Keating Ancestry

  More about Felicite   Thanks for all of the feedback and interest in our great, great, great  “grand mere” Felicite Constant! I decided I needed to do a bit more research to understand her life. My dad gave me yet another very informative book by historian Carl J. Ekberg.  This one is titled “Francois Valle and His World”. Valle was a wealthy man who lived in the same general area (Upper Louisiana/Illinois Country) in roughly the same time period (1780-90s) when the area West of the Mississippi was under control of the Spanish Crown.  I’ve used Ekberg’s description of Valle and his life to extrapolate information about Felicite and her family. As we know, Felicite was born in 1783 in Carondolet, Missouri, a small agricultural town just south of St. Louis. Felicite was a French Creole, which means a French-speaking person born in the French colonial territories outside of France.  Technically the area Felicite lived in was under Spanish control at the time...

  This is my (our) great, great, great grandmother, Felicite Constant Motier, who was born in 1783 in the Louisiana Territory and died in 1873 in Davenport, Iowa.   This is a photo taken of her in 1871 when she was almost 90 and gave an interview about her early life as a settler in the Louisiana Territory.  At the time of the photo, she was living in Davenport with her son, Joseph and his wife Mary, as well as several of their children, including my dad’s grandmother, Eleanor Motier Keating (who was 2 years old in 1871).   Here is the text that goes with the photograph:  “An economic depression in the East had caused heavy immigration into the former territor of Haute-Louisiane (Missouri), newly acquired from France. The new settlements had pushed farther and farther into the ancestral bunting grounds of the Indians, thus provoking their uprisings and retaliatory raids. At Portage des Sioux, the Indians told the French men and women that their lives w...

  As you know, I'm a bit fixated on the brother/sister marry brother/sister situation that occurred in our family.  Our grandparents, Eleanor "Lillie" Motier and Edward M. Keating, married and their siblings George Basil Motier and Mary A. Keating also married.  This just raises all kinds of questions for me, most of which cannot be answered, but I did some digging to find out a few things.  First, did the Motiers and the Keatings know each other in Davenport?   I have no idea.  Both families lived in Davenport and I think they went to the same church, but did they know each other?  Can't say.  Probably. Why did the two families move to Chicago?   I think we can now say that Edward M. moved to Chicago for job prospects, particularly working in the Columbian Exposition.  Did George Motier also work in the Exposition?  No idea. His father, Joseph, had a brick business, but did that end when Joseph died (in 1880) or did older brothers ...

  Here's a gem from the archives, a photo taken at a Christmas Eve party hosted by Grandma and Grandpa Keating (Eleanor Motier and Edward M. Keating) in their home in Chicago.  As my dad recalls, they hosted a fairly lavish party on Christmas Eve for their children and grandchildren.   This picture is undated, but from the ages of the children, I've decided it is 1936.  I have also determined the people in the photo with high accuracy.  The front row contains Uncle Tommy, Uncle Jerry, Little Laurence (Geoff's son).  Middle row contains Uncle Johnny, Mary (Geoff's daughter) and my Dad is peaking out from behind Mary.  The back row contains Joannie (Geoff's oldest daughter) and I think Santa is John, but I'm guessing at that one. This is 1936, the heart of the Depression, but the house looks pretty fancy.  My Dad recalls that Grandma Keating always bought an Austrian pine, so that is a real tree decked out with tinsel. The kids all seem to have...

    With my Dad's 92nd birthday approaching (Dec. 14) I thought I'd write a blog entry about his namesake and our family patriarch, Edward Michael Keating.  I've been able to piece together a story of his life from papers and recollections from my Dad, photos from Petra and a great genealogist named Tammy Eledge who can search a database in most amazing ways.  Here is her contact information: Genealogist Edward Michael Keating was born on July 25, 1864 in Davenport, Iowa.  He was the first child of two Irish immigrants, Michael Keating (DOB 1834) and Bridget Creagh (DOB 1838), both of whom had immigrated from Kilrush, County Clare, Ireland sometime in the early 1860s.  We have little factual information about Keating and Creagh. I assume they knew each other from County Clare and traveled together to Iowa, maybe through Canada, but that is all speculation. We do know that they married in Davenport, Iowa in November 1863.   We have no information ...

With Veteran's Day upon us, I thought I would give a quick overview of Grandpa Keating's service in World War I.  This overview is based on Grandpa's documents, postcards and photos as well as my dad's recollections of Grandpa's service. I am saving all of the documents in a binder preserved in archival sleeves, but I'm  happy to show anyone who is interested! Louis Joseph Keating joined the Illinois National Guard on April 19, 1913 for a three year enlistment.  He had just turned 17 in February of that year and is described on the forms as being a printer with brown eyes and dark hair with a medium complexion standing a little over 5'6" in height. Most likely, Grandpa had not graduated high school, but started some kind of training/apprenticeship in the printing field around age 16. (According to a study, just 9% of US youths had high school diplomas in 1910, by 1940 that number was up to 50%.  See citation: high school graduation rates ) National Guar...