Week 26 or 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Prompt - Black Sheep

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Prompt – Black Sheep 

 Week 26

I have spoke often of my black sheep - Robert Sullivan. My mother's father. He remains my brick wall. In genealogy a brick wall is that place where genealogy can't go back any farther. It is a person who exists but information about them and their ancestors is almost non existence. It is a source of frustration to any genealogist.

Pat Sullivan

Robert Sullivan is an unknown. What is known is sparse and somewhat contradictory. His name might be Bob, Robert, Pat, Patty, Patrick. His middle name is either Windsworth or Wentworth or neither. We can only get an estimate for his birth year. One document says he was born in Pittsburgh and his parents are born in Dublin, Ireland. The next document says he was born in Los Angeles, California and in that document he states his parents are born in the U.S.A. With so much misinformation it is hard to get down to the real facts and find out more about my maternal grandfather, the black sheep of the family.

When I first started family genealogy in 2006 I sat down with my sisters to see who knew what. We pretty much agreed to the same family story. Mary was only 18 years old when she married Patrick Sullivan. He worked as a chef on the railway between Winnipeg and Saskatoon. Pat apparently married a second wife in Winnipeg after he married Mary (a women on each end of the line).  Mary found out and together the wives charged him with bigamy and he was sent to Stony Mountain Penitentiary. Mary took him back after prison and forgave him and had 1 more child before the marriage finally fell apart and divorced him.

I have discussed Robert & Mary to many a relative in the family. I started genealogy when I made contact with my first cousin once removed. His name is John Krikau and he is Mary's nephew. John was one of three cousins who hired the Krikau genealogy researched back to Germany before they moved to Russia. I wrote and asked him if he knew anything about Mary and her first husband, Pat. This is what he wrote re the first marriage.

In 2009 I met Charles Krikau. I had written to Charles father, Fred Krikau and asked to meet him re Krikau family history. However Fred died before that happened. Fred's father was Phillip Krikau who sponsored Andreas Krikau and family, including Mary , my grandmother. Charles did take us to meet Esther, a sibling of Fred. We chatted for a bit. She had some memories of Mary visiting the farm in Rosthern. She said she never saw Pat Sullivan come to the farm. In fact she said; “I knew of him and his rather bad history.” But she did not know any details. Well none that she shared.

A few months later we returned to visit Charles and his step mother who was second wife of Fred. She apparently had some family stories to share. She did not know about Pat Sullivan or that Mary had married anyone other than her second husband, “Benny McLaughlin”. However at 90 memories were fuzzy at best.

During this visit, Charles said something very profound. “Given the time frame of 1920's to 1932, one could lose their identity very easily, especially if he had two angry women after him after they found out about each other. Pat could just pick up and leave changing his name or not and likely have very little fear of being found.”

It seemed like a possibility because in the 1970's my sister, Bonnie tells a story that there was a bus driver in Saskatoon who knew Pat Sullivan and whenever he saw Vivian (Mary and Pat's daughter)  on the bus he would share all the stories he knew about him. He knew he was remarried, moved to Kamloops and had 8 or more children.

I know that bigamy is a prosecutable offense and thus should find records. At this time in 2009 I had looked into some court records on microfiche but never found the right Manitoba index.

I also knew that divorce pre-1968 had to be a statue of Law by the federal government and thus recorded. It had to be publicized in their local newspaper for 6 months prior to the divorce and or the Canadian Gazette. On line in The Library Archives have listed all divorces in Canada pre-1968. There are 12,000 plus names recorded and indexed. I searched for Krikau, Krikow, Krikan, Sullivan, Sollivan, and O'Sullivan. I had no luck finding Mary Sullivan. No divorce? I did ask Lutheran Pastor Dressler if Lutherans annulled marriages. He said no.

In 2009 I contacted my Aunt Phyllis McLaughlin, Mary's daughter-in-law. In this conversation Phyllis and I discussed Mary and Pat. This is what she said and I am paraphrasing. " Mary gave her parents a very hard time  They did not approve of Pat. He was a non practicing Irish Catholic. They were Lutherans. He had no job and pretended to be some kind of cook. They disliked him for Mary because of what he wasn't. Mary worked at a candy factory to make money. She stayed behind and married Pat Sullivan when her family immigrated to the States. Apparently her parents and family disowned her. Although her brothers did witness at her wedding so they must have been speaking. Shortly after the wedding Pat disappeared off and on for years." I told Aunt Phyllis that I had not found any court documents regarding the divorce and his trial. I was at this time feeling it was just family folk lore and nothing more. Aunt Phyllis disagreed with me and urged me to look once more for the court proceedings. Aunt Phyllis went on to say that Mary did a very meticulous job of erasing Pat from her life. I guess that is what you do to black sheep.

Last year I ordered my mother's live birth registration. You never know what information one might find from these documents. On her form it lists her father as Patrick Sullivan who is living at Stony Mountain Penitentiary and his occupation is “prisoner”. He was a 31 year old Irish American and this is where it is listed that his place of birth was Los Angeles, California and his parents born in the United States. Just when I thought his imprisonment was a family story, this appears. I will have to look harder for the court records.

Finally following up on the story that he relocated to British Columbia, I was in contact with British Columbia Archives. There was a person listed as Robert Wentworth Sullivan who had died in Chilliwack, B.C. On November 25^th, 1952. He was married at the time of his death. I proceeded to order the death registration for him and his wife. I hoped that I could prove that this was my grandfather by looking at all the details put on the death registration. Here is what I found. His place of death was the “unemployment insurance office” in Chilliwack. This gentleman had resided in the province and in particular Chilliwack for ten years. His address was 519 Nowel Street South. The registration said his citizenship was Canadian and his race was Irish. His birth place was Truro, Nova Scotia on May 29, 1887. His profession was a cook at a local cafe and he had been a cook “for life” last working July 1952. The names of his parents and particulars was not known by the informant which was Sullivan's wife's brother in law. His wife's name was Jean Alice Walker. The cause of his death was atherosclerotic heart disease which he had for ten years. His doctor had known him from November 1951 to November 1952 and last seen October 1952. He was buried at The Canadian Legion Cemetery and handled by Henderson's Funeral Home – 102 College Street Chilliwack.

The onus is now on me to prove that this is my grandfather. I have to connect this to what I have at the time of his marriage to Mary.

So many coincidences. He was a chef like in Saskatoon and Winnipeg, His middle name was Wentworth. It is so unusual of a name that it is hard to ignore. Dying in an unemployment line fits the description of an unemployed person Mary's parents thought he was. He apparently lived in B.C for ten years. Heart disease does run in the family. His race was Irish.  On the other side Pat was not born in Nova Scotia, but then I already have two possible birth places for him. His birth date of May 29^th, 1887 makes him older than we estimated according to the marriage and his daughter's birth registration. I could never find a Canadian citizenship for Pat Sullivan, but then if he was born in Canada he would not have one. 

That is what I know about him our black sheep of the family. Can't wait to spend more time running down other clues to break down this brick wall of mine.

Wendy