Using Church Records: A Cautionary Tale

I have long been confused by the fact my great-grandfather's youngest sister, Mary O'Hara, was missing from the 1910 census and missing from the baptismal register at the church where she should have been baptized. I eventually found a birth record for her, but these omissions still troubled me. It's one thing for a child here or there to be misnamed, misrecorded, or passed over, whether by the census taker, the parish priest, or the family legend, but for the same child to be missed in every case made me wonder.

I had contacted the Catholic Church nearest the O'Hara family home to try to find the family's sacramental records, and was rewarded with only one: Mary's older sister Malinda was baptized in April 1905. They couldn't find any of the others.

I contacted the same Catholic Church, on a different occasion, to request sacramental records for my Quinn family, who also lived nearby, and was told that, despite a search, there were no sacramental records for any of them. "Must have attended a different parish," I thought. "They don't call Brooklyn the 'Borough of Churches' for nothing." But during a recent visit to my great-uncle's home, he was able to show me a copy of the baptismal certificate of my great-grandmother, Molly Quinn. She was baptized March 28, 1897 at that very church.

Baptismal Certificate
Anna Mary Quinn
28 March 1897

The certificate that I saw was dated 1923, so it's not a question of the baptism never having been recorded. (This certificate was acquired in preparation for her wedding.) But Molly was baptized not Mary Quinn but Anna Mary Quinn, so the person searching the records must have missed it. It's not unreasonable that a parish secretary, whose job has nothing to do with genealogy, doesn't check each record for middle names and mothers' maiden names, but looks for Mary Quinn when asked to look for Mary Quinn.

Using second-hand church records that are closed to the public is a dicey proposition, but I think we have to do it anyway. There are other avenues for some of the information on some of the records (parents' names are on birth certificates, but in NYC births were only unreliably registered prior to about 1900), but others - like godparents - are exclusively available from baptismal records. What is essential to understand - and what I didn't realize before - is that they can be positive evidence when they're found (Malinda O'Hara's godmother was Malinda McGlone, as recorded on her baptismal certificate), but never negative evidence when they're not (The lack of a baptismal record for Mary O'Hara suggests that the O'Haras moved or changed parishes between 1905 and 1908).

What is your experience with contacting churches for records not available for public use?

Irish Catholic Parish Registers: Baptism Questions

As I explore the Catholic parish registers recently put online by the National Library of Ireland, I've realized that I don't know as much as I should about the conventions that would have dictated how they were created. In that light, here are the questions that are piling up as I browse:

• Was it standard operating procedure for an illegitimate child to have only one godparent/sponsor at baptism? I've seen this appear to be the case on two occasions, in two different parishes: different dioceses, different counties, different decades.  

• How common was it for the father of an illegitimate child to be publicly known? Most seem to have a father listed, even when that father appears to be married to another woman. What mechanisms were in place to discover the father of an unmarried woman's baby?  

• If a married woman was a godparent, would she be recorded in the register under her maiden or married name?  

• Were parents ever recorded by their titles rather than their names? (Specific to my family: What English-language name (or title) could be recorded as Mayistri?)

If I can find the answers to any of these questions, I hope to write some follow-up posts to provide as much context as possible.

What sources would you recommend to learn about the context surrounding birth and baptism in 19th century Ireland? What do you find yourself wanting to know about the Irish parish registers?

Doors of Faith: Il Santuario del Beato Giacomo

My maternal family all hail from the south of Italy, most of them from the small town of Bitetto, outside of Bari.

I could be writing about il Cattedrale di San Michele Arcangelo, the church in town which undoubtedly played a role in the faith lives of my ancestors. (It occurs to me at this writing that the frequency with which the name Arcangela was used in my grandmother's family might bear testament to this.) But my main association with the cathedral in Bitetto is that when I visited the town, in college, I was met by my second cousin once removed and his young son. My Italian was better then than it is now, but I still didn't understand anything that was spoken in dialect, and didn't catch much of what was spoken in Italian. Still, I understood as young Donato, in the back seat, told his father that they should show me the cathedral - il primo cattedrale di Bitetto! ("The number one cathedral in Bitetto!") Only moments into my very first visit to the town, even I got the joke: there's only one cathedral in Bitetto.

But although I can speak to 10-year-olds making jokes that even barely proficient Americans can understand, I can't speak, in any meaningful way, to the importance of il primo cattedrale di Bitetto! in the faith lives of my ancestors. What I can speak to is the continuing importance of a different church, Il Santuario del Beato Giacomo di Bitetto, in the lives of people who trace their roots to Bitetto.

Il Beato Giacomo translates to "Blessed James" in English, but although he's occasionally thus named on English-language websites, even in America, no one refers to him in English. He's always Il Beato Giacomo, or just Il Beato (which just means "the blessed," but which somehow never gets confused with, say, Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha, or Bl. Benedict XI).

Il Beato was born in Croatia, and relocated to Bari, Italy, where he received a call to religious life and joined the Order of Friars Minor in Bitetto. During his life, he was known for his holiness and prayer life, including levitating during prayer. After his death, in 1896, his body was discovered to be incorrupt. It is currently on display in the Santuario Beato Giacomo in Bitetto. (Blessed Jakov Varinguez, saints.sqpn.com)

My "doors of faith": Il Santuario Beato Giacomo 

Image source: Santuario Beato Giacomo - Bitetto. http://www.beatogiacomo.it/

Il Beato Giacomo is still important to people from Bari, both those in Italy and those worldwide, and he's particularly important to people from Bitetto. When I visited Bitetto, I did go to il cattedrale in town, but that was just for a quick look around. The big event was visiting il Beato. (Donato wanted to come, but couldn't because he had school. How often do you encounter a church that's so important that even ten-year-old boys want to visit?) I was able to view his incorrupt body. I met with the priest. My grandmother had sent me with instructions to make a donation on behalf of the Gatto and Lanzillotto families. It was 2007. Ninety-eight years after my earliest immigrant ancestor had left Bitetto, we were still donating to express devotion to il Beato Giacomo.

If you look around, you'll find traces of il Beato throughout the lives of my family and, I'm sure, others from the area. There's a framed image of il Beato Giacomo's incorrupt body in my grandparents' home. My mom has a prayer card in her car. I just reached into my wallet and pulled out these, a card and a medal:

Prayer card, front

O Beato Giacomo, faithful friend of Jesus, pray for me and for my loved ones now and always. Amen.

Beato Giacomo medal

"Beato Giacomo * Bitetto"

My family is merely an illustration of the zeal with which people from around Bari still venerate il Beato Giacomo. The United Pugliesi Federation in New York has an annual Mass for him around the time of his feast day. More than that, in doing the research for this post, I discovered that in December 2009, Pope Benedict XVI advanced the cause of canonization of il Beato Giacomo by promulgating a decree of heroic virtues.


Beato Giacomo, ora pro nobis.

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy - Google Maps - Brooklyn Catholic Churches

In trying to find sacramental records - baptisms, marriages - for my ancestors, I ran into a roadblock that must be common for people researching families who were from big cities: too many churches. Way too many churches. From what I've been able to find, upwards of 70 Catholic Churches had been founded in Brooklyn by the end of the 19th century. It's easy to know where to look in the early days; in the 1840s and '50s, there are only a handful of churches to choose from. But then, as the Catholic population expanded hugely in the second half of the century, due in large part to immigration, so too did the number of Catholic churches. Sometimes, these churches are mere blocks from one another; it's not as if each neighborhood had only one church.

In order to facilitate my own search for sacramental records, I realized I needed to know not only where my relatives had lived, but also what churches were in their neighborhoods, and how long those churches had been there. So, using information from sites like this and this, I created a Google map of all of the churches in Brooklyn that had been founded through 1900. I aim to try to add younger parishes, too, but I haven't gotten there yet. I figured 1900 was a good-enough stopping point that the map had become something I could share, and that others researching families in Brooklyn would be able to find it useful as well. The information included is fairly basic; I haven't been able to add details such as the historic ethnicity of a parish, or its mailing or web address, though I know that these would have been helpful. (A shocking number of churches still don't have websites, actually!) I hope that in its current form, though, it's nonetheless useful. Please share the map - available here - with other researchers!

View Brooklyn Catholic Churces in a larger map

This post is part of the 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy Challenge at Geneabloggers by Amy Coffin of We Tree.

Brooklyn Churches! Excitement!

Some time ago, I posted about having come across baptismal records of the three eldest Toner children, Julia, Mary Ann, and Samuel, at St. Paul's Church in Brooklyn. I didn't know why only those three were baptized there, but it appears I've just figured it out!

Combining this Brooklyn Catholic blog I just found, which gives locations and founding dates for churches in Brooklyn with my knowledge of the addresses the Toners lived at and the very cool "My Maps" feature at Google Maps, I've created this map that shows family addresses in blue (will give addresses, family, and time period if you click) and church locations in green (will give parish name, address, and founding date if you click), I've realized that the Toners, it would seem, attended St. Paul's, and baptized their first three children there, until two much closer churches - St. Mary Star of the Sea in 1853 and Visitation in 1854 (1853 is the date given for Samuel's baptism, the latest Toner baptism at St. Paul's). I'll have to look a little closer to double check whether there are any other Catholic churches in or near Red Hook, but for now it looks like my first order of business is contact St. Mary's and Visitation and finding out how far back their parish records go (please let them go all the way back to 1853/4!), and either request a search or make a plan to go do some research myself (that part might not happen until this summer, of course). Finding baptismal records for the middle Toner kids there, and then, especially, for the younger Julia, our Julia, would be crucial. It's torturous to know that the family I've traced back the farthest is the one that hasn't quite necessarily 100% been linked to us, although I'm 98% sure.

My assumption will be that the Toner's attended Visitation (we know the Mulvaneys did), but since we know that the Madigans attended St. Mary's, both are worth the effort.

Anyway, check out the map, as I'll be updating it soon with additional churches and addresses. For my own reference, it will include the O'Haras and Quinns as well as the Mulcahys, Mulvaneys, Madigans, and Toners. I've just recently e-mailed St. Augustine's near Baltic St. to see if they can find any of the sacramental records of the O'Hara family, but if they're not there, I'll have to map and check all of the other local churches.