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Drinan and Lane Families
Our Irish ancestry originates in County Cork in the southeast of Ireland
where the Drinan and Lane families lived. Our great grandparents, John
Drinan and Margaret Lane where born there and emigrated to the United States
in the late 1800s. The Drinan and Lane families lived in the same
church parish — Glenville-Watergrasshill — but we don’t know if John and
Margaret knew each other before coming to America. (Margaret was about
8 months older than John.)
Gretchen Strasma Rauschenberg and husband Roy visited the Glenville area —
about 12 miles from Cork — in 1995 and searched for the “Kiley” which family
memory said was where the Drinans and Lanes had lived. The church in
Killeagh, a village of 500 east of Cork, had no record of any Drinans, and
the residents called the place “KEEL-uh.” But with the aid of an
80-some-year-old farmer, they found another Killeagh, a town land or
township near Glenville. Killeagh town land, which is pronounced
KI-lee in Gaelic, now has just two houses. Its marginal pasturelands
where the Drinans lived in the 19th century are now being reforested.
The online baptismal index of the Watergrasshill and Glenville Roman
Catholic Parish give the first documentation of our Drinan forebears -- the
baptisms of four children of John Drinan and Honorah Keeffe were listed:
Arthur born 5 Apr 1837; Catherine born 19 Jun 1839; Timothy born 10 Apr
1842; and John born 17 Jul 1844. (Patrick Drinan, the father of our
John Drinan, is not listed in the parish's baptismal records for the
children of John and Honorah, but family tree listings include him in the
family.) Patrick was born in 1838, according to US census records and
his gravestone.
Patrick Drinan married Bridget Barry in Annakissy (Annakisha) Parish, County
Cork, on 13 April 1858, (The Annakissy Parish is not far from Glenville, and
it is highly likely that this marriage record is our Patrick and Bridget.)
The Watergrasshill and Glenville Roman Catholic Parish records, now
available online, show they had four children. John, the oldest and
our direct ancestor, was born 30 June 1861. Owen was born 9 August
1863; Honorah (or Nora) was born 25 February 1867; and Thomas was born 7 May
1871.
These birth dates vary from what we have from other sources. John’s
birth, for example, is listed as 24 June 1862 in the Cook County, Illinois,
death records. The parish index dates are identical for birth and
baptism and are likely baptism dates and not birth dates.
Among the online documents available for Patrick are his annual dogs
licenses, usually for one dog identified as a “sheep dog” from 1875 through
1889. He apparently had more than one dog because in 1883 he was cited
for having an unlicensed dog - even though he had a dog license that year -
and the following year he licensed two male sheep dogs. He then
returned to his one dog a year licensing.
Patrick and his brother Owen also made the court records as witnesses in an
assault case in 1859 in which three defendants were sentenced to a month in
the county gaol at hard labor.
The other line of our forebears is the family of Edmond ‘Ned’ Lane and
Margaret Flynn. Our direct ancestor, Margaret, who was to marry John
Drinan, was born 11 November 1860, according to the parish records.
Her siblings were Bridget, born 19 December 1857; Patrick, born 14 March
1864; and Abigail, born 2 May 1870. Edward’s baptism on 10 October
1873 is listed as “Ned,’ in the Watergrasshill records (Father Ned Lane and
Mother Margaret Flynn) Another son, Daniel, listed in the
birth/baptism records for Ballyhooly, a village about 8 miles from
Glenville. Strangely, there is also a baptism record for Edward on 15
November 1873 in Ballyhooly as well. (It seems unlikely that there
would be two different Edwards born to different Edmond/Ned Lane and
Margaret Flynn in villages 8 miles apart so this will likely remain a
mystery.)
Like the Drinans, there is some variation in the birth dates and the parish
records likely are baptism dates rather than birth days.
Bridget’s gravestone records her birthdate as 18 Dec 1860 and death on
12 Nov 1935. The 1900 Federal Census indicates her birth as December
1859.
Margaret’s first cousin, Abina Foley (a 92-year-old nun named Sister
Angelora in Monroe, Michigan) told Gretchen Rauschenberg in 1997 that
Margaret Lane and her older sister Bridget went directly to Xenia, Ohio,
from Ireland when they were about 16 and 17 years old (indicating
immigration in the mid-1870s). Their Aunt Kate (perhaps a Flynn) ran a
saloon there and wrote to their family to say there were lots of
opportunities for work. The 1900 federal census shows Bridget
emigrating in 1882 while the 1910 census indicates 1880. (Margaret
would have been 21 or 19 at the time of emigration and Bridget was 3 years
older.)
The 1900 and 1910 federal census records both show that John Drinan
emigrated to the United States in 1882. None of the passenger lists
currently available for arrivals in the US includes Bridget and Margaret or
John.
John made his way to Ohio — perhaps because Margaret was there. He
later moved to Illinois where a great uncle, Michael, two of his uncles,
Owen and Timothy, and an aunt, Catherine Cotter, lived.
John's great-uncle, Michael, was apparently the first Drinan to leave
Glenville to travel to the U.S. A published biography of Iroquois
County settlers records that he was the youngest of 11 children of Eugene
Drinan and Catherine Hagerty and the only one to emigrate to the US.
He arrived in New York on 19 May 1853, and two years later married Catherine
Donahue, who was from Watergrasshill, in LaSalle County, Illinois. The
biography indicates the family moved to Iroquois County in 1867.
John’s uncle Timothy came came to the US in 1865. His aunt, Catherine
Drinan and her husband Timothy Cotter emigrated in 1866 or 1867. Another
uncle, Owen, and his wife Honora emigrated in the late 1860s, lived in
Livingston County, Illinois, and later settled in Grundy County.
John and Margaret were married 30 January 1883 in Xenia, Ohio. Their
oldest daughter, Theresa, was born in 1884, and daughter Margaret was born
20 November 1885. Both were born in Xenia. Margaret’s sister
Bridget married John Cotter in 1883 in Xenia.
John’s father, Patrick, came to the United States in either 1888 or 1890,
according to later census records; presumably his wife, Bridget, also
emigrated at that time. (Since Patrick had a dog license in 1889 in
Ireland, the 1890 date is most likely.) Bridget was buried in St.
Mary’s Cemetery, Gilman, Illinois; her gravestone shows her birth in 1828
and death in 1893. Patrick was naturalized as a US citizen in 1896.
The 1900 census shows Patrick, a farmer, living in Gilman with his two
granddaughters, Theresa and Margaret, along with his daughter, Norah.
(Norah — or Honorah as shown in her baptismal record — also came to the U.S.
in 1890, according to the census.)
The only other record of Norah found is her brief obituary in the Iroquois
County Times Democrat, April 10, 1903:
Miss Nora Drinan, who lived with her aged father west of Gilman, died Sunday
of consumption. Her funeral was held from the Catholic church Tuesday.
The deceased was 30 years of age.
No burial information has been found - she is not listed in St. Mary’s
Cemetery in Gilman where her mother, Bridget; father, Patrick; and brother,
John, are buried. A number of other Drinan relatives are buried there
as well.
John shows up in the 1900 census in Buckley, Illinois, where he was working
for the Illinois Central Railroad as a laborer and living on a railroad side
track along with 15 other railroad laborers.
The 1910 census shows John, 46, living in Gilman with Frances Drinan, 46,
his wife, and his father, Patrick, 76. Patrick’s emigration date is
shown as 1888.
(Family memories identify Frances as a “common law wife” since John’s wife,
Margaret, was still living in the Columbus, Ohio, institution.)
John died 13 January 1913 in Chicago. He was buried in Gilman.
The Clifton Advocate published his death notice on 7 February
1913: John Drinan, a well known citizen of Gilman, died in
a hospital in Chicago as a result of getting his foot frozen several weeks
ago while doing his work as section foreman. A slight operation was followed
by an infection which resulted in death.
Frances is listed as John Drinan’s wife in the 1910 census, which shows they
had been married for 5 years, and notes that this was John’s second marriage
(the marital status box is marked M2). Frances, 46, was born in Canada
and came to the US in 1865. (The 1900 census shows John as single when
he is living with a railroad crew on a side track in Buckley,
Illinois.) A 1908 Ford County history reports the marriage 5 years
earlier of John’s daughter Theresa to Henry Steadman — and notes that
Theresa’s mother was deceased at that time. Of course, Margaret Lane
Drinan was alive then and did not die until 1927.
John's obituary, published in the Gilman Star on 23 JAN 1913, includes this
marriage and gives his new wife's full name, indicating she was perhaps a
widow or possibly divorced:
On December 1, 1904, Mr. Drinan was united in marriage with Mrs. Francis
Burnett, who is left a widow by his death.
I have found no further record of Frances Drinan or Francis Burnett other
than the 1910 census and John's obituary information.
John’s wife, Margaret, was institutionalized in Ohio prior to 1900.
Census records show her as a patient at the Dayton State Hospital in
Montgomery County, Ohio, in 1900 and the 1920 census which shows her as an
inmate at the Columbia, Ohio, State Hospital, identified as “insane.”
She died in 1927 and was buried in the Lane family plot at St. Joseph’s
cemetery in Lockbourne, Franklin County, Ohio.
Daughter Margaret (Maggie) married Henry Strasma is 1904 in Gilman.
Her sister, Theresa, married Henry Stedman in 1903, and they had one
daughter, Lorna Doone Helen Stedman, born in 1905. In 1910 they were
living in Piper City, Illinois.
Theresa and Henry were divorced, and on 26 Oct 1912, Theresa married Edwin
McClain (also spelled McLain) in Minnehaha SD. They lived in
Davenport, Iowa, and later moved to Battle Creek, Michigan. They had
one son, Harvey, born in 1915, and Lorna continued to live with them.
Lorna was married twice, first to Arthur Knight and then to Joseph Payne,
remaining in Battle Creek. She had no children. The 1949
city directory showed her living alone and employed as an assistant chief
telephone operator for the telephone company. She died in 1951.
Michigan Divorce Records show two divorces for Edwin and Theresa. They
were first divorced on 14 May 1945 and then remarried 12 days later.
They then were divorced a second time on 18 March 1946.
Theresa died in 1951 (the same year as her sister Margaret and her daughter
Lorna). Edwin died in 1965.
Edwin, Theresa, and Lorna were all buried in Memorial Park Cemetery, Battle
Creek MI. Each of them have a flush style grave stone of identical
design with a central McClain grave stone.
Harvey enlisted in the Army in 1943, and is shown to be divorced and living
in Wayne County, Michigan. Later, city Directories from the 1950s show
him married to Myrtle and living in Battle Creek. He died 8 Dec 1984
in Sheridan, Michigan.
Addendum: Drinan Immigration Timeline
Generation 1
Michael Drinan (uncle to our Patrick) - immigration 1853 (1900/1910 census)
- Living in LaHogue, Douglas Township, Iroquois County, Illinois
Generation 2
Katherine Drinan Cotter - (sister to our Patrick) immigration 1860 per
published bio
Timothy Drinan - (brother to our Patrick) immigration 1865 (b Apr 1843) 1900
living in Kempton, Ford County, Illinois
Owen Drinan (brother to our Patrick) - immigration 1868 - lived in Grundy
County
Patrick Drinan (our Patrick) - 1888/1890, likely 1890
Generation 3
John Drinan (our John) - immigration 1882
Patrick Drinan (brother to our John) - immigration 1889 (1920 census)/1892
(1900 census) - living in Tolono, Champaign County, Illinois
Norah Drinan (sister to our John) - immigration 1890 - (1900 census)
Updated 21 July 2016
Jan Strasma
rjan@mac.com