Some records for James and Thomas Cunningham of Ballygowan Townland, Kilkeel, County Down, Ireland
Anna Cunningham was born 3 Oct 1845, possibly in Ballymadeerfy Townland, County Down, Ireland, the daughter of James Cunningham and Catherine Devine. The exact date of her birth comes from her granddaughter Nan (Gallagher) Fleming's research.
There are enough railroad tracks on the southeast side of Cleveland that the train from New York could have dropped the Rodgers off at their doorstep, but they probably had to find their way to their new address on their own. Fittingly, in the 1874 Cleveland City Directory there is a listing for an Edward Rogers living on the south side of Railroad, near Walnut, in Newburgh.
As mentioned earlier, the Rodgers descendants believed that Ned fled Ireland for England and then went back to get his wife ...
While working on the article, I noticed that Mary's cousin Bertha Raimer married a Cunningham. That got my attention, since my great grandmother's maiden name was Cunningham, and they lived in the same part of Cleveland as the Raimers. As it turned out, Bertha's daughter married one of my second cousins. But let's begin at the beginning.
Michael Rourke and Alice Cunningham of Killowen, County Down, Ireland, had at least seven children. Three of their daughters emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio. Let's discuss them first, since we have referred to them earlier in this series of articles.
My cousin and I have a great-grandmother named Anna Cunningham so I wrote to two different Cunningham contacts about the DNA matches. The odd thing is that their DNA matched ours but didn't match each other ...