The Dixboro Ghost, Part 3: Are We Related?

Every child in the family who hears the Dixboro Ghost story asks the same question, knowing we have Mulholland ancestors from Washtenaw County: "Are we related?" It would be such a thrill to be able to claim to have your great-great something who was a ghost and then get to tell this creepy story to your young and impressionable friends.

The Dixboro Ghost
from The Detroit News, 1930

The Ann Arbor Mulhollands of Chapin Street who were my grandparents and great-aunties said the John and James Mulholland in the story were in the family but we are not direct descendants.

Only one document shows the relationship to the family story. In Probate Court records from 1846, Samuel Mulholland sr indicated he was the father of John, and that Sam jr and William were his sons and John's brothers. With James a documented brother of John, the "villain" of the story is also in our family.

Even for these nearer but now-dead aunties, the ghost tale was in the distant past. They did not know about the incident directly and didn't really have much better knowledge than we do now--in fact may have had even less. Most of their knowledge came not from their great-somethings (if others knew, they were too embarrassed to talk about the scandal), but from the 1881 History of Washtenaw County, since the family owned a copy. Research done by a local historian in the 1963 examining court records and newspapers from the time show even the story in the 1881 History, a mere 35 years after events, was already distorted. And the official testimony in the ghost inquest in 1846, a year after Martha's death, was contradictory.

All in the Family (sort of)

While part of the family, no children are known today who are the offspring of James and John Mulholland. The ghost herself, Martha Crawford Mulholland, had only one child from her marriage to John Mulholland, but their child died in 1840 just after his father. Probate records from 1846 state John "had no children living." Martha had a child from her first marriage, Joseph Crawford. He has descendants but they are not related to the Mulhollands. Unless they come forward, her antagonist, James Mulholland's four children are unknown to us after his wife Emily Loomis died and the family left Superior Township.

We are descended from Samuel Mulholland sr and his son, Samuel Mulholland jr, who were the father and brother of John and James in Dixboro. So the grandmas and aunties had it right that the Ghost story characters are not our ancestors but are firmly in the family tree.

The birthdates of 1802 for John and 1804 for James known from their naturalization documents and census records make them much older than the other known children of Sam sr. Even with large Irish families and big age spreads, a twenty-six year difference between youngest and oldest is uncommon. The eight-year gap between James and Sam jr. suggests there may be other unknown children, or perhaps Jane was a second marriage so that Sam sr. had a family by an earlier wife. Some additional Mulhollands appear in early Washtenaw County who may be related, but they typically appear in only a single document or are part of the Steele Mulholland family that landed in Ann Arbor about 1840, and who our elderly relatives insisted are not related to us. DNA evidence links us to individuals still in the area of Ireland that the Mulhollands came from, but there are no early records to show how we may be connected.

Thus some of the tree has open questions as records for the early Michigan territory are mostly lost or never existed, we lack old family artifacts like an ancient bible, and had word from researchers in County Monaghan in Ireland that records before the mid-nineteenth century are also limited or never were kept (our family was Protestant, therefore not as carefully documented as were those in the old World whose vital records were recorded by the Catholic Church). Without better records, the mystery of the family relationships may never be fully known but this provides a challenge to continue looking just in case.

Footnote on other Michigan Mulhollands:

Several other Mulholland families emerge in the research about our family in Michigan in the the early nineteenth century:

1. Anyone who has lived in Ann Arbor knows there is a Mulholland Street south of downtown. The bad news for us Mulhollands is that our grandmas and aunties assured us we were not related to them. Steele Mulholland, who came some years after our Superior Mulhollands and settled in Ann Arbor where the street runs, was known to have come from a different part of Ireland. We don't get to claim relationship to the street.
2. A second family of interest is the Daniel Mulhollen family of Monroe, Michigan. Like our Superior Mulhollands, this is a large family descended from Irish immigrants. As documents show, our families used varied spellings of the name over time, and they settled on Mulhollen while we went with Mulholland. Family trees for Daniel, who arrived in Michigan about 1804, show that he came from Antrim, where there are indeed many Mulhollands but we know our family came from County Monaghan. Minimally, given the pattern of land buying by Daniel, the similar naming pattern for the children, and their location in Michigan before our relatives, there is likely some connection and inspiration for what our relatives did here. It would not be surprising to find there is a family link to Daniel and family to our Mulhollands but it would go back to Ireland where the records don't exist for our family. And to date, there are no DNA ties to that family.
3. A rather unusual link to the ghost tale comes through land purchases in Illinois by William Mulholland. In 1847, he purchased tracts of land in Nauvoo, partnering with Henry Mulholland and Ruben Loomis. Nauvoo is well known as a stopping place for the Latter Day Saints, who were driven from the town and forced to sell their property at this time, leading to the settling of Salt Lake City. Land speculators moved in to buy up tracts in Nauvoo the Mormon community was forced to sell. The relationship of Henry to the Washtenaw Mulhollands is unknown, but he had been buying land in the area before the sell off and is likely the reason William was involved. Reuben Loomis is probably related to Emily Loomis, the second wife of James Mulholland in the ghost story. A James Mulholland also ends up in the Nauvoo land purchases (not the famous Mormon James however). This James ends up convicted of counterfeiting. Here’s hoping that is not the James from our ghost story!