The Storyline
Real families. Real discoveries. Real stories.
Sainte-Trinité-de-Contrecoeur: The Parish That Burned — and What Survived
On December 1, 1675, Philibert Couillaud dit Roquebrune — a former Carignan-Salières soldier who could not read or write — stood before a notary in Contrecoeur and witnessed the construction contract for the community's first chapel. Less than three years later, fire consumed the parish registers kept in a surgeon's house. In 1687, fire consumed them again. By 1701, fourteen and a half years of baptisms, marriages, and burials had simply ceased to exist. But the stone walls built according to the Conefroy plan — thick fieldstone, engineered to survive — held through the building fire of 1862, and were rebuilt around a new Victor Bourgeau vault in 1863. This is the story of Sainte-Trinité-de-Contrecoeur: what burned, what survived, and what it means for everyone researching families from the oldest settlement on the south shore of the St. Lawrence.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Places
Sainte-Famille de Boucherville: Pierre Boucher's Church on the River
Sainte-Famille de Boucherville stands on land donated by Pierre Boucher himself — one of the most remarkable figures in early New France. On October 31, 1672, Carignan-Salières Regiment veteran François Séguin dit Ladéroute married Jeanne Petit in the original wooden chapel, just five years after the town was founded. Over the next two decades, the Séguin family filled the parish registers with baptisms and burials. Their son Jean-Baptiste, our direct ancestor, would carry the family name westward to the fur trade at Detroit.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Places
Église Saint-François-de-Sales
The church of Saint-François-de-Sales in Neuville, Quebec, houses the oldest carved religious decor in North America and the parish registers that anchor the Soulière Line to the very beginnings of New France. In 1686, Marie Barbe Sylvestre — daughter of Carignan-Salières Regiment veteran Nicolas Sylvestre dit Champagne — married Jean Bernardin Lesage dit Lepiedmontois, an Italian soldier from Racconigi, Piedmont. Their story begins here, in the breadbasket of New France.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Places
St. Gabriel’s Church : Parish of New Lots
In the working-class streets of East New York, St. Gabriel's Church served as the spiritual anchor for the O'Brien family of Brooklyn. From James H. O'Brien's 1902 wedding to his brother's 1930 requiem Mass, three generations of sacraments were celebrated within these walls at 749 Linwood Street—a parish that still stands today, celebrating its centennial in 2024-2025.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Sacred Places
St. Aloysius Church: Mother Church of West Essex
For over a century, St. Aloysius Church has stood at the corner of Bloomfield Avenue in Caldwell, New Jersey—the only Catholic church in America located next door to a presidential birthplace. Within these French Gothic walls, four generations of the O'Brien and Robertson families celebrated life's sacred moments: from Mary Agnes Robertson's requiem Mass in 1924 to the weddings of all three O'Brien daughters in the 1950s, to the golden jubilee Mass where Miles and Lillian renewed their vows surrounded by 17 grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Sacred Places
Notre-Dame de Granby
For seven years, the identity of "Hammil, Thornton" in Owen Hamall's 1880 Chicago household remained a mystery. The answer came from Notre-Dame de Granby in Quebec's Eastern Townships—where William Thornton's 1881 marriage record named his mother as "défunte Mary McMahon." Twelve words in French proved William was Owen's half-brother.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Places
The Sailors’ Church: Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours
Thomas Patrick Kenny was six or seven years old when his widowed mother gathered her children for the long journey from Prince Edward Island to Chicago. Decades later, he still remembered stopping at a church in Quebec where tiny ships hung from the ceiling, floating in the candlelit air like prayers made visible. The church was Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours—the "Sailors' Church."
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Sacred Places
St. Mary’s Church, Inniskeen
On January 1, 1841, Henry Hamill and Mary McMahon were married somewhere in the parishes of Inniskeen or Donaghmoyne. The presence of 44 Hamill burials in St. Mary's graveyard suggests this was their family's church. Today St. Mary's stands as a literary shrine to poet Patrick Kavanagh—but its graveyard still holds generations of Hamills who never left this land.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Sacred Places
The Hamills of Donaghmoyne: Parish Churches of County Monaghan
Four marriages. Four DNA connections. One parish name on every record: Donaghmoyne. This comprehensive guide explores the overlapping parishes, surviving records, and cemetery evidence that help trace the Hamill families of south Monaghan—from the townlands of Dian, Drumaconvern, and Edengilrevy to descendants scattered across two continents.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Places
Saint-Paul-de-Joliette : Where the Story Begins
On October 10, 1798, a voyageur named Gabriel Guilbault brought three children to Saint-Paul-de-Joliette for baptism. They had been born and "ondoyé" (emergency baptized) in the pays d'en haut—the upper country of the fur trade. Their mother was identified as "Josephte Sauvagesse de la nation des Sauteux"—the first documented reference to her Indigenous identity. The story of Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe begins here.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Places
Sainte-Madeleine-de-Rigaud : Where Her Name Was Lost
In 1801, Father Leclerc at Oka carefully recorded her full Ojibwe name: Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe de la Nation Sauteuse. Twelve years later, when she was buried at Rigaud, she had become simply "Marie Josette Sauvagesse de nation"—an Indigenous woman, unnamed. The contrast tells the story of colonial record-keeping and the erasure of Indigenous identity.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Spaces
L’Annonciation d’Oka : Mission of the Lake of Two Mountains
For three centuries, this Sulpician mission has stood at the confluence of Indigenous and French Canadian cultures. Here, on January 27, 1801, Father Leclerc did something extraordinary: he recorded the full Ojibwe name of an Indigenous bride—Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe de la Nation Sauteuse sur le lac Supérieur—preserving her identity when most priests simply wrote "Sauvagesse."
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Spaces
St. Anne’s Church : Heart and Soul of Griffintown
For 115 years, St. Anne's Church stood at the center of Montreal's Irish immigrant community in Griffintown. Here, in 1879, Mary Ann Hamall—Owen's younger sister—married William Byron, a brass finisher. The marriage record names her parents as "deceased Henry Hammell" and "Mary McMahon," providing crucial confirmation of the family connections documented at Notre-Dame. Demolished in 1970 for urban redevelopment, the church's foundations remain visible in Parc Griffintown-St-Ann, where park benches now face the former altar site.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Places
Notre-Dame Basilica : Montreal’s Mother Church
When the Hamall family arrived in Montreal as Famine refugees around 1850, Notre-Dame Basilica was the largest church in North America. Within these walls, they buried a child and a father, witnessed a widow's remarriage, and baptized the half-brother whose identity would remain a mystery for 170 years. This Sacred Places article traces the family's journey through Notre-Dame's parish registers—from Henry Hamall's death in 1854 to William Thornton's baptism in 1856—revealing the key document that finally proved the half-brother relationship at the heart of the Owen Hamall mystery.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy Series: Sacred Places
Our Lady of Lourdes Parish
A church risen from the ashes of World War II, where two generations of the Morales family celebrated life's most sacred moments—a Christmas baptism in 1959 and a wedding covered by Manila's newspapers in 1968. This Sacred Places article traces the history of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes from its origins in Intramuros through its destruction in the Battle of Manila to its resurrection in Quezon City, featuring original parish records, family photographs, and the remarkable story of Bishop Miguel Olano, the former Bishop of Guam who survived the war to confirm an infant on Christmas morning.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Sacred Spaces
St. Charles Borromeo Church
St. Charles Borromeo Church stood at Roosevelt Road and Hoyne Avenue for eight decades before falling to urban renewal in 1968. In March 1887, Owen and Catherine Hamall brought their daughter Elizabeth "Lizzie" to be baptized here—their only child christened at this parish. Today, the church is gone, but the records survive, preserving the memory of one of Owen's "lost children."
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
St. Pius V Church
On June 9, 1892, Owen and Catherine Hamall brought their newborn son Eugene to be baptized at St. Pius V Church—in the basement of a building still under construction. Eugene would live only ten months. This companion piece explores the fourth and final parish in the Hamall family's spiritual journey through Chicago, and the Pilsen neighborhood church that has served immigrants for 150 years.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Church of the Holy Family : Chicago’s Immigrant Cathedral
Standing at the corner of Roosevelt Road and May Street, the Church of the Holy Family witnessed nearly 170 years of immigrant history. Founded in 1857, this Gothic cathedral was built with the nickels and dimes of Irish Famine immigrants—including the Hamall family, who baptized three children here in the 1880s. One baptism record would prove crucial to solving a seven-year genealogical mystery.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Holy Name Cathedral
On August 13, 1879, Owen Hamall and Catherine Griffith stood at the altar of Holy Name Cathedral—Chicago's mother church, rebuilt just four years earlier after the Great Fire. Designed by Patrick Charles Keely with a 210-foot spire (the highest in Chicago), the $250,000 Gothic cathedral seated 3,300 worshippers. Nine months later, Owen and Kate returned to baptize their firstborn son Thomas Henry. This companion piece explores the first of four parishes in the Hamall family's spiritual journey through Chicago.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
St. Sylvester's Church
After their 1902 marriage, Thomas Patrick Kenny and Ellen Xavier O'Connor moved their growing family from West Town to the Humboldt Park area. At St. Sylvester's Church—a territorial parish founded in 1884—they baptized the daughters of their new life together: Mary Frances Kenny (March 5, 1905) and Margaret Katherine Kenny (January 12, 1908). Margaret Katherine would grow up to marry Thomas Eugene Hamall, bridging the Kenny and Hamall family lines. Unlike Old St. Stephen's, which fell to the Kennedy Expressway in 1952, St. Sylvester's still stands today—over 140 years of continuous service to the Logan Square community.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story