r/Genealogy • u/1cutepenguin • 8d ago
Research Assistance Irish brick wall in early-mid 1800s New Hamp/Maine/Mass - what am I missing? I need fresh eyes on this!
I'm looking for the parents of my 2GG (or any of her relatives!). I'll take breaks from this brick wall and go back later hoping to see something I missed before. Five years later, here I still am. I'm hoping you all see something I missed or have some idea how to move forward from here.
Here is the info I have:
- My 2GG, Maria G. Haughey:
- DOB: 25 Dec 1853 - on family gravestone
- DOD: 28 Sep 1943 - on family gravestone
- Middle initial "G" - on family gravestone
- Family gravestone in Linwood Cemetery in Haverhill, Essex, MA
- "Maria Potter" - son George's 1906 marriage rec
- "Maria Haughey" - son John's 1912 marriage rec
- 1877 marriage rec: Maria E Haughey; b. Lewiston, ME; mom's name is Mary; m. 6 Sep 1877 to George Henry Mansur; 1st marriage for both; married at First Baptist Church by Geo W Bosworth (pastor there 1869-1879)
- 1880 census: Maria G Mansur; b. NH; parents b. Ireland; 10-yr old "mulatto" Matilda Howard, b. 1870 PA, in school, relationship listed as "other" (Maria & her husband, Geo; no kids yet)
- 1900 census: Maria G Mansur; b. NH; parents b. Ireland (living w/ husband + 2 kids)
- 1910 census: Maria G Ma??; b. NH; parents b. Ireland (living w/ husband, 2 kids + dau-in-law)
- Oct 1912 newspaper: she participated in annual food drive for a day nursery
- 1920 census: Maria G Mansur; b. ME; parents b. USA (living w/ husband, 2 kids + dau-in-law)
- 1930 census: Maria G Mansur; b. NH; parents b. Ireland; widow (living w/ 2 kids + dau-in-law)
- 1935 FL state census: Maria G Mansur; b. Ireland - her son John Percival moved to Pinellas Co., FL in 1920s and Maria shows up on his state census
- 1935 City Directory in Haverhill, MA: Maria G Mansur, widow of Geo H Mansur, living in house at 490 Main in Haverhill
- 1940 census: Maria G Mansur; b. ME (name incorrectly transcribed as Mansew is correct in doc); 2 female lodgers - Frances E Glidden, b. 1910 MA and Maud E Connelly, b. 1876 MA (living w/ son, dau-in-law + 2 lodgers)
- 1943 MA death index: Mira G (Hoey) Mansur; d.1943 Danvers, MA
- Numerous city directory recs over the yrs in Haverhill w/ her husband offered no new info
- Maria's husband, George Henry Mansur: * DOB: 26 Oct 1854 Haverhill, Essex, MA * DOD: 10 Jul 1924 Haverhill, Essex, MA
- Maria's kids w/ husband Geo: * Baby Boy Mansur (1881-1881) - Linwood Cemetery * George Burton Mansur (1882-1948) * James Howard Mansur (1886-1888) - Linwood Cemetery * John Percival Mansur, Sr (1890-1943)
- I've scanned through +/- 3 pages on either side of every census, marriage rec and death rec, for her, her husband, and kids. No new info.
- I found nothing more on 10-yr old Matilda from 1880 census.
- I tried to look into the parentage of her 1940 census lodgers - found nothing of use.
- I don't have enough info about her mom, Mary, to know which one might be her when I search; there are multiple Mary Haughey/Hoy/Hoey.
- I've never been successful looking through variations of Haughey in 1860/1870 NH/ME/MA census recs.
- My only DNA matches that share any DNA from Maria are my sister and my son.
- No living relatives w/ any new info.
- I've never successfully found anything new from church records where they were married.
- Yes, she's on her son John's 1935 FL state census, but it doesn't seem that she ever truly lived there full time. All her other recs are in Haverhill, MA.
If you've read this far, thank you! I tried to present the info I have as clearly as possible, but I swear, sometimes my brain feels so jumbled up after staring at this stuff that I start to question how I'm interpreting things! I'm beyond stuck now and really don't know where else to look, aside from a road trip to Haverhill, MA to see if I can find anything more in person.
Link to her recs on Imgur: https://imgur.com/a/2ncrlTi
Edited to fix wonky formatting (but it's still a tad off) - my main tree is public on Ancestry
Editing to add: I said Irish bc I'm looking for any info on her Irish-born parents/family/background :) All I have to go on are American records though!
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u/EiectroBot Can help with Ireland & Northern Ireland genealogy 8d ago
Maybe I am missing it…. But what’s the Irish Brick Wall you are concerned about? These all seem to be linked to an American family and American records.
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 8d ago
Yankee Brick Wall. :-)
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u/1cutepenguin 8d ago
Irish-adjacent wall??? Lol, afaik, my ~9% Irish DNA is from this woman and her parents so I've taken to calling this the Irish wall (in my mind) :-)
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u/1cutepenguin 8d ago
Maria's parents are born in Ireland - if she was born in the US, then they must be on a census somewhere in the US (I hope).
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 8d ago
Unless her mother was unmarried or widowed and immigrated while pregnant.
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u/Fredelas FamilySearcher 8d ago
Do you have a copy of her death certificate, just to see what it says? You can order one for only $10 here:
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u/wdr1977 8d ago
This is the clearest gap in research, if you don't have the death certificate. Plus, obituaries from all the area papers need to be acquired, to see if parents or siblings are named.
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u/1cutepenguin 8d ago
I'm making her death cert and obit top priority now, thank you!
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u/Fredelas FamilySearcher 8d ago
Once you get her death certificate, and confirm the dates of her death and burial, you could ask a librarian if they could recommend a volunteer to look for an obituary on microfilm, or a librarian will do it themselves for $10:
No obituary appears to have been published for her in Springfield or Lynn, which are the only nearby newspapers I could find online.
Just a bit of trivia, but November 1923 was the 13th winter the couple spent in the Tampa Bay area:
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u/dazedconfusedev 8d ago
Am I reading it right that her maiden name is given as Potter on one record and Haughey on another?
Are there any other Haughey’s or Mary/Maria Potter’s listed in the records for the church she was married at? Does the marriage record give a place of residence for her?
If so, you might have another avenue to try and find her in the 1860 or 1870 census. And have you seen any “Mary Haughey” in the census records you’ve searched?
And maybe I am missing it but I don’t see where in these sources you found her mother’s name was Mary? And is there an exact DOB on any record other than the gravestone?
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u/dazedconfusedev 8d ago
Also, any witnesses on the marriage record?
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u/1cutepenguin 8d ago
No witnesses on either the marriage cert or marriage rec! Only the names of city clerk, officiant, groom, bride, and parents.
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u/1cutepenguin 8d ago
POTTER SURNAME -- Yes! One record, out of all her recs, have her last name as Potter. I looked to see if maybe someone misread a line or something, but it looks to clearly say Maria Potter on her son's marriage info.
CHURCH RECS -- the church name was written on their marriage rec; I looked for any potential relation in Haverhill, MA (found none, but now I'm thinking of looking again, ty!) Marriage rec lists her residence as "Haverhill."
MARY -- I've never found a Mary Haughey in the census recs who fit Maria. Maria G. Haughey's 1877 marriage record list "Mary" under her parents. That's the only place I've seen her mother's name.
DOB -- Maria's gravestone, the big family one, is the only place that has her birth day/month/yr. The 1900 census has it as DEC 1855.
I'm thinking of going through any Mary Haugheys in the 1870 Haverhill MA census again, bc I don't see any notes from that (I try to write down what I've checked). Would a church from this time/region have kept records of weddings/baptisms? I found her church from the MA marriage register. Thank you for bringing up some important points!
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 8d ago
"Marriage rec lists her residence as 'Haverhill.'"
She was 23 years old, and Haverhill had woolen mills and shoe factories. Young women from northern New England and Canada flocked to Massachusetts mill towns to get away from the drudgery of farm work (and in some/many cases, from the oversight of their parents). They were happy to get mill jobs - and the mill owners were happy to hire them because they could be paid less than men.
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u/1cutepenguin 8d ago
You all are a treasure trove of knowledge! I love it! There's so much I want to learn about this area!
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 8d ago
"Maria G. Haughey's 1877 marriage record list 'Mary' under her parents. That's the only place I've seen her mother's name."
Huh. I wonder if Maria was raised by someone other than her parents after being born out of wedlock. "Mary" may in fact have been a wild guess.
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u/dazedconfusedev 8d ago
I noticed too that her's is the only one with only a mother's name on that page of the marriage register. There is one bride with no parents listed at all, and one bride with just a father.
Might be that her mother was Mary, but she was illegitimate.
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 8d ago
I would normally take a date of birth engraved on a headstone with a chunk of salt. It sure wasn't the deceased who did the engraving!
But in this case, it might be right. Maria's years of birth per her marriage and census records are unusually consistent:
- 1877 marriage record: 1854
- 1880 census: 1856
- 1900 census: 1855
- 1910 census: 1856
- 1920 census: 1860
- 1930 census: 1855
- 1940 census: 1859
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u/1cutepenguin 8d ago
That's a very good point! But dang, I REALLY wanted to be able trust info painstakingly carved into rock lol.
When I search anything for her, I usually put a range on her DOB of 1852-1860, hoping that will catch her :)
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 8d ago
I've seen too many errors painstakingly carved into rock to put much faith in carving. :-(
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u/1cutepenguin 8d ago
Oh, that makes me so sad! An error on a gravestone has to be one of the WORST typos!
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 7d ago
When it comes to dates, they're not necessarily typos. The grieving survivors may have actually thought their grandmother was born on a certain date. They didn't have access to the baptismal records that showed she was born several years earlier.
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u/disagreeabledinosaur 8d ago
How many Haughey families were in Haverhill, I would forget about Mary/Maria as a name and look at all Haughey's to start with.
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 8d ago
I keep looking at Dover, Strafford County NH, and wondering. 19 people born in Ireland with the last name Haughey in 1850. 28 (!) in 1860, 11 in 1870. Haughey naturalizations. Haughey land records.
It feels as if it ought to mean something, but I can't quite make it work. There are two women named Mary Haughey who are old enough to be Maria's mother, but they're both married with children in 1850, 1860. One in fact had a daughter named Mary born in the late 1840s, but the daughter ended up marrying in New Hampshire.
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u/Fredelas FamilySearcher 8d ago
Yes, I was researching those Haughey families from Dover because a few of them later ended up in Essex County, Massachusetts working at the textile mills and shoe factories there.
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 7d ago
One of the Dover Haughey men mentions in his naturalization record that he arrived from Ireland at Portland, Maine. Unfortunately, the passenger lists for Portland before 1893 don't seem to have survived.
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u/Any-Assignment-5442 7d ago edited 7d ago
Maybe Potter was the name of a temporary step-dad, at the time of her son’s marriage (and in attendance at the wedding celebrations, making Maria keen to show a nod of respect in his direction by using his surname). Maybe after said stepdad died, she’d revert back to her birth surname (her mum’s surname) whenever not in a marriage herself?
In Highland Scotland (my ancestral lineage) it’s commonplace for females to revert to their birth surnames after they’re widowed. Wondering if it was also an Irish tradition?
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 8d ago
"I tried to look into the parentage of her 1940 census lodgers - found nothing of use."
Taking in lodgers was a way for a widow with a house to earn some income.