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Surnames of our eight great-grandparents
Dad's side:
Smith (Dad's father's father)
Hätti (Dad's father's mother)
Holstein (Dad's mother's father)
Nichting (Dad's mother's mother)
Mom's side:
Connaughton (Mom's father's father)
Hodapp (Mom's father's mother)
Cogan (Mom's mother's father)
Byrne (Mom's mother's mother)
Charts / When they emigrated
Birth & Death Dates
Birth & Death Dates (some approximate)
Youngest Generation
Katelyn Marie - 11/21/95
Matthew Thomas - 6/24/98
Allison Renee - 1/11/00
Paige Nicole - 6/6/02
Aaron Zachary - 2/23/04
Sam - 2/18/2010
Will - 2/20/2012
Kathryn - 9/12/2016
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Our Generation
Thomas Smith - 6/22/63 (m. Stephanie Smith, b. 12/8/59)
Jean (Smith) Nartker - 12/1/64 (m. Bill Nartker, b. 4/28/64)
Doug Smith - 2/24/69 (m. Phyllis Janeway, b. 6/7/67)
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Our Parents
Mark Smith - 1-11-38
Mary A. Connaughton - 12-27-37
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Their Parents
Ernst William Smith - 1/27/1903 - 12/6/1981
Ruth M. Holstein - 7/18/1906 - 12/3/1961
William Connaughton - 12/8/1908 - 12/9/1977
Margaret Cogan - 10/23/1911 - 12/22/2006
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Their Grandparents
James Smith - 7/?/1864 to 3/25/1913? (Ernst's parent)
Amelia Hatti -- 9/25/1864 - 7/31/1950 (Ernst's parent)
Henry T. Holstein - 8/19/1868 - 4/20/1941 (Ruth's parent)
Wilhelmina Nichting - 3/8/1871 - 4/13/1940 (Ruth's parent)
William Connaughton - 5/12/1871 - 1943 (William's parent)
Mary Francis Hodapp - 1875 - 1952 (William's parent)
Hannah A. Byrne - 5/21/1881 - 12/4/1973 (Margaret's parent)
Thomas Cogan - 1/16/1875 - 11/11/1934 (Margaret's parent)
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Their Great-Grandparents
Unknown - (James's parents)
Joahann Michael Hatti - 9/4/1827- ? (Amelia's father) (married 2/27/1854)
Francisca Schelli - 4/14/1834 - ? (Amelia's mother)
Gerhardt Holstein - (Henry's father)
Elizabeth Ackermann - (Henry's mother)
Bernard Nichting: 8/1827-190? (Wilhelmina's father; emigrated 1890)
Catherine Reissinger: 4/1/1842-10/11/1917 (Wilhemina's mother; emigrated 1890)
Unknown - (Whilimina's parents)
Patrick Connaughton - approx: 1819-11/1/1877 (poss. 1/8/1878) (William's parent)
Anna Flatley - 12/15/1834 - 2/27/1917 (William's parent)
Andrew Hodapp - 1842-2/11/1928 (Mary's parent; listed as Antony on one census; probably from Fautenbach, Achern, Baden)
Anna Mary Schillinger - 4/12/1843-7/4/1930 (Mary's parent)
Patrick D. Byrne - 5/9/1830-6/10/1886 (Hannah's parent)(b. Cork, Ire; married 1-28-1858)
Hannah Daley - 1/14/1840 (or) 7/17/1839 (or 1838) - 9/15/1930 (Hannah's parent)(b. Galway Ire or Cork; married 1-28-1858)
Thomas Cogan - 12/21/1833 - 7/6/1914 (Thomas's parent; brother Patrick b. Mar. 1822-1/28/1901) (Sligo, Ireland)
Margaret Glynn - 9/29/1838-12/4/1909 (Thomas's parent)
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Their Great-Great Grandparents
Franz Xaiver Hätti - 1803-? (married 6/26/1826)
Theresia Ulsass (Hatti) - 1807-?
John Cogan - born abt. 1795, married abt. 1815 (father of Thomas Cogan; Sligo, Ireland)
Mary Sheridon - born abt. 1795, married abt. 1815 (mother of Thomas Cogan; Sligo, Ireland)
Jakob Schillinger - (Anna Mary's father) (had previously thought parents were Karl and Mary)
Anna Maria Muller - (Anna Mary's mother)
Anton Hodapp - (Andrew's father)
Barbara Sauer - (Andrew's mother)
Bernard Reisinger (or Reisiger) b. 180? - (father of Catherine Reisinger Nichting)
Martin Daly - b. either 1796 or 1800 -to- 10/12/1895 (father of Hannah Daly lived 95 or 99 yrs; emigrated to US & lived w Hannah)
Owen Thomas Glynn - born abt. 1801, married abt. 1825 (father of Margaret Glynn) (New Castle, Athenry, Galway, Ireland)
Anna Bridget Brennan? - born abt. 1805, married abt. 1825 (mother of Margaret Glynn) (Mark C. thinks "Anna Bern"; family search = Anna Brenn Glyne)
William Flatley (father of Anna Flatley)
Ann (or Katherine) Nolan (mother of Anna Flatley)
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Their Great-Great-Great Grandparents
Michael Hatti? Maria Margaretha Dantmänn?
Likely Franz Michael Hatti (1773-1826) b. 2 Sep 1781?
Aloys Hodapp (Anton's father)
Katharina Klar (Anton's mother)
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+ Requiem in Pace +
Mary (11/25/1913 - 3/29/1981) / Edward (12/23/1910 - 1/28/1973)
Smith & Connaughton Families
The odds were against her from the start.
She was born twelve years before the great Irish famine in one of the hardest hit areas of all of Ireland - County Mayo.
But from Mayo-an bogs she emerged like a Colossus, a survivor in a land where even the strong fled or died.
It seemed even natural catastrophes such as a potato blight would have to take a back seat to the fiery Anna Flatley. Head unbowed, she emigrated not out of panic or need but at leisure, at the relatively advanced age (for an Irish emigrant) of 28.
They say only the good die young and we do naturally suspect the survivor if we don't know how they survived. The inclination is skepticism even if it not be fair. We look suspiciously at the men who survived the Titanic when women and children died and yet it's true that honorable men survived.
Anna married four years after arriving in America and six years after that became a widow. She would raise three children to adulthood without being able to read or write English in a time when orphanages were designed for the children of situations like this: those of a poor, unskilled single widow.
But that would be to underestimate Anna Flatley, now Anna Connaughton.
Death was one obstacle she could not overcome, though she managed to hold it off until 82.
How odd that the essential fork in both my mother's and father's family came with marriages that occurred at advanced ages (at least in that time of history) and involved strong females!
In the Smith family, the Irish rogue James married the quintessential survivor: "Gocko", who saw her raised her children through flood and widowhood and near poverty. On the Connaughton side, Patrick survived the famine but died when his eldest was seven years old, leaving the competent Anna in charge.
There is also symmetry in both family trees in the Irish-German connection. In 1891 James married a German, and in 1906 William Connaughton did likewise. The tensions at the time suggested such pairings weren't common, but the silly romantic can imagine that such a similar ancestry might've been an ingredient in the chemistry between a certain Mark Walter and Mary Alice some five to seven decades later.
The Family in 1845
Sixteen decades ago and across the briny Atlantic ocean lived a group of individuals of whom only names are now known. They had, in the blood, nothing in common; their descendents would unite their diversity within their own DNA.
They lived mostly in two lands: Germany, not yet a country but a collection of independent states, and Ireland, the "off-shore island of an off-shore island".
Of sixteen great-great-grandparents, only one might've lived in America in 1845, the elusive father of the elusive James Smith. The others were either Germanic or Dutch (Hatti, Nichting, Holstein, Hodapp, Schillinger) - or Irish (Daly, Byrne, Connaughton, Cogan, Flatley, Glynn). Into the mysts of history recede names even more foreign, of great-great-great grandparents that went by the surnames of Nolan and Sheridan and Brennan, born just before or after the close of the 18th century.
In 1845, just before the Irish famine, Patrick Connaughton, Hannah Daly and Margaret Glynn are just shy of seven years old. Two of the grooms of Hannah and Margaret were already in their teens: Patrick Byrne is 15 in Cork, Ireland and Thomas Cogan 12 in Sligo. Anna Flatley is 11.
In southwest Germany, more precisely Baden, Amelia Hatti's parents have not yet married and Andrew Hodapp and Anna Schillinger are both infants. In northern Germany, the parents of the Henry Holstein and Whilima Nichting could be as young as infants or as old as newlyweds, so little is known of them.
As the 19th century unfolds, the men would come to America and farm, work in the burgeoning factories or in one case work as a shoemaker. The women would be seamstreses or homemakers or laundresses.
None of the men appear to have fought in the Civil War. Henry Holstein arrived just after. Andrew Hodapp likely did too. We're not sure when Patrick Connaughton came, just 22 in 1861 and a newly minted citizen in 1866, though citizenship seems to have required three years of residency so it seems likely he was in America for at least part of the war. Thomas Cogan would have been 28 in 1861, an Ohio farmer with a family by then. Patrick Byrne was 31 and had been married for three years when the shot on Fort Sumter was fired. They seemed to have had a gift for self-preservation.
The average age of death of our eight great-grandparents is 72 (49,86,73,69,72,77,92 & 59). Without James Smith (who probably died in the 1913 Flood), the average age rises to 75.
On the Germans & Irish
Material found on the Internet:
The Germans have intellectual pretensions, refusing to restrict themselves to pragmatic and utilitarian goals...Germans push every good thing to the point where it becomes a bad one, that inimitable combination of tactlessness and sensitivity, of arrogance and subservience. The difference between northern Germany and southern Germany is dramatic - Southern Germany is tender, intimate, full, warm. The Northern people blase, superficial, industrial-minded.
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Perhaps the most common attribute of the Irish personality is its highly developed sensibility, which is alert and susceptible to its environment. The Irish personalithy is variable and very responsive to calls made on it, so that it can spring from inactivity to excitement or from sadness to gaiety in a few minutes. This vivacious temprament is Mediterranean in character, rather than north European, and it is puzzling to the English. It is associated with other characteristics of the Mediterranean such as talkativeness. Irish alertness combined with social awareness makes the Irish especially curious. The alertness and vivacity, combined with their developed imagination, often leads to restlessness and some personal dissatisfaction. An Irishman will frequently want to be somewhere else or even someone else. This is intensified by a tendency to romanticize situations or destinations not connected with himself, by making them appear more glamourous or attractive. A positive aspect of the Irish personality is personal objectivity. Without any warning an Irishman will reveal in a few quick words an ability to look at himself with the eye of an outsider - an ability rare among Anglo-saxons.
Where we come from: blue dots in Germany (Baden region & Essen or Bremen), red dots in Ireland (Cork, Galway, Sligo).
