Most of the families around Liverpool were connected either by blood or marriage (and sometimes both)
After reading through your post there are a few more things I want to check.
Gramps' account of his seafaring days was written in 1932 but I probably wouldn't be here now if he hadn't taken over command of the
Arthur when Barney McConnell died (I've fixed my earlier typo.
"Captain Barney McConnell, master of the Arthur, had died as she lay at anchor at Clinton, Conn. Her New York owners sent me there to take command. They had known me since I was a boy. The body was still on board and we buried it at Clinton."
"We were off Tortugas, at the lower end of Florida, with a load of yellow pine, when the Arthur turned over in a hurricane. She was not old but she was a weak built thing. She didn't turn completely over but just enough so that we had to cling to the hull until we could cut the rigging away. When we did that, the Arthur gradually came back on bottom. But the Arthur was done for. I knew she would go to pieces that night so all hands set to work building a raft. We had it partly built when along came the steamer Morgan City and picked us off."
"The Arthur was bound for the Canary Islands. The Morgan City brought us to New York. It was the only time I ever failed to reach a port I set out for."
His only possessions when reaching New York (2 Aug.1887) were a nightshirt, trousers, oil coat and rubber boots. Upon arrival he went to the home of a Nova Scotia family he knew living there and one week later married the daughter (he'd met her in New Brunswick previously).
His one regret was losing the Arthur's sextant. On taking command in 1885 it seemed quite ancient but by the time he got to sea he'd changed his mind and said it was the best he ever had.
I remember hearing the graveyard storybut wouldn't have remembered the details.