Long-lost Haase cousins - the Mooneys

So in my last post, I talked about a wedding announcement for George W. Mooney, whose cousin Gustav Haase (my great great grandfather) was his best man.

What I didn't mention was that this was the first time I had ever heard of the Mooneys. Between myself and Milton H., one of my living Haase relatives, who has done some pretty extensive Haase research on his own, we had the family of Charles and Barbara Reinhardt Haase pretty thoroughly covered. But neither of us had the Mooneys on our trees.

As I said in my last post, the guest list is a veritable who's who of Haases, so I made the assumption that George was Gustav's cousin on his paternal Haase side, and not his maternal Meinberg side. If they were actual first cousins (and don't be fooled, sometimes cousin can mean second cousin or even just be a loose term for relative - I refer to Milt H. and another relative, April E., who has done extensive research on my Raynor branch, as my cousins, although it is many times removed) - then George's mother had to be the sister of Gustav's father. Charles and Barbara Haase had six children, and all of them and their spouses were accounted for except for one - the oldest Haase, Louisa.

Louisa was born about 1861, which made her the right age to be George's mother. And a search of the New York City wedding database on www.italiangen.org revealed that a Louise Haas did in fact marry an Edwin Mooney in 1881. (George's parents are listed in the wedding announcement as Mr. and Mrs. E.L. Mooney). I thought that was pretty cool.

And just because I thought the wedding announcement was fairly interesting unto itself, I emailed it to Cousin Milt, who I correspond with regularly if not frequently. I included an explanation of who everyone was or who I thought everyone was.

I'm so glad I sent it, because I heard back immediately from him that though he didn't have the Mooneys on our family tree, he knew the name well, because not only does it turn out that the plot at Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn where Charles and Barbara Haase are buried was bought by the Mooneys (which I didn't know, but he did, and always wondered what the connection was between the Haases and Mooneys), but he had actually met George Mooney and his wife, Lilly...and never knew they were related.

Amazing. See, you learn new things every day, even when you're in your 70s like Cousin Milt. The searches and discoveries never end.

The other lesson to be learned is - share the information you have! You never know who you'll be helping or who will then be able to help you!!