John Vallely was a son of Michael Vallely and Mary Ryan. He was born in Lanark Co., Ontario in 1861, and emigrated to Grand Forks, North Dakota about 1882. In 1889 he married another Canadian emigrant to North Dakota: Anna…
Continue reading →Returning to the French-Irish theme (see Strange Surname Spellings: Hohanlan for O’Hanlon) with respect to surname spellings, here are three surnames which sound somewhat similar, and which are often misspelled in the 19th-century records in ways that make them look…
Continue reading →“Do you claim exemption from draft (specify grounds)?” “Yes Claim Murder” Berkeley, California, 1965? Nope. East Grand Forks, Minnesota, 1917.
Continue reading →“Could you look up Mary Hogan?” asked my dad’s cousin Aggie. “I think she may have been,” and this added sotto voce, as if, even after so many years, there might yet be something to hide, “a Home Girl.”1 A…
Continue reading →…Let’s have a bloody good cry. And always remember: the longer you live, The sooner you bloody well die. My dad, dying of cancer, singing “Isn’t It Grand, Boys.” They broke the mold.
Continue reading →Or: What a Difference Twenty-Some Years Can Make Death and Burial of Margaret Jamieson When Margaret Jamieson, widow of James Moran, died on 12 July 1882, her death generated two records: a Roman Catholic church burial record; 1 and an…
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