The following comes from an email I had sent 5/20/12.  This was before we had heard about the Limerick connection for the James Sullivan family, discovered by the Dunnville historical society August 2014.  Patrick O’Neil, forever famous for Paddy O’Neil’s trunk that was opened 5/12/12, is the uncle by marriage to Sarah Flanagan Sullivan, wife of James Sullivan.  The obituary was discovered by going through microfilm, that ever dizzying process, on a trip I had made to Dunnville, visiting the offices of the Dunnville Chronicle.

From microfilm of Dunnville Chronicle Issue 35 1900
8/31/1900
“Patrick O’Neil was born March 17, 1818 in Desert Martan, Deary Island, Ireland. He came to Canada in 1843, settling at Niagara Falls. In 1849 he purchased the farm on the Robinson Road now owned by Anderson Waines. About 20 years ago he purchased another farm in Dunn and lived there until he came to Dunnville 15 years ago, and has since lived on John St. He revisited Ireland twice. In politics he was a Reformer. He was a strict attendant at St Michael’s church, firm in his faith but liberal minded. His more than usual gift of Irish wit and humor, his fund of reported anecdotes to always suit the occasion, seemed inexhaustible. His wife, who died in 1890, was Catherine HARKENS of Leitrim, Ireland, and was a sister of the late Mrs. Flannigan of Wainfleet. There are still living three sisters, Sarah, in Ireland, Jane and Mrs. John Daly, and one brother Peter, of Niagara Falls.”

I then made some comments in my notebook as follows:
Under Purely Personal:
“John Daly and wife and James Daly of Niagara Falls were here attending the funeral of the late Patrick O’Neil.”
My notebook also reads: “Reverend Crinion, St Michael’s 1897”
Current observation: if the “late Mrs. Flannigan of Wainfleet” is Sarah Flannigan’s mother (Sarah Flannigan being the grandmother of jerry, Janie, tim and myself), then Paddy O’Neil would have been Sarah’s uncle ie Paddy is the husband of Sarah’s aunt Catherine.
Jerry had done lovely research years ago in which he says that Sarah Flannigan was the daughter of Edward Flannigan and Mary McNeff, and was one of eight children: Catherine, Elizabeth, Mary, Frances, John, Edward and Martin. Sarah’s mother Mary (nee McNeff) Flannigan, was born in Leitrim County Ireland. (near Sligo and Willam Butler Yeats, hoo ha!) Sarah’s mother died 4/8/1894 at age 67.
So Catherine Harkens, sister of the late Mrs Flannigan (aka Mary McNeff) are both born in Leitrim County.
I don’t understand why ‘HARKENS’ was capitalized in the above obituary (I think it was, that is the way my handwriting had it) and whether that actually is a different last name from McNeff—were they half sisters? Or is ‘Harkens’ a middle name?
So these are the first Sullivan connections (so far) with geographical origins in Ireland: the Flannigan girls from County Leitrim and the in-law Paddy O’Neil from “Desert Martan” which maybe is Desertmartin, in County Derry, Northern Ireland (per google search so far).
Paddy O’Neil came “out” in 1843 just before the famine hit 1845-1850. James came in 1848 or 1847 (he gave two different dates in later Canadian census reports. I wonder if the families had any knowledge of each other before arriving in Canada?
Peter 5/20/12

What follows was a related email sent 5/12 about the above visit to Dunnville:
Dear family,

aka new information re-discovered:

In August of 2002, I took a first reconnaissance trip to get information about the current owner of the former Sullivan farm on the Bird Rd. This was also a trip to begin to research St Michael’s cemetary there in Dunnville.

I stopped in the post office downtown on that trip and made some inquiries and happened to get the postal carrier for the Bird road route who said that the house “is all by itself, blue, not many blue houses” along that stretch of the Bird road. She gave me the name of the owner as Wayne Langlois. (In the next year, 10/13/03, on a glorious early Fall day that happened to be Canada day as well, a van load of us, Janie, Jerry, Tim and cousins Margaret Marie Sullivan and Maureen Brady, having sent a preliminary letter and setting up a day to visit, met Kerry Langlois–Wayne is his son–and he said as soon as he saw a letter signed by a Sullivan it rang a bell because he had found a foundation stone in the basement with ‘Sulivan’ written on it. This trip was videotaped–more about that at another time).

For the 2002 trip, I brought along a notebook/journal that Wendy bought me for the purpose of taking notes. I just pulled out that notebook and saw that I had written down the obituary of Paddy O’Neil, found on microfilm at the Dunnville Chronicle, dated 8/31/1900. “Holy Kafrump!” said I, forgetting that I had gathered this information 10 years ago. I am attaching the transcribed obituary in a word document.

BTW, little piece of local history, our now long departed and sometimes hysterical Irish Setter was named Patsy O’Kneel.

Gertrude Walters Sullivan, who was a wise, smart, thoughtful and sometimes tough minded woman, had a phrase that occurred to me awhile back. She would be commenting on someone and would add that so and so “is someone who knows Joseph.” I don’t know where this came from, ie was it a phrase she learned from someone else or not, but the meaning was clear: someone who knew Joseph, as in St Joseph I think, was humble, genuine, what we might now refer to as “the real deal”. An admirable individual who did not blow his or her own her horn, operated behind the scenes, a real support, steady. This speaks a lot about some of her values for which many of us are forever grateful.

It’s funny how memories pop up. Now that the heat and humidity are “on” in Mississippi, I suddenly remembered young childhood visits in Clifton Springs, and my grandfather coming home from the blacksmith shop. He would wash up, as I recall, in a sink that was against a wall where later a refrigerator would be installed. Gottlieb died in 1952 I think, so I would have been somewhere between 5-7 years old. These were the days of having Orange Crush in bottles on the front porch swing in what felt like an incredibly safe and deliciously boring state of childhood at the height of midsummer. Only recently as a retiree, I’ve had a renewed inkling of that sense of time stretching on with few to no plans in sight other than sitting on the front porch for the moment. What a luxury.

I have to recall that 1951, for example, was an era way before air conditioning, central or otherwise. A summer day was marked with the white noise of fans (with very unsafe large blades barely protected) and the pulling down of yellow colored shades that had a little circular loop at the end of the string, used for raising and lowering the shade.

At a reunion in August 2014, Helen Sullivan Lydon brought this photo of the farm (in the 1920’s ?) underneath which Aunt Kathryn Sullivan had written “Dreamland”. A great view of the old barn and to the left the original log home structure which was later used as an auxiliary barn for animals. We discovered in a 2003 trip to the farm that the bottom 4 or 5 feet of the log structure still remained, surrounded entirely with high weeds and invisible to the casual passer-by.

Some photos from a gathering in 2009 at a Canadian yacht club, followed by a drive-by visit of the farm.  The original porch of the farm is now enclosed.

This is Jerry’s (W. Jerome Sullivan) original compilation of family history written in the 1980’s (?) . As these three notes were added to this blog page as photos of the originals, the text size is small but hopefully can be read.  An update to the first paragraph from what we now know is that James Sullivan’s birth year is unknown but may have been as recent as 1836-1841 not 1831.  We learned in 2012 via discovering Daniel Sullivan’s will in Paddy O’Neil’s trunk, that James had an older brother John as well as a baby sister Mary.  The picture now is that the family emigrated from Limerick, Ireland in 1847 or 1848 at the height of the Irish Famine (principally 1845-1850).  Daniel, his wife Mary, and sons John and James and daughter Mary arrived in Dunnville probably via Grosse Ille in Quebec.  At the time of sailing, John was about 12, James maybe 7-9 years old and Mary one year old.  It’s unknown if any other family travelled with them.  By 1861, the date of Daniel Sullivan’s will, they were on the farm on the Bird Rd., with the log cabin as the original home.  Daniel and James could not read nor write, John may have learned to read and write later.

Jerry’s history is a great single place to check out birth, death and marriage years for the children of James and Sarah Sullivan.

10/29/13
Near the anniversary of Gertrude (Walters) Sullivan’s death 10/20 (1973), Mary Jane (Sullivan) Mescall rediscovered forty years later a letter in a chest drawer—a response to a note Janie had written informing the writer of mom’s death. Fortunately the writer, Madeleine Frye Sharpe, included a great deal of information about her family, and this became, for our generation, the first link with our great uncle John Sullivan, brother of our grandfather James. Apparently dad, William J. Sullivan, had kept up correspondence for years with his cousins, the descendants of his uncle John, but somehow the connection with that whole side of the family, John and his descendants, had become so lost to us, the children of William J., that we (my siblings and I) were totally flabbergasted to learn when discovering great grandfather Daniel Sullivan’s 1861 will, that our grandfather James had a brother, John.
Janie’s rediscovery therefore is an extraordinary find, a vital link, the first we have with the descendants of John Sullivan. The writer, Madeleine, is the second youngest of seven daughters of Margaret (Sullivan) Frye (sometimes listed in Canadian census records as Margarite). Margaret is the second oldest of 7-8 children born to John Sullivan and Johanna (Hanna). So we have information now about one of John and Hanna’s 7-8 children. In her letter, to be transcribed for the record, she gives information about her siblings.
The hope is that the descendants of these two branches of the family, John and Hanna, and James and Sarah, who shared farms side by side near Dunnville, Ontario, will be able to reconnect at some point and share more information about their shared past, possibly even information about the exodus from Ireland c. 1847 or 1848.
Vibraharp

What follows is a transcription of the note Janie discovered:

Dear Janie,

Your letter was so friendly I’m sure you won’t mind my using your first name. Excuse my tardiness in answering but have just recently returned from an out-of-town vacation. I was very sorry to hear that you had lost your mother last October. In her “1972” Christmas note she said “we must continue to keep in touch even though your dad had passed on.” He always had written the Christmas letter to me and was so proud of his family, God bless him! What wonderful memories you must have of them both.

About our relationship! My mother, Margaret Sullivan Frye and your dad were first cousins. Their fathers were brothers and lived on adjacent farms in Dunnville, Ontario, Canada. That made your dad and I second cousins so I guess we would be third cousins if that is the way such things are figured. I am beginning to confuse myself. Ha! In any event I’ll repeat, your dad and my mother were first cousins and you can take it from there.

I was the second youngest of seven sisters and the only one living. I lost my wonderful husband in November of 1949 and never remarried. We had no children. I sold our home, (which was built in “1941”) in the fall of “1972” and moved into an apartment. We were married in Buffalo in “1927” and sold our home in Snyder New York when he was transferred to Rome with the General Cable Corporation in “1936”. My six sisters were:

Alice Frye Sherman (oldest-died 9/24/1966)

Loretta Frye (died in infancy-4 yrs.)

Margaret Frye Manning (died April 5, 1970)

Catherine Frye Cassidy (died June 23, 1960)

Josephine Frye Ronda (April 21, 1967)

Agnes Frye Reimer (died September 6, 1969)

Alice had two sons, Arthur and Raymond. They are both married. Art lives in Buffalo and has a son single and married daughter with three lovely boy children. Raymond (nickname Buddy) lives in East Aurora with his wife and three children-one son and two daughters.

Margaret had four daughters-Catherine Madeleine (my namesake), Margaret Louise and Eileen. Their dad is also dead. They are all married. Catherine passed away in “1972”. Madeleine has a son (married) and a daughter who will enter college next fall. Margaret Louise has two sons age ten and eleven and Eileen like her Aunt Madeleine (me) is childless. All lovely girls and just like daughters to me. I would be lost without them! Madeleine’s married name is Mrs. Robert E. Fischer and she and her family live in Eggertsville. Margaret Louise is Mrs. H. Merton Smith and they live in Williamsville and Eileen is Mrs. Russell G. Manz and her home is in the town of Tonawanda. Wow! My hand is getting tired. Maybe you will be wishing you hadn’t asked me about my relationship to your family. At least you will get a break soon ’cause I’m running out of space.

Am enclosing several old snapshots which you may or may not have. Please keep them if you wish to. I used to spend teen-age vacations with my bachelor Uncle Jim Sullivan (my mother’s brother). That is when I got to know your dad’s family so well.

Well Janie dear, this certainly isn’t the neatest letter I have ever written. Had I known starting out that I was going to ramble on at such great length I would have set up my typewriter. That would have at least kept my margins straighter and words more legible. Oh well, I’m too lazy to start over again!

Your family of seven sounds wonderful and in these days of planned parenthood it was a joy to hear about them. You and your husband Terry are truly blessed! Maybe I’m old fashioned but I have always loved large families.

As for me, my hobbies are reading, golf and bridge for the most part. Used to swim, play tennis and skate but am not all that ambitious anymore.

Hope all of the foregoing will be of some interest to you. Would love hearing from you again.

Very sincerely and fondly,

Madeleine Frye Sharpe

140 West Linden Street

Rome, New York

February 26, 1974

P.S. After all of the foregoing how can I possibly have a “P.S.” to add? Notice that I forgot to mention that my sister Kathryn Frye Cassidy had two children-a daughter Lucille (Mrs. J. E. Connelly) who resides in Baltimore, Maryland. She has two married sons and a married daughter. She also has a son William E. Cassidy who is a bachelor living in East Aurora, New York.

By some strange coincidence and God’s will we three younger sisters-Josephine, myself and Babe (Agnes Frye Reimer)never conceived.

Best wishes to all!

In August 2014, Mary Jane Mescall, Jerry and Tim Sullivan along with myself had a wonderful meeting at the Dunnville Historical Society in Dunnville, Canada.  The researcher there was delighted to hear from us, as she had been sorting out two different Sullivan families in Dunnville in the 19th century,  and we were able to clarify which family was our focus of interest.  When we arrived at the office, in the back of the Dunnville public library, two of the staff greeted us saying, “Here are the Sullivans from Limerick!”,  One of the researchers had discovered John Sullivan’s obituary of 1918 (he would be to my generation great uncle John, brother of my grandfather James) and it turned out that his youngest son had supplied information as below for his obituary.  The information about Limerick was a revelation for all of us.  Some of us still hold out (emotionally) for a County Kerry or County Cork home of origin.  Remarkably or not, this is one of the pieces of information we never heard about when we had with us all those wonderfully colorful aunts and uncles, to say nothing of parents, ie there were no stories shared about where the family had come from in Ireland.  And none of us ever asked.  It is possible that Limerick was a stop along the journey as the family exited the country in those dreadful times, or it could be that it is where they had lived for a much longer period of time.  Those leaving Ireland at that time were Daniel and Mary Sullivan, and their children John, James and Mary.  It is not known whether there were other relatives eg siblings of Daniel and Mary, who might also have come over at the time.  It is assumed they came via Quebec and from there on to Dunnville.  When you read about the Great Famine, the conditions on board the ships of the time, and the experiences of others who landed at Grosse Ille in Quebec, it is something of a grand mystery and blessing that they survived at all.

Here is John Sullivan’s 1918 obituary:

June 23, 1918 (Ancestry.com)

John SULLIVAN
On June 23, there passed away a very old resident of Moulton in the person of John Sullivan, at the advanced age of 88. He came to this country when a boy of 12 years from Limerick, Ireland and had lived in the county ever since, most of the time being spent on the Bird Road and immediate vicinity. The deceased was well known and enjoyed the esteem of every person. He was ill just a few months. Three children survive: Mrs. John Wulke and Mrs. John Fry, Buffalo and James Sullivan, Bird Road.
The funeral took place Wednesday, June 26, to St. Michael’s Church, Dunnville, where Requiem High Mass was chanted by Rev. Father Donovan. Burial was at St. Michael’s Cemetery. Six nephews, Daniel, James, John, Joseph, William and Patrick Sullivan were pallbearers. In attendance at the funeral were Mr. John Warren, Mrs. Daniel Clifford, Mr. and Mrs. Sherman, all of Buffalo, Mrs. G.R. McWilliams of Stanley, N.Y. and the children.
(Ancestry.com – At Bird Road., Moulton, John Sullivan, 88, farmer, widower. Born Ireland. Son of Daniel Sullivan. Died of old age and diabetes mellitus, 1 year. Informant: John James Sulllivan, Dunnville. Buried Dunnville.)

September 27, 1918

The pallbearers mentioned in the obituary include my father, William, and his brothers. —-Peter Sullivan

I copied and pasted this email message below which gives a brief overview of some of the history gathered to that date re the Sullivans of Bird Road, Dunnville, Ontario, Canada.  The email was sent to Mary Jane  and Terry Mescall, Jerry Sullivan, Tim Sullivan.  –Peter Sullivan

The following are some observations in preparation for a sibling gathering tomorrow, after
doing some additional work on the Sullivan and Flanagan histories. Not in any particular order,
and dates are always subject to revision:
1. The earliest Canadian census record I have seen is from 1861, and it lists in one
household great grandfather Daniel age 56, great grandmother Mary age 50, two sons
John 27 and James 24 (our grandfather) and one daughter Mary 15. Also listed are
Johanna (Hannah) 24 and Mary, 1. Hannah is John’s wife and Mary who is 1 is their
first born. According to those dates, John would have been born in 1834 and James in
1837.
2. We knew nothing about John and his whole family until Daniel’s will dated 1861 was
discovered in Paddy O’Neil’s trunk 5/12/12!
3. The 1891 census lists John as 58 (1833) and James as 49 (1842). The 1901 census lists
John as born in 1836 and James in 1841. The 1911 census lists John’s birth year as 1835,
James as not known but he was 70 which would give him a birth year of 1841.
4. If James’ birth was closer to 1841 than 1837, the info about Kilcummin, Ireland as
birthplace for James looks unlikely (but Wendy and I are still glad we visited there and
this might, of course, necessitate a return trip to Ireland with new data to explore!).
5. What also makes Kilcummin less likely is that I was able to zoom in on the almost
illegible surname of our great grandmother in the will, and rather than looking
like ‘Shanihan’, it now looks closer to ‘Shaunessy’.
6. Today, looking at the will again with the zoom feature, I noticed that Daniel lists his
executors as Patrick Sullivan and Bartholomew ______looks very much like Shaunessy!
So—might this have been a brother of Daniel’s and a brother of his wife?
7. The 1891 census clearly indicates that as of that date James could not read nor write,
though Sarah could write and that John and Hannah could both read and write. They
also had an 18 year old employee at the farm who was born in England, by the name of
John Sloan.
8. Re James, 1848 is listed on one census report as the date of immigration and another
census report lists 1847. (Principal years of the Famine were 1845-1850 and 1847
was the worst year to enter via Quebec). John may have had a later immigration date,
possibly 1853, but it is not clear if that meant he arrived later or just did the paper work
that year.
9. The most recent Canadian census is 1911, William J Sullivan was 14, Patrick 10, and their
uncle John, 76, living with them, along with John’s youngest son John J. 30 and Alice Fry,
listed as a granddaughter, then 27 and I believe born in NYS.
10. Also born in NYS is Edward and Mary Flanagan’s oldest son John born in 1851. (Edward
and Mary Flanagan are the parents of Sarah Flanagan, our grandmother and James’
wife). Would this mean that the Flanagan’s may have had New York as a port of entry
rather than Quebec, also came over later than Daniel Sullivan?
The mystery quest continues. Peter

When we had the sibling (Mary Jane Mescall, Jerome Sullivan, Timothy Sullivan, Peter Sullivan) reunion at Janie’s house on 2/12/13, we talked about starting a Wikipedia-like narrative of our family history with everyone adding to the narrative pieces that they recall. Here were some from yesterday (plus someothers) :

Jerry recalls that in the 1940’s, possibly from Cuba NY or from Williamsville, the family traveled to see old Aunt Mary Flanagan (Flannigan) (of Wainfleet). Janie and Jerry remember seeing Sarah Flanagan’s brothers John and Ed at the Flanagan home not far from the Bird road farm (these brothers were born 1851 and 1854–before American the civil war—grandmother Sarah Sullivan was born c. 1858, married our grandfather James when James was c. 36 and Sarah was c. 17). On these visits in the 40’s, the farm may have been occupied fully by tenants as there was no recall of staying at the farm at that time.

Janie is quite sure that Aunt Mary was Ed Flanagan’s wife, and they had a son John who married Marie Burke, this couple lived in Toronto. One time on a trip to see them, Tim got stuck coming out of the bathroom. There was a sense of intrigue about this couple—they did not have children and may have been separated at some point.

Tim and I remember visits later to see Aunt Mary—dad (William J. Sullivan) was quite devoted in making these visits, almost like pilgrimages—Aunt Mary was large and very deaf—conversation was all at the level of virtually shouting, and Tim and I were expected to say hello and then we could go out and play, or go to the car in the driveway. One time while Tim was sitting at the driver’s seat, a large dog came out (or down the road?) and Tim stepped out to admire the size of the dog, at which point it stood up on its hind legs and its head was at about the level of Tim’s and as I recall it would not get its paws off Tim’s shoulders for some time. Harmless but huge.

When Janie saw my email about finding the name Alice Fry in a 1911 Canadian census, then 27 and listed as granddaughter of Great Uncle John Sullivan (brother to James Sullivan), both of whom, John Sullivan and Alice Fry, living on the farm with dad and his parents at that time, she immediately remembered dad (William J Sullivan) talking about wanting to visit the Fry’s in Buffalo. Alice’s mother must have been one of Uncle John’s daughters who married a Fry. When we looked at the 1880’s James and Sarah Sullivan family bible (the Big Leather Bound Bible) the name Fry is noted in pencil in the front cover, something I had never noticed before and that previously made no connection/sense to me.