Quirks of Researching O'Shaughnessy or,
How Many Ways Can You Spell It?

by Laurel Baker

Naming Patterns
Relative Geography
Illiteracy and Dates
How Many Ways Can You Spell It?

When my mother and I first began researching our families in the mid 1970's, (she researching her family and I my father's), we never suspected the challenges which lay ahead in trying to trace my great grandmother's family, the O'Shaughnessys. I began my search with what we thought was a reasonable amount of anecdotal facts about the births, marriages and deaths of my great grandmother, her five siblings, and their parents. Now, almost 30 years later, I am still amazed to look back and realize how few of those original "facts" were true, and even more amazed at what it took to establish the actual details.

There are many excellent how-to guides available for genealogical research, including several specific to Irish research, so I will limit my comments to a few areas that have been of particular challenge in researching the O'Shaughnessys. Unless otherwise noted, the use of "O'Shaughnessy", should be assumed to include all other spelling variants.

Naming Patterns

The first challenge relates to the common Irish practice of naming children for various relatives. This habit results in the unfortunate situation that in Ireland one is apt to find a large number of people with the same name living in a given area. Some clans solved this dilema by adopting what are known as Sept names, i.e. an additional name added after or used instead of the surname to identify the branch of the family to which one belongs, as for example: McCarthy Bawnee or O'Sullivan Cappy. Sadly for us, the O'Shaughnessys do not seem to have adopted this particular habit so one must be especially careful in singling out the desired ancestor from amongst others of the same name.

A quick look at Griffith's Valuation of Ireland from the mid-1800's will demonstrate the problem. The O'Shaughnessy surname appears in the following 23 counties: Carlow, Clare, Cork, Down, Dublin, Fermanagh, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Limerick, Longford, Mayo, Meath, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Waterford,Westmeath, Wexford & Wicklow, of which Counties Down, Fermanagh, Sligo, Westmeath, Wexford & Wicklow have fewer than 5 occurrences of the name. The following table shows the distribution of several of the most common names used by the O'Shaughnessys:

	County
Name	Clare	Cork	Galway	Limerick	No.in all other Counties
John	13	7	36	53	29
Patrick	11	1	25	30	32
Michael	7	3	38	19	27
James	7	9	6	6	19
Thomas	8	1	5	6	15
William	1	5	9	4	12

Fortunately, this problem is lessened somewhat outside of Ireland as there is less likely to be such a heavy concentration of O'Shaughnessys in any given area. But, as you can see, if the only thing you know about your ancestor is "John O'Shaughnessy of Co. Limerick", you will be doing yourself the greatest possible favor by gathering all details available in your home country before trying to tackle the Irish civil and parish records. Remember that no detail is too small to record as someday that odd little tidbit of information may be the deciding factor in determining which of the many is your John O'Shaughnessy.

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Relative Geography

The second quirk of O'Shaughnessy research is something I have encountered fairly often with Irish immigrants to America from Canada before confederation (1867), but which I've never seen discussed anywhere, namely, the apparently common practice of saying a couple was married or a child was born "near Montreal" or "west of Quebec" or some simliar phrase, when in fact the event took place at some substantial distance from the named city. One can only speculate that this practice arose because the person giving the information was trying to relate the event to a geographical location familiar to the listener. This seems at least a plausible explanation when taking into account that Canada was largely unpopulated at that time; for instance, York, the present day city of Toronto, had only a few thousand residents so was much less well known than either Montreal or Quebec.

Also, keep in mind that many of the early Catholic parishes were actually missions served by priests from a home parish. The marriage or baptism may have taken place in or near the village named in the anecdotal evidence; however the event may actually be recorded in the home parish or one of the other mission parishes served by the same priests. A similiar situation existed for many of the protestant denominations, for instance, the early Methodist congregations were served by itinerant pastors known as "Circuit Riders" who traveled a circuitous route to a number of communities. The local Archdiocese or denominational headquarters should be able to help you identify which parishes or communities were jointly served by the sames priests or pastors.

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Illiteracy and Dates

The next quirk of researching the O'Shaughnessys arises due to the illiteracy common among the immigrant population, in particular, those immigrating during and immediately after the Irish Famine in the late 1840's and 1850's. Although many Irish immigrants of the 19th century could read and write English, the majority could not. When one cannot read a newspaper or book, there is a tendency to lose track of time. For instance, one may know the season of the year, but the finer details such as the exact month, day or even year, tend to become lost in the shuffle of daily living, especially when someone has just come through several years of upheaval such as that caused by the great famine. This illiteracy does not affect only the illiterate individual, it impacts their entire immediate family as well. If the mother or father doesn't know the correct date at the time of a child's birth, the child will be unlikely to know the exact date either; after all, who will be able to tell him? For this reason, one must view all anecdotal dates as simply a starting place for your research. Also keep in mind that the more remote and undeveloped the location, the greater the likelihood that a child may have been older when baptised, or that the priest or pastor recorded the event in a related parish or community at a later date. For these reasons, you must be prepared to look several years either side of a given anecdotal date in order to find your O'Shaughnessy.

My own family demonstrates several of these quirks of reseach quite nicely. Family anecdotal evidence said that the eldest son, John H., was born "in Toronto", that the next son, Michael, had been born "near Montreal", and that my great grandmother Margaret, had been born in Upper Canada, "near the Welland canal". I thought it a bit odd that the children would be born in such widely distant areas, but chalked it up to the father, Thomas, needing to go where the work was. Although I had approximate dates of birth from their death certificates and tombstones, I knew that the dates were off somewhere as only one of the tombstones matched the corresponding death certificate, and some of the dates given would have been biologically impossible. Despite extensive long distance reseach of microfilmed parish records, I had no luck finding Margaret near the Welland Canal and still had not found Michael amongst the many parishes in and near Montreal nor John in Toronto. I finally found the parents' civil marriage record from which I learned that they were married in Whitby Ontario, which was about 40 miles east of Toronto. I obtained the microfilm of the local parish to see if I could find the sacramental marriage record and decided to see if John might have been born in the same parish. You can imagine my surprise when instead of finding John's birth record I found Michael's and Margaret's -- nowhere near Montreal or the Welland Canal.

I eventually found John's birth recorded in one of the nearby mission parishes served by the same priests that served the Whitby parish. As you can see, if I had taken as fixed the anecdotal locations I would probably still be slowly making my way through every parish register in the greater Montreal area. Instead, I found all 3 children born in the same neighborhood and learned that the family had actually settled for a time in the Whitby/Pickering area, near Thomas' brother Michael.

The lessons to be learned from this are to give any anecdotal locations and dates their broadest possible interpretation. Carefully review your available evidence and cull it for any clues that may assist you in finding that next piece of the puzzle. Also, keep in mind that even information given on "official" records, such as a death certificate, can be incorrect when it is based on events reported by an illiterate informant, when the event occured when the informant was not yet alive or was otherwise not present to witness firsthand, or which are so remote in history that the exact details have been blurred by time.

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How Many Ways Can You Spell It?

Finally, the most challenging quirk facing the O'Shaughnessy researcher is just how many ways can one spell this name? ----- The answer may shock you.

Most genealogists learn fairly quickly that there are several alternate spellings for most names. There was no 'standardized' spelling system so most names were written as they sounded to the person making the written record. Often that person was himself an immigrant from another country such as Germany or France, with his own interpretation of how to write "English" sounds, so encountering 5 or even 10 variations of a name is quite common. However, in the case of O'Shaughnessy, and even excluding many of the "O" variations, I have documented at least 170 different spellings. I do not mean to suggest that there are 170 valid ways to spell the name, but I can tell you that there are primary historical records (or modern indexes to them) to be found under those 170 plus variants.

For example, my great great grandparents were found in the Marion County Ohio tax rolls between 1868 and 1875 as: Shance, Schone, Shoney, Shinsay, Shaughnessy, Shaughency & Shaghency. Their marriage in 1862 in Ontario recorded Thomas as O'Shoughnessy, while at his brother Michael's wedding 2 years earlier he was recorded by the priest as Sheenesy, Michael as Checklesay and their father as Checklesey.

Many of the variant spellings are readily explained by differences in how earlier generations pronounced the name -- was it pronounced: Oh shog ness ee or Oh shock ness ee? Oh shan ess ee or Oh shin see?

Then there are the obvious letter substitutions, e.g. "nn" for "n" or "ghn", "m" for "nn", "ey" for "y", etc.

Others, are less obvious phoenetic substitutions such as "ck" for a hard "g" or "gh"

Or the shortening of syllables such as "Shannesy" to "Shonsey", or even adding extra syllables such as "Shaugenacy".

Still others are due to modern human misinterpretation of antiquated penmanship such as "fs" for the old fashioned double "ss", or even contemporary misinterpretation by the writer when copying from one source (parish register or note) to another (civil marriage book), hence "Sheenesy, Checklesay and Checklesey" in the same record.

However, the most unusual variants I've encountered are also the result of the most sophisticated technology -- thanks to the computer-based optical scan
text-bridge reader we now have records indexed as "O'SHAUGHNFQSY"!

To see the current list of variant spellings please click on Variant Surnames

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