally useful when her age varied from document to document!

I did have one thread of hope that formed the basis of a hypothesis about her origins, though. Roughly 10 years ago, before so many records were available via FamilySearch, Barbara Poole of Life From the Roots, found an 1871 Canadian Census entry for an Emma Murphy residing in Manchester, Guysborough, Nova Scotia, Canada. It was something, because every other Emma, Anna, or Annie Murphy that I’d tracked in the 1871 and 1881 Canadian Censuses, and 1870 and 1880 U.S. Censuses in Maine and Massachusetts hadn’t borne fruit. Those Emmas had the wrong parents, wrong husbands, the wrong everything. But this Guysborough Emma had, well, nothing. Just the lone census entry.

The Hypothesis

Over the past decade, I built a hypothesis piece by piece around the Guysborough Emma. She was 10-years-old in 1871 and living with the Flavin family. She wasn’t related to them, but there was a baptism for an Emma Ann Wallace, daughter of an Eliza Murphy at St. Ann’s in Guysborough in 1863. Again, just a tiny record and, really, it shouldn’t have meant much. Why? Because my Emma’s parents were supposed to be John Patrick (or John… or Patrick) Murphy and Mary Ann Frazier/Fraser/Frasher.

However, this Eliza Murphy of Guysborough had a sister named Margaret Murphy and a brother named Laurence Murphy, and their parents were a Patrick Murphy and Mary… Lowery. Again, you’d wonder why I clung to this family as a possibility when the names weren’t quite right. Because there were two names that were right: Laurence and Margaret.

Laurence is a family name for us, you see. My grandmother, Barbara Shaw (granddaughter of Emma) had a twin brother. His name was Laurence. Sadly, Laurence died when he and grandma were only 3-years-old. I can’t imagine the pain of losing one’s twin, especially so young. Grandma went on to honor his memory by naming her second son Lawrence, my Uncle Larry.

As you can see, there is no evidence here to prove that the Guysborough Emma was mine, but there was nothing disproving it, either, unlike other Emmas who I’d chased over the years.

Margaret was the other piece of the puzzle that kept me holding on to my theory. Emma purchased property in Middleborough in 1889 with a Maggie Murphy. Somehow, there had to be a connection, but it continued to elude me until 3 years ago.

So what was my hypothesis? It was that Emma was the granddaughter of Patrick Murphy and Mary Ann (Fraser) (Lowery). The pieces fit as far as the ages of the possible grandparents, potential mother, aunts, and uncles, and the fact that this Emma in 1871 was living with an unrelated family in town. But how was I going to prove or disprove it?

Margaret “Maggie” Murphy

In 2016, I tried a new search query on FamilySearch. Instead of searching for Emma or anyone by first name, I searched for the last name Murphy and various combinations of the father’s possible name, “Patrick Murphy” or “John Murphy,” and the mother’s name, “Mary Frasher/Fraser/Frazier” or “Mary Low(e)ry.”

I found 2 possibilities. The first was a James Murphy who was the son of Patrick Murphy and Mary Lowery of Nova Scotia. He died in 1886 off Grand Banks, Newfoundland in the loss of the Schooner Virginia Dare. He’d married an Annie Fitzpatrick in Gloucester in 1882 and had a son, John James Murphy, born a few months after James’ death. John went on to marry Leone Mason in Gloucester in 1907 and have 3 children, 2 of whom lived to adulthood and died in the 1980s. Great… but I didn’t want to pursue descendants without verifying a family connection.

The second hit was Margaret Murphy, daughter of Patrick Murphy and Mary Frazier, born in Nova Scotia and died in Boston in 1890. At last, someone whose parents’ names were the same as those on Emma’s 1888 marriage record and 1945 death certificate! By then, I’d forgotten about the purchase of the property on Plymouth Street, Middleborough in 1889 by Emma and Maggie. But, as you can see, it was another potential piece of evidence that my Emma was the Guysborough Emma.

This still didn’t prove anything, though, because how many Patrick Murphys and Mary Fraziers are out there? And how many Margaret Murphys? The death record also didn’t tell me exactly where Margaret was born or where she was buried. I wasn’t sure where to go from there, but I knew there was more. There had to be. I also continued to put out feelers for someone who might be willing to review my work and give me some fresh ideas.

Finally, I reached out to one genealogical research firm for an assessment, posing the two questions asked above. Their response? “Prognosis: Poor.” They didn’t believe it was possible to identify Emma’s date and place of birth, confirm her parentage, or find her first husband. I decided if they couldn’t do it, my only choice was to sit around and hope for DNA to provide answers…

Read on for Part 2.

2019: The Year I Find Emma

by Wendy, January 4, 2019

I am confident that 2019 will be my year – the year I find the origin of my great-great grandmother, Emma Anna Murphy. Emma, who married first a Mr. Reagan and then my great-great grandfather, Erastus Bartlett Shaw of Middleborough, Massachusetts in 1888.

The first time I tested my DNA was in 2006, before FTDNA offered Family Finder or Ancestry DNA became a thing. The only option available to me was mtDNA, which wasn’t applicable to Emma, but I still wanted to get “in” on this technology. I hoped that this new tool would help me break down the looming Emma brick wall. Since then, I’ve followed up with several autosomal tests, had my father test, and also seen other relatives on that side of the family test.

Now, after 25+ years of attempting to either dismantle or climb it, I think the end is in sight (despite a professional genealogy firm telling me the prognosis of a search for Emma was “poor”)! The technique that I believe will yield answers is that of creating genetic networks or DNA match clusters.

I found that creating a spreadsheet that sorted all DNA matches known to connect to my father’s mother – and therefore, potentially, Emma – was the way to go. Here’s a look at what I did:

You could probably create a network like this in mere moments using DNA Gedcom or Genetic Affairs, but I did this by hand in Excel, person by person, because I wanted to look at each person individually. The process allows us to see patterns in our matches in a different way.

How did I do it? First, this was made based upon my father’s DNA matches. Since Emma is his great-grandmother, it makes sense to work off Dad’s DNA instead of my own. He’s a generation closer to her and thus ought to have more of her DNA than me or my sister do.

I then took the 4 close matches he has who are confirmed as maternal matches. They are my father’s half-niece, his great-niece, a second cousin, and a first cousin, once removed. While the half-niece is my generation and the great-niece is even more generations removed from Emma, they are still useful for pinpointing maternal-only matches for my father. Why? Because my grandmother was married twice and her eldest son (father of the half-niece) and daughter (grandmother of the great-niece) were from her first marriage, while her two younger sons (my other uncle and my father) were from her second marriage, to my grandfather. Thus, these two nieces allow me to absolutely rule out my father’s paternal matches.

Next, I looked at the first cousin, once removed. She is actually a first cousin we didn’t know my grandmother had and I’m sure there’s a story there that the DNA match herself doesn’t even know (one I’ve been trying to approach as sensitively as possible with her). But that isn’t the focus of this post. The nice thing is, I can actually rule out the first cousin, once removed, because she connects to my grandmother’s maternal side, and my focus is my grandmother’s paternal grandmother.

With that large grouping of people in gray set aside, that allows me to move on to the peach, pink, and green matches. A review of the green matches shared with my father’s great-niece didn’t give me much hope that I would find my answer there.

So my focus is on the peach and pink clusters. I’m already biased toward one of them, because two of the matches in it who only match me, my cousins, and one another appear to be likely candidates. However, ruling out all others also helps in this instance, to ensure I’m not chasing the “wrong” cousins. I’ll definitely post updates as I work through this project and let you know if I’m successful!

Digging Up a Burial

The Hypothesis

Margaret “Maggie” Murphy

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Digging Up a Burial

The Hypothesis

Margaret “Maggie” Murphy

Hey There!

Let's Connect

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