The gaps, stated plainly

The man himself has no record in Ireland

William Wiley I, the man who crossed in 1857, appears in exactly one document anywhere: the line in the Alton marriage register of 1878 that names him as his son's father. In Ireland there is nothing. His baptism, about 1835, would have been written into the register of Rathmolyon parish, and that register does not survive before 1878. The neighbouring Longwood book, which does survive, has no Weily child between 1833 and 1838 and no Weily marriage at all between 1833 and 1878. So his baptism and his marriage happened in the lost book, or in his bride's parish, and we cannot recover either from church records.

In America it is no better. He has no census entry, no death record, no burial, no naturalisation that we can find. The family tree's “born about 1835, died about 1890” are guesses that were entered years ago and carry no source. He was not living in his son's block in Springfield in 1880, and the city directory that year lists only one William Wiley. He may have died before 1880, or lived somewhere else entirely; his son's death notice in 1913 asked the Chicago and Pittsburgh papers to copy, which hints at family in both cities.

Certain that he existed and that his wife was Margaret Flynn. Everything else about him personally is inference.

Which William was his father

There were three Williams on the farm in a row: William Senior (dead by 1841), William Junior (baptising children 1839 and 1842, dead by 1854) and our William, who left in 1857. The obvious reading is grandfather, father, son. It fits the first-son naming habit, the 1825 tithe book with a Senior and a Junior side by side, and the ages. But no document says “William, son of William Junior”. Grace, whose father was “William Weily, farmer, deceased” in 1881, could be the daughter of Junior or of Senior, which would make her our William's sister or his aunt. Likely is the honest grade.

The one document that might state it outright is the lease of 1 January 1835, because an Irish lease “for lives” named the people whose lives it ran on, usually with their relationship to the tenant and often their age. If it reads “William Wiely the younger, son of the said William”, or names an infant grandson, the generations are written on one page. Copies are on order from the National Library.

Margaret Flynn's family

Our Margaret Flynn, William I's wife, has no record of her own on either side of the ocean. We know her name only from her son's marriage register; her granddaughter did not know it in 1913. For six years the family tree carried a Margaret Flynn baptised at Kilfinane, County Limerick, in 1835. That came from a database hint matched on name and year alone, and it is retired: the Limerick registers were read and hold no Wiley, and the Meath evidence puts her husband's family two farms from the Flynns of Clonmowley and Ballin. Likely she was one of those Flynns, and quite possibly kin to the Margaret Flynn who was her husband's mother or stepmother. A US death record for her, which has never been found, would name her parents and settle it.

The ship, and the year

No passenger list has been found. The year 1857 rests on one line of the 1900 census, given from memory more than forty years later. It fits the Meath leases running out in 1856 so well that we believe it, but a manifest with William, Margaret and an infant aboard would turn Likely into Certain. William II's own birth date is uncertain by two years: the 1900 census says January 1855, the 1880 census implies 1856, and the 1913 death certificate's arithmetic gives 29 January 1857. We carry all three.

Where the parents died

Nobody knows where William I and Margaret Flynn Wiley lived after the 1860s or where they are buried. Springfield, Chicago and Pittsburgh are all possible. This is the largest open question on the American side, and the least worked.

Grace: sister, half-sister or cousin

The DNA that Dad and his brother share with Grace's great-grandchildren is the right amount for a third cousin once removed, which is what a sister of William I would produce. But DNA at that distance is noisy, and a first cousin of William I would produce amounts that overlap. Grace's own age would help: one online tree gives her birth as 1843, another as 1855, and neither has a source. Her civil death record (Trim district, early 1886) would give her age at death. It is a free search that has not yet been run.

The widow of 1854

The Longwood marriage of 22 May 1854, “John Flynn and Margaret Flynn alias Weilly”, has two possible readings. We think she was Margaret Flynn, the widow of William Weilly Junior, remarrying; that makes William Junior dead by 1854 and explains Margaret Wiley on lot 4 in Griffith's. She could instead be a woman born Weilly, widow of a Flynn. The Valuation Office's revision books for Cullentry, which record every change of occupier after 1854, would show whether lot 4 passed from Margaret Wiley to John Flynn. Those books are held in Dublin and have not been checked.

Where the Weilys came from before Cullentry

Wiley is a Scots and Ulster name. In the 1850s there were about 450 Wiley households in Ulster and a dozen or so in Meath. The Rathmolyon estate belonged to the Rawdons, Earls of Moira, a planter family from County Down, before the Fowlers bought it, and the family's forenames in the 1800s (Robert, Samuel, George, Joseph, beside William and John) look like a Protestant-settler naming pattern. So it is Possible that the Weilys came south as Rawdon tenants in the 1700s and became Catholic through marriage. It is untested: the tests are the Moira leases of Cullentry from 1767 and 1771, the Registry of Deeds, and the Rawdon estate papers in Belfast. Chris's own Y-DNA belongs to a branch that is rare in Ireland and commoner on the Continent and in Britain, which is consistent with a family that did not begin as native Irish, and no more than that.

A Wiley we cannot place

A George H. Wiley, who died in 1895, lies in Sts Peter and Paul Cemetery in St Louis, the family's own burial ground, four years before Alice. No birth date, no family link. He may be a child of William II and Alice who does not appear in the family's list of six, or a brother of William II who came over with the family. The cemetery's own register would say.

The tests that would close it

In order of how much each would settle for the effort.

1. The 1835 lease, NLI MS 43,577/1. Names the two “lives”, probably with relationships and ages. May state Senior, Junior and an infant William on one page. Ordered from the National Library of Ireland.
2. The estate rent books, 1849 to 1857. A yearly list of every tenant at Cullentree. Shows the year William Junior's name drops, whether Margaret's lot passes to John Flynn, and whether any Wiely leaves in 1856 or 1857. Same collection, same order.
3. A Y-DNA test of a male-line descendant of Michael Wiley and Anne Daly. Michael's sons John (1871) and Hugh (1876) carried the Cullentry Wiley Y chromosome. A living grandson or great-grandson of either, tested against Chris, would prove or disprove the Meath origin with no paper at all, and would do so whichever branch of the family Michael belonged to, because there was only one Wiley house on the estate. Finding him means the 1901 and 1911 censuses for Cullentry and Longwood, the civil birth records of 1871 to 1876 in the Trim district, and the parish index from 1878.
4. The Valuation Office revision books for Cullentry lots 3, 4 and 5. Decide the 1854 widow question and date the changes of occupier through the 1850s and 1860s.
5. Grace Byrne's civil death record, Trim, early 1886. Her age at death; sister or cousin.
6. An 1857 passenger manifest. New York and New Orleans lists for a William, Margaret and infant William Wiley, Wylie or Weily.
7. A death or burial record for William I or Margaret Flynn Wiley in America. Springfield, Chicago and Pittsburgh, 1860s to 1900s.
8. Brownrigg's 1798 survey volume and the 1771 lease with its map. Would name Robert Weily's holding in 1798 and perhaps show the farm a generation earlier. Same National Library order.