The Owen Hamall Mystery
The Brother Who Existed Once
The research began in September 2018 with two marriage records. Owen Hamall married Catherine “Kate” Griffith at Holy Name Cathedral, Chicago, on 13 August 1879. Their son Thomas Henry Hamall married Emma Gilbert in Chicago on 31 January 1904. Thomas Henry is the first of the Three Thomas Hamalls, and working back from him led straight to the 1880 census.
Hammil, Thornton · 24 · Canada · Brother
1880 U.S. Census, Chicago, Cook County, ED 194, p. 28, dwelling 211, family 273.
Owen’s surname sits in the surname column. “Thornton” sits where a given name belongs. Searched under every spelling of Hamall, Hamill, Hammil and Hammel, the man never appeared again: no birth, no marriage, no death, no city directory, no later census.
The household itself hid as much as it showed. The 1890 census was lost to fire. In 1900 the widowed Kate told the enumerator she had borne six children and had two living. Four children had been born and buried between enumerations, and no census had ever recorded them.
The cemetery found the children first. On Mother’s Day weekend 2019, interment cards at Calvary Cemetery showed four of Owen and Kate’s children buried in one plot between July 1892 and May 1893. The brother would take five more years.
The Sponsors’ Column
Reading every name in each of Owen’s children’s baptisms, not only the child’s and the parents’, reached William Hamall, born 16 January 1883 and baptized at Holy Name Cathedral on 25 March 1883. His sponsor was William Thornton. That same year Owen Hamall stood godfather to William Thornton’s daughter, Mary Margaret. Two men naming each other in the same year is the pattern of brothers.
| Name | Occupation | Born |
|---|---|---|
| Pat Thornton | Labourer | Ireland |
| M. Thornton | Ireland | |
| O. Hamel | Apprentice | Ireland |
| M. Hamel | Ireland | |
| M. Hamel | Montreal | |
| W. Thornton | Montreal |
The online index reads Owen’s line in the 1861 census as “C. Hamel.” Viewing the image shows “O. Hamel.” The household was found by reading the page, not the index.
One Mother, Two Families
Mary McMahon married Henry Hamall in Donaghmoyne parish, County Monaghan, in 1841. The family reached Montreal by 1851. Henry died there in 1854, and in 1855 Mary married Patrick Thornton. William Thornton was born about 1856 and grew up in one household with his Hamall half-brothers and half-sister. When Mary was buried at Notre-Dame in September 1874 the register still called her “widow of the late Henry Hammel.”
Both sons settled in Chicago. Both lost children between the censuses. Owen, a molder, was blind and on the Chicago Tribune’s list of destitute families in 1897 and died of meningitis on 4 February 1898. William, a laborer, died in September 1900 at Metropolis, Illinois. Both lie in Calvary Cemetery.
In the spring of 1893 Owen and Kate buried three children in a month. All four of their lost children lie in the Calvary plot Kate’s mother, Elizabeth Griffith, bought in 1870. Owen joined them in 1898 and Kate in 1919, after twenty-one years a widow.
Two descendants of Owen’s sister Mary Ann Hamill Byron, on separate lines, share DNA with Owen’s descendants, as the documented tree predicts.
The document-by-document account behind this case study, including the order the records were found, the conflicts in the record and how each was weighed, the searches that came back empty, and where DNA fits, is set out in the full methodology. Every record is reproduced and cited in the three-part document gallery.
Full Methodology Document Gallery Evidence Trail Timeline