PREFACE "A Search Begins ..."

Richard and Mary Tobin are my maternal great-great-grandparents. Little is known about them, where they come from in Ireland, and who their parents and siblings were. This blog is meant to document what I learn during my journey of getting to know them better. 

The difficulty I have had in researching the Tobin family has to do with the fact that my mother died when I was in my 20s, and her mother, Leona, died before I was born. Leona's dad died in 1942 and Leona's mother, Mabel [who married to William J. Tobin, firstborn child of Richard and Mary Tobin] died before I turned 2 years old.  Leona had one brother William Thomas Tobin and my mother was close with one of his daughters, Barbara "Bibs".  But I don't ever remember meeting this side of the family.  Ultimately, there was no one on my side of the family to tell the family stories.

So here's my story...

When my parents married, they lived in Helena, Montana for a few years while my father was in the Army National Guard.  This is where my brother, Kevin, and I were born. My dad was transferred to Alaska with the Guard and this is where my brother Kraig was born. After the Alaskan earthquake of 1964 of which I do have memories, we moved to Maryland where my father went to Officer Training School. After he graduated, we moved to Utah and stayed with my father's parents while he served in the Vietnam War. My sister Andrea was born after my dad returned home from war. I grew up most of my school years in Bountiful, Utah, with a second move to Anchorage, Alaska during my sophomore year of high school.  My mom was sick a lot and learned she was allergic to volcanic ash, so we moved back to Bountiful, Utah.

I remember in my pre-teen years, our family would get together with Benda Neuenswander's family quite often [Benda is my mom's sister]. The Neuenswanders lived in Provo, Utah at the time.  They now live in Centerville, Utah.

My family drove to Helena, Montana each summer and would spend time at our grandparents home at 20 South Raleigh, Helena, MT.  As I grew older and could travel on my own, Grandpa Ben and Grandma Mary welcomed me into their home each summer for about a month's time.  My Aunt Debbie is only 2 years older than me, and we were more like sisters, so she took me everywhere she went.

I remember sitting in Grandma's kitchen [circa 1977]  when three older women came in to visit. I slightly remember them saying their names and one of them having the last name of Tobin. As I write this now, I must have met Avis Ann "Sanny" Tobin, Betty Tobin, and Mary Lou Schmitz.  I remember having to introduce myself as the daughter of Jerry and Joan Butt to which they said I looked just like my Grandma Leona Tobin.  However, as a teenager, I wasn't much interested in sitting in on adult conversation.  I wish I would have paid better attention.

I also remember spending one family summer vacation when my mom took me to an apartment in Helena where we visited with an older woman by the name of "Aunt Margaret." When I tried to remember the date of this visit, all I could come up with was probably around 1980 or 1981.  This means I probably met Margaret "Mugs" Kolf Tobin.  I remember my mom telling me "Aunt Margaret" was in her late 80s at the time of our visit, which coincides with the fact that "Mugs" was still alive at this time. 
In early 2010, I came across a television series "Who Do You Think You Are" which shows people discovering their ancestry.  I became intrigued about the Tobin family, since I had been told most of my life this was a dead end for searching family history.  So "A Search began..." 

I interviewed my Grandpa Ben Evans who was living in an assisted living home.  He had dementia but he always greeted me by name.  He loved talking about the past and I asked many questions about the Tobins.  He said he was introduced to Leona through Bob Millegan, a high school classmate of Ben's.  Bob is also Leona's cousin through the John L. Tobin family line.  Leona lived in Great Falls and would visit family in Helena, staying with the Millegans.  Noteworthy:  Jeff and Marie Tobin purchased Robert Milligan's home in Helena and currently live there.

Grandpa Ben also said the Tobins spoke with an Irish brogue and they were "jokesters" and they loved to drink.  He mentioned it was also fun spending time with them.  Both Richard and Mary Tobin died before Ben married Leona, so he never met them.  Discussion shifted to WWII when Grandpa Ben started talking about serving in the Pacific while he was in the Navy.  Then his dementia would kick in and he would become confused and greet me again like I just walked in the room.  Though it wasn't much information, time spent with Grandpa Ben is priceless.

I then started asking questions of my Aunt Benda.  She copied and give me a 2-page story written by Avis Ann "Sanny" Tobin, granddaughter of Richard Tobin along with a few photographs.  She even gave me a recipe from Mabel Tobin.  Of note, I recently met with Benda again and she went through every document she had relating to the Tobins.  I scanned them and they are in digital format attached to this blog.

I have also learned a lot about searching history at the LDS Church Family History Library in Salt Lake City.  I started going to the library once a week with only a few photos in hand along with the 2-page family story Benda had given me.  I have search ships logs, census records, birth-marriage-death indexes, land deeds, numerous microfilms, books, etc.  Through this, I have discovered a personal love for history.

Let me back up a little and tell you in August 2009, while attending events associated with my Grandpa Ben's funeral in Helena, MT, my husband and I drove to Birdseye, Montana and located what we thought was the Tobin ranch house mentioned in this 2-page story.  We also went to Resurrection Cemetery and wandered around for about an hour trying to locate the Tobin headstones.  Of note, the cemetery office was closed for lunch, there was no one to ask questions of.  After about 45 minutes, my husband called me on my cell phone because he was too far away for me to hear him, exclaiming he had found a Tobin headstone.  To my delight, he had stumbled across Richard and Mary Tobin's family plot.  Their daughter Mary and son Joseph were buried in the family plot also.  I remember thinking at the time "they really did exist" for their cemetery plot was right in front of me.

I later learned the printing of this 2-page family story, written by Avis Ann "Sanny" Tobin, is included in the publication, Valleys of the Prickly Pear 1888-1988, published by The Little Red Schoolhouse, Inc., Helena, Montana, 1988 [see ADDITIONAL INFORMATION listed to the left of this blog, and specific information for each person on their individual pages]. I have taken the liberty to add additional text in the form of notes, additional research, and my own comments.

There were never any official Tobin family reunions.  Thus, I had no associations with Tobin cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. or the information available as to who these individuals were, whom they married, etc.  My only experience with the Tobins is what I have related above; that is until I received two comments on my blog.  These individuals opened up other avenues to learn family stories and local history. 

So to sum this up, I am hooked...I am going to find my Tobin ancestors arriving into the United States and track them back to Ireland finding their ancestry.  In the meantime, I am enjoying newly found relationships, and learning more as I go.  My hope is to track down all the family branches of Richard and Mary Tobin and include their information on this blog.

A special thank you to my husband, Richard Arthur Bliss, Jr.  He is the sole person on this planet Earth responsible for jump starting me on this wonderful family history journey.  Richard told me he would support me in whatever I wanted to do.  He found the first Tobin headstone in Helena, and the Tobin ranch house based on one sentence from the 2-page family story [later confirmed by others].  Richard made me promise to limit my time searching to one day a week, so this project wouldn't consume me.  But as we all know, passions take a lot of our well-spent time.  Thank you, my sweetheart, for your support, love, and understanding.  I adore you and look forward to continuing to share this adventure of searching the Tobin family history!

Thank you Benda Evans Neuenswander [my mother's sister] for informational documents and photos, spending a few hours with me passing on priceless information and relating deeply emotional-filled memories, and for calling me whenever you remember something that may be of help in my search.   Thank you to the descendents of the Richard D. Tobin Sr. family and the John L. Tobin family for assisting with photographs and documentation. This includes David Shawn Tobin who found this blog on the one year anniversary of his father's death [Richard Donald Tobin, Jr.], and to David's wife, Justine Eidt Tobin for the sourcing of the original information from the Valleys of the Prickley Pear, being the keeper of priceless family photos, sharing family stories not written down, introducing me to Jeff and Marie Tobin, and for continuous wonderful chatter across the Internet.  Thank you to Jeff L. Tobin and and his wife Marie Mack Tobin for showing me and my brother, Kevin Butt, the Tobin ranch house location, touring the Birdseye school, sharing family stories not written, introducing us to Patty Mazurek (granddaughter of Frank Tobin) and for documents and photos.  I look forward to further conversations.  Thank you Patty Tobin Mazurek for your patience, and for your family stories and photos of the Frank Tobin family branch.  I look forward to meeting you face-to-face and staring into another set of "Tobin eyes."

This blog also brought me a new friendship with Susan DeBree Moran, her husband Rick Moran, and her sister, Louise DeBree Galvin. Susan found me by typing in the word "Birdseye" into the Internet search engine and my blog came up so she started reading it and contacted me.  Susan's grandfather purchased land bordering the Tobin ranch and she grew up there in the 1940s and he also worked for the railroad as a telegrapher. Thank you Susan and Louise for your wonderful stories of life in Birdseye, Montana [see their information on the RESEARCH pages listed to the left of this entry].  Thank you to Rick Moran for detailing important railroad information and sourcing the railroad near the Tobin ranch originally was the Northern Pacific Railroad.

Thank you to my brother, Kevin L. Butt for traveling 1000 miles with me in the dead cold of winter [Jan. 2010] to drive from Utah to Montana for research, and for assisting me in my search efforts.  Thank you to Jerry B. Butt, my father, for keeping priceless photos of my mother and her ancestors and passing them down to me in 2009.  And thank you to my mom, Joan Karyl Evans Butt, who gave birth to me and left a wonderful legacy and a desire to know her Tobin ancestors, despite all odds of hitting roadblocks for too many years to count.  Mom, I will get this done!

TOBIN FAMILY CREST

Tobin is in Irish Tóibín, which is a Gaelicised version of the Norman "de St. Aubin", after the place of the same name in Brittany, so called from the dedication of its church to St. Albin. The family came to Ireland in the immediate aftermath of the Norman invasion, and by the early thirteenth century were well established in counties Kilkenny and Tipperary; their power in the latter county is attested by the (unofficial) title "Baron of Coursey" by which the head of the family was known in the middle ages. In the course of time, the surname also spread into the adjoining counties of Cork and Waterford, and this is the area in which it remains most common by far today.

Placenames including the surname reflect the geographical spread of the family, with Ballytobin and Castletobin in Kilkenny, Tobinsgarden in Tipperary, and Tobinstown in Carlow.
[see http://www.irishsurnames.com/]

[document courtesy of Benda Neuenswander]