In my blog page “Finns in the USA” I traced the story of four Finn sisters who had emigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. I noted that I had one weak DNA connection at 8cM to Jess Bazeley, a descendant of the Zieglers through Ann, one of the sisters. The sisters are all descended from James Finn and Nancy Finn, who came from Derrynabrock, the southern most of the four townlands making up the village of Cloontia, County Mayo, Ireland. The problem was that Nancy, just like my grandparents from the same area, had the same surname before she got married. This made it more difficult to work out further family connections back in Ireland because I was not sure whether to follow the paternal or the maternal line.

Jess Bazeley was the fourth generation in the USA and the fifth generation, if you include James and Nancy in Ireland. Five generations is pretty well the limit of the reach of DNA because Ancestry do not report connections below 8cM. According to the Lost Cousins Masterclass on “How to make the most of your DNA results”, the expected cM for 5th cousins is 14cM with a 32% probability of detecting a cousin. This drops to 3.5cM and 11% for a sixth cousin. Many results are below these figures and we are relying, for more distant connections, on the smaller proportion that are above average. I don’t know whether Jess Bazeley is a fourth, fifth or sixth cousin, but I suspect that she is a fourth cousin once removed, because her father is of a similar age group to me being four years older and that would make him my fourth cousin. This would place her Irish connections in the same age bands as my earliest known ancestors in the area and it is unlikely to be earlier than that otherwise there would be no chance of a DNA match. This gives me hope that I may eventually identify the family connection.

I was recently searching through my DNA results, which is a periodic exercise, because new results are being added all the time. I came across a DNA connection to Sean Kelly at 21cM, who is of the same generation as Jess Bazeley. Sean Kelly is descended from Catherine T Finn a daughter of Mick (Tommie) Finn of Derrynabrock, who married Catherine Forkin. Catherine T Finn emigrated to Monroe County, New York State, USA, where the largest city is Rochester on the southern shore of Lake Ontario.

Thomas Finn wrote his booklet “Cloontia Its People and Its Past” in 1999 when the author was 80, so it includes his recollections from, say, 1935 up to 1999. There are very few dates in this booklet, so pinpointing when things happened is hard. Published sources to support any research are Griffiths Valuation, the 1901 census, the 1911 census and the usual births, marriages and death records. However, birth, marriages and deaths can be difficult to use when there are so many similarly named people in the same area. I decided to use the 1901 census as a base and traced every Finn household in Derrynabrock. There were twelve. I then traced these forward to the 1911 census. I chose the 1901 census as a base because ages in the 1911 census were notoriously unreliable. This census was used as part of the introduction for State pensions, so where the birth year pre-dated the commencement of birth registration, many older residents had the opportunity to exaggerate their age.

Combining the details from Thomas Finn’s booklet with these two censuses, yielded the following table, labelled Page 9, because it is part of a set of 15 pages. I have noted on this chart the 1901 and 1911 census connections and the references contained within Thomas Finn’s booklet. This chart captures the family in Ireland before any of the siblings emigrated to the USA. I have now replaced the original hand drawn chart with this one (this has been superseded by the two new charts at the end of this blog page).

Page 1 shows the four Cincinnati sisters and their parents as James Finn and Nancy Finn. Pages 2 to 5 follow the families of each of these sisters. Pages 6 and 7 show James’s and Nancy’s other four children, two sons who died young, another Tom Finn who moved to England and married Gertrude Linley, where they had their son James Finn. The older James Finn, Nancy’s brother, married Marie McGeever and one of their sons is Thomas Finn, the booklet author, whose sister Kathleen Francis Finn married Brian McGeever. I have a DNA connection of 9 cM to their granddaughter Maureen Walker (neė Griffin). This is another fifth generation connection from James and Nancy.

It is now I must introduce Mary Bihn. I first had contact with Mary at the end of August 2022. She gave me the information about Margaret Finn and Anna Finn being Nancy’s sisters. As Nancy’s name is Ann, she also confirmed that Nancy did indeed have another sister called Anna, unusual to say the least. Mary married Edward Victor Bihn, the son of Edward Bihn and Bertha Marie Gorman. Bertha was the daughter of Bernard J Gorman and Bridget M Finn, the oldest of the Finn sisters who emigrated to Cincinnati. The death certificates for Margaret and Anna show their parents as Matthew Finn and Mary Tarpy, although on Margaret’s certificate it is spelt Tarpe. Mary provided this photo of Nancy:

Mary Bihn provided some further information about Nancy’s husband James’s sole sibling, Mary Finn, who emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio, USA in 1934. This is shown on page 8 and maybe the subject of another blog page. Mary married Peter Higgins in 1887, in Ireland and emigrated with some of her children, but not with her husband. James’s and Mary’s parents were Patrick (Patch) Finn and Bridget Doherty. Pages 10 to 15 lead on from the above page 9 as marked under each column on the chart above and follow the families of each of Nancy’s siblings, so the story of James and Mary will have to wait for another day.

Thomas Finn’s booklet doesn’t mention Nancy’s American sisters nor James’s American sister. The information provided by Mary Bihn has been invaluable in being able to show Nancy’s siblings above. But Mary didn’t stop there. I contacted her again in June 2023 with the fifteen charts mentioned above and asked for any DNA information she might have, plus checking for inaccuracies I may have introduced. She responded with a list of people she knew who had taken DNA tests. Checking through these I was able to identify two further matches. These are Claudette Blozy 8cM, who is descended from the same line as Jess Bazeley, i.e. the Zieglers, and Mary Zuber 14cM, who is from the Gorman line mentioned above in connection with Mary Bihn. Both of these DNA connections are from the fourth generation, whereas the other three already mentioned are from the fifth generation. All of the five DNA connections mentioned above are at the far end of where DNA connections are possible. Because of these five results, I am pretty sure that the rest of the list provided by Mary are also very distant relatives.

Nancy’s sister Catherine Finn was born in 1850 and she married Edward McGeever on 4th February 1867, as shown on page 10. The witnesses were John Finn and Mary Finn, presumably her siblings. Her father was noted as Matthew Finn, which confirms their father in Irish records and not just from the death certificates of the two sisters who emigrated to the USA. According to the 1911 census they had six children all of whom were living. Thomas Finn on page 6 of his booklet states that Edward was married to my father’s aunt Catherine, who was sister to Jack and Nancy Finn, and that Edward and Catherine had 4 or 5 children, of whom he only knew Edward and Mary Ann. The six children have been identified and the others were Margaret, Matthew, Patrick and Kate.

Nancy’s brother Edward (Pincher) Finn married Biddie Conway in 1891 and their family is detailed on page 11. I have not been able to locate a marriage record and this date was extrapolated from the 1911 census and that also shows six children all of whom were living. In Thomas Finn’s booklet on page 5, he states that Edward was a brother to John (Tommie) and Mick (Tommie), but that they had eight children. I have been able to identify six: Tom, Mary, John, Honoria, Edward and Michael to agree to the census. UPDATE Sunday 17th September 2023: Mary Bihn has identified another son, Patrick Finn, born after the 1911 census on 8th February 1913 in Cloontia. UPDATE 20th February 2025: Edward (Pincher) Finn is not Nancy’s brother.

Nancy’s sister Mary Finn was a local teacher in Cloontia and she married Ned (Rue) Finn on 28th January 1872, with their connections shown on page 12. Mary’s father was given as Matthew. The witnesses were Edward McGeever and Catherine Finn. Thomas Finn asserts in his booklet on page 5 that Mary Finn was sister to his grandmother Nancy.

John (Tommie ) Finn had the nickname Jack and according to Thomas Finn’s booklet on page 3, he was brother to Mick (Tommie) Finn. His first marriage was to Ellen Towey on 13th February 1880 and their family is covered on page 13. Their marriage certificate says John’s father was Thomas Finn. Hence, presumably, the use of Tommie in brackets to identify his family. John and Ellen had 8 children and in 1911 all were living who were: Ned, Nora, Catherine, Anne, Patrick, Mary, Michael and Tom, these names agreeing to Thomas Finn’s booklet. UPDATE 20th February 2025: It was John (Mathue) Finn who had the nickname Jack as noted on page 3 of Thomas Finn’s booklet.

Michael (Tommie) Finn married Catherine Forkin on 11th March 1875, which is shown on page 14. He is noted as John’s and Nancy’s brother in Thomas Finn’s booklet on page 2 as only having two children. The 1911 census stated they had 9 children and 8 were still living, who were: Ned, Mary, Honoria, Bridget, Anne, Catherine, John and Beatrice. I haven’t been able to identify the child who had passed away. UPDATE 20th February 2025: On page 2 of Thomas Finn’s booklet it stated Jack was Nancy’s brother and it was referring to John (Mathue) Finn not Michael (Tommie) Finn.

Nancy’s sister Bridget (Tommie) Finn, known as Biddie, married John Finn in 1875 with their family shown on page 15. In the 1901 census he is shown as John (Matt) Finn. In Thomas Finn’s booklet he states Biddie (Tommie) Finn married Mick (Mathue) Finn and he states that there were three boys. The 1911 census confirms that there were three children, all living, with the same forenames Thomas, John and Michael, so it seems that he got their father John’s name wrong. On page 3 of his booklet, he mentions that Biddy (Tommie) Finn was sister to John (Tommie) and Mick (Tommie) and he says Jack was an uncle to his father and his sister Nancy was his Dad’s mother. UPDATE 20th February 2025: The Jack mentioned here is John (Mathue) Finn not John (Tommie) Finn.

To summarise we have Nancy’s siblings, Margaret, Anna, Catherine and Mary where their father is recorded as Matthew. We also have John, Michael and Bridget where Tommie is used in brackets to denote a family connection and John and Edward (Pincher) where Thomas appears as his father in their marriage records. We also have Bridget marrying John (Matt) Finn, so presumably another Matthew Finn exists. This is obviously contradictory and introduces the element of doubt into this research, but whenever was family research ever guaranteed to be exact? Thomas Finn has recorded all of those living in Ireland in his booklet as siblings of Nancy and these are noted across the foot of page 9 above. He was not aware of Margaret and Anna in the USA. He has also made a few mistakes, not surprising given that he was relying on his memories. UPDATE 20th February 2025: This has been resolved in the new charts at the foot of this blog page.

In Griffiths Valuation that was taken between 1847 and 1864 across the whole of Ireland, there were nine entries for Finns in Derrynabrock, with the properties being numbered on Ordinance Survey maps 63 and 64. Two were in Shanbally: John at 26 and Thomas at 28. The other seven were in Finn’s Village: Patrick at 50, Edmund at 52, Thomas (John) at 55, Matthew (Thomas) at 57, Thomas (Michael) at 58 and 63, Patrick (Michael) at 62 and Mary at 64. I can’t tie up any of these to the 1901 census and the area of Finn’s Village is larger than recorded as part of Ballahere by Thomas Finn in his booklet. It is interesting though that one of the entries in Griffiths Valuation is Matthew (Thomas) Finn and it may be the explanation as to why three of Nancy’s siblings have (Tommie) inserted in their names. In the 1901 census there was only one house in Derrynabrock occupied by a Matthew Finn and that was House 52. He was a widower aged 65, so born in 1836. This would make his age range 11 to 28 during the Griffiths Valuation period, just about old enough to have his own household at the end of that range. Certainly not conclusive proof of a family connection though.

At least another blog page is needed to cover the later generations of Nancy’s siblings. As can be seen above there is further research needed and I will provide updates to this blog page should more information come to light. If anyone would like a copy of the fifteen charts, I will be happy to send them out, if you email me at ray.backler@capsa.co.uk

UPDATE Sunday 17th September 2023: Mary Bihn asked me to check whether I had a DNA connection to Vincent Curran and I was able to confirm an 11 cM result. From the chart above, Vincent’s great grandparents were Catherine Finn and Edward McGeever. Vincent’s parents were Marie McGeever and Nelson Curran and his grandparents were Patrick McGeever and Delia Kelly. Of the DNA connections mentioned in the original post, four were from descendants of Nancy Finn and one from Mick (Tommie). The importance of the Mick (Tommie) connection is to prove that my DNA connections are from Nancy Finn and her siblings and not from her husband James Finn and his sister. However, with the potential for uncertainty in my research, also mentioned above, Vincent’s result is a welcome second confirmation that my line is through Nancy Finn and her siblings. UPDATE Thursday 20th February 2025: I have DNA connections through both Matthew Finn’s and Thomas Finn’s descendants, but this does not prove that the connections are through Nancy as opposed to her husband James.

UPDATE Wednesday 20th September 2023: Mary Bihn has sent me another DNA match, again descended from Catherine Finn and Edward McGeever. Peter Cherry, whose parents are George Cherry and Teresa J McGeever is an 11cM match. Peter’s grandfather was Matthew McGeever son of Edward and Catherine and he married Teresa Murphy.

UPDATE Thursday 29th August 2024: I have a 17 cM DNA connection to Ancestry member WEKEOHANE. John (Tommy) Finn mentioned above had a son Michael Joseph Finn (10th February 1882 Slievemore, Cloontia, Mayo, Ireland – 1st December 1969, Lowell, Massachusetts). He married Anne McDermott on 28th April 1909 in Lowell. They had a daughter Nora Patricia Finn (22nd March 1912 Lowell – 12th February 1997 Missouri) who married Thomas Francis Keohane (1907-1993). They had 10 children, probably including my DNA match, who is presumably W E Keohane.

UPDATE Thursday 20th February 2025: The chart and the connections to Mick (Tommie) Finn, John (Tommie) Finn, Bridget (Tommie) Finn and Edward (Pincher) Finn above are incorrect. Their father was, indeed, Thomas Finn and not Matthew Finn, as suggested above, and it means they are not siblings of Nancy Finn. I have separated the above chart into two new charts that follow and made some UPDATE annotations in the main body text above. The Matthew Finn chart has kept the Page Nine reference and the Thomas Finn chart has a new number Page Sixteen. This error arose because, I assumed that references to Jack Finn were to John (Tommie) Finn, but they are actually to John (Mathue) Finn, the husband of Bridget (Tommie) Finn. It is John (Mathue) Finn who is Nancy Finn’s brother. I am grateful to Edel Thomas a descendant of John (Tommie) Finn and Ellen Towey for pointing out that his grandfather was Thomas Finn and not Matthew Finn. I went back, carefully, over my research and realised how the error had arisen. In my defence, I did note in the main body text that there was room for doubt!