Category: Genealogy

The Daily Morning Astorian (Astoria, Oregon) 1889 September 8 page 2 column 2

“William Basquell, the young English sailor apprentice who sued the British ship City of Carlisle for $15,000 in the United States district court, and who secured a judgment for $1,530, will soon leave overland for New York, where he will take a steamer for London where his parents reside. The boy was badly hurt. Though he was once a very bright little fellow, since the accident by which his skull was broken he acts like a baby.”

This is just awful, and the worst of it is that I doubt it was an uncommon story. I don’t know how old William was (I haven’t had a chance to research him or link him to a known William, yet), but it sounds like he was fairly young.

The Jackson Standard (Jackson, Ohio) 1884 July 03 page 3 column 5

“Mr. John Basquill, of Hamilton, Ontario, is visiting here. He is a nephew of Mr. Nicholas Basquill, of this place.”

This may not look like much, but it is a major breakthrough in the larger Basquill puzzle. I have some evidence that Nicholas Basquill, who settled in Jackson, Ohio and married Eliza Hawkshaw, was the son of Patrick Basquill and Mary (as of yet, maiden name unknown). Patrick and Mary are part of my own tree. If Nicholas is their son, he was born in 1834 in Ayle, Aughagower Parish, County Mayo, Ireland. (Not 1816, as most everyone on Earth seems to think, based solely and as far as I can tell on the 1870 US census. Though interestingly, some folks have assigned an actual birth date to him, with AGAIN as far as I can tell no evidence whatsoever.)

So, why is this little snippet from an old newspaper interesting? John Basquill is the son of Michael Patrick Basquill and Ellen (maiden name also as yet unknown), who emigrated from Ireland and settled in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. This is an odd little family group that I have not been able to attach to anyone. None of the male children, as far as I can tell, married or had children. The lone daughter, Bridget, married a man named Thomas Raycroft and settled in the Chicago area. So aside from Bridget, this family seemed to mysteriously appear from nowhere and then disappear into nowhere.

And here he is, a-visiting his uncle, Nicholas, in Jackson, Ohio. So there is mounting evidence that not just one free-ranging Basquill clan, but TWO, may be able to be connected to my own tree.

Also lending credence to this theory is the interesting myth that I’ve seen repeated over and over (but never proved), that Nicholas emigrated with his brothers, one of whom was named John.[1]

The Jackson Standard (Jackson, Ohio) 1887 May 26 page 3 column 1

“John Basquill died yesterday. He was a brother of Nicholas Basquill, of this place, and was for many years in business in this place. Of late years he has been farming about a mile and a quarter North of town. He was a kind-hearted, gentlemanly man, and had a large circle of friends. He leaves a large family.”

All the while, brother John was living side-by-side with Nicholas. He was a saloon owner and then a greengrocer, and then a farmer.

This is not bullet proof, by any means, but it’s hanging together pretty nicely, and I think it will stand up to intense scrutiny.

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1. This will teach me to try to piece things together when my information isn’t right in front of me. I had it stuck in my head that the Basquill who’d emigrated to Ontario was Michael. No, it was Patrick (abbreviated Patk on the 1851 Canada census form, which was then unhelpfully and incorrectly transcribed as Patth). I don’t think this changes anything. Patrick must have been yet another brother of Nicholas and John. Whether or not Michael exists is a mystery for another day.

Aughagower; County of Mayo; Archdiocese of Tuam. Baptisms, Sep. 1855 to Jan. 1856, Microfilm 04210 / 05, page 8.

“30th [December 1855] Ruchane, Thos illegitimate of Thomas Heraghty a married man & Sally Gannon spon[sor] Bridget Gannon.”

It’s easy to forget, as you’re trawling through the remnants of others’ lives, that these were people with their own complicated stories. Little Thomas was born illegitimate in a country that was deeply Catholic, and at a time when people all around him were dying of starvation. I wonder what became of him and Sally?

Baptism of Walter Basquil 29 June 1846
Aughagower; County of Mayo; Archdiocese of Tuam. Baptisms, May 1846 to June 1846, page 56

This is kind of like my holy grail. I’m a little stunned that I finally located it. Walter was my great-great grandfather. He was born well before the start of compulsory civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths, so I really didn’t think I’d find any documentation that would pin down his birth date. True, this is just an entry in the baptismal register, but it means that my previous best guess for his birth (1845) was slightly off. He would have been baptized soon after birth, so this puts his birth date firmly in 1846.

The funny thing is that, as I was going through the register for 1845, the year I thought he was born, I encountered pages with such faded writing that at first I thought they were blank. No amount of adjusting contrast or even inverting the values could have made them legible. When I got to the end of 1845 without finding Walter I almost cried, for real, because I thought for sure his entry was lost in those pages.

So frustrating! But now I’m floating on a happy little cloud.

Baptism of Michael Baskwell 15 February 1844
Aughagower; County of Mayo; Archdiocese of Tuam. Baptisms, Jan. 1844 to Feb. 1844, page [27]

Two things are going on here. First, there’s the baptism of Michael Baskwell (Basquill), son of Michael Basquill and Margaret Kelly, on 15 February 1844. This is my great-great grandfather Walter’s older brother, and I believe the first child in the family to be baptized in Aughagower Parish, so I am on the right track. The sponsors are Thomas Flinn (I think?) and Julia Baskwell. I don’t know which Julia this is, yet, but both sponsors would be close to the family.

Second, check out Mrs. Duffy on the last line. One advantage of slogging through thousands of pages of un-indexed images is that you get to see stuff that wouldn’t normally interest most folks. I doubt, when Ancestry releases its own set of indexed parish records for Ireland, that entries for churching will make the cut. I think that’s unfortunate, though.

Churching is a blessing given to women after they’ve given birth. The child does not have to be live born or even baptized, but hopefully if you look further back in the register, you’ll find a baptismal entry for the woman in question. If there isn’t one, that would indicate that the child likely was stillborn or died before it could be baptized. Either way, it’s potentially helpful information.

Ancestry has been hinting that there was a big announcement coming up. They did not disappoint. Well, they did disappoint, but that was a couple of months ago, when they announced they were discontinuing support for Family Tree Maker. This just about makes up for that nonsense.

In a nutshell, you will now have two options to sync with online Ancestry trees.

1. You can keep using Family Tree Maker, which was purchased by Software MacKiev. Huzzah! They are going to keep developing and supporting FTM.

2. Use RootsMagic. I’ve never used RM, but it has a loyal fan base in the genealogy groups. RM and Legacy seem to be the top two recommendations for folks who want to be serious about their research.

I’ve made the switch to Legacy, and am very pleased with it. I still am using FTM, though, and will continue to do so. I think my plan going forward will be to get branches of my tree to a point where I am comfortable making them public, port them to FTM, re-add the image files, and then upload them as separate chunks to Ancestry as public trees. (Right now, my trees there are private, but that’s because they’re working trees without all the documentation. Also at one point in time I suffered from “add all the people!” disease, so some branches go halfway back to Jesus and are obviously filled with a bunch of made-up crap. No one needs to see that. It’s embarrassing, but it’s a mistake just about everyone makes when they start out.)

I’m also hoping, since Ancestry has made an arrangement with RootsMagic, that a similar agreement is in the works to allow Legacy to sync with online Ancestry trees. That would be fabulous.