The cards below run from the oldest to the youngest. A sand-coloured card with a dashed edge means the person is real and documented, but their place in our line is a reconstruction; no record names them as our ancestor. A white card means the link is documented. Living people are named by role or first name only.
The line
Robert Weily
farming at Cullentry between about 1771 and 1798Joint tenant with a widow named Walker of the largest farm in Big Cullentry, 183 Irish acres, called Heghlane, under the Earl of Moira and then Archbishop Fowler. He is the only Weily on the whole estate map. In 1825 two Roberts of the name were farming nearby, at Castletown and in Rathmolyon town, and a “Robt Wyley” was written onto the south end of the farm in red ink. Robert is the first name of Dad's grandfather, Robert John Wiley Sr, the first Robert in the American line; a coincidence, probably, but a pleasing one.
William Wiely Senior
at Heghlane in 1825 · dead by April 1841Listed in the 1825 tithe book as “Wm Weily Senior” at Heghlane, twice. On 1 January 1835 he took a new lease of the farm from Robert Fowler, Bishop of Ossory, for two lives or 21 years at £178 1s 1d a year, one of the largest rents on the estate. His wife was Ellen, maiden name unknown. On 28 April 1841 she took a lease of the same farm for two lives or 15 years at £172 9s 8d, which is how we know he was dead by then. Ellen was still holding lot 5 at Cullentry in 1854.
William Weilly Junior
at Heghlane in 1825 · dead between March 1842 and May 1854“Willm Weily Junior” at Heghlane in 1825, so born by about 1805. He married twice. With Bridget Belagh (perhaps Bellew) he baptised a daughter Ellen at Longwood on 13 January 1839. With Margaret Flynn he baptised a daughter Mary there on 25 March 1842, the sponsor a Flynn. Neither marriage is in the Longwood book, so both took place elsewhere, most likely in the brides' parishes. Griffith's Valuation, printed 1854, still lists a William Wiley on lot 3 at Cullentry, beside Margaret on lot 4 and Ellen on lot 5. On 22 May 1854 Margaret Flynn “alias Weilly”, a widow, married John Flynn, which on the simplest reading means William was dead by then. His daughter Grace's marriage record of 1881 calls her father “William Weily, farmer, deceased”.
- Children we can document: Ellen (1839, mother Bridget Belagh); Mary (1842, mother Margaret Flynn); Grace (born by about 1839; see below).
- Children we infer: William I, born about 1835, our ancestor; possibly Michael, born in the 1840s (see below).
William Wiley I
born Ireland, about 1835 · crossed 1857 · died in America, date and place unknownNamed once, as “Gulielmus Wiley”, father of the groom, in the Alton marriage register of 1878. That is his entire documentary footprint. He married Margaret Flynn about 1854 to 1856; no record of the marriage has been found, and the Rathmolyon register that would hold it is lost. Their son William was born in January of 1855, 1856 or 1857, and the family was in America by 1857. William and Margaret were not in their son's household or block in Springfield in 1880. The Springfield priests wrote the family name Weley, the same sound as the Meath clerks' Weily.
Margaret Flynn is Likely a daughter of the Flynns of Clonmowley or Ballin, two farms toward Longwood from Heghlane, and quite possibly kin of the Margaret Flynn who was her husband's mother or stepmother. For six years the tree carried a Margaret Flynn baptised in County Limerick in 1835; that lead is retired (see How We Found It).
William Wiley II
29 January 1855, 1856 or 1857, Ireland · 24 June 1913, St LouisCarried to America as a baby in 1857. A parishioner of St Joseph's, Springfield, Illinois, by January 1878, when he married Alice Aspinall at Sts Peter and Paul, Alton, with a dispensation because her family was not Catholic. In 1880 he was a roll mill hand living among other Irish mill hands on Springfield's north side. By 1888 the family was in East St Louis, where he worked as a puddler at a rolling mill and lived at 625 Piggott alley; by April 1899 they were at 723 Lami Street in St Louis, where Alice died aged 37. In 1900 he was a widowed day labourer lodging on Sidney Street with three sons. He was a naturalised citizen who could read and write. He died at Washington University Hospital of cancer, aged 56, and was buried at Sts Peter and Paul Cemetery. His death notice asked the “Springfield, Chicago and Pittsburg papers” to copy it.
Alice Aspinall (about 1861, Pendleton, Lancashire, England, to 14 April 1899, St Louis) was the daughter of James Aspinall and Elizabeth Hilton. Every one of William II's children carries her English blood as well as the Irish, which matters for the DNA work: her side has to be subtracted before any match can be called a Wiley match.
- William Jr (1879, Springfield, to 1934, St Louis): iron moulder, Iron Molders' Union No. 59; married Margaret Fritz; daughter Grace Hoffert.
- Margaret (1881, Springfield, to 1961): married Schoppe, later Bailey; she was the informant on her father's death certificate.
- James Alvinas (1883, Springfield): baptised at the Church of the Immaculate Conception (later the cathedral) with John and Margaret Lynch as sponsors; untraced after 1900.
- Mary Ann (1885, Riverton): untraced after childhood.
- Robert John Sr (1888, East St Louis): our line.
- Alice (1894, East St Louis, to 1989, St Louis): married Robert M. Broeg; their son Bob Broeg was the Post-Dispatch sports editor.
Robert John Wiley Sr
29 August 1888, East St Louis · 22 February 1964, St LouisBorn while his father worked the East St Louis mills; at school and lodging with his father and brothers in St Louis in 1900, aged eleven, a year after his mother died. He married Ella Helen H. Giese (1893 to 1977), born in Iowa to Ferdinand Giese and Theresa Koehler, a German family. Their children were born around Chicago between 1919 and 1929, among them Robert John Jr (Oak Park, 1922) and William Joseph (Batavia, 1926); the family came to St Louis in 1940. Robert died in St Louis in 1964.
William Joseph Wiley
1926, Batavia, Illinois · 1997, St LouisBorn in Batavia, west of Chicago, and came to St Louis with his parents in 1940. Married Terese Rose Kunz, of German and Polish descent. Their son is Dad.
Dad
St LouisDad's DNA kit, not Chris's, was the instrument that found Cullentry. Chris's mother's family is colonial American, with hundreds of distant cousins in the databases, and their matches drown out the Irish ones. Dad has none of that: all eight of his great-grandparents' lines arrived in America after about 1855, and only one of those lines, Wiley and Flynn, is Irish. So any Irish family that matches Dad has to connect through the Wileys or the Flynns. That simple arithmetic is what turned six related strangers named Kenny and Newman into a signpost pointing at Grace Weily of Cullentry.
Chris and his brothers
Chris carries the Wiley Y chromosome, the line passed father to son from Robert Weily. It belongs to a branch that is rare in Ireland and common in Britain and on the Continent, which fits a family that arrived in Ireland from somewhere else, and is one reason the Ulster question on the open list is worth asking.
The ones who stayed
The family did not all leave. Most of them did not. These are the Weilys who stayed in Meath, and the Flynns, Bradys and Byrnes they married.
Grace Weily, later Brady, later Byrne
born by about 1839 · died 30 January 1886, ClonardOld enough to be a godmother in September 1853. She married John Brady at Longwood on 14 February 1876, was a widow within five years, and on 4 July 1881, at Longwood chapel, married James Byrne, a widower and publican of Clonard, giving her father as William Weily, farmer, deceased, of Cullentry. Jane Flynn stood witness. Her children with James were twins Rose Anne and Eleanor (October 1882), Catherine Marie (13 April 1884) and John (30 January 1886). Two independent online family trees give the same date for her death and for John's birth: she died in childbirth. James Byrne died the same year and the children were orphaned. Catherine married Charles Edward Kenny and died in Chicago in 1973. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren are the Kenny and Newman testers whose DNA matches Dad. It was their family tree, with its garbled “M Wiley Brady Byrne, born Cullintry, Rathmolyon”, that first said the word Meath.
Margaret Flynn Weilly, then Flynn
widowed by 1854 · remarried 22 May 1854Mother of Mary (1842). Held lot 4 at Cullentry in her own name in 1854, between her late husband's lot and her mother-in-law's. Married John Flynn at Longwood on 22 May 1854, witness James Brady. She may be the “Margt Flynne” who baptised a daughter Mary Anne with a John Flynne in December 1856; if so, that child was a half-sister of our William I. Whether Margaret was William I's mother or his stepmother depends on whether he was born to her or to Bridget Belagh, and no record tells us.
Ellen Weily the elder, and the girls
1841–1854Ellen Weily, William Senior's widow, held the farm on a lease of 1841 and was still on lot 5 in 1854. Ellen (baptised 1839) and Mary (baptised 1842), William I's sisters or half-sisters, appear once each in the register and then not again. They may have married, emigrated or died young; no later record has been found under any spelling.
Michael Wiley and Anne Daly
children baptised 1871–1876Michael, of about William I's generation, married Anne Daly somewhere outside Longwood and baptised four children there: John (June 1871), Mary (1 September 1872), Elizabeth (30 May 1874) and Hugh (9 April 1876). The Dalys held the mill land at Little Cullentry on the old estate map. Michael's sons carried the Cullentry Wiley Y chromosome, the same one Chris carries if the story on this site is right. A living descendant of John or Hugh in the male line is the single most valuable person in this whole search: one DNA test would settle the Meath origin without another sheet of paper.
John Wiely, and the wider family
1835–1861Two Johns took smaller leases of Cullentry in 1835 (£44 and £37 a year). In 1854 a John Wiley held lots 7, 9, 10 and 11 and sub-let to three families; a Joseph Wiley held lot 24 with three sub-tenants; a George Wiley was at Isaacstown; and a Samuel Wiley and another John were landlords to ten sub-tenants at Ballynaskea in the next parish. In October 1861, after our family had gone, John Weilly took a new 31-year lease of part of Cullentry at £105. How John, Joseph, George and Samuel were related to William Senior is not recorded; brothers and nephews is the natural guess. Griffith's Valuation shows this one house had become at least six holdings in two parishes by the 1850s.
The Flynns
c. 1780s–1881William Flynn held 62 acres at Clonmowley and Walter Flynn, with John Duffy, 138 acres at Ballin on the river, both on the road from Heghlane to Longwood chapel, when the estate map was drawn. A Flynn is at every family event we can find: Elizabeth Flynn, sponsor at Mary's baptism, 1842; James Flynn, sponsor beside Grace, 1853; John Flynn, who married the widow Margaret, 1854; Mary A. Flynne, witness at Grace's first wedding, 1876; Jane Flynn, witness at her second, 1881. Flynn was one of the parish's core families, with about 35 marriages and 60 baptisms in the Longwood book between 1833 and 1858. Our Margaret Flynn, who crossed the Atlantic, is Likely one of them.
Belagh, Brady, Byrne, Walker, Daly
- Bridget Belagh, William Junior's first wife, mother of Ellen (1839). The name may be Bellew, an Old English Meath family name.
- James Brady witnessed Margaret's remarriage in 1854; John Brady married Grace in 1876 and died before 1881.
- James Byrne (about 1823 to 1886), publican of Clonard, son of Michael Byrne, farmer; Grace's second husband, with children from a first marriage (Thomas 1865, James 1869, Mary 1874).
- Widow Walker, Robert Weily's joint tenant on the estate map; a Robert Walker held part of Isaacstown on the same estate.
- William Daly held the mill land at Little Cullentry on the estate map; Anne Daly married Michael Wiley a century later.
One name, many spellings
Nobody in this family spelled their name the same way twice, because for most of this story nobody in the family was writing it down; clerks were. The landlord's office wrote Wiely, Wielly, Weily, Weilly between 1835 and 1861. The Longwood priest wrote Wiley, Weilly, Wiely. The men who updated the estate map wrote Weily and Wyley. The tithe collector wrote Weily and Wiely. The Trim registrar wrote Weily. The Springfield priest wrote Weley; the Alton priest Wiley; the 1900 census taker Wylie. Griffith's valuers standardised everyone to Wiley, and so, in the end, did we. Four independent sets of scribes over sixty years and two continents kept coming back to the same “ei/ie” vowel run, which is one of the small threads that ties the Meath family to the Illinois one.