Carney Family Reunion

The Carney family immigrated from Ireland.  Either they didn't all come together, or they didn't keep track of dates very well.  The 1900 census is the first time people were asked to report the year they went to the US.

The father of this Carney family was John Kearney/Carney.  John died in Illinois in 1876.  So he came before that.

• The eldest son, Thomas, died in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1895.  So again not sure when he arrived,
• The second son, Michael, was married in Trenton, New Jersey in 1868 and reported that he came in the US in 1863.
• The third son, Bernard, married in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1870 and reported that he arrived in the US in 1860.
• The fourth son, James Carney, married in 1873 in Chicago, Illinois, and reported that he immigrated from Ireland around 1870.
• The fifth child, and only daughter, Mary, was married in Chicago, Illinois in what appears to have been a joint ceremony with her brother James.  Mary died in 1894.

James met Mary Gibbs, an Irish immigrant,  in Chicago, and they were married.  They had five children while they lived in Chicago.  The first two were twins, John & Margaret.  The twins were either stillborn or died shortly after birth.  The third child was Margaret Marie Carney, my great-grandmother.  James and Mary had two more sons, John James, and Charles.  Although the rest of the family stayed in Illinois, the James Carney family moved to Nebraska between 1885 and 1890.  They bought farmland in Oak Grove Township, Section 27.  Their youngest son Charles died around 1888.  Since Chicago has no record of his death, I assume he died in Nebraska, where they didn't keep vital records.

Their neighbors to the north and west of them in Section 28 was the Enoch Parr family.  The families were joined in September 1896 when James' daughter Maggie married Enoch's son Elmer.  In 1906, Maggie's brother John married Mayme Strangman, who also lived nearby.  John eventually took over his father's farm.  Elmer and Maggie bought land north of the original Parr homestead, and the two remaining Carney siblings stayed close, and their children attended school together.

In going through old family photos, we found many with the Carney siblings' families, but there was one that we couldn't quite sort out.  It appears to have been taken in Nebraska at the Carney farm (by then owned by John & Mayme).  One day I came across the exact same picture on Ancestry! It had been posted by John Hunt.  John said the photograph had been taken when the Carney family had gone to visit the "Nebraska Carneys."  He could identify all the Illinois Carneys in the picture but had been struggling to identify the Nebraska Carneys.    So together, we sorted everybody out, but I had to expand my family tree to cover the details of James Carney's siblings' families.

James Carney's eldest brother, Thomas, apparently never married. The second brother, Michael, married Anna Dunne. Michael and Anna had 6 children: John, Annie, Margaret, Thomas James, Mayme, and William Francis.  The third brother, Bernard, married twice.  He had six children with his first wife Sarah Boyle: Margaret, James John, John F, William J, Thomas B, and Michael Joseph.  He married his second wife, Mrs. Mary Moore Shortell, after Sarah's death when he was 51.  James's sister, Mary, married Thomas Dunne and had two children: William Patrick and Katherine.

So who is in the photo in front of John & Mayme Carney's house in Nebraska?
The family on the far left is Bernard's grandson, Bernard J, his wife Lillian, and their children: Larry, Gerald, Bernice, and baby Murray. Then the next pair over is Michael J & Frances Carney - Bernard's son and Bernard J's parents.  Next to Michael J Carney, along the back row, is Mayme Carney, John Carney, and their son Henry. The rest of the younger adults across the front are Michael and Frances' son Michael F, John and Mayme's daughter Mary Carney, Michael and Francis' daughters: Constance Carney and Marjorie Carney Hunt.

The photo must have been taken around 1940, assuming baby Murray was born in 1938.

Fish in Nebraska

Researching our family is always tricky for a couple of reasons -1) They continuously move and have for hundreds of years, and 2) they re-use first names to a ridiculous degree. And then we have the Fish and Work problem.  Since those are common English words, it is challenging to search out the names because the search becomes swamped by all the uses of those ubiquitous words.
But I am beginning to get a handle on at least part of the Fish family because of the homestead records I talked about in the previous post.

My great-great-grandmother Harriett B Fish married Enoch Parr August 20, 1857, in Wayne, Iowa, where both families temporarily resided.  Harriett and Enoch's first four children were born in Wayne, Iowa but the youngest, my great grandfather Elmer Clyde Parr, was born on the homestead in Oak Grove Township, Franklin, Nebraska.  The closest town is Bloomington.

Harriett was the youngest child of Abner Fish and Sally Featherstone, who resided in Washington County, Ohio, at the time of their marriage and possibly until Sally died.  I think Abner & Sally had about 10 children -- not all of which I have been able to trace.   Harriett, her sister Silence, and brother Robert all ended up in Franklin, Nebraska.  Until I was able to find Robert Fish's homestead records, I wasn't sure he actually survived the journey from Iowa to Nebraska.  But as it turns out, Robert came to Nebraska before his other siblings.  He was a Postmaster, first in Iowa and later in Nebraska.  But he also was a homesteader.  His homestead was in Turkey Creek Township, which was the township northwest of Oak Grove.  He completed his home on March 16, 1873, which started the 5-year proving period for the homestead.  He bought a significant amount of land in Oak Grove Township along the Republican River in October 1873.  Not many people actually bought property from the government at that time, so he must have been reasonably prosperous.

 Robert's homestead paperwork was fascinating because he died while homesteading.  As far as I can tell, the only record of his death is in the homestead records.  His wife Julia took over the farming part of "proving" the homestead and raising their five children: Wallace, Mary, Laura, Lavinia, and Rufus.  Not only did the homesteader have to make declarations in that they met the requirements to "prove" a homestead, but they also had to come up with two or three other people who could attest to all the same questions.  One of the men who filed an affidavit to testify to the homestead was Silence's son John Swaney.

Homestead National Monument & Homestead ACT of 1862

In Beatrice, Nebraska, the National Parks Service has a National Monument dedicated to the Homestead Act of 1862.  The Homestead Act was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, after 11 states had seceded from the Union. Passing the act before that point had been delayed by fighting over slavery issues.  Homesteaders were required to sign an oath of allegiance to the United States, and if they violated that oath, they lost the homestead.  This prevented homesteaders from aligning themselves with the southern states that had seceded.  Also, the homesteaders had to build a house and farm the land to "prove" the homestead and get title to the property.  "Proving" a homestead took 5 years.
To prevent boundary disputes, the government surveyed all the public land and divided it all up into square blocks called "townships." These townships consisted of 36 "sections" that were 1 square mile each.  These sections were then subdivided down into square "quarter sections" and then again into square 40 acre lots.  Each homesteader was allowed 4 of these 40 acre lots.  Each lot had to have a common border with another lot in the homestead.  So a homesteader could choose a full quarter section and have a square lot or could choose a lot configuration that looked like a "T" or an "L."  My great-great-grandfather, Enoch Parr, picked a lot configuration that resembles a Tetris shape in the Oak Grove Township in Franklin, Nebraska.
Here is what the land looks like today.  Likely, the original homestead building was back near the trees and the creek that ran through the property.

Enoch & Harriet Fish Parr's Homestead

My great-great-grandfather William Michael McGee and great-grandfather John Carney McGee homesteaded in North Dakota near the town of Cando, in Coolin Township.
Here is what William's homestead looks like today.  His homestead was a standard quarter section.  There is nothing left that would indicate where the house was.

William & Isabella Carney McGee's Homestead

John's homestead was also a standard quarter section. Here is what it looks like today. Trees were not a natural part of the landscape in this part of North Dakota, so someone planted them there -- likely around a house that is no longer here.

John Carney & Margaret Callahan McGee's Homestead

My family homesteaded in the late 1800s, but the Homestead Act was still in effect until 1976 in the lower 48 states and 1986 in Alaska.  The Homestead National Monument of America has exhibits from the original homesteader all the way to the last homesteader.  It is worth a trip to see a piece of history that impacted how this country was settled.

Finding your family's homestead land can be quite tricky.  In North Dakota, the streets in the townships are not labeled.  We were fortunate to get help from Gerald Maurseth from Cando's Pioneer Foundation/Museum, who is also a retired Postman.

In Nebraska, we had help from Gary and Jaynette Keim, who are with the Franklin County Historical Museum.  In Nebraska the streets are labeled but wouldn't have been enough for us to find the boundaries of the homesteads.  Other members of the museum helped us find family records that the museum had stored.

http://www.nps.gov/home/index.htm