Editor’s Note: As with most of the other families, a Canavan ancestor looms large for the Lynch Families and their offshoots. To begin at the beginning, in the tree above, we see our progenitor Anthony Canavan, Sr. He was one of the nine children of Anthony Canavan and Catherine Kirby. In that tree we also see Anthony Canavan, Sr. and his wife Ann Hughes had 12 children surviving into adulthood, one of whom was Margaret Elizabeth Canavan (the lady in blue, as it were).
Margaret Elizabeth Canavan was born December 18, 1862, in Sumner Township, Illinois. She died in March 1938 at the age of 75 and is buried in nearby Manteno. At the age of 36, Margaret married John Dominic Casey on Wednesday, January 11, 1899, in Holy Name Cathedral Catholic Church in Chicago. He was 34 at the time and the son of Thomas Patrick Casey and Catherine Bern. This John Dominic Casey was born August 4, 1864 and reached 50 years of age when he died in 1915.
John and Margaret Canavan Casey had two children. Mary Catherine Casey, known as Catherine, was born May 22, 1900, in Chicago. Mary Catherine died on August 9, 1982, at the age of 82. Her namesake brother John Dominic Casey was born in Chicago on February 15, 1907 and died on April 16, 1989, at the age of 82.
Mary Catherine Casey and Patrick Columbus Lynch had three children: Francis Lynch, known as Frank, John Gibbons Lynch, known as Jack, and Patricia Lynch, known as Patsy.
Francis Lynch was born in Oak Park, Illinois March 13, 1921. He died on May 11, 2000, at the age of 79.
John Gibbons Lynch was born in Oak Park, Illinois August 12, 1922. He died in Cary, Illinois November 10, 2009, at the age of 87.
Patricia Lynch Heffron was born July 13, 1926. At the age of 21, Patricia married Walter Steven Heffron I on August 30, 1947, when he was 24 years old. Walter Heffron I was born in Illinois, on May 5, 1923. Patricia died on December 6, 2006, at the age of 80.