This week's #52AncestorsIn52Weeks Prompt was "Name's the Same".
When I first started doing my genealogy there were a lot of things I didn't know. First off I assumed that if someone else had information in their tree that it had to be correct. Second I didn't take into account that people lie, so just because a census record says my great great grandmother is only 40 when the census (which is taken every 10 years) before she was 35, doesn't mean that that's the truth. Third I did not think about the fact that there could be multiple people with the same name. This is the story about how I learned to read ALL the information on a record before deciding it was for the right person.
I knew that my nana Joan had an aunt named Anna Kelleher, who married a man named James Fallon and had a son named Leo. I also knew that Anna lived close by her family in Scranton. So when I pulled up a 1920 census with Anna Fallon, married to James Fallon with a son named Leonard Fallon, living in the town next to Scranton I assumed this was probably the correct Anna. I then pulled up the 1930 census. There was Anna, James and Leo but there were two more sons, Donald and James. I paused here because I couldn't remember nana ever mentioning any other Fallon cousins, but I also knew nana had a whole bunch of cousins on the Kelleher side and that it was entirely possible that Donald and James had died young so maybe that's why I didn't know them. I even called my mom and asked her if Uncle Leo had any siblings, she said no she was pretty sure he was an only child. I looked at the census again, could this be the wrong Anna? What were the chances that there were three people with the right name, in the right area, but be the wrong people? That's when I noticed that Anna's parents were listed as being born in Wales. My great great grandparents were born in Ireland.
The "Real" Anna Fallon with her husband James and son Leo
I decided then that I should go look at what records Ancestry held for Leo. I knew a little more about Leo that could help with my search. First I knew that I had met Leo, which meant that he had lived at least into the 1990s. I knew that he had married and had a bunch of kids and that he had lived in New Jersey when he was older. The first record that popped up on Ancestry was for FindAGrave, which is a site with cemetery information. There was a grave marker for Leonard Fallon, who died in 1979 in Pennsylvania. These were not my people.
I deleted the wrong Fallons from my tree and went back to Anna to start again. This time I found another 1920 census with Anna living with her husband James Fallon but they were living in Scranton. Not only that but when I looked at the actual image they had my great grandmother Margaret and several of her children living on one side of them and Anna's brother Dennis living on the other side. BINGO! Next I found the 1930 census with Anna and James and a 4 year old son named Leo. After adding these Fallons to my tree I checked for Leo's records. There was a FindAGrave match, Leo had died in 1999 in New Jersey.
I decided for this story to check what happened to the "Fake" Anna and her family. There were several similarities to both Annas' stories. "Fake" Anna was Anna Donohue, born December 1888. She was 1 of 4 children born to her parents who had immigrated from Wales. Her father had died in 1899. Anna D married James Fallon, also born in 1888. They had three children, Leonard, Donald, and James. James Sr was a coal miner and died in 1936 from complications after having his appendix removed. Anna died in 1969. Leonard married a woman named Viola Malishefski and had three children. He served in the US Army during WWII and died in 1979.
"Real" Anna was born Anna Kelleher in August 1888. She was 1 of 13 children born to her Irish immigrant parents. Her father Peter died in 1906. Anna married James P Fallon, also born in 1888. She gave birth to a daughter who was stillborn in 1920 and then had her son Leo in 1925. James was a bartender when they got married and then got a job working for Prudential with several of Anna's brothers. He died of a heart attack while driving in 1955. Anna died in 1968. Leo married a woman named Nan McHale and had 6 children. He served in the US Navy during WWII and died in 1999.
You can read more about Leo Fallon here
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