So it's beginning to appear as if some McMahons from Clare settled first in New Jersey. One hint came from a too-distant-to-track-the-connection cousin from a Family Tree match and the other from an old FT post I found in an internet search. So I'm wondering if anyone knows of any of the families who settled in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey, right across from New York city around the cusp of the 1850s.
The reason it's relevant is that I found my John and Ellen McMahon Curtis's first U.S. born child in both Ancestry and Family Tree with a New Jersey, not a New York, birth entry. The daughter Ellen, sometimes Nellie later on, was also later married in New Jersey to a John Farley, born in in New York, and moved to New Jersey with her large family after her parents both died near the turn of the century.
Also, the only death listing I can find for the mother Ellen, although I can't confirm it is her, is from New Jersey.
And yet the Curtis family lived together continuously in a variety of gently improving addresses in Brooklyn, New York including in the 1900 census, the first in which the parents were absent.
So, trying to stay with verifiable data, I initially ignored all these hints, but I think I'm now starting to take them seriously because this could easily fit the pattern of there having been slightly earlier emigrants who supported the family's adjustment to America initially and then stayed closely connected over the years. And in this scenario, immediate family makes the most sense.
I'm also taking seriously the fact that another of Ellen's relatives might have settled in Canada.
In the 1880 U.S. census, a young many named Patrick McMahon, born in Canada about the same time as Ellen's first U.S. daughter, was living with the John and Ellen's family in New York along with a friend/relative of his, Samuel Donohue, about the same age, also born in Canada.
Searching in Canada censuses, I found a Patrick McMahon born about that time to a Patrick and Ellen McMahon with older children Michael, Catherine, Ellen and Mary living in Canada in 1861. I found them again in the U.S. 1870 census living in Illinois, this time with Patrick and two additional children Maureen and it looks like Low (?). In both cases, Patrick sr. was a farmer. Then in 1891 in Ontario, I found an entry that might be the original young Patrick, now married to a ten-year younger Ellen, with offspring John, Patrick, Peter, Margaret and James.
I'm hoping that there might still be McMahons living in Clare who have some idea of the New Jersey and Canadian emigrants who left around the 1850s. I'm suspecting the parents of this group were Patrick (Ellen's first born son and the adult farmer's name) and Ellen McMahon (because a 75 year old woman named that was with the Curtis family in the 1860 U.S. census.
Again, I'd appreciate any hints whatsoever. Although of course I'm dreaming that perhaps we might even find family. Thanks for whatever you can do. Jude
