Category: Genealogy

More Adventures in Genealogy: Don’t Trust Other People’s Work Edition.

I don’t know if I can explain the problem so that it makes sense, but I’m going to try.

John Number 1 was born in Sraheen, County Mayo, Ireland in 1860. His parents were John Basquill and Bridget Kelly.

John Number 2 was born in County Mayo, Ireland in 1876. His parents were Nicholas Basquill and Ellen O’Brien. He emigrated to the US and settled in Scranton PA.

Two Johns, with two different sets of parents and two different birth dates. Not so easy to keep straight, apparently.

Somebody else attached Mary McGing and her children to John Number 2, and I blindly followed suit. Bad idea! The result was that when I discovered a John Joseph Baskwell born in Ireland 1876 and living in Scranton PA, there was no place to put him. It looked like he was a THIRD John. AIEEE! It was like the worst genealogical tetris problem ever, and I nearly had a brain hemorrhage.

I got out all my records for the three Johns and went back over them again with a fine-toothed comb. What I discovered is that Mary McGing and her children belonged with John Number 1. Further, Census records showed they were all still in Sraheen in 1901 and 1911, and as far as I can tell they never left there. That left John Number 2 without a wife and kids, which meant that he WAS the John Joseph Baskwell who married Anne Simerson. YAY! This is backed up by the fact that old city directories show him living at 611 West Market Street, Scranton PA, with his brothers, Patrick John Baskwell and William Joseph Baskerville. So my hunch that John Number 2 was actually one of “mine,” was correct.

(And yes, all this is further complicated by the varied and creative spellings of the Basquille name. Good times!)

I\’m sure this is boring to anyone who is not me, but I’m going to share, anyway. I mentioned that I’d located my great-great-great aunt Margaret Basquill? Today I found her death certificate. Yay! But the name listed for her father is wrongity-wrong-wrong-wrong. Boo! On the death certificate her father is identified as William. His name was Michael Basquill. Oops. Well, there are three possible explanations.

1. Michael’s first or middle name is actually William. I have nothing whatsoever to support that theory, so I’m discarding it. (Making note of it in case evidence appears in the future, but it’s just not likely.)
2. I have the wrong Margaret. I do not. More on that later.
3. The information on the death certificate is simply incorrect. I’m going with this one, because the information was obviously supplied by someone who was not Margaret (most likely her son, Michael), so it’s possible that they made a mistake.

Now, why do I know I have the right Margaret, out of the twelfty Margaret Basquills to choose from? Letters! I have a letter written by my great-great uncle William to my great grandma Nell, in which he states that Margaret “lived in Boston & was married to a man named Bourke.”

Ta-da!

1940 Census Atlanta, Georgia, ED160-158, page 10, lines 58-60.

IT’S HERE! I wouldn’t recommend trying to access it right now, because their servers are getting hammered. Things should calm down soon, though. I did manage to find my grandma Jeanne, my great-grandma Nell, and my great-great aunt Margaret, but it wasn’t easy. Even knowing their street address, I had to look through three different schedules to find them, because there are no transcriptions available yet.