General Notes

This father to these children below, could have been James May, according to notes from Clare Julia Mchale
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notes from Terrance may
I trace my lineage through the MAY family line to TIMOTHY FRANKLIN MAY I and ELLEN BRIERLY, both natives of Ireland, and their son TIMOTHY FRANKLIN MAY II (1826-1912) who married ELLEN MAHONEY.  My Great-Grandfather JOHN EDWARD MAY (1878-1956) was the last of about a dozen children born to Timothy and Ellen who were married in 1853.

You may be saying, "Who is Ellen BRIERLY.  He means Ellen TOBIN, doesn't he?"  Ellen TOBIN who was born to Thomas TOBIN and Jane CLIFFORD.

Indeed, the Church's computerized database of ancestral files do show that T.F. May I was married to Ellen Tobin.  The person who submitted that information many years ago is Frankie Miller - a distant relative whom I met in Utah about 10 years ago.  She said she was given that information by my late Great-Grandmother.  On the death certificate for T.F. MAY I verified that TOBIN was indeed the name reported as the his mother's maiden name.  The source for this information was my Great-Grandfather John May.

However, while reviewing the microfilm records of St. Joseph's (Douro, Peterborough, Ontario) Church, I stumbled across the entry for the marriage of TF May II and Ellen Mahoney.  It is dated January 16, 1853. In this official book, the priest wrote by hand that the marriage was witnessed by Timothy's parents whose names were TF May and Ellen Brierly.  Not Tobin -- as my late Great-Grandfather had believed and reported on his father's death certificate in 1912 -- but Brierly.

So, you see, TIMOTHY FRANKLIN MAY I's wife was ELLEN BRIERLY and not ELLEN TOBIN (the daughter of Jane Clifford and Thomas Tobin).  This mistake has never been corrected in the Church's official records.

There is a TOBIN in my lineage nevertheless.  TIMOTHY F. MAY II's wife ELLEN MAHONEY was the product of a MAHONEY/TOBIN union.  JOHN MAY was right about there being a TOBIN in his ancestry, but it was on his mother's (and not his father's) side of the family.

Having cleared that up and, hopefully, not having confused you with all this detail, are we still related?  There probably isn't a direct connection through JANE CLIFFORD and THOMAS TOBIN, as the Church records state, but the MAHONEYS and TOBINS did inter-marry.  The Robinson party, which came from Ireland in 1825, settling in Douro, arrived on 6 ships. They formed a small, tightly-knit community that included Mahoneys and Tobins.

The MAY surname doesn't appear on any of the ship's passenger lists. I don't believe they were part of that original pioneering migration. However, I looked up microfilmed records of land ownership for Ontario at the Family History Library and found that TIMOTHY MAY I was first granted land in Douro by the Crown some 15 years later in 1840.

Frankie Miller said she originally believed the MAYs were from County Cork but had later determined that they came from County Sligo in northwestern Ireland instead.  I believe she came across information suggesting that the May family had its roots there.  Cork, of course, was the city from which ships departed Ireland for the United States.

Unfortunately, because I moved around so much over the past decade, I don't have all of my written records any more.  I really need to go back to Salt Lake City and attempt to recreate everything.  I had hoped that Frankie Miller, through her son Randy Lazenby or daughter Jacki would provide me with print outs or computer files, but they didn't get around to it and we've lost touch, I'm sorry to say.  All I have to go on are some handwritten notes and my memory.

Frankie Miller, who is now about 75 years, was last living in Murray, Utah.  She is a granddaughter of Timothy Franklin May III.  I had to do a little digging to find her and her daughter Jackie, but the Church found them for me.

There is a famous MAY among us; he is LUKE S. MAY, who was a pioneering scientific criminologist in Seattle, Washington where he died in 1965. Here are two places on the Web where you can read about him (he is my Grandfather EARL E. MAY's 1st cousin):  < http://www.historylink.org/_output.cfm?file_id=4241 > and < http://journalsip.astm.org/jofs/PAGES/1684.htm >.

There was another source I used to confirm that TIMOTHY F. MAY I's wife was ELLEN BRIERLY not TOBIN: the 1851 Canadian Census on microfilm at the Family History Library

Terrence
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