Let’s look at the family tree of the earliest Anthony Canavan we know anything about.  The progenitor Anthony Canavan at the top of this family tree was born in 1790 in County Mayo, Ireland and had nine children with his wife Catherine Kirby.

Throughout, I’m going to be calling their red-tagged son Anthony Canavan, Senior.  Typically, he would be a Junior, having as he does the same name as his father, but there are several practical reasons in my mind to give him this senior suffix.  He is the first Anthony Canavan to come to America.  Also, we know a lot about him and next to nothing about his father.  Finally, if you keep score on this kind of thing, with 13 children compared to his father’s mere nine, he was clearly senior to his father in the fertility department.

Note on the left the list of three of our progenitor’s nine children with other family names underneath each of them. The red tag is that of their son Anthony Canavan, Sr. His sister Honora Canavan has the blue tag, and his sister Ellen Canavan has the green one.

Of the family names listed under Anthony, Sr., Honora and Ellen Canavan, note five family names are in bold type: the Hart, Duhn, McNulty, Bowe and Lecour family names.  That’s because these families all have a double Canavan connection.  That is to say they are related both to children of Anthony Canavan and Catherine Kirby, and to children of Anthony Canavan, Sr. and his wife Ann Hughes.