The Storyline
Real families. Real discoveries. Real stories.
Finding Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe
For generations she was only “Sauvagesse,” the wife of Gabriel Guilbault. FamilySearch’s Full Text Search found her: first as “Sauteuse” at a triple baptism in 1798, then at Oka in 1801, where her own baptism and marriage give her name, Abitakijikokwe, and her homeland on Lake Superior. This post traces how she was found, and what any researcher can learn from it.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: At the Lake of Two Mountains
Three Generations of Shrinking and Expanding
Kate Hamall bore six children in Chicago and buried four of them across 1892 and 1893. Two generations later her great-grandson Thomas Kenny was the only person alive carrying that line forward — one boy of six, in a household that had just come apart. His cousins Edward and Emmett Holland both lived to eighty-nine and had no children, so that branch ended quietly in the 1990s with nobody left to tell. Then in 1957 Thomas Kenny married Barbara Ann O'Brien, and they had six children: the number Kate started with, eighty years on.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy Series: From Research to Story
The Father Who Tried
His bank closed fifteen weeks after the wedding and took his career with it; he was forty-nine before he found the work he would be known for. Three contacts with his son are documented across twenty years — a trip to Washington in 1947, a letter to a young woman he had never met, and a thousand-mile journey to be in the wedding photographs on his own birthday. His son said in later life that he felt estranged from him, and kept his watch, and wore it to all five of his daughters' weddings. This page sets those beside each other without deciding between them.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy Case Studies Series: From Research to Story
Mothers and Sons: A Working-Class Family Pattern
Kate kept house with Thomas Henry from 1911 until she died in 1919. Emma was with Thomas Eugene, on and off, for the best part of twenty years. Margaret joined Thomas Kenny's household for the last stretch of her life. Read through a modern lens the repetition looks like a family trait; read through the household accounts it looks like arithmetic — no pensions, no Social Security until 1935, and women earning half a man's wage for the same work. Margaret is the proof of it: she followed the family north, took an apartment of her own in New Jersey, and was still keeping books at sixty. She moved in only when she could no longer pay for a front door of her own.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy Case Studies Series: From Research to Story
The Mystery Man: Photo Analysis
In a 1947 photograph, two men sit together at the US Capitol—one is Thomas Eugene Hamall, age 42. The other remained unidentified for 75 years. Through forensic photo analysis, family tree reconstruction, and a 1968 high school yearbook, we found the man the evidence points to—and uncovered a poignant story about family connections maintained across three fractured generations.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: From Research to Story
They Were Never Photographed Together
Three sets of photographs, three claims to test, and three different answers. Two men in formal dress at the same Riverside bridge in the year one of them married there. A dog on a lawn chair at a cottage, in two frames taken the same season. A father and a son at the same Capitol balustrade in 1947. One case holds, one fails at the last step, and one is settled as to the event but open as to the journey — and saying which is which is the whole method. A shared element can put two photographs in one place. It cannot put a person there.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy Series: From Research to Story
The Widow Who Never Lost: Marie Chapelier's Legal Victory
Marie Chapelier arrived in New France as a penniless widow in 1649. She could read and write—a rare skill that would prove decisive 44 years later. When her stepdaughter challenged her property rights in 1693, Marie fought back through five levels of colonial courts. The final score: 9-0. She died undefeated three months after her final victory. This is the story of strategic survival, legal warfare, and one woman's refusal to be defeated.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: From marriage contracts to courtroom victories—one widow's signature tells a 48-year story of literacy, strategy, and undefeated determination.
The Woman in the Portrait: Aunt Maime’s Story
For 90 years, her portrait was preserved but unlabeled. Through death certificates, census records, and a 7-year search, we finally discovered Aunt Maime's extraordinary story of sacrifice and survival.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy Series- Uncovering the Stories Behind the Names
Four Generations in Hats: A Brooklyn Story of Resilience
After seven years of research into Brooklyn's mat maker John Kenny, one discovery changed everything: the hats weren't just about his craft—they were about survival. From 1888 to 1957, four generations of Kenny women wore elaborate hats in family photographs. Each hat told a story: Mary Agnes Kenny, circa 1900, twelve years after her father's death. Lillian and Helen as toddlers in luxury millinery. Lillian's timeless taupe hat at her daughter's 1957 wedding—so stylish it would turn heads 61 years later. But the real story wasn't the hats themselves. It was the network of devoted women—Aunt Maime, Aunt Lillian, grandmother Ann—who kept the family together through impossible tragedy. John Kenny's craftsmanship created more than fashion. It created a legacy that four generations of women would carry forward with dignity, resilience, and style.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: When one craftsman's legacy becomes four generations of resilience—the stories objects can tell.
The Aversion: A Family War Over a Fille du Roi's Estate
Louise Senécal crossed from Rouen to New France, married Pierre Guilbault in 1667, and died before April 1693. Four years later her three heirs took their father before the seigneurial court of Notre-Dame-des-Anges — seven weeks after his second wedding — and the judge wrote a single word into his order: aversion. Part 3 of The Louise Senécal Story, told from the court file itself.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Uncovering the extraordinary stories hidden in ordinary family histories, one ancestor at a time.
Crossing the Atlantic
Louise Senécal was baptised at Saint-Éloi in Rouen in 1637 and lost her mother at eight. Thirty years later she stood in a Québec notary's study beside Pierre Guilbault, a habitant of Charlesbourg who had twice contracted to marry before — and neither of them could sign. Part 1 of The Louise Senécal Story follows the records from Rouen to the wedding at Notre-Dame-de-Québec, and says plainly where they stop.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Uncovering the extraordinary stories hidden in ordinary family histories, one ancestor at a time.
The Hidden Years
Pierre Guilbault appeared before a notary on April 13, 1693, to sign a marriage contract with 20-year-old Jeanne Morin. It was the same day his wife Louise died. The shocking timing—documented in colonial records—reveals the tensions that had been building in a marriage that survived separation, reconciliation, and 26 years of frontier life, only to end in a family war over Louise's estate.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Uncovering the extraordinary stories hidden in ordinary family histories, one ancestor at a time.
Hero in the Depths: Cherry Mine Disaster
In November 1909, Captain Thomas P. Kenny of the Chicago Fire Department received an urgent call that would define his 44-year career. Racing 83 miles by emergency train in just 62 minutes, Kenny and his specialized crew arrived at the Cherry Mine disaster - America's deadliest mine fire. His technical expertise in fighting underground blazes helped create the conditions that enabled one of the most miraculous rescues in industrial history: 21 miners found alive after eight days entombed underground.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Uncovering the extraordinary stories hidden in ordinary family histories, one ancestor at a time.
The Missing Brother Mystery
Sometimes the most puzzling genealogical mysteries hide in plain sight. One census entry proved particularly haunting: 'Thornton Hammil' listed as Owen Hamall's brother in 1880 Chicago—but no such person seemed to exist anywhere else in the historical record. The breakthrough came where it often does in immigrant family research: in the margins of church records, where community relationships revealed themselves through acts of faith and mutual support.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: When mysterious census entries unlock complex family stories that span continents and generations
The Irish Immigrant’s Hidden Fortune
He rose from chief stableman to keeper of the Union Hotel, raised a 148-foot liberty pole topped with a racehorse, and faced a federal distillery charge. When Terrence O’Brien died in 1874, his four children were scattered among relatives. Thirteen months later, $11,000 in bonds was found hidden above the kitchen ceiling of his old hotel.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Uncovering the extraordinary stories hidden in ordinary family histories, one ancestor at a time.
The Fire in Your Blood
When Owen Hamall died of meningitis in 1898, he left behind more than just a grieving family—he left behind a story of resilience that would echo through generations. This story was discovered not through grand family legends, but through a single newspaper clipping that reduced his family's struggle to twenty-three stark words: "Mrs. Hammall, 94 Sholto Street, two small children and a blind husband."
This entry in the Chicago Tribune's "Destitute List" from January 26, 1897, could have been just another piece of historical data. Instead, it became the foundation for understanding what it truly meant to be a Hamall descendant—and why some family stories deserve to be told as letters of strength to future generations.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: When family tragedies become letters of strength to future generations.
Four Words That Solved a Mystery
After seven years of failed research attempts with dozens of John Kennys in Brooklyn records, a single city directory entry changed everything. Discover how 'Kenny, Elizabeth, wid. Richard' unlocked an impossible genealogical puzzle and revealed an innovative research methodology.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: When traditional research methods fail, innovative approaches unlock the impossible cases that define professional genealogy.