Unique Surnames Provide Unique Opportunities

Unique surnames can lead a researcher along many unexpected and uncharted courses. I stumbled upon a family called Tregoning in New York City. These pre-Famine Irish immigrants provided many challenging opportunities to sharpen my research skills.

I had never seen the name Tregoning before and wasn’t sure how to pronounce it. Based on the inordinate number of spellings and misspellings it must have been quite an earful as well.

1838 baptism Tergonin

1850 census Tragining

1855 census Treganan and Tragoning

1856 burial Teegoing

1856 burial Tragonin

1860 census Tearney

1870 census Tryoning and Fragannon

1875 death Fegonning and Fiegonnery in separate indexes

1880 census Tregonning

1881 birth Tregunning

1890 will Treguning

1890 census Sregoning

1900 census Legoning

1910 census Gregoning and Treganing

1920 census Teryornny

1867 marriage Tagonning

1881 death, 1915 marriage and 1915 death Fregoning

Richard Tregoning (1871-1931) married into a collateral branch of my family in 1891. I wanted to provide him with a fuller entry so I searched a bit for his parents, Thomas and Mary Tregoning. I was able to find them in the 1880 US Census living with Richard’s paternal grandmother. As I filled in the names and dates on my tree, I discovered that the elder children including Richard were the children of Thomas Tregoning and Mary Devine. The youngest child was the child of Thomas Tregoning and Mary Morgan. The 1880 Census also showed that the older childrens’ mother was born in New York while the youngest child’s mother was born in Illinois. 

It took several attempts to find them in earlier censuses. Each census revealed a new way to spell the surname. As the children aged and moved into their own homes, independent spellings were listed within the same census year.

Thomas was born in New York, to Irish immigrants in 1840. This was 5 years before the start of the Irish Potato Famine.  In the second 1870 enumeration of New York City, the Tryoning family of Thomas, Mary and Stephen were found at 517 West 39th Street. Nearby at 510 West 40th Street Bridget Fragannon and her son Richard were found. 

In 1860 Bridget, Thomas and Richard Tearney lived with Thos. and John Cleary.

In 1855 a state census enumerates John and Bridget Treganan with their sons John, Thomas and Richard Tragoning. Amazingly even within the same household the names of the parents and their sons differed. The relationships are specified in this census. The parents and eldest son were born in Ireland. They had lived in the city for 15 years. Both Johns had naturalized. 

In 1850 John, Bridget, John, Thomas and Richard Tragining were enumerated. The adults and the eldest child were all Irish born. 

Based on the census records it appeared that Bridget was widowed before 1860. In 1865 she opened an Emigrant’s Savings Bank Account for her son, Thomas. She was the widow of John and resided at 325 West 38th Street. She arrived in the US in 1840 aboard the Mayflower(sic). She was born in County Tipperary in 1815. She had 2 boys and was born a Cleary. This would indicate that the Cleary boys in the 1860 Census were likely relatives of hers.

Checking RootsIreland.ie Irish church records for Tregoning found scant results. In 1838 Patrick Tergonin was born to John and Bridget Tergonin in Toomevara, Tipperary.