More than you ever wanted to know about the Rothwells and Mulvanys* of Kells, Co. Meath (but rather less than I want to know about them)

As I related in an earlier post, I was recently blown away to discover that two associated Mulvanys (James and John), both from Kells, Co. Meath, and both living in Brooklyn from the 1850s on, were both married to women with the maiden name Rothwell (Bridget and Ann). James Mulvany and Bridget Rothwell were my 3x great-grandparents, and John Mulvany and Ann Rothwell were, it seems, related to them some still-unknown fashion. In 1860, the two families were living in the same building in South Brooklyn. In the 1880s, members of both families were buried in the same grave.

In my last post, I promised to let readers know "where these two Rothwell-Mulvany families take me." It occurs to me that this might have given the impression that Part II would be a wrap-up, a conclusion. When I said that this discovery "might have blown my Mulvany line wide open," or that this discovery "changes everything," it might have seemed like I was suggesting that it had led me to an answer.

I'm going to say up front that that's not the case. Of all the things that this discovery changed, what stayed the same was that I'm dealing with questions, not answers. More questions than ever, really.

Here's how I'm trying to answer those questions.

I went to the Irish Family History Foundation's website and was able to find the marriages of Bridget Rothwell and James Mulvanny, 2 March 1850, and of Anne Rothwell and John Mulvany,  19 July 1851, both in Kells. An Anne Rothwell is one of the witnesses for James and Bridget's 1850 marriage, and a James Rothwell is one of the witnesses to Anne and John's wedding. (A James "Bothwell" immigrated later in 1851, listed on the ship's manifest immediately beneath a James and Bridget Mulvaney.)

Manifest of the John Hancock, 13 November 1851

I was not, however, able to find birth records for Bridget or Anne Rothwell. I have no idea who Bridget Rothwell Mulvany's parents are: they're not listed on her marriage record, or in her obituary, and she died long before New York City (rather, Brooklyn) required they be listed on her death certificate. However - Ann Rothwell Mulvany lived to the ripe old age of 90, dying in 1921, well after New York City (long unified) began asking for parents' names on death certificates. That certificate - something I would never have thought important to order, before this unexpected discovery - obviously became the very next item on my list of records to acquire.

It showed up recently, and, of course, it didn't quite blow anything wide open, but it did offer some clues. Ann's father's name is recorded as John. Her mother's name is unknown.

Death Certificate, Ann Rothwell Mulvaney, 30 September 1921

Now, buried with John Mulvany (Anne's husband) were James and Bridget as well as a John Rothwell, whose age indicates that he is of the same generation as Bridget and Anne (not their father). John Rothwell died 21 December 1894, and his death certificate gives his parents' names as John and Mary.

Death Certificate, John Rothwell, 21 December 1894

That they both have fathers named John suggests that he and Anne, at least, might have been siblings. However, according to the records available on the IFHF site, the only John Rothwell who was having kids in Kells in the 1830s (or any time thereabouts) was married to a Rose, not a Mary. And while John and Rose have a son named John of approximately the right age to be John Rothwell, son of John and Mary, they don't have a daughter named Bridget (but then none of the Rothwells in Kells have a daughter named Bridget who's anywhere near the right age), and their daughter named Ann is about 5 years younger than she should be. Five years here or there shouldn't seem like much, but being born in 1837, like this Ann Rothwell, would have made our Ann Rothwell a mere 14 years old when she married John Mulvany in 1851. It would also mean, if all these Anns are really the same Ann, that she was only 13 when she was a witness at the wedding of Bridget and James. (One source I just found, after a quick google, suggests that there is currently no minimum age for witnesses under Canon Law.)

Even more than the Mary/Rose discrepancy, and the lack of a Bridget, this seemed to raise a significant objection to my hope that I was identifying the correct Rothwell family. My understanding is that marriage before the late teens or early twenties was quite rare in most European countries. (Not recalling the several sources where I had read this, I checked Wikipedia, which quotes an average age at first marriage of 25.) It seemed unlikely that Ann Rothwell had married at 14. Unlikely, not impossible. But it certainly didn't point to this being the correct Ann Rothwell.

I remembered that there was one more record I should be looking for in Ireland, the birth record of Ann and John's firstborn son. In all U.S. census records, their children are identified as American-born, with the exception of their eldest son, Michael, who is routinely recorded as having been born in Ireland. I knew when he was born, within 2 or 3 years, and if they married in Kells, I could be reasonably sure he was born in Kells. (One thing that I know, but can't get around, is that just because Bridget's obituary says she was a native of Kells, and just because both couples married in Kells, doesn't mean that any of them actually was born in Kells. But Ireland has a lot of towns, and so far this is the only one with any indicated connection to the Rothwells/Mulvanys, and so I'm looking here, until I have reason to look elsewhere.) I was just making sure to accumulate all the records associated with this family, and I quickly found out just why that's so important. I easily found the baptism of a Michael Mulvanny, born in Kells to John Mulvanny and Anne Rothwell, on 19 September 1851.

Did you do the math? He was already being baptized 2 months to the day after his parents' wedding. All of the sudden, marriage at 14 doesn't seem quite so improbable - at least, no more improbable than pregnancy at 14!

So there's a good chance that Ann Rothwell Mulvany is the daughter of John and Rose Rothwell, and was born in Kells, Co. Meath, in 1837, got pregnant at 14, married John Mulvany (parents to be determined), gave birth to a son, and soon thereafter immigrated to the United States. But where does that leave John Rothwell (son of John and Mary)? And where does it leave Bridget Rothwell Mulvany, who, after all is my direct ancestor and so the Rothwell whose parents I most want to find?

Ann's early marriage sent me back to the records to look at Bridgets again, Bridgets who fall outside of the age range that had originally seemed reasonable. There is a Bridget Rothwell born in Kells in 1805, but I still don't like the looks of her. This would put Bridget's age off by a solid 20-25 years in all later records. That's an entire generation. And then there are 2 Bridget Rothwells born in 1839, one to James and Mary, the other to Thomas (mother's name not recorded, but likely Catherine). An 1839 birth date would put Bridget's age off by about a decade in later records. (The several later records I have with ages or birth years indicate birth in 1829, 1832, 1815, 1832, 1832, 1828, 1828). It would also mean that she was married at 11.

Eleven. It couldn't be, could it? Just in case, I went back to check the birth records in Kells again. If we had another one of these babies that came not quite 9 months after the wedding, I wouldn't be so sure. But no babies showed up in the 9 months after the wedding, nor, indeed, were there any at all born to James and Bridget in Kells before their 1851 immigration. That makes their earliest known child Mary Ann Mulvaney, who was baptized 7 April 1852 at St. Paul's Church in Brooklyn, and who is most likely the same Mary Ann who was buried in the Mulvaney-Rothwell plot at Holy Cross Cemetery on 6 June 1854. With 25 months separating James and Bridget's marriage from Mary Ann's birth, there's no evidence that shotguns were involves in the union, although 25 months is long enough that I might suspect there was another pregnancy, if not another birth, in there somewhere. (Unless she really did get married at 11, and didn't hit puberty until some time after the wedding. But I think that would be a highly unlikely situation.)

Then I had another idea. Back when I was searching the IFHF for Rothwells, and searching for Mulvanys, it seemed necessary to limit my search to Kells.  Mulvaneys in particular are quite common in Meath, and Johns and Jameses don't exactly narrow down the search very much. But Rothwell-Mulvany couples are much less common, and I realized I could search the whole county to find out if there were any other couples from these families, or if our couples had had children baptized anywhere other than Kells. This was a brilliant idea, which nonetheless yielded only the two marriages and one birth that I already knew about.

That's all I've got, for now, and it certainly isn't an answer. My next step is to check the Board of Guardians minute books, 1839-1917 from the Kells Poor Law Union; the Court Records of Kells, 1851-1921; and the book Kells Burial Grounds, County Meath, by author Eileen Hewson. I'm hoping they offer me something, because if they don't, I'm not sure what other avenues to pursue.

Of course, there's a reason I called Part I of this post "On ordering every record of everyone, ever." I discovered the Rothwell-Mulvany link by accident, when I ordered a death certificate that I didn't think would teach me anything of much importance.  There's information you didn't know you needed in places you didn't know to look for it, which means that if the above promising sources don't bear fruit, I'll be spending months, maybe years, working my way through the acquisition and analysis of the death certificates (and other records, where they exist) of the combined 16 children of the two Mulvany families, hoping for another thunderbolt out of the blue.

*Although my family spells the name Mulvaney, it seems to have reliably been Mulvany before about the 1890s (sometimes Mulvanny, but never Mulvaney), so I tend to drop the e when talking about the 19th century, and add it back in when talking about the 20th. For the sake of not confusing the heck out of people, I'm trying (sometimes failing) to stick with one spelling per post.

On ordering every record of everyone, ever.

Like most people with limited time and funds, I tend to focus primarily on my direct ancestors and turn to more distant, tangential lines only when necessary. But a few months ago, I had an extra line on the request for photocopies that I was about to send to the Family History Library, and on a lark, I spent $2.00 on the death record of a very tangential relative, not expecting it to add anything to my body of knowledge besides her cause of death. Boy was I wrong! When the record arrived, I read it, did a double take, read it again, and realized it might have blown my Mulvaney line wide open.

My great-great-grandfather was Patrick Mulvaney, whose parents were James Mulvany and Bridget Rothwell. Patrick was born in Brooklyn, NY, but his parents were, by all indications, from Kells, Co. Meath, Ireland. Now, while James and Bridget (Rothwell) Mulvaney from Kells were raising their family in Brooklyn, there were several other Mulvaneys in Brooklyn. Deputy Sheriff Mulvaney doesn't seem to have been a relation, though goodness knows I wish he was, what with all the newspaper appearances he made in the course of doing his job. Luke and Edward Mulvaney seem to have been rather more well-to-do than my Mulvaneys, and they don't appear to have ever interacted. But John and Ann Mulvany - they must have been relations of some sort.

The two Mulvany families live in the same neighborhood. Heck, in 1860, they live in the same building! James and Bridget Mulvany and their children are living in the same building as John and Ann Mulvany and their children. They never show up together on the census again, but members of each family end up buried in the same grave when John, James, and Bridget all die in the 1880s. They're joined in that grave by James's brother Mathew and a John Rothwell who must have been related to Bridget, right? There is every indication that these families are related through James and John Mulvany. They could be brothers, maybe cousins, but I've been working under the assumption that the two men are related somehow. And then . . .

I have an interest in the life and story of John and Ann's daughter Julia. Her story is not one that I'll be ready to share until I know how all the pieces fit together, but I'm interested, right now, in trying to learn as much about her as I can. She's quite a collateral relative - at most, the first cousin of my 2x great-grandfather - and hers is the record I ordered on a whim. She died in 1928. When it arrived, I read it, and then, as related above, did a double take and read it again. Then I asked my husband to read it. Did the handwriting look the same to him? Did that really say that her mother's maiden name was Ann Rothwell?!

I've spent all this time assuming that the two Mulvaney families are related paternally, because their fathers share the same last name. I still think they're related - circumstantial evidence points to it, perhaps even more strongly now - but now there's every possibility that they're related maternally instead of - or in addition to - paternally, because their mothers also share the same last name.

Stay tuned to find out where these two Rothwell-Mulvany families take me!

Part II is here. 

Learning from other people, OR, GenealogyBank is awesome!

I finally caved and got a subscription to GenealogyBank. I told myself it was mostly for my husband, whose ancestors come from backwards states like Massachusetts and New Jersey, states whose newspapers haven't been made available online en masse by the unbeatable Thomas M. Tryniski of the unmatched FultonHistory website. My ancestors are all New Yorkers - even more, they're (almost) all Brooklynites, up until the last 50 years. What more could I ask than a site that has the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, plus dozens and dozens of other New York papers, just in case?

I should have known better. After all, I read lots of genealogy blogs, right? If you didn't know better, you might assume I pay attention to them, too. I sure thought I did. I remember two posts in the not-too-distant past about making sure you check multiple newspapers for your ancestors. Kerry Scott, of ClueWagon, posted Why You Should Always Check the Second Newspaper. That was literally the title of the post. Why you should always check the second newspaper. And what did I think? "Good thing I don't ever have to check other papers, since everyone in Brooklyn read the Eagle!" Humor me for a moment and take a look at the Brooklyn Public Library's list of Brooklyn newspapers that they have on microfilm. You don't have to read it. Just look at how very long it is. Then you can roll your eyes, if you must. Meanwhile, Liz Haigney Lynch of The Ancestral Archaeologist posted News You Can Use, in which she even mentioned multiple Brooklyn newspapers. And it's true that, somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that the responsible thing to do would be to one day check out the Brooklyn Daily Standard Union. But the Brooklyn Public Library was so very far away, and reading years of newspapers on microfilm can be so very tedious. I still didn't think I needed a subscription to GenealogyBank. After all, GenealogyBank doesn't have the Brooklyn Daily Standard Union, so what good will it do me? I'll still need to get to Brooklyn to read the Standard Union, and what other newspapers will do me any good?

It turns out that the one newspaper that will do me the most good is one I didn't even know I needed. By the 1910s, the Mulvaneys were publishing their death notices in the Daily Eagle, like all good ancestors do when they know the Eagle will be available free online in a century or so. But a few decades earlier, back in the 1870s and 1880s, it seems that the Mulvaneys were dedicated New York Herald readers.

In less than an hour from the time when we began our GenealogyBank subscription, I had come across the following, from the 10 February 1883 edition of the Herald:

MULVANY - On Thursday, February 8, BRIDGET, beloved wife of James Mulvany, native of Kells, county Meath, Ireland. Friends of the family are invited to attend the funeral, from her late residence, 127 King st., Brooklyn, Sunday, 11th, at two o'clock. 

How long had I been trying to find out where in Ireland these Mulvaneys originated? Oh, only approximately forever. It was the one last family whose Irish hometown I didn't know. And "Kells, county Meath" waited, tucked away in a database I wasn't willing to subscribe to because I was sure that all the newspapers I would ever need the Eagle (free online) and the Standard Union (only on microfilm) (and occasionally the Times, but really not until after consolidation, which wasn't until the immigrant Mulvaneys were long dead).

In sum, pay attention to what you read, listen to people who know more than you do, read lots of newspapers, and don't be as dumb as I am.

Mulvaney Family, 1875

When I visited the NYPL several weeks ago, this was one of the 1875 NYS Census records that I found, the record of the Mulvaney Family. It's hard to tell, because the addresses are cut off in the image, but I believe that across the margin is written the word "King" and next to that the number "121." If that's so, it's a couple doors down from 127 King, the address where John Mulvaney was living when his father died in 1885. It's a further few doors away from 135 King, where Bridget Rothwell Mulvaney died in 1883, and a couple blocks from 197 King, where the family was enumerated in 1880. They apparently spent at least a decade just moving up and down the street. 

The family is enumerated as James Mulvaney, 48, an Irish-born carpenter and naturalized voter; Bridget, 43, his wife; Thomas, 20; John, 18; Patrick, 15; and Mary A., 13. The children are all Brooklyn-born, and none of them have occupations listed, although 5 years ago, at age 15, Thomas had already been listed as an "Ap. Carpenter." I'd imagine that certainly Thomas and John, and maybe Patrick, were working by this point in time. Looking up the page, however, it seems that only heads of households and other verifiably adult males - men in their 30s and 40s - had their occupations noted. They live in a brick house worth $5,000.

Tombstone Tuesday: Mulvaney Family Gravesite

Last year, I took a trip to Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn to see a variety of family graves.

This is the stone on the grave of my great grandparents, Veronica Mulvaney (d. 1982) and Joseph Mulcahy (d. 1970), as well as my great-great-grandparents, Julia Toner (d. 1938) and Patrick Mulvaney (d. 1919). Also listed on the stone are several of Julia and Patrick's sons, William and Harold (d. 1933, both of them).

My information on the grave had come courtesy of my uncle, John Griffin, who had requested information on the plot a number of years ago. 

There's additional information in this letter. The plot was purchased by Patrick Mulvaney and his brother John, and I believe that the Gertrude Mulvaney, who died in 1890 at 1 year old, was John's daughter. (John later had another daughter named Gertrude, this one living to adulthood.) Mary Hughes is a mystery; no one has any idea who she was. Raymond Mulvaney was Julia and Patrick's young son, who died as a toddler. (He shows up on the 1905 NYS Census.) I believe Patrick's entire body is buried here, not just his leg. The date of burial corresponds with his date of death, and it's been suggested that he went into the hospital to have his gangrenous foot amputated, but the surgery ended up killing him. Arrangements would have been made to have his leg buried, but, sadly, his entire body needed to be buried instead.

Recently, though, one of my new Mulvaney cousins called Holy Cross, and got information that indicated that neither the gravestone nor the letter pictured above is complete. Holy Cross told her that there are four additional bodies interred in the plot, as well. These, it seems, were initially interred elsewhere, and were moved to this plot after John and Patrick bought it c. 1890. Thus, the information on most of them is spottier, but they were listed as:

Bridget Mulvaney, 53
James Mulvaney, 60
Thomas Mulvaney, 27 (3-1-1889)
James Mulvaney, 8

We've yet to find death certificates for anyone besides Bridget, although I'm looking.

Bridget Mulvaney Death Certificate - 8 February 1883

Even though I've been far too busy for genealogy lately (there's not much time for genealogy when you're finishing grad school, planning a wedding, and hunting for a job!) I had the good fortune to be contacted, separately, by a couple different Mulvaney family researchers. I benefitted greatly from their research, and gave them everything I knew, even though I haven't had time to put much new effort in lately. Then I put them in touch with each other.

As a result, I have some new material to post - for which I can't claim any credit - from the Mulvaney side of the family. Sometimes, genealogy finds you!

This is, we believe, the death certificate of Bridget Rothwell Mulvaney. She died on 8 February 1883, in her 50s; the age given reads either 53, 55, or 58. The age she most often gave in census years corresponds with a birthdate of around 1832, which would put her at 51 in 1883. She's female, white, and married, which means that her husband James must have died after 1883. I've been unable to find him in the 1892 NYS Census or the 1900 Federal Census, so I should probably be looking for his death between 1883 and 1892. She's Irish-born and has been in the US for what appears to read "30" years. (That corresponds with immigration around 1853, which is feasible, as their oldest son, Thomas, was US-born around 1855. (However, I just reminded myself, there was possibly an older child, a girl named Mary Ann, who was baptized in NY in 1852, and seems to have died before 1860.)) She has lived in NYC those entire 30 years. Both of her parents were Irish-born, unsurprisingly. Her place of death was 135 King St., Ward 12, Brooklyn. The only address we ever had for the Mulvaneys was 194 King Street, which is mere blocks away. Had they moved? Or was one of her children living nearby, and she died at his house? If the latter, she'd probably been there for some time. We see from the remainder of the certificate that she'd been ill - with paralysis and asthemia - for 4 months before she died, since October 7, 1882.

More later on where Bridget went next!

136 Images Later . . .

. . . I've finally found the Mulvaneys! I was expecting to come across them living much closer to the John Mulvaneys than they actually were, though, as addresses aren't listed in the 1865 NYS Census, I don't actually know how far they were away, geographically, just that they were many pages away. The writing on these pages are very faint, so I'll tell you that the Mulvaneys are the second family on the right side of the page. James is listed as 46 and Bridget as 50. Thomas is 11, John is 8, Patrick is 6, Mary Ann is 3, and James is a month old. Bridget says she's the mother of 5 children, so it appears that all of her children are still living at the time. Both parents have been married only once, and James is still a carpenter. He has been naturalized, but Bridget is still an alien. (I'm going to have to do some research on naturalization laws in the nineteenth century; a wife was apparently not automatically naturalized by the fact of her being married to a citizen.)

This was from page 136 of the 12th Ward of Brooklyn in the 1865 NYS Census on the FamilySearch Pilot Site.

Mulvany Immigration Papers?

I started looking into the Mulvaney/Rothwell side of the family again, after spending a while concentrating on the Toners. When I asked Betty and John what they knew about the Bridget Rothwell, the answer was essentially "not much." However, they did mention that Nana used to say that she was from "the only poor Rothschilds," which seems to be an ironic reference to Bridget's family. We can't be sure, though, whether she was mistaken about the name, or just commenting on a well-known name similar to her grandmother's name, or whether, perhaps, Bridget's name really was Rothchild or Rothschild. It would be an unusual name for a Irishman, sure.

So anyway, I went looking for our Bridget Mulvany, searching Ancestry.com on her married, not her disputed maiden name. And I found this immigration record, from November 13, 1851, from the ship the John Hancock:

I know it's small, but it should enlarge when you click on it, I hope. Line 143 reads Jas. Mulvany, 25. Line 144 reads Bridget --, 22. Line 145 reads Thomas Mulvany, 16. And, most interestingly, line 146 reads Jas. Bothwell, 16.

There's not much information here, other than ages (which generally but not exactly match the ages James and Bridget provided census takers over the years). They tell us that all of these passengers are coming from Ireland, to the US. Unlike later ships' manifests, there's not detailed information about whence came the immigrants, who they were meeting and where, and their nearest relatives at home.

It would not be unusual for 16-year-old Thomas Mulvany to be the younger brother - or even, I suppose, a cousin - of James. After all, one of his sons was named Thomas.

But what I think is potentially most important - though also potentially a completely irrelevant coincidence - is the next name on the list, James Bothwell, which gives me a little more ammunition for the belief that this is, in fact, the correct record. Is this Bridget's younger brother? Is Bridget's real last name actually Bothwell? Is this a misspelling of Rothwell? It does give me a little additional evidence that the suffix of Bridget's maiden is -well, although it does potentially call into question the Roth- part.

1880 Census - Mulvanys at 191 King St.

Finally! For some reason, neither the Mulvanys nor the Toners show up when I search the 1880 census of Brooklyn. It's very frusturating, because I think they simply have to be there. So this morning, I started paging through the 98th district of the Kings County census pages, just scrolling down and looking at every name on every page. I was hoping to come across the Toners, as I have reason to believe they'd be in that district (some Brooklyn Eagle clippings, that I believe are our Toners, that I hope to be able to post soon. But this is more exciting, for the moment). However, there they were, on page 22 (of 59 - I'm still hoping to come across the Toners as I continue) - the Mulvanys!

This census shows the Mulvany family living at 194 King St. James gives his age as 52, and Bridget gives hers as 48, which correlate to birth years of around 1828 and 1832 - consistent with what we've seen. Their only 3 children stil living at home (or still alive, and it's a testament to health conditions of the era that we can't say which) are Thomas, age 23, Patrick, age 20, and Mary A., age 17. They have a boarder named William Anderson, a carpenter like James, who was born in Denmark though his parents were Irish, and who, at 42, is a widower. Bridget "keeps house," Thomas (b. 1857) works in a cotton mill, Patrick, (b. 1860) is a machinist (just like he's listed in all later censuses), and Mary is "at home."
Who's as excited as I am to learn that the family didn't just fall off the face of the Earth for a decade?

1870 Census - Mulvany Family

This is an image of the 1870 census of the Mulvan(e)y family. James gives his age as 42 - he's only aged 8 years in the past 10, but with this age, his birthdate would be around 1828. Bridget has aged 10 years in the past 10 years, from 28 to 38, so her birthdate would remain the same, around 1832. James is listed as a Carpenter, still, and his oldest son Thomas is an "Ap. Carpenter" - he's apprenticed, I'd assume, to learn his father's trade. Thomas, John, and Patrick, at ages 15, 13, and 11, have each aged a neat 10 years in the past 10 years, so their birthdates remain around 1855, 1857, and 1859, respectively. They're joined by younger siblings Mary, 9, (b. 1861?) and James, 6, (b. 1864?). Patrick and Mary are at school. Thomas, as we said, is learning to be a carpenter, John has a question mark next to "occupation" (would 13 be too old for school and too young to work in 1870? I didn't think there was such a thing!), and James Jr. seems not to have started yet. Bridget is listed as a dressmaker in this census. Interestingly, James Sr. has an affirmative mark under "Male citizen of U.S. of 21 years of age and upward." We know James was not born a citizen, but he has become one since arriving in the U.S. Either he went through the entire naturalization process, but Bridget did not, or he could have petitioned for naturalization after service in the Army. According to Wikipedia, "An 1862 law allowed honorably discharged Army veterans of any war to petition for naturalization, without having filed a declaration of intent, after only one year of residence in the United States." It doesn't strike me as particularly likely that he served much time, if any, in the Army during the Civil War, however, due to the timing of the births of his youngest children. If he were away at war from 1861-1865, it is highly unlikely that he could have fathered children born in 1861 and 1864. It's not impossibly, however, to imagine that he may have been away for 2-3 years in between their births.

Betty and John have told me that these names seem to match up with the names they know of of Patrick's siblings, and that they're pretty sure that Patrick's brother John was a Brooklyn alderman.

It seems that the family has moved since the last census was taken. They no longer live in the same apartment building as the John Mulvany family, and are now in a single-family house. There is no record of the value of their estate this year, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were doing better than they had been in 1860, simply because the move from an apartment to single-family house tends to be a move up.

Another record of the family that I MAY have found is in the Baptismal Record of St. Paul's Church in Brooklyn. Mary Ann Mulvaney (spelled with the "e" now) was born April 7, 1852, and baptized at the church April 25, 1852. Parents are listed as James Mulvaney and Bridget Rothwell, and godparents are John Mulvaney and Brid Kavanah. This Mary Ann Mulvaney would be about 10 years older than the Mary Mulvaney listed on the census, and would be about 3 years older than Thomas, who appeared to be the oldest child. The parents' names are correct, as, it would seem that the godfather, is as well, although it's cutting it close for John Mulvaney to be in the US in April of 1852, when it would seem that his son Michael was born in Ireland in 1853 - late 1852, I'd think, at the earliest. Possibly, of course, Michael's age is a year or two off. It seems likely, but not definite, that this is another, older child, a girl who possibly died young, born to James and Bridget Mulvaney before their oldest son Thomas. Is anyone familiar with St. Paul's Church and whether the family were parishioners?

1860 Census - Mulvany Families

No, that's not a typo. The Mulvaneys were listed as Mulvanys in both the 1860 and 1870 censuses.

This 1860 census lists, numbered family 224, James Mulvany, his wife Bridget, and their 3 sons, Thomas, John, and Patrick. Patrick is listed as 1 year old, which gives him a birthdate somewhere in the vicinity of 1859-1860 - still pretty much in the range we have based on his ages given over the years and the age he was said to be when he died. James gives his age as 35, which means he was born around 1825, and Bridget says she is 28, meaning she was born around 1832. Both parents were born in Ireland, but all three boys were born in NY. James is a Carpenter by trade, and the value of his personal estate is $40. None of the boys - Thomas is, at 5, the oldest - have been to school yet.

What's possibly more interesting is that the family two above them, numbered 222, is the family of John and Ann Mulvany. More Mulvanys, at the same address? I can only imagine that John and James Mulvany were brothers. Possibly they were not - they were cousins, or it was pure coincidence. But brothers is not an unlikely possibility. John Mulvany was 30, and so, being 5 years younger than his probably-brother James, was born around 1830. He's a carpenter, too - might they have worked together? - with his personal estate valued at $50. His wife Ann is 26, and so was probably born around 1834. Both of them, and their oldest son, Michael, 7, were born in Ireland. Their next child, oldest girl Ann, 5, was born in NY, which means that this Mulvany family, at least, immigrated sometime between 1853 and 1855. I can't say whether the same is true for the family of Bridget and James, but given that their 5-year-old, too, was born in NY, I wouldn't be too surprised if the brothers had immigrated together, with their families (although, of course, we don't even know whether James and Bridget were married yet, or whether they married in the US or Ireland). They have another Patrick, this one 4 years old, as well as a two-year-old named Mary. Of all of these cousins, only Michael, 7, has attended school within the past year. I don't doubt, though, that his sister Mary and cousin Thomas would be joining him soon.

It looks like James named his second son after his brother, and the fact that both Mulvany boys named a son Patrick suggests to me that it may have been an important name in the family - or possibly they both had a devotion to St. Patrick, being Irishmen leaving home. But again, we've entered the realm of pure speculation. Does anyone know anything about Patrick's brothers and sisters, or where he grew up? There are no addresses listed in censuses from this early.