Three Names, One Life
and Elizabeth Corbett — Brooklyn, New York, 1879–1950
The Challenge
Elizabeth Kenny was born in Brooklyn in July 1879, the daughter of John Kenny and Margaret McKenny. Her mother died in 1884, when Elizabeth was about five years old — but the loss did not immediately leave the girls without family. Two grandmothers were still living. The 1880 census places Eliza Kenny (John's mother) in the household at 436 Park Avenue; Thomas Kenny, John's uncle, lived one block away at 525 Park Avenue. For three years after Margaret's death, John Kenny and his mother appear to have kept the household together. Then the losses came in rapid succession. Paternal grandmother Eliza Kenny died December 2, 1887. Maternal grandmother Ann Lynch McKenna died May 10, 1888, of cerebral embolism and asthenia. And then, on November 30, 1888, John Kenny himself died of pulmonary phthisis — tuberculosis — and asthenia. Elizabeth was nine years old. Mary Agnes was five. In the space of four years, they had lost their mother, both grandmothers, and their father. The only adult left who could take them in was their maternal aunt, Mary F. MacKinney — "Aunt Maime" — who gave the girls a home and kept them together.
In the 1880 census, the subject is enumerated as Eliza — the same name as her paternal grandmother, Eliza Kenny, who was living in the same household that June. It is likely that Elizabeth M. Kenny was named for her grandmother, who died December 1887 when Elizabeth was eight. By the time she appears in her own adult records beginning with the 1910 census, she was known as Lillian. Whether the shift happened during the turbulent years of 1884–1888 or later is not documented. The early cascade of deaths that stripped the family of its living memory almost certainly contributed to the name ambiguity that runs through every subsequent record — and to the informant errors on the death certificate sixty-two years later.
Through the first four decades of the adult record trail, Elizabeth appears almost exclusively under a different name: Lillian Marie Kenny. The 1910 census, the 1915 New York State census, the 1920 census, the 1918 Navy enlistment card — all record her as Lillian. Whether she preferred the name, adopted it to honor a family member, or used both names interchangeably is not documented. The records do not explain it. They simply reflect it.
Three different source dates of birth appear across the documentary record, and none of them agree completely:
- 1880 Census: approximately July 1879 — enumerated at 10 months old (10/12), born July, at 436 Park Avenue, Brooklyn. Consistent with July 28, 1879.
- Social Security Application: July 28, 1879 — the most precisely stated date, closest to the census-implied month.
- VA Master Index Card: 7/28/88 — almost certainly a recording error of one digit; the year 1888 is inconsistent with every other source and would make her implausibly young in the 1880 census.
- Death Certificate: April 29, 1879 — wrong month and day; the year is correct. This is an informant error.
- Navy Enlistment Card: states age 30 years 3 months at enrollment October 30, 1918, implying birth approximately July 1888 — almost certainly a deliberate understatement of nine years to meet enlistment requirements.
The preponderance of evidence — the 1880 census, the Social Security record, and the death certificate's year — establishes July 28, 1879, as the correct birth date.
Recorded as: Elizabeth O'Brien. Correct answer: Margaret McKenny. The informant was Lillian J. O'Brien (nee Robertson) — Elizabeth's niece, who traveled from Caldwell, New Jersey to Brooklyn to identify her aunt's body. She was the daughter of Elizabeth's sister Mary Agnes, who had died in 1924. She knew who her aunt was. She did not know her grandmother's name with precision, and she recorded what she remembered — or what she thought she remembered — in a moment of grief. The error is human and entirely understandable. It does not obscure Elizabeth's identity; it documents the limits of informant knowledge in secondary-source vital records.
Is the "Eliza" Kenny in the 1880 census the same person as "Lillian Marie Kenny" in the 1910 census — the same person as "Elizabeth Kenny" on the 1920 marriage license — the same person as "Elizabeth M. Corbett" in the Social Security index — the same person as "Elizabeth Corbett" on the 1950 death certificate? The answer is yes. The proof required assembling twelve record sets and identifying the two linking documents that place both names on a single line.
The Breakthrough
The Result
Elizabeth Kenny, born July 28, 1879, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York — daughter of John Kenny and Margaret McKenny — is the same person documented across twelve record sets under the name Lillian Marie Kenny through 1920, and as Elizabeth Corbett (married name) from 1920 through her death on February 24, 1950. The proof rests on a converging chain of direct and corroborating evidence: matching birth year across three independent sources, matching address across the 1920 census and the marriage license, continuous residence in the MacKinney household across three censuses, and — most decisively — the VA Master Index Card placing both names on a single line.
When Elizabeth Kenny walked into the Navy Yard in Brooklyn on October 30, 1918, she became one of the first women to serve in the United States Navy. The Navy had begun enlisting women as Yeomanettes in 1917 — the first branch of the U.S. military to do so. She told them she was thirty. She was thirty-nine. She had been working as a typist; the Navy needed clerical workers and she had the skills. She was rated Landsman Yeoman Female on entry.
She served twelve days. On November 11, 1918, the Armistice was signed and the war she had enlisted to serve in ended. She was placed on inactive duty the following July and formally discharged December 10, 1920 — as Yeoman 2nd Class, a promotion from her entry rate. Her military service was real, documented, and brief: a twelve-day window onto one of the most significant weeks of the twentieth century.
When Margaret McKenny died of pulmonary consumption on May 24, 1884, her sister Mary F. MacKinney stepped in to raise Margaret's two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary Agnes. The sibling relationship is now confirmed by Mary F. MacKinney's 1935 death certificate, which names her parents as George Mac Kinney (Ireland) and Ann Lynch (Ireland) — the same parents documented in the McKenny family records. For the next forty-seven years, Mary F. MacKinney lived in Brooklyn, keeping the girls' household together after 1888 and carrying forward whatever family memory survived. She died April 5, 1935, at 340 Maple Street, Brooklyn, of chronic myocarditis — still single, survived by "several nieces." She was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, the same cemetery where her mother Ann Lynch McKenna had been buried in 1888, and where Elizabeth Corbett would be buried in 1950. The same undertaker handled both funerals.
In 1923 and 1924, when Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson was dying and leaving three young children behind — Helen, Joseph, and Lillian — Elizabeth stepped in. She was present for the photograph taken at 12 Elm Road, North Caldwell, New Jersey, in the spring of 1923. The VA Master Index Card records her address as 12 Elm Road even decades after Mary Agnes's death. She helped raise the Robertson children, exactly as she had been raised by an aunt after her own mother died. The pattern repeated across two generations, held together by women who stayed.
John Corbett died in 1949, leaving Elizabeth a widow. By February 1950 she was living at 903 New York Avenue, Brooklyn — back in the borough where she had been born seventy years before. She died there on February 24, 1950, of coronary sclerosis, and was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery two days later.
Her niece Lillian Robertson O'Brien — the little girl Elizabeth had helped raise at 12 Elm Road after Mary Agnes died — traveled from Caldwell, New Jersey to identify her aunt's body. She got the birthday wrong. She got the mother's name wrong. But she knew who her aunt was, and she came. And she paid for the perpetual care of the family plot at Holy Cross in the years that followed, along with her sister Lillian Marie O'Brien Ambrosio. The cemetery receipts — 1951, 1952, 1953 — are the last record in the chain.
- The 1930 and 1940 censuses — where was Elizabeth living after the marriage to Corbett?
- John Corbett's full background: Charlestown, Massachusetts — immigration, parentage, occupation, year of death
- The full name of Elizabeth's mother — McKenny in the Social Security record, McKernry in other spellings — is confirmed as Margaret McKenny; her relationship to Mary F. MacKinney is now confirmed as sisters, daughters of George MacKinney (Ireland) and Ann Lynch (Ireland)
- The origins of the name Lillian — whether it honored a family member, and whether it predates or postdates her mother's death in 1884
Elizabeth Kenny Corbett was the great-great-aunt of the researcher. Her sister, Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson (1883–1924), was the researcher's great-grandmother. The death certificate informant — Lillian J. O'Brien, née Robertson, who traveled to Brooklyn to identify her aunt's body — was the researcher's grandmother. The researcher's mother, Barbara O'Brien Hamall (1935–2022), was fourteen years old in February 1950 and remembered her mother making that trip. It was Barbara who, decades later, kept the cemetery receipts and told the stories that made this case study possible.
Are you a descendant of the Kenny, Robertson, or MacKinney families of Brooklyn? Do you have photographs, documents, or family stories connected to Elizabeth, Mary Agnes, Joseph J. Robertson, or Lillian Robertson O'Brien? The researcher welcomes contact from family members who may hold pieces of this story. Reach out through the contact page at storylinegenealogy.com.
This summary presents the case study findings and the identity chain in overview. The full methodology page documents all twelve record sets with complete primary source citations in Evidence Explained format, the birth date reconciliation analysis, the age-understatement pattern across Navy and marriage records, the informant error analysis, and the cemetery care receipts as closing evidence.
Read the Full Methodology →