Contagious Genealogy: A Pandemic

They say it takes a village to rear a child. My 2nd great grandfather, John Alexander Dean, was sure in need of one when Mollie Boyce, his wife (and my 2nd great grandmother), died at the young age of 36 in 1906, leaving behind 5 children to raise. Mollie, John, Chester, and baby Benjamin Dean, Big Wheeling Creek, West Virginia, circa 1900. The Deans lived up on a hill from Big Wheeling Creek in West Virginia. John was a blacksmith by trade who also took care of his own farm and raced horses on the side. Mollie was the homekeeper. In addition to raising 4 strapping young boys and 1 beautiful girl, the Deans had also given birth to a set of twins, 1 boy and 1 girl, Arthur and Mary. Unfortunately, the twins took sick in infancy. The ailment they suffered from differs across sources from thrush to tuberculosis to measles, but whatever afflicted them turned fatal. Sadly, part of the reason may have been lack of medical attention, as they were not the only ones in dire straits. Mollie, too,...

Born in Londonderry, Ireland about 1844, my third great grandfather, James Boyce, was brought over to America as an infant. Starting around the age of 16, I can place him in Wheeling, Ohio County, Virginia, when he enlisted in the Union Army at the start of the U.S. Civil War. Military pension records describe him as being of light complexion with grey eyes and brown hair and standing at 5 feet 5 inches high.  Arthur Lumley, artist, and William Waud, "The old Harrison mansion--Harrison's landing James River," United States Virginia Harrison's Landing, 3 Jul-16 Aug, 1862; photograph, Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/2004661302/ : accessed 10 Feb 2024). James Boyce was mustered at this general hospital on 18 August 1862, just two days after this sketch was estimated to be drawn, meaning he very well could have been one of the soldiers featured as its subjects. In March 1864 he deserted the army. Later that year he signed up to be a Landsman in the U.S. Nav...

In November 2020, I began intensively researching one of my maternal Irish lines, the O’Keeffes. I wanted to learn more about the direct impact the potato famine of 1847 had on my family. During my studies, I made some incredible discoveries practically all in one night, one after another, that you can read through here -- Potato Famine: The Great Hunger That Forced My Irish Ancestors to Flee to America . A few months later in May 2021, I followed up with this writeup on a grandson of my immigrant family -- William Thomas Murphy . This breakthrough helped me expand the search on the O’Keeffes here in the United States. But now, it’s about time I head to ground zero for this family, or at least ground zero-adjacent. I have a research trip planned in the fall of 2023 to Ireland that will be entirely focused on the O’Keeffe branch of my ancestral tree. I’ll be diving deep into record groups held by all the major repositories in Dublin. Kira D. Foltz, Dublin, Ireland, September 2019. This ...

  MAY 02, 2021 As far as I know, there is only one ancestor in my direct line that has had a major run-in with the law, and it was quite a shameful event, so I’d rather focus on my 2nd great granduncle’s brush with the prison system. Week 18: Crime and Punishment The eldest son of my 3rd great grandmother, Margaret (O’Keeffe) Boyce was first only known to me as William T. Boyce. Other than being aware that he was born circa 1864 by the 1870 and 1880 US censuses that he appeared on, I didn’t really have any other info on him. It wasn’t until this past year that I took note of the fact that William was born several years prior to any of his siblings, and more importantly, even though he held the Boyce surname on the censuses, his birthdate appeared to have fallen previous to his parents’ marriage date in 1868. I knew his mother, Margaret, had been married once before to a papermaker in Wheeling, West Virginia. Originally, I believed her 1st marriage to have ended quickly and before a...