Genealogy

My Sullivan History Search

My genealogy goal was to identify the birth and death dates for each of my grandfather’s brothers and sisters by the 100th anniversary of his mother’s death. With a little luck and perseverance, I was able to complete this goal and have the results carved in stone.

This is the story of my twenty-year hunt for the Sullivan family information.

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The Basics

As my first step, I read the obituary for Patrick and discovered that he was born in Lake City Minnesota. The hunt for his parents began there. My first disappointment was the lack of information on the grave markers. Simply Mother, Father, Nellie, and Mary. No dates, no last names, in short, no information other than the headstone that said Michael Sullivan age 55 and a death date.

I gathered the names of the nine children using the U.S.census records for 1870 and 1880 and the Minnesota censuses for 1875 and 1885. The census revealed that the first four children were born in New York but there were no clues about where in New York. I researched the oldest son Dennis (my name source) and his marriage certificate said he was born in Kingwilliamstown, New York. I never found this town; the closest was Williamstown in Oswego County. I ordered all of the 1860 census records on interlibrary loan but I did not find any of my Sullivans in this county.

On one of my trips to the Lake City Library, I discovered a name index for the city newspapers going back to the earliest editions of the two newspapers published in that city. Wow, all of the Sullivan’s were listed in one spot in several volumes of index books. I found articles on marriages, burials, and murders. The murder caught my eye and I went right to the spot on the microfilm to learn that Hanna (Sullivan) Walsh was hacked to death by her son. The important clue was that she was born in St. Lawrence County New York and that she was the daughter of William Sullivan. My next step was another interlibrary loan of 1860 census records for this county. I was able to find my Michael Sullivan family living in Canton New York with the William Sullivan family.

During this period of my research, my oldest son was doing his medical internship in Salt Lake City, Utah. I visited my son once a year and spent a few hours in the Mormon Family History Library while there. On my first visit I searched for all of the resources for St. Lawrence County New York and found a gem in a Priests handbook of records for Oldensburg, NY. He would come to Canton once a month and perform marriages, baptisms, and burials. From this microfilm, I found Anne’s Maiden name was Sullivan, the date of her marriage to Michael Sullivan and I found records for the baptisms of the first of their four children.

The Chicago Sons

I now had the key bits of information for the marriage and the birth dates for four of the children. I had the information for three of the boys but I was missing two sons and three daughters. There were two of my fathers uncles who lived in Chicago so I made use of the Computer to research the Illinois Vital Records for Cook County. The only problem was that I was looking for James Sullivan, who was called Uncle Jim, and for John Sullivan who was called Uncle Jack. The two common names grew into four. I restricted my search to the years that I knew when they were alive, because I didn’t have a death date. These two were alive and attended the funeral for their oldest brother Dennis who died in 1915 but they did not attend the funeral for the youngest brother Patrick who died in 1944. So my search had to cover the years between 1915 and 1945. I found 85 James Sullivan’s and 127 John Sullivan’s during those years. I made a trip to the Illinois archives to begin the task of reading the index and pulling the reels. I think I went through 50 or so reels to find the correct record for John which showed his mother and fathers name. I found James in the next 18 reels. I was very methodical in recording the age at death for every name that I found but the vital records department would not use my information to improve their index.

The Girls

The daughters were not as difficult as I imagined they could be without a clue about their married names. I had ignored reading the obituary of Nellie Sullivan in Lake City because the person who recorded the information had made a reference to a different Michael Sullivan. I was now up against the wall so I read the story anyway and followed up on the information by getting a death certificate for her in St. Paul. As it turned out, this was sister Nellie who was buried in the family plot. And as luck would have it, her sister Catherine signed the certificate; I now had Cate’s last name and I could get her death certificate.

My last problem was Mary so I turned to the death index in the Minnesota History Center assuming that she died in Minnesota. I decided to research all of the Single Mary Sullivan’s assuming that perhaps she never married. There were 10 single Mary Sullivan’s and all I had to do was to look at each reel to see if the correct parents were listed. I lucked out and found the correct Mary Sullivan on the second reel. My information on the birth dates and death dates was now complete but I wanted to read the obituary for Mary. There it was in the September 19, 1915 issue of the Pioneer Press, Mary Sullivan, well known to the underworld, died. Now what would possess a lowly obit writer to attribute that to a great aunt of mine? Will there every be enough information so that one can truly be finished? I want to publish a family book but I would sure like to know the meaning of this before I do.

Dennis Sullivan

October 29, 2008