Where did we come from? The story of the Cain family.

Welcome Cain cousins to your family history. 

This is the first of my Blogs on "Simon1799.com" I hope to bring you along with me on my journey for the past 50 years.  It has been a passion of mine for that long and I'm now thinking it is time to tell the complete story of our family.  I have DNA testing that will become a game changer soon I hope.
With the help of the computer and many web pages and letters, phone calls and discussions I think I have a good story to tell.  I hope you will follow along and provide me with your thoughts, stories and pictures to complete this amazing journey.

A lot of you knew Grandma & Grandpa Cain, William A, and Margaret (Conmey) Cain.  Why didn't any of us just ask them where the Cain's came from?  It would have saved me a lot of time.  My research includes the US Census from 1850-1940, letters to newspapers around the country for obituaries.  Librarians in many of the cities where the Cain's lived, Cemeteries, and Churches, City records, and of course I had a lot of help from you too.  The computer has been a constant and increasingly more important tool in my arsenal. 

 I have been working on this project since I had a school project in 1963.  My first informant was my mother Catherine (Hanlon) Cain.  This discussion took place at our home at 1414 4th St., Bay City, Michigan.  We got out some ledger paper and she and I began documenting what she knew at the time. We lived with my great Uncle Tom Conmey.  He was my grandmothers older brother.  He was confined to a walker and wheel chair, the result of an auto accident. I have done quite a bit of research on the Conmey family as well and hope to share that as we go along. 

 Mom had a photographic memory for facts names, dates and locations. She was a wonderful story teller, great sence of humor in the Irish tradition, and a finely tuned sense of history. She was a registered nurse a very caring and a dedicated mother and teacher.  I am so fortunate to have been able to learn what she knew about the Cain's, Conmeys and of course the Hanlons too, a process that has inspired me to complete the stories she told me, and share with all of you the discoveries I have made in this long and very rewarding journey.

I would be remiss if I didn't share the credit for some of my early discoveries. Philip Cain & Peggy McGurk shared my early passion for answers to the question of "Where in the world did we come from?"  We worked as a team on many occasions, some of you will remember the charts we created for the family reunions at the farm in Owosso.

We will share more about those gatherings at a later date, but for now I remember what a wonderful time those of us who attended had.  I have so many memories of that time of my life, 1974-1986 or so.  We were blessed as a family to have had the farm to grow up together on and enjoy bringing our own kids back home to share the memories. We got to know all of our aunts uncles and first cousins as they visited grandma and grandpa Cain at 4650 Waugh Rd.  The farm was a very important part of who I am and I am so thankful to have had it. I think a lot of my cousins might feel the same way.

Philip was the first of us to visit the church in Palms, Michigan.  St. Patrick's, this was right after he returned from the Air Force in 1968.  He gave the priest $10 for the perputial care of the family grave sites. He also discovered the obit for Simon Cain in the newspaper in Minden City.  He found a picture of John & Bridget Cain.  I think it is our oldest photo. He got from Monica (Cain) Gross when he visited her in Detroit in 1968.  He interviewed a cousin of John Cain, Bridget O'Rourke.  I have a couple of letters she wrote in the 1950's with her memories of the family. There were two prayer books that belonged to Simon and John.  Phil had one and Peg had the other.  There was not a lot of information in either book, but it was a place to start.

Dennis Cain found the original death certificates for Simon and John Cain. These documents provided us with the name of Simon's father,  Francis, and the mother of John Cain, Simon's wife, Ellen Doyle, and the fact that Simon had two children living at the time of his death in 1898.  I may have found the other living child of Simon and Ellen Doyle.  There were several children baptized at Davidstown, Diocese of Ferns, Wexford, Ireland that share the parents Simon and Ellen Kain. More on this discovery later.

My sister Mary Ellyn has been with me from the start of this search, one day she was surfing the web and discovered the parish in Canada, St. Columban's, where many of the John Cain kids were baptized, this was a significant discovery, it gave us a place to research where the Cain's lived in Canada. They arrived in Canada after 1853, John & Bridget were married in York County, Ontario Canada in1858, the same year as their first child Simon was born.
That is 11 to 16 years in Canada. They farmed and worked in the logging industry.

Dennis and Nance Cain called me one day in 2004.  They  asked me where in Ireland the Cains came from, they were preparing for a trip to Ireland. They actually made two trips, in august 2005, and May 2006.  Nance said "it's  just not that big of a place, they can't be that hard to find".  Famous last words comes to mind, but they came to visit me and took copies of what I had.  They went home and put all the old photos I had collected on the computer for them to view on a daily basis. They made a formidable team, searching on the computer, sharing what they found and hired a professional genealogist that got us to Davidstown, Diocese on Ferns, Wexford, Ireland They came back with copies of church records that I am following up on now that they are available on line.

My father, my best friend for a number of years, shared his memories of growing up on the farm, he introduced me to his aunts, uncles and cousins.  I feel like I have a personal link to this generation of Cain's through him.  I was able to find all of the ten descendants of John and Bridget (Mullett) Cain.
And I discovered all of their children and grand children.  I have made contact with many of their living descendants and we have been able to corroborate on some of the family stories, photos and memories.  I hope to share these journeys into the Cain family with all of you as time goes on.

Mary Ellen Sappington Good, a cousin on the Mullett side of the family has been kind enough to provide me with access to her Ancestry.com membership, and shared many stories of the Mulletts, O'Rourks, McNamara's and Cain's.  She was married at St. Patrick's Palms by Fr. Thomas Cain, son of Uncle Joe, Grandpa's twin.

I will be posting pictures and histories of all the Cain's as time goes on.  I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I have.  I do hope to hear from you.  This process is never ending....

You can reach me by e-mail at Pjcwheaton@gmail.com  call me at 630-596-6533, or send me a note snail mail at Pat Cain, 907 N. Main St., Wheaton, IL  60187