How the Younger Anthony Canavan became Anthony Canavan, Sr.
Editor’s Note: Anthony Canavan’s father was also named Anthony Canavan, so why is the younger man given the “Senior” suffix in this family history? Here Joe Hart traces his own descent from the progenitor Canavans, and I explain that the only contemporaneous obituary I could find, in The Kankakee Record around 1890, designated him “Sr.” — which, whatever the normal order of things, is how his family in Kankakee County evidently thought of him. Joe agrees that the label helps keep the two Anthonys straight.
Transcript
Speakers: WJB — William J. Bowe; JH — Joseph Hart. Transcribed from the recording; punctuation added and obvious mis-hearings corrected.
WJB: How are you descended from the progenitor Canavans, the Anthony Canavans?
JH: The first one married Catherine Kirby, and then the one that we think of, maybe because he’s a little bit closer, the one married to Ann Hughes. Right — the one on the big poster behind you there.
WJB: Yes, the fellow that’s looming large.
JH: And I think you, in one of our sessions, referred to him as Anthony Canavan Sr., even though his father was Anthony Canavan as well, because he appears with that title in some references, I think. Because he had a son —
WJB: The reason I elevated him, Joe, was because in a contemporaneous obituary — the only one I could find of any moment, in The Kankakee Record, so this is 1890-ish — they had his birth date, I think, at 1822, as I think my mother did. Everybody else had his birthday maybe about 1818, not 1822. But also, that obituary designated him senior, notwithstanding, of course, that his father, in the normal order of things, would’ve been the senior. So I guess in his family in Kankakee County, he was king. He was Mr. Big. He was the senior.
JH: Yeah. So that might help to clarify some references to him, if I call him Anthony Canavan Sr.
WJB: Yes. In fact, I think indeed, even though it’s a little disjunctive given his father’s similar name, I think it does help.
JH: Okay.
