I have been researching my 5th great grandmother with some success but not what I had hoped for.
Mary McCracken Wisely Welch was first found on board the schooner, The Seven Friends, which left somewhere in Ireland and arrived in St. John, New Brunswick, in July, 1819. She was with her family, father James, and 5 others (not sure if any of the other 5 were her mother - the ship's manifest just lists James as head of household with 7 in the family). On board the same ship was the Samuel Wisely family with 7 members. It is believed by our family that Mary married Samuel (the son of the father named on the manifest) either on board ship or in St. John. We don't have any documentation of this.
Anyway, in June of 1819 (6 months later), Samuel and Mary Wisely are in Philadelphia, PA. They have a son named James Wisely, born in Philadelphia on April 30, 1823, and then Samuel dies in the following summer of 1824. However, Mary is with child again, and my 4th great grandfather, John Wisely is born in Nov., 1824. If the Irish naming patterns are held true here, Mary would have named her first son, James, after her father, James, but wait - usually the first son is named after the father's father, no? In any case, John arrived a few months after his father's death.
Mary raised the two boys alone for several years and then married a fellow in Philadelphia named Robert Welch. She gave him a daughter, named Martha Welch, who was born in 1830. In the 1860 census (if I remember correctly), Mary Welch is shown living with her daughter Martha Welch Logan and her son-in-law, John Logan, and 2 children in Pennsylvania.
Martha Welch Logan's death certificate in 1912 lists Mary McCracken as her mother born in Ireland.
The interesting thing about this family is that the 2 original sons, James and John Wisely, are buried in Vandalia, Indiana, along with their wives in a family plot and the other occupant is Mary Wisely, born in Ireland in 1793 and died April 30, 1880. James, her eldest son, had died shortly after the Civil War, in which he sustained a life threatening illness, but her second son, John, lived until 1900. He was in fact one of the original deacons and patrons of the church in whose cemetery his family is buried.
So, did John seek out his mother before or after her death in 1880 and bring her to Indiana to be buried in the family plot along with his wife (who died in the 1860's and his brother who also died in the 1860's) and use her family name of Wisely?
Or is this Mary McCracken Wisely Welch buried somewhere else and we have the wrong Mary McCracken?
Just to add a brick to the wall, I have the 1831 census of the Dunboe Parish in County Derry showing the Samuel Wisely household and 4 other Wisely households, as well as McCracken households in the same wee parish. If these families were in Ulster in 1831, are they the parents or grandparents or cousins of my family, Samuel and Mary, who came to Philadelphia in 1819?
Any suggestions entertained!!
| e-mail address:-Sharyn Wisely Anderson |
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