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The Elusive Donnellan Line

3/9/2018

5 Comments

 
​I’ve had great success researching my ancestors who arrived in New England 400 years ago but I keep running into stonewalls when I try to learn more about my Irish great-grandfather who came to New England about 150 years ago. Thomas Donnellan was a 20-year-old from Ireland when he sailed on the Ocean Wave from Ireland in 1865. I believe he married Margaret Cowan shortly thereafter and eventually fathered my grandmother, Mary Jane, in Manchester, Connecticut, in 1877.
 
I am hedging here because the birth, marriage and death records for the family are nowhere to be found online. Thousands of Irish immigrants flooded America back in those years but the record of their family milestones are hard to unearth. I know Thomas died in 1891 because I’ve seen his grave marker at St. Bridget Cemetery in Manchester but it tells me little about the man.
Picture
 ​Manchester was a mill town back in the 19th-century, dominated the world-famous Cheney Silk Mill. Both my grandmother and her sister, Margaret, worked there but there is no trace of how their father was employed.
 
There is more information about Mrs. Donnellan, born Margaret Cowan in Ireland in 1849. She came to America with her parents and six siblings before 1860.  The photos below show Margaret Cowan, 1830-1884 (left), and her daughter Margaret Cowan Donnellan, 1849-1921.
​Margaret Cowan’s oldest brother, Francis, was listed as a weaver in the 1860 census but soon he was raising his sword high above his head in full uniform to pose for a photo before going off to fight with the Yankees in the Civil War, a fate common to many Irish immigrants.
Picture
Francis, "Frank" was 17 went he became a union soldier.
Frank Cowan served for three years in the Connecticut Fifth Infantry, marching from Harper’s Ferry, Virginia to the battlefields of Manassas and Gettysburg. He survived, presumably unscathed, and died in Manchester in 1886.
 
I have few clues about how my great-grandparents met and married, where they worked or lived. I know they lost three infants early and two sons died young. Frank Donnellan got sick in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and died at age 23 in 1898. Here’s a photo he sent back home of him and his fellow soldiers in Cuba.
Picture
My great-uncle Frank Donnellan is seated third from the left.
​Another son, Johnny, died young and only my grandmother and her sister, along with their mother, saw the dawn of the 20th century. 
Picture
Margaret Cowan Donnellan and her daughter Mary Jane Donnellan at their home in Manchester in the early 20th-century.
Frustrated that there was hardly any trace of the parents of a man who died while serving his country, I decided to branch out to the Donnellan family in Springfield, Massachusetts who I understood were related to the Manchester clan.
 
John and Anna Donnellan were brother and sister who lived in Springfield, Massachusetts all of their lives. They died there in the 1960s, both childless and unmarried. I know they stayed close to my grandmother Mary Jane Donnellan Peckenham because when I was born in 1955, they became my godparents and may be watching over me still.
 
John was born in 1895, the son of Thomas Francis Donnellan. After graduating high school he joined the Army, where he joined the Chemical Warfare Service in World War One.
Picture
John Donnellan, center, and his buddies in the Chemical Warefare Unit, World War One.
​After the war, he became an accountant, then spent 30 years as a postal clerk in Springfield. His sister, Anna, was born in 1899, and was a teacher, then a social worker in the department of public welfare. They had two other brothers, Edward, who became a prosecutor in Boulder, Colorado, and Thomas F. Jr. who started to join the priesthood then joined the welfare department as an interviewer in the 1930s.
 
Their father, Thomas F. Sr., was born in Thompsonville, Connecticut, in 1865, the son of John and Bridget Donnellan, who worked as a laborer in the carpet mill in town. Before John and Bridget moved to Thompsonville,in 1860, they  had been living in East Hartford, Connecticut, just down the road from Manchester.
Picture
By 1900, the carpet mill in Thompsonville was one of the largest in the world.
By 1870, John had moved his wife and three sons to Springfield, where the census takers noted that the 38-year-old had no occupation. His ten-year-old son Matthew worked in a “picture store,” while the younger ones were at school.  John died by 1885 and his sons worked a series of jobs.

In 1893 Thomas F. Sr. went into the grocery and meat business with his brother Matthew, parting ways in 1899. By then, Thomas had married Bridget Teresa Burke and started a family. Thomas worked for the next ten or fifteen years as a bartender, starting at the Russell Hotel in 1902. In 1930, at the age of 65, he lived in a house valued at $9,000 and his occupation was listed as vulcanizer in a tire factory. His wife died that year.

Thomas F. Sr., would have been cousins to my grandmother, Mary Jane, but despite hours of combing through online genealogy records, I cannot prove how they were related, or even better, what part of Ireland they called home. Neither his daughter, Anna, or his son, John, or their two brothers, ever had children and there are no cousins or aunts for me to contact to pick their brains.  

I remember the Donnellans because they were family and I knew them when they were alive. History has been less kind to the family, and after a century, their time on this earth is fading from memory.​
5 Comments
Thomas Francis Donnellan
11/17/2019 02:06:03 pm

Hi, I appreciate your time and research into the Donnellan family, unfortunately I ran into issues similar. According to my research John and Bridgette arrived I’m America, not through Ellis island as most, rather through B.C. Novia Scotia? I really can’t recall? My research started from church records of birth in Ireland, John’s birth, his parents and that was all available.
in which I was able to trace no further. I was able to trace John and Bridgette’s arrival in America! All records including the census or anything else seem to have been destroyed, intentionally or not, from any records past their arrival. Massachusetts is where I was lead as well to John Donnellan, I had an uncle John Donnellan but I was soo young and a child I don’t have any further details. I live in Florida, born here, I have a brother niece,nephew, all sharing the Donnellan name. that’s as far as my journey was able to lead me. My father Thomas Francis Donnellan Senior was born in Cleveland,Ohio. Not the one you mentioned but my dad and us sharing the same name, I’m junior. So yes, I found my research to literally stop at 2 points? One being anything before Johns birth in Ireland church records, Second being anything factual Family records after arrival in the Republic of America? I feel the same as you and none of it makes any sense at all as to why the limited amount of information as to history is available? Hopefully we can possibly help each other to continue the story and add in any way! It’s really nice to know that we’re not alone in questioning the lack of information available. From your story it really is impossible that we’re not related, regardless of our frustrations of looking on the internet! Again, I’m Thomas Francis Donnellan Jr. Hopefully we can figure out together more about our heritage.

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Nancy Peckenham
11/18/2019 02:58:56 pm

Hello,Thomas. Good to hear from you. I re-read the story I wrote about the Donnellans and recalled that I found 3 or 4 different records for a Thomas Donnellan (with different spellings) coming into the US. I would guess that we are distant cousins but I don't have enough info to make all the connections. My father was Thomas Francis Peckenham II, named after his father, Thomas Francis Peckenham I. His mother was Mary Jane Donnellan, daughter of Thomas Donnellan, about whom I have very little info. Would you like to stay in direct contact? My email is nancypeckenham@gmail.com and if you have a Donnellan tree you'd like to share, please do. I have always been a little curious about an incident my father described during the Great Depression when one of many hobos came to the door of their house in Manchester and he was struck by how his mother treated the man very kindly. He suspected it was a relative who fell on hard times but he never knew. There were a lot of Irish back in the 1800s in New England and few efforts to record the events of their lives.

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Thomas Donnellan
11/17/2019 02:47:29 pm

Wow, I had to go back and read what you stated again. How could it be possible that we don’t know of each other? All the similarities, dads best friends last name was Cowan, John Cowan. I was able to trace John and Bridgette as being ancestors. I have a cousin by marriage named Bridgette, in which has a son named John. How ironic that my name passed down to me as junior is the very name you questioned? The odds are about as impossible as anyone could make up. I’m literally baffled right now and this doesn’t seem real, too many coincidences occur that makes me question, it’s very interesting and peculiar? What are the odds? Are you an intelligence agency testing my emotions, feltching information. No harm meant it just seems so bizarre, as if you already knew before sharing. Please take no offense in my attempt of explaining that of which I don’t understand nor experienced.Thanks for sharing, hope to hear from you! Cheers!

Reply
Thomas Donnellan
11/17/2019 03:28:52 pm

Like you, I’ve been able to trace my Scottish heritage back to Templar Knights and landing upon ground in Newfoundland, from there Novia Scotia, eventually The isle of Cape Cod.The Donnellan’s are seemingly erased from history as far as records? It’s frustrating to say the least, so I totally understand! At the end of the day, we are are still around and here to stay! Speaking for myself, my family, us Donnellan’s, We tend to be more opinionated than most, lol! We are proud, We love each other, stand up for ourselves, and wish no harm unless wished upon us.I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. Take care, hope to hear from you soon!

Reply
T Donnellan
11/17/2019 08:42:41 pm

I request the Lord’s Prayer to be a part of this communication going forward. So without further action required, I would wish to bless any conversations or messages in such. So accordingly.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give
us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
I ask for blessing upon conversations previously by me, and any future contact.
I left out the last part of the Lord’s Prayer only for the reason I did not recognize it, nor the way I was taught to say, so I text the way I recognize the absolute most powerful prayer. Any individual prayers are not to be forsaken or thought of in any lesser way nor value to neither . Any prayer misspoken takes away the meaning. Bless you

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