William James TIERNEY and Margaret Theresa KELLY TIERNEY

TIERNEY, William James (1870-1937) and Margaret Theresa KELLY TIERNEY (1872-1911), standing center. Robert Emmett KELLY (1885-c. 1940), seated right. Photographed c. Apr 1908 by unknown photographer, Union City, Indiana. Privately held by Jean Marie Diaz, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Linden California. 2009.

This photo resulted from my first encounter with the website Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness. The amazing Suzanne Stamper-Youmans looked up obits and took photographs, which gave me not only the death date for great-grandmother Margaret Theresa KELLY TIERNEY, but the link to her mother’s LEAHEY family.

Thanks again, Suzanne!

I had known the family story that my grandfather had been adopted as a small child because his mother had died, but I hadn’t been clear on the relationships involved. The evidence came together bit by bit, but now we know that Margaret married William James TIERNEY in Apr 1908, and my grandfather was born in Dec 1908. Margaret died of TB (“from a bad cow,” my mother theorizes) 11 Sep 1911, but not before she had arranged for her son to be cared for by Will’s sister Nellie TIERNEY MCKINNEY and her husband Herbert Vincent MCKINNEY, who eventually adopted him. The formal adoption played a big part in a family tussle over the estate of another of Will and Nellie’s siblings, but that’s another story that hasn’t been properly researched yet…

Phillip John WEYRICH (b. 17 Feb 1844, m. 20 Dec 1870, d. 10 Jan 1906) is a second great-grandfather of mine. His obituary lauds him as the first pretzel-baker in Dayton. He had four daughters and a son… so why, I ask, are there so many confounding WEYRICHs in Dayton in this time period?

Here’s a page from the 1891-1892 Williams’ Dayton Directory. (Writing that sentence caused me to take a quick peek at bookfinder.com, the best book search engine available. The only copy of a Williams’ Dayton Directory of this era available for less than $250 has several missing pages. I guess I can resist the temptation.) (Resisting parenthetical remarks is quite another matter.) (Oh, yes, the original selling price? $4.)

Williams' Dayton Directory for 1891-92

Right, we have two Adams (counting the WEYRAUCH) and two Phillips, and three of them are bakers. Fortunately I can pick my direct ancestor out of this mob, because great-grandmother Bertha Elizabeth is also listed at 501 S. Warren.

This is good and useful, because Adam WEYRICH had twelve children—so says a note in the Dayton Metro Library’s online obituary index; I haven’t received a copy of the obit itself yet. Census data from 1880 and 1900 agrees. I expect this family is the source of many of the Dayton WEYRICHs of later generations. Unfortunately no two of the death certificates (via a quick lookup on pilot.familysearch.org) agrees on exactly what Adam’s wife’s name was (the two censuses agree on Barbara), but that is a mystery for another day.

The question that intrigues me: Are Adam and Phillip brothers?

The KELLY Siblings

TIERNEY, Margaret Theresa KELLY (1872-1911), seated third from left. Robert Emmett KELLY, standing far left. Also present: Catherine A., Ellen C., Thomas Francis, Mary, Edward Joseph, Anna S., Cecelia and Josephine KELLY. Photographed c. 1908 by unknown photographer, Union City, Indiana. Privately held by Jean Marie Diaz, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Linden California. 2009.

Submitted to the 10th Edition of I Smile For the Camera at Shades of the Departed.