Loose Ends: Cappawhite, Cavanaugh

Omissions over the last four years—
Six years ago I wrote a post entitled James Meagher, of Cappawhite Parish. Four years ago, two years after the original post, Richard J Crowe commented and confirmed that Clonganiff, Clongariff and Clonganhue are different spellings for the same townland in Cappawhite Parish. I should have replied to his comment at that time, but didn't. This is a very late Thank you Richard for that information.
Almost three years ago I wrote a post entitled Ann Cavanaugh, of Ohio/Ireland. A few days ago Helen Miller commented on that post. After the original post, I did find some additional information (documented in footnotes 12 through 17 on the MeagherCavanaugh page). The 1860 census lists Ann living wih her father and most of her siblings. Though Ann and siblings are recorded as all born in Ohio, I'm suspicious about that information, since I have not found a roughly matching family anywhere in Ohio in the 1850 census. I suspect that Ann's childhood family may have arrived to Ohio from Ireland via a circuitous route, with no desire to remember the past. For now, any town in Ireland might be the birthplace of Ann Cavanaugh.
A little over two years ago the young Catriona White, originally from Cappawhite, died in California. For a long while I thought that maybe there were two different Cappawhites, but no. From time to time there are news updates about her tragic story in California. And yes, it is the same Cappawhite.
I tell people that genealogy makes a good excuse for traveling. It is a particularly good excuse for getting to know locals in a small town off the tourist trail. Last year, after having studied the map for many years, I drove to Cappawhite.

The town square could easily be a Snow Village that you might set up under the Christmas tree. Below is a view looking in the same direction, but from near the intersection. In both views the greenish-blue (teal?) awning marks the Centra market, a small-town fixture in Ireland.

The proprietress, Breda Meagher Ryan, showed me a picture in the town history.

This Timothy Meagher, born 1843, was from a different, probably more well-to-do family than the one that sent three brothers and one or two sisters to eastern Ohio. But he may have been a cousin to the Meagher's of Clonganhue.

Clonganhue is about 2.5 km southwest of The Square (in the previous views of the square, ahead and to the left). The line of scraggly pine trees marks a creek that flows southwest through the middle of the otherwise flat townland. Old maps highlight Clonganhue Bridge at this point.

Ann Cavanaugh, of Ohio/Ireland

My resolution for this year is to try to find out more about Ann Cavanaugh, who married James Meagher in Massillon, Ohio, in 1862. I'm hoping that some reader of this post may be able to help. For most of the branches on my family tree we know exactly which townland in Ireland or which town/village in Hungary was the ancestral home. But for Ann Cavanaugh it is only a guess, probably a good one, that either Ann or her parents came from somewhere in Ireland. (My Brooks-Humbertson branch also has uncertainties, but those uncertainties predate Ann Cavanaugh by at least a generation.)
It is a common name, and so it will be difficult to identify the correct Cavanaughs. Probably the most reliable information about Ann was provided by her oldest son, Patrick (a great-grand-uncle of mine). When one of Patrick's younger brothers, James, died in 1931, Patrick provided the information for the details on his brother's death certificate. Patrick reported that their mother, Anna Cavanaugh, was born in Massillon, Ohio. That birthplace is consistent with both the 1860 and the 1870 census records, which show that Ann was born in Ohio. In 1936 when Patrick himself died, Patrick's son Daniel reported that his grandmother was born in Ireland. That Daniel thought his grandmother had come from Ireland provides some basis for assuming that Ann's ancestry was no more than two generations removed from Ireland.
Ann's husband was, of course, a first-generation immigrant from County Tipperary. As a still single man in 1860, James Meagher was a coal miner living in Mineral City. As a married man in 1870 and 1880, James and his family were living in Mineral City. But I suspect that Ann and the older children had spent considerable time in Massillon during the 1860's. Both Patrick, the oldest son, and my great-grandfather Thomas Meagher, the second oldest son, were familiar with their Massillon origins. Father James himself could perhaps have found alternative employment in Massillon during the early years of his marriage, before eventually settling back to coal mining in Mineral City. It's even conceivable that James could have commuted from Massillon to his work near Mineral City. Still it's reasonably clear that the connection to Massillon was through Ann's side of the family.
A Thomas Cavanaugh was a witness for the wedding in 1862. Thomas would have been the name of Ann's father, if the Meagher-Cavanaugh family followed the traditional naming conventions, which they did in fact follow for the names on the Meagher side of the family. (This Thomas Cavanaugh would be the namesake for many contemporary Thomas relatives of mine.) Ann could have incorrectly remembered being born in Massillon, but if so she probably at least had arrived there at a very young age accompanying her parents. If Ann was in fact born in Massillon, it is still probably the case that her parents were relatively recent arrivals there. Census records have Ann a decade younger that her husband, so her parents could have emigrated either well before the Famine, or at the very beginning of it. Possible itineraries are described in the history of Massillon's St. Mary parish:

The majority of the early Catholic settlers were of German heritage. ... They had come overland through Pennsylvania, or had arrived in the United States and proceeded by boat from New York, up the Hudson River to Albany and then westward on the Erie Canal to Lake Erie, Cleveland, and then southward on the Ohio and Erie Canal to Massillon. With the building of the canal through Massillon, there was an influx of Irish immigrants. They labored in building the canal and also worked in the local coal mines. ...