How a Sponsor’s Name Solved a Census Entry
A record-by-record account of seven years of research across Chicago, Montreal and County Monaghan: the order the documents were found, why the standard searches failed, what each record states, the conflicts between them and how each was weighed, and what remains open.
The Research Question
Who was the man enumerated as “Hammil, Thornton,” age 24, born Canada, relationship “brother,” in Owen Hamall’s Chicago household in June 1880, and what was his relationship to Owen?
The research began in September 2018 with two marriage records. Owen Hamall, 31, and Catherine Griffith, 24, both of Chicago, were licensed on 13 August 1879 (Cook County no. 41765) and married the same day at Holy Name Cathedral by D. M. J. Dowling; Daniel Callahan and Mary Griffith witnessed. Their son Thomas Henry Hamall, 24, and Emma Gilbert, 21, were licensed on 30 January 1904 and married on 31 January 1904.
Thomas Henry is the first of the Three Thomas Hamalls. Working back from him led to the 1880 census, and to the entry that would hold the research for six years: Owen’s surname written in the surname column, “Thornton” written where a given name belongs, for a man who appears in no other record under that name.
How the Research Unfolded
Each stage answered something and opened something else. The children were found five years before the brother.
The Chicago foundation
Owen’s adult life was laid down from Chicago records: the 1879 marriage in both the church register and the county license, the 1880 census, and city directories from 1874, when he boarded at 19 Bremer Street as a single moulder, to 1897. His naturalization ran in two steps, a declaration of intention in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, on 10 August 1868 and final papers in the Cook County Criminal Court on 28 October 1872. Every search for a Thornton Hamall, under every spelling of the surname, came back empty.
Starting at the cemetery
On Mother’s Day weekend, interment cards at Calvary Cemetery, Evanston, showed four children of Owen and Kate in Lot 17, Block 14, Section D, buried between July 1892 and May 1893, in a plot Kate’s mother Elizabeth Griffith had bought on 27 May 1870. The cards gave death dates, ages and addresses; those led to the death certificates, birth registers and baptisms. They explained Kate’s 1900 census return of six children born and two living.
Widening the Chicago record
Voter registrations of 1888 and 1892; directories through 1898, when Kate is listed as the widow of Owen at 94 Sholto Street; the Chicago Tribune list of destitute families of 26 January 1897, which describes Owen as blind; and Owen’s death certificate of 4 February 1898. Like other Chicago certificates of the period, it names no parents and leaves his birthplace blank.
The sponsors’ column
A pass through the baptisms of Owen’s children, reading every name in each entry rather than only the child’s and parents’, reached William, born 16 January 1883 and baptized at Holy Name Cathedral on 25 March 1883. His sponsor was William Thornton. In the same year Owen Hamall stood sponsor to William Thornton’s daughter, Mary Margaret.
Reading back through Montreal
With a full name and a reason to look, the 1861 census of Canada East was searched for a Montreal household carrying both surnames, and one was found on a single page: Pat Thornton, M. Thornton, O. Hamel, two entries for M. Hamel, and W. Thornton. The online index renders Owen as “C. Hamel”; the image reads “O.” The marriage of Patrick Thornton and Mary McMahon, “widow of the late Henry Hamall,” followed in the same month.
Reconstruction and corroboration
William Thornton’s life was rebuilt from his Granby marriage of 1881, his children’s baptisms and deaths, the Thornton plot card at Calvary and the 1900 census. DNA from descendants of Owen’s sister Mary Ann was tested against the documented tree. Kate’s widowhood was followed through the 1900 and 1910 censuses and court records to her death at Chicago State Hospital on 9 November 1919. The Massac County Clerk’s reply on William Thornton’s death certificate arrived on 22 May 2025.
The Proof: Two Sons, One Mother
No single record says that Owen Hamall and William Thornton were half-brothers. The conclusion rests on a chain in which every link is stated in an original record, and in which the Montreal records and the Chicago records were made independently of one another.
Donaghmoyne, Co. Monaghan
1841
Notre-Dame, Montreal
10 April 1853
Notre-Dame, Montreal
1854
Montreal
1855
Montreal, St. Anne Ward
1861
Notre-Dame, Montreal
21 September 1874
Chicago
June 1880
Granby, Quebec
20 August 1881
Holy Name Cathedral
1883
In Irish Catholic practice a godparent took on a lifelong spiritual duty to the child, and families chose sponsors from their nearest circle. One man sponsoring a friend’s child is common; two men sponsoring each other’s children in the same year is the pattern of brothers. The baptisms did not prove the relationship by themselves. They supplied the full name that let the Montreal records prove it.
Why the standard searches could not succeed
The enumerator wrote William under the head of household’s surname, so the only name ever searched, a Hamill called Thornton, belonged to no one.
The two men had different fathers, different surnames and different countries of birth.
Their one shared document of childhood is a single Canadian census in which the Hamall children are written “Hamel” and Owen is indexed as “C.”
The person who connected them was their mother, recorded as McMahon, then Hamall, then Thornton, and at her burial as the widow of Henry Hammel.
Conclusions and their standing
Stated directly in an original record
Established by correlating independent records
Supported, not yet established
An open lead
| Conclusion | Standing |
|---|---|
| “Hammil, Thornton” of the 1880 census is William Thornton, Owen’s half-brother through Mary McMahon | Proven |
| Owen Hamall was the son of Henry Hamall and Mary McMahon | Proven |
| Mary McMahon, widow of Henry Hamall, married Patrick Thornton in Montreal in 1855 | Confirmed |
| Owen and Kate had six children, four of whom died in 1892 and 1893 | Confirmed |
| William and Mary Jane Thornton had three children, none living in 1900 | Confirmed |
| The Irish-born M. Hamel of the 1861 household is Owen’s brother Michael, baptized at Montreal in 1851 | Suggestive |
| The McMahon match cluster reflects Mary McMahon’s own family | Suggestive |
| Michael J. Hamall, bridgebuilder, boarding at 94 Sholto Street in 1897, is Owen’s brother Michael | Exploring |
| Henry Hamil of Edengilrew in the 1824 tithe is Henry Hamall’s father or uncle | Exploring |
Recovering the Children Between the Censuses
Seven children were born and died inside the twenty years between the 1880 and 1900 enumerations, with the 1890 census lost. None appears in any census. Each was recovered by starting at the cemetery and working outward to the civil and church records the interment card pointed to.
| Child | Born or baptized | Died | Where | Recovered from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catherine “Katie” Hamall | b. 28 Dec 1889; bp. 9 Jan 1890 | 28 Jul 1892; acute meningitis | 1009 W. 21st St. | Birth register, baptism, death certificate, Calvary card, Inter Ocean death notice |
| Eugene Owen Hamall | bp. 9 Jun 1892 | March 1893, 10 months; membranous laryngitis | 302 S. Desplaines St. | Baptism, death certificate, Calvary card |
| Elizabeth “Lizzie” Hamall | bp. 1887; no civil birth record | 30 Mar 1893, age 6; diphtheria | 302 S. Desplaines St. | Baptism, death certificate, Calvary card |
| William Hamall | b. 16 Jan 1883, 634 W. 14th St.; bp. 25 Mar 1883 | 29 Apr 1893, age 10; pneumonia | 302 S. Desplaines St. | Birth register, baptism, death certificate, Calvary card |
| Mary Margaret Thornton | bp. 1883 | 31 Jul 1886, 3 y 2 m 4 d | Chicago | Baptism, death certificate, Thornton plot card |
| Eugene Michael Thornton | bp. 5 Apr 1885, Holy Name | 19 Aug 1886; cholera infantum | Chicago | Baptism, death certificate, index, Thornton plot card |
| Third Thornton child | not identified | before June 1900 | 1900 census only: “3 children, 0 living” |
Eugene Owen’s interment card is headed “Owen Hamil,” age 10 months. Read without the death certificate beside it, the card could pass for Owen’s own burial five years early. Eugene and Lizzie were buried together on 31 March 1893.
How the Records Were Weighed
Every record answers a question for somebody. What it can be trusted for depends on who supplied each line, and how long after the event.
No record in this case was accepted or set aside by type alone. Each was read for who gave the information, whether that person was in a position to know it, and how close to the event it was written down. The same certificate can be first-rate for one line and weak for the next.
| Record | Who supplied the information | Trusted for | Used with care for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Church registers baptisms, marriages, burials | The priest, from parents, sponsors and witnesses present, usually on the day | Date of the sacrament; parents; sponsors; birth dates stated against the baptism (Mary Ann “born the day before yesterday”) | Spellings taken down by ear in French or Latin; ages at burial, given by survivors |
| Civil birth registers | Physician or midwife, within days of the birth | Date and address of birth; parents | Surname spelling (“Hamniell”); coverage in 1880s Chicago is incomplete, and neither Thomas Henry nor Lizzie has a civil record |
| Death certificates | The physician for date, place and cause; a relative or an institution for everything else | Date, place and cause of death | Age, birthplace and parents, all secondhand. Chicago forms of the 1890s have no parent fields; Thomas Henry’s 1938 certificate, from a hospital record, puts Owen’s birth in Canada; Kate’s of 1919 gives an age three years short of her 1900 census |
| Cemetery interment cards | The cemetery clerk, from the undertaker or family at burial | Burial date; lot; last address | Death dates and ages, which can be copied or misheard: Eugene’s card gives 20 March and is headed with his father’s name; Katie’s repeats the certificate’s age |
| Censuses | Whoever answered the enumerator’s questions, not named | Who lived together; addresses; relationships as the household described them | Ages and birth months, which drift (Owen 18 in 1861, 51 at death; Thomas “January 1880” in 1900); names written under the head’s surname (“Hammil, Thornton”); index transcriptions (“C. Hamel”) |
| City directories | Canvassers, months before publication | A year-by-year address and occupation | Identity, which rests on a name alone; entries can run a year behind; no relationships |
| Newspapers | The family, for death notices; relief agencies, police or hospitals, for lists | Dates, addresses and family relationships in notices placed by the family | Names as reported (“Griffin” for Griffith); lists identify by name and street only, so a William Thornton with frozen hands in February 1900 is a lead until an address ties him to this family |
| Naturalization records | The applicant, under oath | Residence and dates of each step | Birthplace, given only as “British Dominions” |
| DNA | Living testers’ results, compared against documented trees | Testing a relationship the documents have already proposed | Naming a relationship on its own; single segments near 19 cM are corroboration, not proof |
Where records disagree, the one made closest to the event by the person best placed to know is preferred, and the disagreement is recorded rather than smoothed over. Two records that share an informant, or were copied one from the other, count as one witness. What people did, standing as sponsor or sharing a household, points the research toward a relationship; the relationship itself is proved by records that state it in words.
Conflicts in the Record and How They Were Weighed
Owen’s year of birth
The record saysAge 18 in the 1861 census; 31 on his marriage license in August 1879; 51 at death in February 1898.
WeighedThe census age points to about 1843; the license and death certificate to about 1847 or 1848. No baptism survives to decide it. Owen is given as born in the 1840s in Donaghmoyne parish, the year held open.
“Brother” or half-brother
The record saysThe 1880 census says brother. The Montreal records show different fathers.
WeighedBoth are true. A census records the household as the informant described it; nineteenth-century enumerations rarely distinguish half-siblings, and these two were raised under one roof.
Eugene Owen’s date of death
The record saysThe death certificate, signed 30 March 1893, gives a date of death at the end of March. The interment card gives died 3/20/93 and buried 3/31/93.
WeighedThe certificate, made at the death, is preferred. The card’s “20” is most likely a slip. Eugene died days before his sister Lizzie, not after.
Katie’s age at death
The record saysBirth register: born 28 December 1889. Inter Ocean death notice, 29 July 1892: aged 2 years and 7 months. Death certificate and interment card: 2 years, 3 months, 7 days at death on 28 July 1892.
WeighedThe birth register, made at the birth, the baptism of 9 January 1890 and the family’s own notice agree: two years and seven months. The certificate and card share one age, most likely from a single informant or copied one from the other, so they count as one witness, not two.
Thomas Henry’s father’s birthplace
The record saysThomas Henry’s death certificate of 1938 gives his father Owen’s birthplace as Canada. Every record of Owen’s own lifetime says Ireland.
WeighedThe 1938 informant was the hospital record, forty years after Owen’s death. Owen grew up in Montreal; the slip is understandable. Ireland stands.
Eugene Thornton’s date of death
The record saysDeath certificate and state index: 19 August 1886. Thornton plot card: 20 August 1886.
WeighedThe certificate, which records the hour of death, is preferred. The card’s date is most likely the day of burial.
Thomas Henry’s month of birth
The record says1900 census: born January 1880. 1938 death certificate: born 7 May 1880. Baptized 16 May 1880; age 1/12 in the census of June 1880.
WeighedThe baptism and the 1880 census, both made within weeks of the birth, fit May and not January. The 1900 month, given twenty years later, is set aside. Thomas Henry was born 7 May 1880.
Mary Ann’s year of birth
The record saysBaptism, Basilique Notre-Dame, 10 April 1853: “Mary,” born the day before yesterday. 1901 census of Canada: Mary Byron, born 17 March 1856, age 44.
WeighedThe register entry was made two days after the birth, by the priest, in the parents’ presence. The census figure was given forty-eight years later. She was born 8 April 1853.
The surname
Hamall, Hamill, Hammil, Hammill, Hammel, Hammell, Hamel and Hamniell all occur. Every form was searched separately. Identity was carried by matching parents, spouses, addresses and dates, never by spelling.
Where DNA Fits
The documents establish Owen’s parentage. DNA was used afterward to test it. Living testers are identified by initials only.
| Match | Shared | Documented descent |
|---|---|---|
| CR | 19 cM, 1 segment | Mary Ann Hamill Byron, through Mary C. Byron Barnes |
| DK | 19 cM, 1 segment | Mary Ann Hamill Byron, through a separate Byron line |
Mary Ann was Owen’s full sister: her baptism and her 1879 marriage to William F. Byron both name Henry Hamall and Mary McMahon. Two of her descendants on separate lines matching Owen’s descendants is what the documented tree predicts.
A single 19 cM segment is modest, and on its own could not establish a fourth-cousin relationship. Its weight here comes from fitting a tree already proven from records, and from appearing twice through two different lines.
Beyond the direct line, shared matches connect Owen’s descendants to four couples married in Donaghmoyne parish: Henry Hamall and Mary McMahon (1841), Owen Hammel and Ann King (1846), Charles McCanna and Susan Hamill (1857), and James Hamill and Anna Gartlan. The Gartlan matches come through the Irish Hamill line, not through Kate Griffith’s family. A separate group of McMahon matches, 14 to 35 cM, points toward Mary McMahon’s kin. The extended network and its triangulation are set out in the Donaghmoyne Network case study.
Searches That Found Nothing
A search that finds nothing is evidence only when its extent is stated.
| Sought | Where and how far | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Owen’s baptism | Donaghmoyne Catholic registers, 1845 to 1850 (searched 2022) | Not found |
| Owen’s parents and birthplace on his death certificate | Chicago Report of Death, 4 February 1898 | Not asked by the form; birthplace left blank |
| Lizzie Hamall’s civil birth record | Cook County Clerk, births 20 March 1886 to March 1888 | “No Record Found” |
| Thomas Henry Hamall’s civil birth record | Cook County birth records, 1880 | Not found; baptism of 16 May 1880 used |
| William Thornton’s death certificate | Massac County Clerk, Metropolis, Illinois, death of 10 September 1900 (reply of 22 May 2025) | “Not able to locate the record” |
| William Thornton’s death certificate | Cook County death records, 1900 | Not found |
| Hamall family’s arrival | Arrivals at Quebec, about 1849 to 1851 | Not found |
Still Open, and What Transfers
Open questions
Michael Hamall. Last seen in the 1861 household; a Michael J. Hamall, bridgebuilder, boards at 94 Sholto Street in 1897, the Hamall home. Thirty-six years separate the two records.
The third Thornton child. Counted in 1900, named nowhere, and not in the Thornton plot.
Metropolis. Why William Thornton, a Chicago laborer in June 1900, died of exposure more than three hundred miles south that September. The Chicago Tribune of 1 February 1900, listing victims of a cold snap, names a William Thornton of 667 North Roby Street, found at Taylor and Sherman streets with both hands and feet frozen and taken to the County Hospital. Whether he is Owen’s half-brother is not yet established; the address in the June 1900 census is the first test.
Owen’s blindness. When and how a working molder lost his sight before the 1897 list of destitute families.
The Donaghmoyne Hamills. Whether Henry Hamil of Edengilrew in the 1824 tithe is Henry’s father or uncle, and who the other Hamills of the 1861 valuation were. Only James Hamill of Dian (1827–1914) is identified.
Patrick Thornton. Living in 1881 per his son’s marriage; not yet traced after.
What transfers to other cases
Read every name in the entry. Sponsors, witnesses and informants are where relatives with other surnames hide.
Follow the mother. When a brother carries the wrong surname, trace the mother’s marriages before the father’s line.
Start at the cemetery. For urban families of the 1880s and 1890s, interment cards find the children the censuses never saw.
Trust the relationship column before the name. Enumerators wrote household members under the head’s surname.
Read the image, not the index. “C. Hamel” in the index is “O. Hamel” on the page.
Cross the border. The answer to a Chicago question was in Montreal.
Let DNA test, not decide. Modest matches carry weight when they confirm a tree built from records.
This methodology page accompanies the case study summary. The summary presents the findings; this page documents how each was established. Every record cited here is reproduced and transcribed in the three-part document gallery.
← Return to Case Study Gallery: Owen & Family Gallery: William Thornton Gallery: Ireland, Montreal & DNA Evidence Trail Timeline The Donaghmoyne Network