Thomas Gilshannon's Will . . . A Widow's Plight

Thos. Gilshanon born in County Meath Ireland

Summer is coming to an end for me.  School starts tomorrow, and, as usual, I didn't accomplish everything on my "to do" list, but it has been a wonderful summer with a successful research trip, an unexpected discovery of a cache of old photos and videos, a pleasant road trip with my husband, a few cleaning/organizing projects completed, and I still had time to knit!  It has been a most relaxing summer. 

 So what is left of interest in Thomas Gilshannon's will other than a bunch of bills.  Well, I found a few items of interest.  Let's look first at his obituary.  His obituary tells me that he had tuberculosis . . . for seventeen years!  I didn't know you could survive it for that length of time in 1888.

Clinton Daily Herald  Jan 25,  1888

Thomas' will was written five years before his death and only a year after his daughter, Nancy, also succumbed to the dreaded consumption.  He could see the end, and wanted to get his affairs in order. His choice of executor was not a deathbed decision.  Like Thomas, his wife Bridget did not read or write and would need someone to look after her interests after he was gone. There were still children at home to consider. Did G. A. Griswold do that?  You decide.

While G.A. Griswold paid everyone else, Bridget had to petition the court

 

In the District court of the State of Iowa in and for Clinton county.

In the matter of the estate 

of Thomas Gilshannon

deceased

Petition of the Widow for

allowance for 1 years support

Bridget Gilshannon, widow of said deceased state that now (no?) allowance has been made to her as such widow for her support for twelve months from the time of the death of said deceased.  That she is 66 years of age.  That the amount of personal property ^ of said deceased^ set apart to her as exempt from execution is $_______.  That the appraised value of personal estate of said deceased other than exempt property is $______.  She asks that she may be allowed the sum of $300 for her support as such widow during said period of 12 months.

                                                                          Bridgett Gillshannon

                                                                               Widow

                                                                          By Geo B. Young, her atty

 

The judge ordered it.

The executor complied . . . with payments

 

The lawyer's bill was $25

Note:  Thank goodness his name was printed in the upper left corner of the bill because I certainly couldn't read it.

I investigated, briefly, the identity of the executor of his will, and from what I can tell he was a farmer who had a nearby farm and I assume a trusted friend of the Gilshannons, but why wasn't a family member chosen?  So far,  I have not found a family relationship with G.A. Griswold.  What was the incentive for someone outside a family to agree to be an executor? Money? Friendship? Obligation?   There was a bill for $25.00 "commissions", and I assume this was what he was paid for carrying out the duties of the executor.

 

So. . . when all the bills and fees were paid and everything was settled, what monies were left for the widow and children? 

The Final Disbursements

Bridget received $204.39

. . . and each of the children receive $58.39

As you can see a probate record contains more than just a wil,l and these "extras" give you the story behind the will and can often lead your research in new directions.  One bill in this probate record referenced a lawsuit between Thomas and a man named Struve complete with the date.  That will go on my list for next year's research trip.  The bills may paint a picture of the life of the deceased, along with the time period they lived in.  

Don't just settle for a will, dig deeper and search for the entire probate record.  Surprises await. . .  

Postscript:  My research trip to Clinton would not have been as successful without the help of my Clinton angel, Mary.  She gave me addresses, hours of operation, local maps with ancestor addresses highlighted, location of various records, went to museums and historical centers to check out their holdings, and so much more.   If I try to list it all, I will forget something.  She was the reason I was able to accomplish so much. 

More Probate Information Beyond the Will

As a family historian, you always search for relationships and names to further your research.  While the will of Thomas Gilshannon names his wife and children, the probate gives additional information about where they lived at the time of their father's death and also the names of the spouses.  Since there is no federal census for 1890, a probate record for 1888 is about as close as you will get.  The location can help distinguish between individuals with a similar name and link them to a particular family.  Here is that record for Thomas Gilshannon.

 

The information contained in this probate record about his children, in birth order . . . his heirs at law on 17th of April 1888

Ellen Allen . . . aged 39 . . . resided in Clinton, Iowa

Thomas Gilshanan . . . aged 35 . . . resided in Whitney, Nebraska

Elizabeth Gilshanan . . . aged 33 . . . resided in Elk River, Iowa

Catherine Guerin . . . aged 32 . . . resided in Whitney, Nebraska

Bernard Gilshanan . . . aged 30 . . . resided in Aberdeen, Dakota

                                                               (It was still a territory at this time)

Mary M. Gilshanan . . . aged 22 . . . resided in Elk River, Iowa

Henry Gilshanan . . . aged 21 . . . resided in Elk River, Iowa

Note: His daughter Nancy died in June of 1882.  Nancy and Ellen were the children of Thomas and his first wife Ellen Guilfoil

Additionally it names the following spouses as heirs at law of deceased or interested in his estate:

James Allen . . . husband of Ellen Allen
Mrs. Thomas Gilshanan . . . wife of Thomas Gilshanan  (not much help)
Thomas Guerin . . . husband of Catherine Guerin
Mrs. Augusta Gilshanan . . . wife of Bernard Gilshanan

I have to assume that Elizabeth, Mary, and Henry were not married as of this date.  This gives quite a bit of additional information beyond the names in the will to research!!


Next post:   So. . .  what did everybody end up with when all was said and done?

Guilfoil, Gilfoyle, Gilfoil, Guilford, Gilfail etc.,etc. . . . .

Well, Geneabloggers designates this surname Saturday, and there is only one surname for this Saturday and that is Guilfoil.  I know I mentioned this surname in a previous post about my summer family history trip to Clinton, Iowa, but so much has happened since then.

As you might have realized, I have been under the delusion illusion that only a few interested family members have read my blog and half of them have been coerced by my repetitive question, "Have you read my latest blog post?"  I ignore their eyeroll when they answer, "Not recently".  Now, as you can tell, I have a very boring basic blog layout - no buttons for twitter, facebook, or list of blogs I follow, no beautiful family photo at the top, and no button to conveniently email me with questions.   While, I hope to snazzify my look in the near future, it isn't a priority at this moment.  So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered  several comments from someone researching the same Guilfoil (the officially correct spelling) line.  How did she find me?  What happened to being invisible?  I know that this blog is on the internet, but I was operating on the assumption that I was the proverbial needle in a haystack. After all, I never registered my blog with Geneabloggers, I have a blog name that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue and, doesn't include any "genealogy type" words in it that might attract a search.  What a surprise - a wonderful surprise, and then she told me that another Guilfoil descendant told her about my blog.  You mean there is another person who stumbled across me too?

I  realized the wonder of internet connections, when she told me that my  g-g-g-grandmother, Ellen Guilfoil, also had a brother Michael who lived in the Sabula/Clinton area.  We knew she had a brother, James because of the 1850 census I included in an earlier post but although we found other names similar to Guilfoil, we couldn't make a connection.  I only just discovered that Sabula is in two different counties - Clinton and Jackson - and it was closer to go to Illinois to get married than it was to go to Clinton because of the bridges.  So that means researching two states in addition to two counties even when they didn't move.  I never knew about Michael, AND she never knew about Ellen. Yippee, this is the my family connection to the Guilfoils that I found in Evergreen cemetery in Sabula, Iowa.  To top it off,  she isn't even a direct descendant.  She is descendant of Michael's wife, Zilpha's - don't ya just love the old names - and her second husband McGann. it turns out that Zilpha's will was the key to connecting the families.  Confusing?  Nah, I know this is clear and understandable for anyone who is interested in genealogy, unlike when I was telling my daughter. I got the eyeroll again, accompanied by a loud sigh.

Now for my biggest surprise. One hour after I returned home from my visiting with my double cousin, the phone rang.  As she introduced herself, I spaced out on her first and last name, because I only heard Guilfoil in the middle.  She was a descendant of the same Michael Guilfoil, mentioned above, and she didn't know about Ellen either.  How could this be when they were all listed in the census together?  Oh yeahhhh. . . . . Ellen was married and only her married name was listed.  Meanwhile, my new cousins wondered why the Guilfoils were living with the Gilshannons in Elk River township. They had run across the name, but didn't know how it connected to their Guilfoil family. Are you ready for this?  It turns out that John, Ellen's father, and James, her brother, were ALSO listed in the census in Jackson county just one month later living down the road from Michael. They were listed as Guilford in this census. As I looked at this new record that I had probably dismissed at sometime in the past, it became clear that it was definitely them.  What incredible luck this was because if this had been reversed with the Jackson county census was taken first and the Clinton county second, they might not have been listed at all.

Wow!  Now I began to doubt myself.  I needed to find some tangible record of Ellen Guilfoil but where?  We have not yet found a death record and our trip to Clinton didn't turn up her burial location. After thinking and re-thinking, I decided to take my own advice. I was browsing Ancestry.com one day last week during my lunch hour when I  thought I would check out the Illinois Archives.  Surely, I had checked for her here before, but let's give it one more try before the bell rings and I am back to teacher mode.  Groom's name: Gilshannon and it's multitude of variations. . . . no luck.  Then Bride's name:  Guilfoil. . . . bingo! And with the correct spelling.  It listed  an Ellen Guilfoil marriage to Thomas Gulshan in 1847 in JoDaviess county, Illinois.  I couldn't believe it. I then followed the path explaining how to obtain a copy of the original record and called The Illinois Regional Archives Depository (IRAD) at Northern Illinois University.  The nice young man took my information and explained that there would be no charge.  Unbelievable!

Then a few days ago, I received the following record.  This documents the previously assumed.

Thomas and Ellen - I now pronounce you man and wife!

Genealogy is just so much fun.

Editorial Note: I do realize that a surname Saturday post is intended to be posted on Saturday, but I started it on Saturday so I think it still qualifies.

Another Grand Visit with My Cousin

Who is this woman?

I have been on the road for the last three weekends and since school has now started, I can no longer indulge in endless hours searching through census records, sending to counties for copies of vital records, or writing this blog.  Please notice that I did not include time spent organizing my records - despite my best intentions at the beginning of the summer, I accomplished precious little.  Somehow, I always heard the siren's call of research. The lure  of finding that elusive marriage certificate or unraveling a family mystery could always pull me away from the tedium of organization.  As Scarlett O'Hara would say, maybe another day. . . . .

My day now begins at 5:15 a.m. with the whoosh and bubble of a watery stream coaxing me into consciousness.  I have one of those nature sounds alarm clocks that gently wakes you up.  After trying the sounds of loons, birds tweeting, fog horns and other assorted sounds, I settled on the gentle stream flowing over rocks. I could never go back to the jarring sound of a standard alarm.

If you recall in my last blog post, I had invited myself for another visit with my double cousin. Of course we  had such a good time, I couldn't wait very long and so only two weeks later, I again followed my GPS  to her home.  Since my last visit, she had purchased and installed a wireless printer/scanner.  I am totally in love with this printer and have already added it to my lengthy Christmas list.

We organized her boxes of photos and piled hundred and thirty year old county history books next to our seats on the sofa.  I connected to her wireless network with a bit of trouble that we finally diagnosed as operator error, and we filled our glasses with drinks and fresh ice.  We briefly discussed eating, but both agreed that we wanted to start going through our information.  Ahhhhhh. . . . . .like minds.

   We first looked at and discussed the emails, she had received from a distant cousin in California.  This cousin first found me through Ancestry despite the fact that I have a private tree. (Why I have a private tree will be the subject of a future post).  The McDonnell brothers, Michael, Owen, John, and Bartholomew immigrated from County Cork Ireland to the Clinton county Iowa area in the mid 1800's.  Our ancestor is Owen and our California cousin's is Michael.  As the emails and attached photos came up, my brain screamed. . . . . HEY, wait a minute!!  I don't have all those photos.  So, as we sat inches apart on the loveseat, my double cousin, Mary, forwarded the email from our California cousin, Karen, to me.  Feeling very smug with our techno savvy, I reminded her to save the photo attachments to her genealogy folder on her computer.  Since she had not done this before, I offered to show her - no problem.  A half hour later, we were still working on it.  Her email  program was different from mine, and search as I might I could not find the "save attachment:" choice. We finally found a way, but it had about ten steps when it should have been one.  I went back to my email to show her how I did it.when . . . .What happened, the emails were gone?  We tried it again, and again they disappeared when I went back.  It was only later, when I returned home that I figured out what happened.  As I suspected, it was operator error again - meaning me!   Pride goeth before a fall.

  We sat glued to our seats, sifting through files, and boxes and going online to search as questions
popped into our minds.  We answered some questions, but also created more.  Four hours later, we mentioned food again.  I boldly said that I would go out and get something for us.  We agreed on Subway, and Mary gave me directions to the closest one.  Unfortunately, I didn't listen.  I think I have spent too many days in the company of thirteen year olds.  Their habits have rubbed off on me.  In my mind, I knew that my handy dandy infallible GPS would find the closest subway and direct me turn by turn to the location.  I left her house and returned an hour later in frustration and humility.  First, I turned the wrong direction, RECALCULATING, RECALCULATING, then there was no Subway where it said there was.  I went by twice to be sure.  I reprogrammed the GPS for the next closest Subway.  Like a lemming I followed it as it led me into the heart of the town.  Yes, there was a Subway, but nowhere to park.  Forget this, I headed for a Burger King that I knew how to get to without a GPS.  Frustrated and angry, I pulled into the Burger King and decided to check my purse for cash. . . . . . . I had left it at Mary's house.  With my tail between my legs, I returned to her house, and had to admit that I hadn't really listened when she gave me the directions.  Would she mind telling me again.  Fifteen minutes later I returned with lunch.

Back side of the photo

  Now it was back to the fun, and so we continued until 11:30 AGAIN.  One of my wishes has been to find a photo of my g-g-grandmother, Elanor Gilshannon Allen.  I have several photos of her husband, James Bush Allen, but none of her.  Mary knew of my yearning to find her image.  As she handed me a photo, she said, "I think you're going to like this one"    I had a photo with an unidentified older lady for some time.  I knew she had been cut apart from a larger photo because you could see the hand of a man in the side of her picture.  Now, I had the rest of the photo and the back was labeled with the names of my g-g-grandparents and two of their daughters. Now that I look closely, she has that Irish upturned nose I see every time I look in the mirror.

  I am so happy.

Won't This Saga Ever End?

Well, today is my report on the end of our trip.

Our original plans were to go to the library and possibly the historical society if we found out that they were open and had records that are available for us to look at.  I left a message on an answering machine the day before asking about their hours and leaving my phone number.  We weren't sure if they were open one day a week or once a month.  That morning as we started for the library when my phone rang, and it was the historical society and museum.  Yes, they were open from 9-11 so we quickly changed our plans to accommodate their hours.  We could go to the library afterward.

I wish I had a photo of the Clinton Historical Society and Museum, but I was so excited that I often forgot to take photos on this trip.  I even scoured the internet for an image to "steal" with no luck.  The all volunteer staff was so friendly and helpful, but it was almost overwhelming.  This is my fault because I didn't really have a prioritized list of  information we were seeking. As they showed and described the records and information located on each wall, my eyes started to glaze a bit.   I gave my brother the task of looking through the city directories since I love the year by year picture they can give.  He brought his scanner in and began to look through them.  I should have given him a list of individuals to look up, but he made do with the surnames, Allen, McDonnell and Moldt.  I was trying to find where our grandmother graduated from high school and a couple of marriage records.  My sister-in-law with her halo still affixed to her head agreed to look through the card files for family members.  I was the only one who came up almost empty handed as the time raced by. I found a death record for Ellen Allen, my gr. grandmother's sister, who died of consumption in 1888 at age eleven - I think it is her sister.  Of course, it could be a random stranger with the same surname.  Shortly before they closed, one volunteer worker suggested that we needed to visit the records office since Clinton was one of the few places left where you can still go in and actually put your hands on the original records.  We added that to our list of "to do" jobs.

The Historical Society and Museum was closing and we gathered up the few modest records that we had found.  Off to the library - NOT QUITE YET!  Man cannot live by knowledge alone.  We needed food so  Dahl circled around the downtown, and we settled on a local sandwich shop and bakery.

Clinton library - image copied from their website

Now that we had nourishment, we were ready to tackle the microfilm machine in The Root Cellar of the Clinton library.  I had corresponded with Fran before and found the library staff so extremely helpful.  Fran even remembered me when I introduced myself.  You can't beat small town friendliness.  She showed us where the microfilm was and set us up at a machine.  I thought we should concentrate on obituaries and since I am the designated supervisor, that is what we did. . . . . . . until 5:30.  It was tedious and my back had a permanent knot in it.  When I suggested stopping for dinner, I heard no objections.  Before we left the downtown area we wanted to see St. Irenaeus.  A church built in the early 1870's that was scheduled for demolition before it was rescued by the Historical Society and Museum.  Family members told us that Owen William McDonnell and James B. Allen helped with the construction of the church and that several family members were married there.  James B was listed as a stonemason in several census records so it sounds plausible. But now that the church has closed, where are the records stored??  I am still working on that.

At dinner, we all felt a little overwhelmed, and we hadn't yet made a hotel reservation for that night.  After  2-3 minutes much discussion we decided to head for home that night and stop when we were out of town a couple of hours.  That way we could get home the next day by noon since I still had to drive 2 1/2 hours from my brother's house back to my own home.  I refer you to my original post in this Saga series.  We never got to the records office, but that just means that it is at the top of my list when we return.

Since we had gone through every small  town on the way to Clinton, we decided to take the major highways home to shorten the trip.  Silly, silly, silly.  We didn't find a place to stop for the night until 10:30 and gas until the tank said zero miles left.  I was digging out my AAA card since I was sure they would need to bring us gas.  Don't ask how I know they do this.  We tried to stop earlier, but an exit that listed hotels sent us over 2 miles into a sketchy part of town with a crumbling high rise style hotel and one that had closed long ago as the sign was very rusted.  Farther down the road we tried again, but couldn't get through the parking lot for all of the semis parked at various angles and the group of men hanging out at the door smoking put us off - imagine that!  Finally we found a choice of hotels at an exit for Peoria.

The next day was uneventful, and I arrived back at my house before dinner.  We definitely need to return.  What did I learn from this trip . . . . and I learn something from each trip?

Wisdom from the Trip

1. Appreciate the kindness of strangers. The cemetery caretaker, the volunteers at the history museum, the directions from the ice cream merchant, and the generous and helpful librarians, made our trip a success.

2. Don't measure success in quantity. This speaks for itself.  


3. Don't have a rigid schedule.  Be prepared to adjust when opportunities present themselves. The historical society wasn't part of our original schedule, but since it was open we adjusted.

4.  Take a cemetery kit with extra water in a jug. Some cemeteries have no water source. 

5.  Take more photos!  Not just the headstones, but the people and places on your journey.

 6.  It's good to be organized but don't allow this issue to stop you from making a family research trip. We can never get it ALL done anyway.  Just plan that you will return!

7.  Smile, laugh, and keep an upbeat attitude.

Edited addition: 8. Take snacks for the road.  I suggest something salty and something sweet.

Tombstone Tuesday

The tombstone of Elanor Gilshannon wife of James Bush Allen in St. Mary's cemetery, Clinton, Iowa. But where oh where is the headstone for G-G-Grandpa Allen. Alas, I have photos of him but no headstone. I have a headstone for her but no photos.