I may be focusing on the wrong part of the chain in my attempts to find family information on my Irish ancestor, Anne (Murphy) Neill.
Anne was born around 1840 in Ireland. No record on Anne in the United States provides any more specific information regarding her place of birth. She died near West Point, Hancock County, Illinois, in July of 1897 and death information only indicated she was Irish.
She married Samuel Neill in New Brunswick and that marriage record provided not additional clues as to her origins. The bondsman on the marriage bond was also a dead end. There are no clues in Samuel’s probate file about his wife’s origins and all relatives listed in that record are children of Samuel and Anne. Death records on their children only provide maternal place of birth as Ireland.
The Neills came to West Point with Samuel’s brother Joseph and Joseph’s family. There were few other Irish Protestants who settled in the rural area where the Neills did and so it was determined to try and find the reason the Neills came to West Point. While both men originally worked for the railroad when they arrived (according to family tradition), only Joseph continued to work for the railroad his entire life. Samuel farmed.
After some searching, it was determined that the connection that the family of Joseph’s wife, Anne (Brice) Neill, had already settled in the area before the Neills arrived and had been there for some time. That had to be the connection that brought the Neills to West Point.
That did not help me locate Anne (Murphy) Neill’s family of origin.
The determination of what brought the Neills to West Point had interested me from curiosity standpoint as well, aside from locating Anne (Murphy) Neill’s origins.
Then it dawned on me: members of Anne (Murphy) Neill’s family could have come to the West Point area after her. My focus had been on locating relatives in the area before the Neills had arrived. It is also possible that relatives of Anne (Murphy) Neill arrived in the area after her.
Simple concept and I should have thought of it earlier. Sometimes we get so focused on our initial approach that we sometimes neglect other approaches as well–or just the reverse of the approach in this case.
Order matters.
Now I’m back to looking for Irish Murphys.
Not that there are any of those
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