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

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

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

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

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

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