Foley

Starting Over! Am I Crazy?

ianhadden1955 3 Comments

I have long suffered (and have posted about) what I refer to as the ‘sins of my genealogy youth.’ Specifically my lack of source citations for all of the ‘facts’ I had gathered over thirty plus years of research.

When I began researching my family’s history, source citation was something I had done in university but my family history was different – it was for me. In the early 1980’s there was a collaborative approach taken to genealogy but that usually meant having a query posted in a society newsletter and then waiting, hoping that one day something would appear in the mailbox (as in ‘snail mail’ box). With computers and the Internet, genealogy database programs, however rudimentary, helped keep my information organized and made finding fact tidbits a bit easier through posted indexes. The digital age has ever increasingly allowed me to gobble up large numbers of records, as well as digitize and share large quantities of family photos and documents, and connect more easily with family members and researchers, close and distant.
But I always came to the same spot. When asked what I had used as a source for a fact or event, I was usually left having to search through pages of notes or hundreds (thousands?) of scanned images in the hope that I would find the information source.
My first effort to tame this merciless dragon was to begin wading through the 12,500 plus individuals in my database and one by one, add source citations to the facts and events that I had recorded for them. I made the effort but was not satisfied with the results. It just didn’t feel, for me, that I was really advancing. It felt like I was trying to get somewhere by running on a treadmill – you put out the effort but at the end you’re still in the same space.
As I posted previously I began formal genealogy study through the National Institute for Genealogical Studies some months ago and I know as a result, my research habits and practices have improved. Ultimately, this lead me to the conclusion that I needed to start over again.
So I have created what I refer to as my family ‘master’ file. Nothing, no name or fact, is allowed into this master file without a well composed source citation supporting it. I am using Elizabeth Shown Mills “Evidence Explained” as my source citation ‘bible‘ which is always open on my desktop as I research. As a back-up, I have Elizabeth Shown Mills’ book “Evidence! Citation and Analysis for the Family Historian” close by my side.
So the big question for me was “Has this helped? Is my ‘new’ database any better?” I think so and can offer two quick examples: in my original database I had six sources cited for the birth of my second great grandfather Lewis Fitzgerald but now in my ‘master’ database, I have fifteen sources for his birth. Similarly, in my original database I had four sources for the birth of my great grandfather John Foley whereas I now have thirteen sources cited for the same event in the new ‘master’ database.
I’m not trying to suggest that he/she who has the most sources for an event wins but rather doing it right has great merit. What do you think?
Contact me with your stories, questions and comments at ian.hadden@rogers.com

More Family Obituaries

ianhadden1955 1 Comment

As I continue to probe the details of old editions of the Toronto Star newspaper, I have been focusing on finding family obituaries. Two obituaries I found are of particular interest to me.


The first is for ‘Gerald’ Foley, my mother’s favourite uncle and my namesake. I have posted previously about how difficult it was to find Uncle Gerald’s birth record. He was born February 17, 1895 so there should have been no reason to have a difficulty finding his public birth vital record. Eventually, the birth registration record was found as was his baptismal record. In the civil registration, he was named as Louis Fitzgerald Foley, Fitzgerald being his mother’s maiden name. He was baptized at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Toronto, Ontario on March 3, 1895 and his name is listed as Louis Fitzgerald Foley, son of John Foley and Mary Jane Fitzgerald. Throughout his life however he went by the name Gerald.

When Uncle Gerald passed away, his was the first funeral I attended. I remember the trip to the Rosar-Morrison Funeral Home, the ‘family’ funeral home as my mother explained to me at the time and I remember the ‘wake’ after the burial at Mount Hope Cemetery. Although I remembered these events, I could only put an approximate date as to when they occurred, that is until I found Uncle Gerald’s obituary which appeared in the Toronto Star newspaper on February 7, 1968.

The obituary maintained the name confusion as it lists his name as “Foley, Gerald Lewis.” My transcription of the obituary is as follows:

“At the Toronto East General Hospital, on Tuesday, February 6, 1968. Gerald Foley, dearly loved husband of Catherine Helen Simons, dear father of Mrs. Al Sherman (Veronica), Mrs. A. Asselin (Mary), John, James, and Sister Catherine Foley of the Congregation of Notre Dame, Kingston. Friends may call at the Rosar-Morrison Funeral Home, 467 Sherbourne St. (near Wellesley), until 8:30 a.m. Friday. Funeral mass at St. Brigid’s Church at 9:00 a.m. Internment at Mount Hope Cemetery. Parking adjacent to the funeral home.”

The second obituary of note that I found was for Mary Elizabeth Gaull, the wife of George Irvine Gaull (named after his father’s twin brother), a brother of my great grandmother, Jessie McKenzie Hadden (nee Gaull). My family’s oral tradition holds that Jessie (with her family) came to Toronto, Ontario from their home in Saskatchewan around 1926 or 1927 to visit her brother George and that Jessie liked Toronto much more than the farm life of Saskatchewan so they decided to stay.

George Gaull had left Scotland for Toronto, Ontario in 1910 and the 1911 Canada Census shows George, listed as a “Lodger,” in the home of the Coulson family. On July 1, 1913, George married the youngest daughter of the Coulson’s, Mary Elizabeth. Although the 1911 census record indicates their Mary was seven years older than George, their marriage record states that Mary was only two years older. Mary’s birth record has not yet been found. Many records confirm the family’s oral tradition that George operated a small neighbourhood grocery store at 87 Pickering Street in the east end of Toronto, Ontario.

Mary’s obituary appeared in the Toronto Star newspaper on July 20, 1961 and read as follows:

“GAULL, MARY ELIZABETH – At St. Michael’s hospital, Toronto, on Wednesday, July 19, 1961, Mary Elizabeth Coulson, late of 98 Lyall Ave., Toronto and dear mother of Leonard Gaull. Resting at the Sherrin funeral home, 873 Kingston Rd. (at Birch Ave.), Toronto. Service in the chapel on Saturday at 11 a.m. Internment St. John’s cemetery, Norway.”

Based on these ‘new to me’ obituaries, some cemetery visits need to be planned as especially as I was struck by the fact that George’s relationship to Mary is not mentioned. As a young boy, I walked past the Gaull store many, many times but don’t recall ever meeting either George or Mary and I have no idea as to what happened to George, but intend to find out.

Contact me with your stories, questions and comments at ian.hadden@rogers.com

William and Catherine Shaughnessy

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It sometimes takes me a little while but eventually I get around to tracking down the siblings of my more direct ancestors. Such is the case with Catherine Foley, the sister of my great grandfather John Foley.


Like her older brother John, Catherine was born in Barrie, Ontario, Canada in 1865, the daughter of William Foley and Bridget McTague. On November 28, 1883, in Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Roman Catholic Church in Barrie, at the age of 18, Catherine married William Shaughnessy, also a native of Barrie, Ontario, the son of Michael Shaughnessy and Catherine Miller. The record of their marriage appears both in the Ontario marriage registrations and in the church register. Finding these records was made all the more difficult due to the frequent misspelling of the Shaughnessy surname – in the records the name is spelled as ‘Shanacy.’

Not long after their marriage, William and Catherine headed south for the ‘big’ city of Toronto where William found employment as a brick maker. In 1887, when their third child was born, the Shaughnessy’s were living on Verral Avenue in Toronto’s east end. By 1911, Catherine and William had taken up residence at 10 Brighton Avenue, just one block away from the Blong Avenue homes of where Catherine’s older brothers, John and Thomas had lived. Below is an image, captured from Google street view, of the house at 10 Brighton Ave. as it looks today. I suspect it didn’t look too much different 100 years ago.




By the time they lived in this house, William Shaughnessy had left the brick-making industry and became a teamster, then a contractor. A pattern of employment identical to Catherine’s brother, John. It just seems too coincidental that William would work for some years years as a teamster and then work as a contractor.

Although I have never heard it suggested and have no family stories to base it on, I suspect John Foley was the head of a ‘family’ business that employed Thomas Foley and brother-in-law William Shaughnessy. It will be interesting to see if records exist that might corroborate my suspicions.

Contact me with your stories, questions and comments at ian.hadden@rogers.com

Solving My Foley Family Puzzle

ianhadden1955 1 Comment

I have shared previously, and most recently in July 2011, about the uncertainty of information about one of my maternal great grandfathers, John Foley. This past week, fellow Canadian genealogy blogger, John Reid of Anglo-Celtic Connections, posted a note on Google Plus that Family Search had added 126,534 Ontario Roman Catholic Church Records to their online databases.


I immediately thought of my Foley ancestors and the puzzlement about verifying John’s birth. Census records have provided conflicting information ranging from locations in the United States to Barrie, Simcoe County, Canada West (now Ontario) and birth years ranging from 1860 to 1865.

Fortunately, the Ontario civil registration for John Foley’s marriage to Mary Jane Fitzgerald on April 25, 1894 provides the name of the church in Toronto in which they married. My first stop then was the church records for marriages at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in 1894. Unfortunately, the images added by Family Search are not yet indexed so finding the church marriage registration meant ‘surfing’ through numerous images. The church registrations are in chronological order so using the marriage date, I was able to find the marriage registration information fairly quickly. All of the information contained in the church record was identical to the civil registration record.

When he married in April 1894, John gave his age as 29 years, meaning he was likely born around 1865. John’s gravestone in Toronto’s Mount Hope Cemetery lists his date of birth as February 16, 1864 but due to the various pieces of conflicting information, I have always been suspicious of the date.

I then proceeded to viewing the church baptismal records for Barrie, Ontario, the location John had maintained was his place of birth. The church record images available through Family Search for Barrie consist of one Roman Catholic church – Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary including two mission, or satellite, locations. The baptismal records cover the period 1858 – 1875 and consist of 218 images in the main church register.

Like scrolling through microfilm images, I went through the baptismal records one image at a time, hunting for the Foley name. Fortunately, this was made easier as the family surnames were printed, not written, in the left hand column of the register book. On image #86, line #706, I found it! The baptismal record for John Foley, although the surname was misspelled as ‘Froley.’

The parish priest, Father P. Rey, listed: Froley, John; Date of Birth – 16 Feb. 1863 in Essa (a small town near Barrie); Date of baptism – 21 March 1863; Parents – William Foley, Ireland and Bridget McTigue (misspelling of McTague); Sponsors – Joseph Cain and Elizabeth Hussey.

So, at long last, I know that my great grandfather was born in Essa, part of the Barrie, Ontario area, on February 16, 1863, exactly 125 years before his great great granddaughter, my daughter, Jenna was born! Finally, a puzzle solved.
Contact me with your stories, questions and comments at ian.hadden@rogers.com

Could The Foley Family Story Be True?

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Like most, perhaps all families, the oral history of the Foley family’s history in Canada sounds fantastic complete with a rags to riches hero. In my last post, I wrote about my great grandfather, John Foley and the new connection I have made with another of his great grandchildren, my second cousin, Margaret. Because Margaret doesn’t have any more information about our great grandfather than I do, it was time to take another swing by the records, hoping to find another ‘needle in the haystack.’

The family’s oral history starts out with, “There were these three brothers ….”

Knowing that endless family oral histories start out with three brothers had me sceptical from the start. But the Foley family story has John being born in Barrie, Simcoe County, Ontario in 1864. This was five years before civil registration began so no birth registration or certificate is available. As devout Roman Catholics, John would certainly have been baptized in their local church so perhaps a trip to the Toronto Roman Catholic Archdiocese archives might result in locating a baptismal record. John’s parents, William Foley and Bridget McTague immigrated from their native Ireland in 1849, suggesting they were likely poor and escaping the ravages of the Irish potato famine. Like many Irish immigrants at the time, they landed at New York City and made their way to Canada. A marriage record exists that shows they were wed on August 24, 1852 at the Roman Catholic mission located at Newmarket, Ontario.

The family story, as told to me by my mother’s older brother, claims that William and Bridget died suddenly when John was about 12 years of age. John, now an orphan, was left to fend for himself. Alleged he took to the back woods to carve out a meagre existence eventually surfacing to make his way to the ‘big city’ of Toronto where he became a teamster. When he suffered business setbacks, as apparently occurred from time to time, he took off back to the ‘bush’ to ‘re-group’ before trying again. Eventually, John’s business began to prosper and grow. He became a prosperous sand and gravel contractor, employing a number of men including his older brother, Thomas. When John passed away suddenly in 1927, he left behind an estate valued in modern terms of more than $1 million.

But what of the ‘three brothers’ Foley family story might be true?

In 1871, the Foley family consisting of father William and mother Bridget can be found in census records living in Barrie, Simcoe County, Ontario with their six children: Mary Anne (aged 15), William (aged 14), Thomas (aged 12), James (aged 9), John (aged 8), and Catherine (aged 6). In 1876, Mary Anne married married Patrick O’Connor in Flos Township, Simcoe County, Ontario and the following year William married Georgina Ducheneau in Barrie, Simcoe County, Ontario.

In 1881, the next census year, Thomas, James, John and Catherine, the remaining unwed Foley children can be found living in Vespra, Simcoe County, not far from Barrie. Although enumerators were required to be literate, the enumerator for their district was struggling a bit as the family name was listed as “Folly” and Thomas’ occupation was listed as “labrer.” It appears likely that William and Bridget had died sometime between 1871 and 1881 leaving their children orphaned and note, there were three brothers, as claimed in the oral tradition. There do not appear to be any records of their death but then would the ‘kids’ have known or cared about civil registration requirements or indeed would they have had the funds the pay the registration fees of that time?

In 1891, John cannot be found in the census records but his brother Thomas was located working as a horse trainer in Hallowell, near Belleville, Ontario. Working with horses would later become the family’s prime means of a living and eventual wealth.

Records show that John was in Toronto, Ontario in 1894 when he married Mary Jane Fitzgerald, in 1901 with the three children of his marriage when the census was taken, in 1903 when he married Annie Teresa McElroy, and in 1911 when the last published census of Canada was taken. According to a newspaper article, dated January 14, 1927, reporting on his sudden death, John had lived in Toronto for forty years which would mean he arrived in the city around 1887. Where then was he in 1891 when the census was taken? Perhaps he had returned briefly to the back woods just as family tradition claims!

Contact me with your stories, questions and comments at ian.hadden@rogers.com

Connecting With Family Through Ancestry

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I am often asked if it’s true that simply searching for a name of Ancestry (.com; .ca,; .co.uk;.au,etc.) can produce a shaking leaf providing you with a full family tree or an instant connection with a distant, previously unknown relative who sends family photos that you have never seen before as is suggested in some television advertising. My answer is usually along the lines that if it were that simple, I’d be really disappointed in myself for spending so much time over the past thirty years when only a few keystrokes and a mouse click were needed.

Ancestry is certainly a great Internet site to search for historical records and documents. I have maintained a world deluxe subscription for many years (and by way of disclaimer, I pay for this entirely myself, with my own funds). It has been a tremendous source of documentation and collaboration. I have previously posted that there is benefit to exploring the ‘public’ member family trees in spite of any criticism that the family trees may frequently contain erroneous information.

A recent additional benefit for me has been making new connections with cousins I didn’t know about who either sent a message to me asking for some additional information based on details found in my posted tree or who I sent a message to with a similar request.

I have three (!) examples to offer from the past three months.

Donius contacted me offering a correction to a date associated to her mother who appeared in my posted family tree. It turns out that Donius is my wife Ellen’s 4th cousin. They share Andrew Kimmerly, a United Empire Loyalist, and his wife Susannah Sagar as common ancestors.

Another Andrew Kimmerly and Susannah Sagar common ancestor connection was made when Pat contacted me with some questions about my family tree file. Pat, as it turns out is married to my wife Ellen’s 5th cousin.

I have been able to share information, tips, sources, and photos with both Pat and Donius. A truly great connection experience.


My favourite recent connection was one that I instigated. Recognizing that new trees get added and older trees updated frequently on Ancestry, I found one of my second cousins of whom I had no previous knowledge, had posted a family tree. More important to me is that this cousin and I share a great grandfather, John Foley, in common. My maternal grandmother, Gertrude Ellen Foley, was John’s only daughter. My cousin Margaret’s grandfather was John Joseph Foley, my grandmother’s half-brother (pictured above), and John’s third son but only child from his second marriage (to Annie McElroy).

John Foley without a doubt has been my greatest genealogical challenge. I have posted previously a number of stories about John who was, in modern terms, a self-made millionaire, despite his inability to read or write. I am a namesake of John’s oldest son who was my mother’s favourite uncle and whose funeral I can vividly remember attending when I was ten or twelve years of age. Various records provide various dates and locations of John’s birth. John appears and then ten years later disappears in census records. The only thing certain seems to be that John married my great grandmother, Mary Jane Fitzgerald in 1894 in Toronto, Ontario, that they had three children before Mary Jane’s sudden death at age 33 in 1899, and that John married Annie McElroy in 1903 in Toronto, Ontario. John died suddenly in 1927 while on a business related trip to Los Angeles, California in 1927.

I have never seen a photograph of my great grandfather John Foley although I feel certain that one must exist somewhere. Fortunately, through the Ancestry connection I may be getting a step closer to breaking through this stubborn brickwall.

Contact me with your stories, questions and comments at ian.hadden@rogers.com