Michael Martin and Margaret Cartmell were the shadowy parents of Thomas Martin and thus my 4th-great-grandparents. I only know of their existence from a handful of records of their children which mention them. Chronological inference suggests they were born around the 1790s, and lived in Ireland. There is an outside chance that Michael immigrated there from France. Michael was almost certainly still alive in 1846.
It is not known if they ever immigrated to America.
They had two known children, although there could easily have been others, including who stayed in Ireland:
There is a remote chance that Michael had a different mother; see below.
There are five documents that name one or both of them, coming from the two children named above:
The discrepancy in their mother’s name on the last two will be considered next.
The children Thomas and Michael were found together in censuses in 1850ref and 1855ref, so, with their shared names, and marrying two sisters, and both hailing from Ireland, there is good independent reason to suspect that that they are brothers. Supporting this, they both report their fathers’ names as Michael. However, their death records give similar but different names for their mothers.
The name Cartwell on Thomas’s death record does not appear to be an existing surname (or at least extremely rare), despite its phonotactic plausibility. Corpmel, on Michael’s, is not close to a reasonable name. I speculatively triangulated these to the name Cartmell, which I believe plausibly accounts for both names.
American English used to generally make a clear distinction between the short or sound in words such as sort and horse and the long or in words such as port, hoarse, and more. This distinction is almost entirely lost today. The short or was sometimes so close to ar (as in car) that in some accents they merged, so that for and born would be pronounced nearly or exactly the same as far and barn, rather than as four and borne, as they would today. Thus, I consider it plausible that the first vowel of Cartmell could be heard as a short or in casual speech by the person recording the names on the death record.
A similar phonetic phenomenon, assimilation, could explain the p. It is common for a consonant to take on features of a following consonant in speech, such as labiality, as in in- plus possible becoming impossible.
Taken together, Cartmell could believably be heard as Corpmel.
Meanwhile, Cartwell could be an orthographic error for Cartmell, since the letters m and w might look alike in handwritten scrawl. It is, alternatively, conceivable that it, too, was misheard.
Thus, the name being Cartmell neatly accounts for both records. Note that there may be spelling variations such as Cartmill for this surname, which are probably not significant given that spelling used to be less fixed.
The discrepancy between Mary and Margaret isn’t so easy to explain. These are both common names, unlikely to be confused. Nevertheless, there are plausible ways that Mary on Michael’s death record could be an error. For example, the name Mary could have been miscopied from a handwritten note. The name was also provided presumably not by Michael himself but by a surviving relative, who could be mistaken. By contrast, Margaret on Thomas’s marriage record was recorded when he was still alive, and he can be assumed to know his own mother’s name.
The name on Thomas’s death record is also Margaret, which is if nothing else a 2–1 vote in its favor.
It is also possible that Michael and Thomas had different mothers, perhaps sisters who Michael (Sr.) married in turn. Another remote possibility is a double name such as Mary Margaret. However, these theories seem much less likely than a simple error as described above.
On many records, death and post-1880 census records here, informants are asked the birthplaces of the subject’s parents. Here are all such records I have found:
| Child | Record | Year | Father | Mother |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas | Census | 1880 | Ireland | Ireland |
| Thomas | Census | 1900 | Ireland | Ireland |
| Thomas | Death | 1901 | Ireland | Ireland |
| Michael | Census | 1880 | Ireland | Ireland |
| Michael | Censusref | 1900 | France | Ireland |
| Michael | Death | 1907 | France | Ireland |
Census records seem more likely in practice to be thoughtlessly filled out and thus less reliable. Also, it’s common for the parents’ birthplaces to be presumptively the same as the child’s when whoever reported to the census taker is not certain. Thus, the unusual mention of France on Michael’s later records should be given weight.
What does it mean? It may be that Michael Jr. learned later in life that his father was a French immigrant, or he always knew it and it was missed in the early census; but somehow Thomas never knew. It may be that the family knew the Martins were ultimately of French origin, and this was mistakenly assigned to Michael Sr. himself. It may be that a myth grew up about French origins of the family with no basis in fact.
My great-aunt told my mother that the Martins were originally French Huguenots, who presumably immigrated to Ireland long ago. However, much of her information proved wrong.
So, it is possible that Michael immigrated from France. It is slightly more likely the Martin family has roots in France, although perhaps distant.
Meanwhile, there seems no suggestion other than that Margaret was native to Ireland.