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The McCanns of Lissan

Daniel Hanlon’s wife, Mary Ann McCann, came from the north of Ireland, from Lissan, a parish in the Archdiocese of Armagh that straddles counties Londonderry and Tyrone. Its name comes from the Irish Lios Áine, “Áine’s fort,” and its post town was Cookstown. It was an Ulster parish of the Plantation era, and its great house, Lissan House, was bought by the Staples family about 1628 and stayed in that family until 2006. Its Catholic church, St Michael’s, was not built until 1908, and where the parish’s Catholics worshipped before then is not known.

Her parents, Charles McCann and Mary Quinn, married at Lissan on 26 November 1861. The register enters them as “Charles McCann & Mary Quin,” with Michael Heany and John O’Kane, a faint reading, as witnesses, and a place written in the margin that reads as Letteran. Letteran is a townland of Lissan, and the family was living there in 1871. Their known children were Mary Ann, Sarah, Patrick and Charles.

Baptized fourteen months after the wedding, Mary Ann was probably the first child. The register reads “Mary Anne of Charles McCann & Mary Quinn,” with Eugene Branan(?) and Mary McCann as sponsors. Her memorial gives the same day for her birth, at Caneese in Lissan parish. Sarah’s baptism falls in September 1865 (one copy of the index says August). Patrick was baptized on 6 July 1871, with John [?] and Rose Malone as sponsors. His mother registered his birth on 21 August as Mary McCann, formerly Quinn, of Letteran, and gave the date as 3 August, a month after the baptism. A child is not baptized before he is born, so Patrick was born on or before 6 July. The two entries are probably the same child. Charles was born on 8 November 1873, registered at Magherafelt.

In 1911 the family was at Caneese, a townland in the Lissan Upper district and the Magherafelt Union. The household was headed by Charles McCann, 46, a single farmer, with his widowed mother, Mary, 79, who could read but not write and spoke only English, and a Patrick McCann, 10, entered as a relative. Mary’s age fits Mary Quinn, born about 1832. The farmer of 1911 cannot be the Charles born in 1873, so either the family had two sons named Charles or one of the ages is far off. A Charles McCann whose death was registered at Magherafelt in July to September 1908, born about 1821, is possibly Mary Ann’s father. Nothing is known of the generation before Charles McCann and Mary Quinn.

Mary Ann’s brother Charles followed her to Philadelphia, and possibly her brother Patrick too. Charles McCann, 26, born in August 1874 in Ireland, lived with the Hanlons in 1900, which fits the Charles born in 1873. In January 1920 a Patrick McCann, 47, born in Ireland and widowed, who had come over in 1908 and filed his papers, boarded with Daniel and Mary Hanlon and worked as a still tender at an oil company. He was probably the Patrick McCann, a dairyman at Friends Hospital, Frankford, who declared his intention to become a citizen on 16 December 1915. That man gave his birth as 11 July 1873 at “Canice,” near Cookstown, which fits Caneese, and said he had sailed from Londonderry on the California and landed at New York on or about 22 April 1908. The California reached New York on 20 April 1908. Her list carries a Patrick McCann, 30, single, last living at Cookstown and bound for Philadelphia. His nearest relative at home was his mother, Mary McCann of Cookstown (a doubtful reading). He had paid his own passage, had never been in America before and was going to his sister, Mrs [J.] [Loughran], at 1828 [Jackson] Street, Philadelphia. The passenger was probably the declarant, and the readings of the list’s right-hand page (his passage, his earlier visits and his sister) are probably right. “Single” in 1908 and “widowed” in 1920 fit a marriage after he arrived. His mother at Cookstown fits Mary McCann, the widow of Caneese, but the census does not say the boarder was Mary Ann’s brother, so that remains possible.