KEALY Relationships in Lewisville, TX
In the 1830s several related individuals named KEALY moved from New York to Michigan, and in the 1850s some of these Kealys moved again to Denton Co., Texas. The adult male Kealys who made the move were named Thomas H. Kealy, Joseph Kealy and John Nicholas Kealy. There has been much confusion about how some of these Kealys are related.
In particular, the parentage of John Nicholas Kealy (1837 Brooklyn, NY - 1911, Lewisville, TX) has been a source of uncertainty.The J.N. Kealy family Bible is now missing, but transcriptions of its family pages exist. The Bible said that John Nicholas was the son of Edmund and Susan Kealy.
Edmund and Susan are usually identified with the Edward Kealey and Susan Sturges who married in Bergen, NJ, on Christmas Eve in 1808. This same couple is also recorded as the parents of Thomas H. Kealy, b. 1809. The stumbling block to accepting all this has been the 28-year age difference between the presumed siblings Thomas and John, as well as the uncertainty over whether the groom was named Edward or Edmund.
One of the proposed solutions to this problem of age differential has been to consider John Nicholas the son of Thomas H. Kealy and his wife Henrietta, who married about 1830. There is a convenient gap in the birth sequence of their known children that would accept the 1837 birth of John Nicholas.
However, this is not a possible relationship. The Thomas H. Kealy family Bible (which I have seen) does not list John N. Kealy as a child of Thomas and Henrietta. Furthermore, exerpts from the John N. Kealy Bible report the death in 1894 of a brother, Joseph Kealy, who was "the last living brother of John N. Kealy."
This Joseph Kealy is not in the Thomas H. Kealy family Bible, nor could he be. Joseph's gravestone in the Lewisville cemetery testifies to his birth in 1816, when Thomas was only 7 years old.
Furthermore, two of Thomas H. Kealy's known sons were still alive in 1894. That would make it impossible for Joseph to have been the "only living" brother of John Nicholas Kealy if John N. was indeed the son of Thomas.
All of this conclusively indicates that John N. Kealy was NOT the son of Thomas H. and Henrietta Kealy. And no matter how improbable it may seem, John appears to have been the youngest brother of Thomas H. Kealy, a man 28 years his senior.
This conclusion is different from what I previously believed. One of my earlier posts to this forum misstates the relationship between Thomas H. and John N. Kealy.
More Replies:
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KEALY Relationships in Lewisville, TX
Paul Kealy 4/24/04
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Correction to Name of Thomas Kealy
David Wilson 2/15/02
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KealyNJ to NY to MI to Lewisville, Texas
Paul Kealy 4/18/01