Ten years of wrong turns, then one week, then a month

What we had to start with

One line in a Latin marriage register at Alton, Illinois, 1878: William Wiley, son of William Wiley and Margaret Flynn. That was the whole Irish inheritance. No county, no parish, no ship, no grave for the parents. William II's own records said only “Ireland”. Wiley is not a rare name and Flynn is a very common one.

The family tree also carried a lead: a Margaret Flynn baptised at Kilfinane in the south of County Limerick on 19 January 1835. It had arrived as a database hint, matched on the name and a rough birth year, and over time it hardened into a fact. Her “born 1835” in the tree was that hint's date.

Years in Munster

Because the only Irish document in hand was about the wife, the husband was hunted where the wife's record was. Chris read the Catholic registers of Kilfinane, then Fethard and Cahir in Tipperary, page by page at high magnification, some 1,500 image reads over the years, looking for a William Wiley marrying a Margaret Flynn between 1850 and 1855 or a William baptised in 1855 to 1857. There were Wileys in Tipperary, but not ours. Every negative was logged. Before and alongside that came the wrong turns every long search collects: an 1860 Chicago census household that turned out to belong to a family named Lynch, a naturalisation index entry tied to it, a Margaret Wiley in New York, each followed up and thrown out. By 2026 Chris had been at the wall for about ten years. The registers were eliminated at the level of the record, which is the standard that made the later change of direction defensible rather than a mood.

The measurement that changed direction

In August 2026 two simple counts were made that should have been made at the start. First, in Griffith's Valuation, the mid-century survey of every landholder in Ireland, there are about 450 Wiley households in Ulster and 9 in the whole of Munster, with none at all in County Limerick. Wiley is a Scots name that came to Ireland with the Ulster plantations. Second, civil registration of non-Catholic marriages began in Ireland in 1845, and the index holds no William Wiley marrying a Margaret Flynn anywhere; so the marriage was Catholic, which is why no state index had ever produced it. The search moved north, to a parish on the Monaghan-Fermanagh border where Wileys and Flynns lived side by side and a “Joanna Wily, converted from Protestantism” had married a Catholic. That turned out to be wrong too. But it broke the long habit of looking in the south, and it put the right question on the table: a Catholic Wiley family is unusual, so where did one live? The answer, when it came in September, was not the one the question expected: a Church of Ireland house at Cullentry, and in it one man, William Weily, who married twice at the Catholic chapel. His widow raised their children Catholic, and our branch is theirs.

The DNA, in plain words

On 29 and 30 August 2026 the match list of Chris's father was sorted into families. One stood out: six related people, Kennys and Newmans and one tester known only as “catimf”, who all match him, all match each other closely, all match the documented descendants of William II's other children, and match none of the eighteen testers known to descend from the German Giese side. That pattern places their connection above William II and Alice, on the Irish or the English side.

Thomas Kenny's family tree had, on his grandmother's side, a woman recorded as “M Wiley Brady Byrne”, born 1843 at “Cullintry, Rathmolyon, Co. Meath”, died 30 January 1886 at Clonard, wife of James Byrne, mother of Catherine Byrne who married a Kenny and died in Chicago in 1973. (The tree’s 1843 turned out to be right; its death date was four days out, and the civil register gives 3 February 1886.) On WikiTree, out of 43 million profiles, she was the only Wiley born in Meath. Chicago was the city William II's death notice had asked to copy, unexplained for a century. Meath had never once been considered. The tree's “born 1843” carried no source, and it was right: the parish register, found on 12 September, gives 14 September 1843. (Her death was 3 February 1886, four days later than the tree has it.)

Two things about that chain are known now that were not in August. Every link in it from Grace to her children is in the civil register; only Catherine's own birth is not. And the amounts in the table cannot yet be read against the right expectation: if the testers are Catherine's grandchildren, about 40 centimorgans is expected if William II and Grace were brother and sister and about 13 if he was her nephew, and which generation they are is not yet known.

One civil record, the same night

Irish civil registration of Catholic marriages began in 1864 and the records are free online. Within the hour Chris had the Trim district marriage of 4 July 1881: James Byrne, widower, publican, of Clonard, married Grace Brady formerly Weily, widow, of Cullentry, daughter of William Weily, farmer, deceased; witness Jane Flynn. Every piece of the garbled tree entry was explained (Grace not Margaret; Brady her first married name), and both brick-wall surnames stood in one record from south-west Meath. The dangerous alternative reading, “Reily”, was ruled out at zoom against the same clerk's W's and R's on the same page.

Two checks followed. Cullentry is a real townland, the only one of its name in Meath, in Rathmolyon civil parish, according to the national placenames database. And the Catholic chapel that served it, Longwood (also called Killine), has a surviving register of 158 images running from 1829 to 1878, which nobody had ever opened for a Wiley.

The register

On 5 September 2026 Chris had the Longwood register fetched from the National Library and read in its entirety, using an AI research assistant that could work through the images page by page and enlarge every candidate name against control letters on the same page. The book is in English and clearly written. It yielded exactly five Weily entries between 1833 and 1878 (the 1839 and 1842 baptisms, Grace as sponsor in 1853, the 1854 remarriage, Grace's 1876 wedding) and four more for Michael Wiley and Anne Daly in the 1870s. It also yielded the negatives that shape the story: no marriage of a Weily man in the Longwood book between 1833 and 1878, no Weily child between 1833 and 1838, no William baptised in early 1857, no Weily death to 1855. The National Library's list of Catholic registers showed none for Rathmolyon, Cullentry's own parish, before 1878, and for a week it was assumed that the family's other records were lost with it. They were not. Rathmolyon's Catholic chapel book does not survive before 1878. The parish's Church of Ireland registers do (baptisms from 1733, marriages and burials from 1734), on microfilm at the National Archives of Ireland and in the RootsIreland index, and they hold our family. That is where our branch's children turned up a week later, as the sections below tell.

Griffith's, the landlord's papers, the map, the tithe book

The same day, Griffith's Valuation put William, Margaret and Ellen Wiley on three adjacent lots at Cullentry in 1854. That evening Chris found, in the National Library's catalogue, the estate papers of the family's own landlords, the Fowler and Rawdon of Rathmoylon Papers: leases of Cullentry to William Wiely in 1835, John Wielly and John Wiely in 1835, Ellen Weily in 1841 and John Weilly in 1861, with yearly rent books from 1837 to 1867. He noticed that a lease “for 2 lives or 21 years” from 1 January 1835 ends on 1 January 1856, and that William II arrived in America in 1857. For a week that looked like the reason for the crossing. It was not our branch's lease: the man who took it, William Junior, was buried in 1836, his widow Ellen held the farm to 1856, and their son John took a new lease in 1861. That house kept its land.

Late that night he found the Longfield estate map, fetched it at full resolution from the Library's image server, and there was Robert Weily at Heghlane in the 1770s, with five later Wyleys written over his farm and the Flynns two farms away along the road to Longwood. The next day Chris found the 1825 tithe book, which confirmed the farm's name, Heghlane, and put William Senior, William Junior and Michael on it.

The stones and the lists

On 6 September Chris found the family's gravestones on the Baconstown Heritage Group's site for the Enfield graveyards. In Rathmolyon churchyard, a slab: “Here lyeth the body of John Weily late of Cullenter who departed this life April ye 3 1749 aged 69”, with his wife Mary Brown and the son John who raised the stone and died in 1756. In Rathcore churchyard, sixteen Weily burials from 1901 to 1991; and on the stones Charles Weily of Cullintra House, died 1901, and Charles Watson Weily of the same house, died 1976. The same evening the 1802 lists of Protestant parishioners, transcribed on the Meath History Hub, gave four Wiley households and a single man at Rathmolyon and two Weily households at Rathcore, every one of them Church of Ireland. The story turned in one evening. The family had been on the land a generation before Robert of the map and stayed there for 120 years after our branch left; it was a Protestant house; and our branch was the Catholic one, made by one man's two marriages at the chapel.

The state's registers

Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths began in Ireland in 1864, and the indexes and register pages are free online. On the evening of 7 September, 99 index queries were run in one sitting: every spelling of the name against every registration district around Cullentry. Out of them came Margaret Flynn, married, 60, wife of a farmer, who died at Cullentry on 13 June 1877 with her son Robert Wiley present at the death; Grace's civil marriage to John Brady in 1876, aged 36, “farmer's daughter, Cullentra”, her father “William Wiley, farmer, deceased”; Grace Byrne's death at Clonard in 1886, aged 43; John Flynn's death at Cullentry in 1903, aged 83; Robert Wiley's death in the Trim workhouse in 1915, aged 67, a bachelor labourer; and Michael Wiley's marriage to Anne Daley in 1870, with the births of his eight children. The Margaret Flynn who had married at the chapel about 1841 was now found by name, place and son. The same queries showed that no William Wiley of any spelling died in a Meath district between 1864 and 1911, which is the one hard negative about William I, if he existed: he did not die in Meath after 1864.

One census form

The same night the 1901 census was opened, house by house. Form A for house 5 at Ballin lists John Flynn, 78, widower, farmer, born County Kildare, and “Robert Wiley, step son, 45, Roman Catholic”. In 1911 the same man is “Robert Weilly, 64, brother in law” in the house of Michael Gill and his wife Mary Ann, John Flynn's daughter. Two words, “step son”, closed a question this site had carried as open: the “Margaret Flynn alias Weilly” who married John Flynn at Longwood in 1854 was William Weily's widow, and Robert, born 10 April 1848, was their son. It also put our branch on the Ballin farm, beside the Flynns, for the rest of Robert's life.

The stress test

The DNA link runs through Grace's daughter, and until 7 September it rested on the Kenny testers' own family tree. That night the civil birth register was searched for Grace's children. It has twins, Ellen and Roseanna Byrne, born at Clonard on 25 October 1882, and John Byrne, born there on 30 January 1886, all to “Grace Byrne formerly Wiley”. Grace died four days after John was born, of puerperal fever; her death entry is written “Third January”, a slip for February, since the entry sits in the February batch. Grace's daughter Catherine Byrne married Charles Edward Kenny and died in Chicago in 1973; her descendants, the Kenny and Newman testers, share DNA with Chris's father and uncle at the amounts a relationship of that depth predicts. Every link in that chain but Catherine's own birth is now in the civil register. Catherine's birth, 13 April 1884, is not in the index. The testers' tree had not been built backwards from a Cullentry Wiley; the records built it forwards, and it held.

Counting the Williams

The site had said that Rathmolyon's registers did not survive before 1878. That was true of the Catholic chapel's book and false of the parish church's, which the Meath Heritage Centre has indexed on RootsIreland from 1733. In the second week of September Chris worked through the whole index: 495 screenshots, transcribed twice by machine, the two transcriptions compared line by line, and every disagreement settled against the image. The index holds ten William Weilys. There were three grown William Weilys at Cullentry in the 1830s. William Senior of the tithe book (born 1752) was buried in September 1836, 'aged 96'. William Junior (born about 1788), who took the big lease on New Year's Day 1835, was buried in May 1836. The third, born about 1796, is ours: he married at the chapel, and he was buried on 19 January 1850. William Junior's widow Ellen was the lessee of 1841; five marriage entries name him as the father of John Weily of Maryville, who took the 1861 lease, and Charles Weily of Cullintra House, whose family was there until 1976. That is the house that stayed, and it was never ours. The third William's children were in the same book: Mary, born 21 March 1842, four days before the Longwood chapel christened “Mary of William Weilly and Margaret Flynn”; Grace, 14 September 1843; Michael, 10 March 1845; Robert, 10 April 1848; and William, 12 December 1849, all christened at Rathmolyon as children of “William and Eleanor Weily” of Cullinter. Those are the names, in those years, of Margaret Flynn's children who married at Longwood and lived at Ballin. Our branch's children had been christened in both churches while their father lived. The mother's name on the index cards, Eleanor, is the one loose end, and the register page itself will settle it. Very likely

The boy in the register

Among those five children was a William, born 12 December 1849 and christened on 2 January 1850, seventeen days before his father was buried. He has no record in Meath after that day. On the night of 12 September Chris asked the question the register allowed: what if William II did not cross as an infant with his parents, but was this boy, sent over at seven to kin? Two things were then checked. First, William II's stated ages were read as a series. He gave his age as 25 at his civil marriage in January 1878, 28 in the census of June 1880, 45 (born 'Jany 1855') in 1900, and his death certificate of 1913 works out to 29 January 1857. The earliest two point to 1851-53, the latest two to 1855-57. (The 1880 figure had been read as 24 in the first pass over that census page; on 13 September it was re-read at four times magnification against the same enumerator's other 8s and 4s, and it is 28.) Neither birth year fits all four records. Second, the United States censuses of 1860 and 1870 were swept, twice and once, for a William, a Margaret and a child William born in Ireland, and the family is not there under any spelling tried; a boy in a Flynn household would be missed by the same searches. The standing reading, a son William I who married a second Margaret Flynn and crossed with the infant, stays Likely; the boy of 1849 is Possible. The two readings, and the four records that would decide between them, are set out on The Family.

Why we believe it

Not because of any one document. Because six independent kinds of evidence, made by different sets of people for different purposes, agree on one farm and one family:

1. The state's registers (1877, 1881, 1886): Margaret Flynn's death at Cullentry with her son Robert Wiley as informant; Grace's marriage naming her father William Weily, farmer, of Cullentry, deceased, with a Flynn witness; Grace's own death. And the census of 1901, which calls Robert Wiley John Flynn's step son.
2. The Catholic chapel register at Longwood (1839 to 1876), with a William Weilly married to a Margaret Flynn, in the only Weily family in the book.
3. The parish church register at Rathmolyon (1842 to 1850): the same children, the same father, and his burial.
4. The landlord's own leases (1835 to 1861), the surveyor's map (1770s to 1790s) and the tithe book (1825), putting the family, in its own spelling of the name, on one named farm for a century.
5. The gravestones (1749 to 1991) and the lists of 1802: the house on the land before our branch, and long after it.
6. The DNA of six living people descended from Grace Weily of that farm, matching Chris's father and his uncle Bill and attaching to the Irish side of the family by elimination.

What we do not have is a document that joins William II, the man of Alton and Springfield, to a named child of that house, and we say so on the open questions page. The next documents most likely to supply it are the register pages themselves, on National Archives microfilm MFCI 51, and the Valuation Office revision books for Cullentry.

The wrong turns, honestly

• An 1860 Chicago census household and a naturalisation index entry were attached to the tree early on; both turned out to belong to a family named Lynch and were removed.
• A database hint was allowed to become a fact. Margaret Flynn's Limerick baptism was never more than a name-and-year match, and it steered years of work.
• The husband was searched where the wife's record was. The Wiley surname's own geography, which pointed away from Munster, was not measured until 2026.
• Leinster was never counted. When Ulster and Munster were compared, the middle of the country was left out, and that is where the family was.
• The Kilfinane lead is retired to “Possible” at most. It would revive only if an American record for Margaret Flynn Wiley named her parents as Thomas Flynn and a Clanchy or Clohessy.
• For one evening in September the couple of the 1842 baptism, William Weilly and Margaret Flynn, were read as the emigrants themselves. Chris's own challenge killed it within the day: the bride of 1854 was that William's widow, and she died at Cullentry in 1877.
• For a week, from the tithe book to the parish register, William Junior of 1825 was taken for the William who married at the chapel. He was not: he was the 1835 lessee, buried in May 1836, and his is the house that stayed.
• The murder of William Wyley by Ribbonmen was dated 1816 from a secondary source. The Chief Secretary's papers put it in December 1821.
• Chris recalled Michael Wiley's family going to Australia. Every free Australian index is negative, and the source of the recollection has not yet been found.
• A library catalogue's “Springfield directories, 1867-68 to 1879-80” was taken for Springfield, Illinois. It is Springfield, Massachusetts.
• “No Weily marriage at all in the Longwood book” was written on this site. The book has two: Grace's marriage to John Brady in 1876 and her mother's remarriage in 1854. Grace's second marriage, in 1881, falls after the book ends. What it has not got is a marriage of a Weily man.
• William II's age in the 1880 census was read as 24 in the first pass over the page. At four times magnification, against the enumerator's other figures, it is 28, and the site said 24 for a week.