You can learn more about  Enclann’s Genealogy  Experts at:

http://www.eneclann.ie/Research/research_genealogy.html

The purpose of this initial assessment is to review the information you have given us on your Irish ancestors and, if possible, to develop a search strategy. As I am sure you will understand, we do not like to recommend commissioning research if we are not confident of finding more material about the family.

The initial information that you sent was that Margaret ______ was born ca. 1818 in Dublin.  It is believed that Margaret trained as a doctor in Dublin.  Margaret married Andrew Roche.  Three known children issued from this marriage, namely Bridget (b. ca. 1831, Dublin), Anna (b. ca. 1838, Dublin) and Mary (b. ca. 1845, Dublin).  Margaret Roche emigrated with her three daughters ca. 1851 (possibly on bard the Princess arriving in the US ca. 21^st June 1851).  Andrew Roche was not travelling with the family (the Andrew recorded on the ship’s manifest appears to be too young and is believed therefore to be an issue of the marriage).  It is possible that a Patrick (b. ca. 1835, Dublin), John (b. ca. 1848), Michael, James, Rosanna and the aforementioned Andrew also issued from this marriage.  Margaret Roche died in the US, most likely in Cleveland in 1875.  A Patrick and John Roche resided in Cleveland, where the burial of a Margaret Roche has been located (27^th April 1875).

Civil registration commenced in Ireland in 1864.  Therefore, we will not be able to locate civil records for the births of the Roche children above or the marriage of Andrew and Margaret.  Instead we will have to see whether we can determine an address for the Roche family in Dublin to allow us determine the relevant parish in which to search for family events.

Griffith’s Valuation was a nationwide survey of property holders, taken between 1847 and 1864 for the purpose of assessing the rate of local taxation, which was levied for the upkeep of the poor and destitute of the parish. Most of the census returns for the 19^th century have been destroyed and now Griffith’s acts as a valuable mid century census substitute.

At the time of the valuation the individuals who would have been heads of household were:

• Andrew Roche, should he have been alive and residing in Dublin at the time of the Valuation in his parish of residence
• Margaret Roche, should Andrew have died prior to the Valuation in her parish of residence, and should Margaret still have been resident in Dublin at the time

An open mind is necessary in relation to surname variants: widespread illiteracy made consistency and exactness of spelling extremely rare. Therefore, individuals of the following surnames may be related to your ancestors – Roche, Roache, Roach etc.

Griffith’s Valuation did not record any ratepayers named Andrew Roche (all surname variants) in Dublin.  The Valuation did however record one ratepayer named Mrs. Margaret Roche residing in Dublin:

Occupier		Lessor		County	Parish	Townland
Roche	Margaret	Murphy	J.	Dublin	Booterstown	Merrion

Date of Printing: 10^th March 1849

It is possible that this individual was the wife of Andrew Roche given that the Valuation was taken in March 1849.  However, it is also possible that Margaret resided in a property for which she was not the recorded ratepayer and is therefore not recorded by the Valuation.

Mrs. Margaret Roche leased No. 24 Merrion House, Merrion Avenue from the Reps. of J. Murphy in the townland of Merrion, civil parish of Booterstown, which consisted of a house for which the total rateable annual valuation was £1. 10 shillings.

Without further corroborative information we have no way of knowing whether this information is relevant to your family.

A copy of the Valuation for Merrion Avenue has been enclosed with our assessment.

The destruction of the 19th Irish Census returns is probably the greatest loss that genealogy in Ireland has suffered. Irish genealogists have tried to fill this gap using extant documentary sources from the 19th Century, as ‘census substitutes’.  One important census substitute has survived for the capital city, and that is an index of the heads of households in Dublin City from the 1851 Census of Ireland as compiled by Dr. D. A. Chart.  This census only covered the part of the Dublin city situated between the two canals (which does not include the parish of Booterstown noted above).

We examined this index for evidence of an Andrew or Margaret Roche (of course it is possible that Margaret had emigrated prior to the enumeration of this census).  We noted the following:

First Name	Last Name	Street Number	Street	Parish	North/South of River Liffey
Margt.	Roach	36	New Row West	St. Catherine’s	South

However, again, we cannot confirm at this juncture whether this individual is of any relation to the family of your ancestors.

You state that it is believed that Margaret Roche trained as a doctor in Dublin.  At the time Margaret was residing in Dublin, there were restrictions on woman obtaining a medical degree.  In fact, Dr. Blackwell, an Englishwoman brought up in the United States, after much difficulty obtained a medical degree. Blackwell was the only woman able to have her name entered on the newly established General Medical Council’s register (under temporary provisions for overseas qualified doctors immediately after the passage of the 1858 Medical Act).  Knowing the restrictions on woman with relation to obtaining medical qualifications at the time, the only source, which we could recommend searching, would be the Lists of Midwives.  These registers are held in the Royal College of Physicians in Dublin and date from the late 1600s.  They record the name and date of licence for all midwives licensed by the college and may hold a record of your ancestor should she have worked as a midwife in Dublin prior to emigration.  Alternatively, Margaret Roche may have worked as a nurse in Dublin. However, no record source survives which would allow us to confirm this.

Can you inform us of what occupation Margaret Roche recorded on her US census returns?  This may assist in determining whether a search of the above source would be worthwhile and likely to produce a positive result. Again, we do not like to recommend commissioning research if we are not confident of finding more material about the family.

We searched, Slater’s Commercial Directory of Ireland, 1846 for evidence of Andrew or Margaret Roche.  This book includes a full commercial directory for the entire country. Organised by Province, and then town, it lists all the principal office holders, gentry, professionals, trades, hotels, schools, public institutions, churches, and even pubs for each town in Ireland.  However, our search of this directory did not locate any entries under either name.

We also searched the Dublin Heritage Group’s databases, which include indices to selected Dublin parish registers being developed by staff of Dublin City Public Libraries.  We searched these parish registers for evidence of the baptisms of the Roche children (using all surname variants), searching across five years for each centring on the provided years of birth.  We noted a Patrick Roche baptised in St. Mary’s RC parish on 24^th March 1836, and two John Roche baptised in St. Andrew’s parish on 14^th May 1849 and 22^nd February 1850.   However, the original registers would need to be examined in order to determine the names of these children’s parents.  Unfortunately, we did not note evidence of any of the children confirmed as issuing from this marriage – Bridget, Anna and Mary.  Nor did we note a marriage record for Andrew Roche and Margaret _____

The Dun Laoghaire Heritage & Genealogy Centre and the Swords Historical Society have made parish registers for these areas available digitally.  Although these only cover small sections of South and North county Dublin respectively (not including Dublin city), we searched these for evidence of the baptisms of the Roche children.  However, our search did not yield a positive result.

The difficulty in developing this search, is that the only event that you have positively identified as occurring in Ireland – the baptisms of the Roche children and the marriage of Andrew and Margaret – occurred in the first half of the 19^th Century.  Unfortunately, there are no vital records sources (Census returns or civil births, marriages or deaths) for this time.  Indeed, prior to the introduction of civil registration in 1864, there is no one indexed source that provides coverage for all 32 counties in Ireland, for all economic classes and religious denominations.  In order to develop this search, we would need to know an address or parish for the family in Dublin. Without a piece of information, which unequivocally ties us to a specific location, we will have to work systematically through a lot of records, which will take time and money.

At this stage, I would recommend that you do some more research in the US to try and find some additional evidence to work from, before commissioning any research in Ireland, otherwise you’ll pay for your lack of information, and the chances of finding anything definite are less likely.  The following sources are those most worth consulting:

1)        A death certificate for Margaret Roche  – U.S. civil death certificates usually give the name of one or both parents, and this would help us to develop the search in Ireland.

2)        A gravestone inscription or newspaper obituary for Margaret Roche or any of her children. These often give the person’s place of origin in Ireland.

3)        Immigration papers. After 1883, immigration papers gave quite accurate information about the person’s place of origin. However, even earlier immigration papers sometimes record this information and so should not be overlooked.  Earlier papers would also be of use in indicating whether Margaret wasmarried at the time of her arrival in America.  These papers are kept in the National Archives in Washington DC. Their e-mail address is: inquire@nara.gov, or see their web site,http://www.nara.gov/genealogy/immigration/immigrat.html – this will tell you which records they have.  It would appear that you may already have consulted this source.

4)        Census returns from the late 19th century can be a useful source of genealogical information.  We have found that later census returns tend to record more accurate information on a person’s place of origin in Dublin.

5)        Family letters / bibles. Through talking to relatives, people often find that old papers are still in existence that can help with this research.

I am sorry that we cannot give any more positive recommendation at present. However, the nature of genealogical research is such that it is necessary to work methodically backwards from each generation to the previous one. The more information you find on the family in the US, the more likely we are to be able to focus the research in Ireland.

When we hear back from you, I hope that we shall be in a better position to develop a search strategy (you do not need to complete another search assessment form).

Yours,

Elizabeth Cuddy
Research Manager
Eneclann Ltd.
Unit 1, Trinity Enterprise Centre,
Pearse St., Dublin 2, Ireland
Tel: +353 1 6710338
Fax: +353 1 6710281
Web: www.eneclann.ie

“Anna Roche was born in Brooklyn, but her mother came from Dublin, Ireland, where she was educated to become a doctor at the University there. If it was not that she was your great, great grandmother, we would not be writing this today. Your grandfather (Thomas) was about 4 pounds when he was born and she kept them alive in a little cigar box in the back of one of those old-fashioned coal stove’s. She kept him for one year, until he was a very strong baby.

Your great great grandmother had other children besides Anna Roche. She had Rose, Anna and another daughter and a son. I do know the boy moved to Cleveland Ohio and had seven sons. Rose married a man named Booth and had no children. Rose moved to Port Chester after her husband died and lived with one of her sisters who married a man named Gackstetter. They had David, Walter, John, Harold and Mabel. They were the ones I visited for many years and enjoyed very much. At one time Mabel and I, and one of her brothers came to visit you at your home in Larchmont. That it that is what you remember. No one in the family kept up with them but myself and now I have not heard from them in years. The other sister, Anna, lived up in Port Chester too, and had six girls and one boy. Their name was Hickey, bur all are married with different names. At one time they had a family gathering and there were 15 members of the family. Many more did not come. I do not know anything more about them today.”

But as I began gathering evidence of Anna and her children, I found that close to 100% of the researched documents cited Anna’s maiden name as Roach, not Roche. These records include death certificates from New York City and Census records. For example, the 1860 Census record which clearly shows Anna’s mother Margaret living with them, has Margaret’s last name spelled as “Roach”. Anna’s Death Certificate has her maiden name listed as “Roach” also.

In hopes of putting the name issue to rest , I decided I would visit Anna’s grave at Greewwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. But when I saw here grave stone, it had her name spelled as “Roche”. So at this point, I had believe that my relatives didn’t know how to spell her last name and,and just guessed that it was “Roche”. Since no legal documents pointed to the “Roche” spelling I could only go with the “Roach” spelling.

So moving on and using Aunt Grace’s letter as a base for my further research, I was able to track down those relatives in Port Chester, mentioned in the letter. I thought by solving this branch of the family tree, it might give me some useful clues in solving the mystery of the Roche/ Roach spelling issue. It took me a while because Aunt Grace was a bit confused. She thought that Anna’s sister, Rose, married “a man named Booth”. In fact, Rose did marry a Samuel Booth, but Rose was the daughter of Anna’s sister Bridget, not Anna’s sister.

Bridget married a man named David Reekie. Bridget and David had at least 7 other children, in addition to Rose. One of Rose’s sisters, Susan, married John Gackstetter and eventually wound up in Port Chester as told to us in the letter of Aunt Grace Lewis. Using Census records for the majority of my research, I was able to track down two living descendants of the relatives in Port Chester. We have exchanged addresses and telephone numbers and converse occasionally via email. It took some time, but I eventually tracked down the death certificate for Bridget Roach. She died in Dover, NJ on 29 June 1908. The Reekie’s spent about 10 years in Dover, before two of the surviving descendants moved to Port Chester, NY. The death certificate revealed Margaret’s husband’s name for the first time. It was Andrew. But it still cited their last name as “Roach”.

As a result of this research, I am now regularly in touch with cousin David Feser, another descendant of Bridget Reekie. He is also an avid genealogist. He is the great grandson of Robert Reekie, brother of Rose and Susan Reekie. He now lives in Chesapeake, VA.

When I first started the research on Anna Roach way back wehn, I made a half baked attempt at querying for a Roach connection in the Cleveland area using Ancestry.com’s Census Collection. It returned hundreds of possibilities. I quickly gave up. Without some basic information, I figured trying to find the Cleveland relatives would be impossible.

But several things changed recently. First, Ancestry.com began something called lifespan filtering. This simply removes results that are outside the possible lifespan of the person you are querying. So I decided to take a guess and enter the birth year of Bridget Roach as the birth year of someone with a last name of Roach who lives in Cleveland, Ohio. I also asked for results that only fall within 10 years, either way of that birth day. I figured a brother of sister would most likely be within 10 years of Anna. Then I also asked for an exact match birthplace of “Ireland”.

The very first match in a set of 168,373 records, showed a Patrick Roach in the 1880 Census. Patrick was born in 1835 in Ireland and was married to Elizabeth, also of Ireland. Together, they has one daughter AND SEVEN BOYS! Could this be Anna and Bridget’s “brother who moved to Cleveland and had seven boys?” It look promising, so I built a separate research tree to investigate this line of Roach’s. I spent hours looking for him and his kids in the 1870 Census without success.

From the 1880 census, I learned that Patrick was the Sexton of a Catholic Cemetery. The 1880 census also indicated that they lived at 928 Woodland Avenue. So with a quick Google, it was easy to figure out that they managed and resided at St. John’s Catholic Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio.

I immediately found an online form for the diocese and asked if they could help me with any information about the Roach Family. The same evening I also sent out an email for help on the Cuyahoga genealogy mail list and requested assistance from a RAOGK (Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness) volunteer. I asked RAOGK volunteer Norm Davis if he could possibly find a death certificate for Patrick. I had hoped that the death certificate would name his parents as Andrew and Margaret Roach.

The next day, Norm wrote back…

“Here is the obit. Unfortunately there were no death certificates in 1882. They started in Dec.1908 but there was a death ledger in place at the time and I will get a copy of it for you early next week.  The ledger will not give much info but sometimes it will verify some facts for you.  Being he died at such a young age I will see if there is a coroner’s report available.  I will keep you posted.”

Norm Davis
RAOGK

Id#: 0297665
Name: Roach, Patrick
Date: 11/15/1882
Source: Cemetery record;  Cleveland Necrology File, Reel #068.
Notes: Age 47. St. John’s Cemetery Cleveland, Ohio.

What a major set-back I thought. Without a death certificate, how could I ever prove that he was the long lost brother I was looking for? I had tried searching the Cleveland Necrology file before, but without a clue on what to search for, it returned hundreds of results. So I decided I would try to learn more about Patrick and his family. I also wanted to track down the descendants of the children of Patrick and Elizabeth.

I soon began receiving responses from people on the Cuyahoga Mail List. The first came from LAS500.

Footnote.com has the Cleveland Directories- There is a Patrick Roach listed
as Sexton at Woodland Ave Cemetery. I looked at the 1871 directory because
that  info was probably collected in 1870.  There are several other Roach
families listed with home addresses.

So that confirms that Patrick was in Cleveland in 1870 and that for some reason he is either not in the 1870 Census or there is a gross error in the recoding of information about him and his family.

Holly Timm wrote:

Below is something of a timeline for Patrick Roach using the known census
plus the available Cleveland city directory information from Footnote.com

1860 CENSUS living in the 6th Ward, carpenter
1861 not listed
1862 (not on site)
1863 (not on site)
1864 2 listed: one as hostler, Franklin House, w.s.
the other as joiner, h. Wheat
1865 carpenter, h. 5 Forest
1866 (not on site)
1867 carpenter, h. 28 Harper
1868 not listed
1869 not listed
1870 CENSUS not found
1870 sexton, Woodland cemetery
1871 sexton, Catholic Cemetery, res 923 Woodland
1872 carpenter, res. 30 Pier
1873 sexton, r. Catholic Cemetary [sic]
1874 sexton, Catholic Cemetery, r. 923 Woodland av.
1875 sexton, r. 923 Woodland av.
1880 CENSUS Supt Catholic Cemetery, res 928 Woodland Ave

Looks like he *may* have been gone from the city in the late 1860′s and
returned in time to be listed in the 1870 directory but missed in the 1870
census, either not in residence or missed by the enumerator.

The title page for the 1870 directory states it was published in 1870 for
the years 1870-71

This provided me with a work history for Patrick. I also soon received a response from Janet Tomaro at the Cleveland Dioceses.

Dear Mr. Hayes,

In reference to your recent request on Patrick Roche. I can confirm that he was the Sexton of St. John Cemetery in Cleveland and that he is buried there in a family plot. Unfortunately, I do not have any family history, but following is a list of all those buried with him.

This is all the information available to you.

*Margaret Roche age 63 4/25/1875 abt 1812
*Patrick Roche age 47 11/15/1882 abt 1835
Clarence Roach age 6 mos 12/27/1891 abt Jun 1891
Joseph S. Roach age 7 days 12/3/1899 abt 26 Nov 1899
Julia Roach age 34 yrs. 1/29/1900 abt 1866
Margaret Roach age 46 yrs 3/28/1901 abt 1855
Lillian Roach age 28 yrs 5/28/1901 abt 1873
John Roach age 73 yrs. 2/25/1902 abt 1829
George Roach age 2 mos. 8/12/1902 abt Jun 1902
Mary v age 65 yrs 12/8/1904 abt 1839
Catherine Hull age 40 yrs 2/4/1905 abt 1865
Valorie Hull age 15 yrs 7/7/1910 act 1895
Elizabeth Roach age 81 yrs 11/25/1912 abt 1844
Elizabeth Long age 43 yrs 8/22/1925 abt 1882
*Andrew Roche age 73 yrs 1/13/1934 abt 1861
*Patrich Roche age 70 yrs 3/5/1934 abt 1864
*Margaret Roche age 88 yrs 9/9/1950 abt 1862

The lot is in Section 7 row 5 Lot 2 Part 9/10.

It has been my pleasure to assist you in your genealogy search, and I hope this information is helpful. We usually provide 4 names at no charge and gladly accept any monetary donation.  Your contribution will help maintain the cemetery grounds, and provide a place where meditation and reflection can be enjoyed by all visitors. Should you have any questions please contact the cemetery by email, or (216) 641-7575. Sincerely

Janet Tomaro

WOW! Interesting! Some of interments are listed as Roach, others as Roche. This brought me closer to the idea that I had found the family of the brother I was looking for. This group of Roach/ Roche had conflicting name issues too. Using the Cleveland Necrology File, I quickly began piecing together who was who. The necrology file is a database of obituaries from the Cleveland area, dating back to the early 1800’s. It soon became apparent that there were members of two families here. One line came from Patrick’s family (d. 1882). The other came from what appears to be another brother named John (d. 1902). I was able to match all but two internment’s with a listing in the Cleveland Necrology File. And then there is a Margaret Roche who appears to be the mother of Patrick and John. She is about the same age as the Margaret I was tracking in New York. So now it appears that Anna and Bridget’s mother, Margaret, may have come to Cleveland to live with her son Patrick in her final years. Wow… everything seemed to be falling in place.

Using Ancestry.com’s Census Records, I quickly began building on the descendants of Patrick and John. I easily found members for the next 3 – 4 generations of family members along with numerous death records and obituaries.

THE BIG MYSTERY SOLVED

Over the last several weeks, Norman has slowly been sending me a variety of interesting documents. These included:

• The Last Will of Patrick Roach and associated Probate Records from 1885.
• A Death Ledger for Patrick Roach who died Nov 14, 1982.
• A Naturalization Record for a James Roche

Then just today, I receive the absolute confirmation I was looking for… from a surprising source… A second Death Ledger. Norman Davis, the very dedicated and generous ROAGK volunteer who first responded to me weeks ago, retrieved some additional records form me. He scanned them in and sent them to me via email. One of them was an additional Death Ledger from another source which gave many more details than the first one he sent many weeks ago. This one provided me with the following information.

• Namer: Patrick Roach
• Date of Death: November 14, 1892
• Age: 48 years, 4 months old
• Address at Death: 923 Woodland Avenue, Cleveland, OH
• Born: Dublin, Ireland
• Cause of Death: Dropsy ( An old term for the swelling of soft tissues due to the accumulation of excess water. Usually caused by Congestive Heart Failure)
• Burial Location: Woodland Catholic Cemetery
• Father: Andrew
• Mother: Margaret

That was the confirmation I needed. He was born in Dublin and his parents were Andrew and Margaret. That is consistent with the research of the New York Roche / Roach’s and makes him the perfect fit for Anna and Bridget’s brother.

So now that I have the confirmation I was looking for, I will try to make contact with some of the cousins related to the Cleveland Roach / Roche’s to see if they can contribute any additional facts.

Also,stay tuned for some additional news concerning the name issue. Some recently discovered documents may help explain things.

I have been deeply curious about the Roach’s because of the mis-spelling of her last name on Anna’s grave. Initially, I though the grave was correct and that the Census record keepers were just sloppy. But as I collected various death records, I became convinced that “Roach” is the proper spelling of her last name.

Back in 1977, my Great Aunt, Grace Lewis, wrote a letter to my Uncle telling him what she knew of Henry Lewis and Anna Roche Roach. She indicated the Anna’s mother, which I later determined to be Margaret, “was educated to become a doctor in Dublin at the University there”.

Now Grace, left out an entire generation of people when describing one of the sisters of Anna, but she did mention one VERY interesting point which appears to have panned out. She stated that Anna Roach had at two sisters and a brother. She said her “brother moved to Cleveland, Ohio and had seven sons”. In Anna’s obituary, there was an editor’s note for “Cleveland, OH papers please copy”. This confirms at least this part of Aunt Grace’s history of the Roach’s.   There was a boy who went to Ohio. But how do we find him?

When I used Ancestry.com last year to see if I could quickly figure out who it could be, I was overwhelmed with results. I quickly gave up that battle and decided to save it for another day.

Well… that day has come. With a clear head, I took a fresh attempt at trying to figure out who the boy was that went to Cleveland, Ohio. I started by once again looking at the Cleveland Ohio’s necrology file which had “paid obituaries” from the early 1850′s to the mid 1900′s. I carefully paged through all records starting in 1850 and found nothing in the text that clued me in to a New York connection.

Then I went to Ancestry.com again and did a bare bones search using the folloing criteria:

Birth range: 1828 – 1848 (based on the ages of the known children of Margaret)
Lived In: “Cleveland, Ohio, USA” (Using the exact data feature)
Sex: Male
Birthplace: Ireland

Now because Ancestry.com has recently changed their search results criteria to filter out results outside the possible lifespan of the date ranges provided, I only got a handful of results. Most of the results came from the 1880 Census in Cleveland. Next I looked for someone who had seven boys… BINGO.

I found a Patrick Roach (b. abt 1835 in Ireland), married to an Elizabeth with one daughter and seven boys. When looking even closer, it turns out that Patrick’s first daughter, Margaret Roach ( the same name as his Anna’s mother), was born in New York circa 1856. Then when looking at Patrick’s first Boy born, I see that his name is Andrew, which is what I believe to be the name of Anna’s father.

So finally, I have something to work off of. Just when you think all trails are going cold, you make a break through. That is why this hobby is so much fun! Now lets see where this takes us.

Patrick lived on Woodland Avenue and was a Superintendent of a Catholic Cemetery.  That should be enough to get me going!

Click to enlarge census image