Using a Timeline & Relationships to Narrow a Research Focus

This past week, I worked on my first project of the year focused on a female ancestor. Mary Jane Sheridan (abt. 1843-1919) is a paternal 3x great-grandmother. She began her life in New York, eventually moved to Ontario, Canada, and later Cleveland, Cuyahoga Co., Ohio. While I have a good deal of information on her, the one crucial piece of information missing is the record of her marriage to Philip Cassidy. 

A first step no matter what the research question is to create a timeline of known events in the person's life. I spent some time looking at several existing sources to discover what is currently known about Mary Jane:

• Mary Jane's profile on my family tree on Ancestry
• Mary Jane's profile on the FamilySearch Family Tree
  
• Other Ancestry-user trees where Mary Jane appears
• WikiTree and Geneanet trees
  
• Information I already have in files from past research (including paper and digital files)
• Past blog posts written which included Mary Jane.

Mary Jane's starting timeline includes major events like the births of her children, her residences, moves, etc. Because world and local events might have impacted Mary Jane's life, I also added some major events, such as when Canadian Confederation took effect in 1867 (this changed the names of localities the family lived in); when civil registration began to be required in Canada in 1869; and an influenza epidemic there in 1873-74, among others. Adding historical events gives context to her timeline.

A portion of my Airtable research log for Mary Jane includes world and local events.

As I've been reading Telling Her Story: A Guide to Researching and Writing about Women of the Past I was struck by a point Sharon Carmack Debartolo made. It's related to researching the FAN club (or the friends, associates, and neighbors), but goes one step beyond. She discusses considering the various roles that a woman played during her life, such as mother, wife, sister, etc. "You never know what record about someone else will provide you with facts on your female ancestors."¹

I made a quick table of Mary Jane's roles and to whom, so that I might recognize another person whose records could potentially help answer a question about her.

Some relationships she had were:

• Daughter to Henry Sheridan and Catherine Coats
• Sister to Charles, Catherine, William, Phillip, and Henry Sheridan
• Wife to Phillip Cassidy, and later, his widow
  
• Mother to Charles, Daniel, Phillip, Mary Jane, Martin, John, Matthew, and James Cassidy
• Parishioner at various Catholic churches, for example, the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria in St. Catharines, Ontario, and St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Cleveland. 
• And others...
  

Pinning down the locality Mary Jane and Philip married in will be tricky as it's unclear exactly when she immigrated to Canada. She and her parents and siblings lived in Evans, Erie, New York as of 1855.² By 1861 Mary Jane and Phillip were married and living in Lincoln, Canada West.³ Since the couple's oldest child, Charles Francis, was born in December 1860, clearly Mary Jane had immigrated by then.⁴ She and Phillip could have married in either New York or Canada, possibly about 1858-early 1860.

Using the relationship chart I created, I wondered if any of Mary Jane's siblings had also immigrated to Canada. Viewing their FamilySearch profiles revealed that a younger brother William had died in St. Catharines in 1930. His death certificate offered that he had resided in Canada for 77 years, or since about 1853, though the informant—his son—was likely off a few years given that the family was still in the U.S. in 1855.⁵ It also indicated he was born in Buffalo, New York, which added another locality to Mary Jane's timeline.⁶

My current hypothesis is that Mary Jane immigrated to Canada about 1856-57, which would give her plenty of time to meet and marry Phillip in Canada in the late 1850s-early 1860. We'll see where the research leads next.

Email inbox cleanup status: my inbox stands at 4655. 

I use the Research Like a Pro Airtable bases for my research logs. The bases were created by Nicole Dyer and are available for free download in the Airtable Universe.

Until next time...

Follow my blog with Bloglovin 

© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2025. All rights reserved.

 

NOTES

¹ Sharon DeBartolo Carmack, Telling Her Story: A Guide to Researching and Writing about Women of the Past (Salt Lake City, Utah: Scattered Leaves Press, 2024), p. 16.

² 1855 New York Census, Erie County, population schedule, Town of Evans, p. 48, dwelling 190, Mary L. Sheridan in Henry Sheridan household; imaged, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-8B53-9XN7 : accessed 7 Jan. 2025).

³ 1861 Canada West Census, Lincoln Co., ED No. 4, line 32 Mary Casedy in the Philip Casedy household; imaged, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DWY7-DHM : accessed 7 Jan. 2025); citing Public Archives, Toronto.

⁴ Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), "Baptismal Register, 1860-1906," p. 1, baptism of Charles F. Cassidy, 7 Dec. 1860; digital images, Ancestry, "Ontario, Canada, Roman Catholic Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1760-1923," (https://bit.ly/2VRK5Yu : accessed 5 July 2020), image 107/554; citing Archdiocese of St. Catharines, Ontario. 

⁵ Province of Ontario, Certificate of Registration of Death, #023357 (stamped), William Sheridan, 24 Nov. 1930; imaged, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6WJ3-KDV : accessed 10 Jan. 2025). 

⁶ Ibid.