S O S : Saving Our Societies

 

Perhaps blogging has become passe in today's world, but I still follow several genealogy blogs. It's one way to keep up with what's happening in the world of people who still pursue their families' stories. Since I coordinate several local family history education opportunities on behalf of my county genealogical society, I find it important to keep my fingers on that pulse.

I also know what an uphill battle it has been for local genealogical organizations to remain pertinent in an ever-connected yet increasingly isolated culture of technology. Any society board member who might have caught a glimpse of John Reid's post in Anglo-Celtic Connections earlier this week might have found resonance in the title of Tuesday's entry: "Ideas on How to Save my Genealogical Society."

Mentioning an online meeting hosted by a board member of the Stanly County Genealogical Society in North Carolina, the blog post provided contact information for anyone wishing to become part of that meeting. The meeting was open to any society's board members interested in sharing ideas on what goes into maintaining a thriving organization now.

While our local society is still active and, despite losing members ever so gradually over the decades, providing multiple programs and services each month, I was grateful to have spotted the announcement and took up the offer to join in the conversation. In my opinion, it's good for us to share our resources. Granted, what might work well for one community may fall flat in another location, but if we don't gain any inspiration by seeing what others have already tested out, we're likely to continue our own downward spiral.

As it turns out, by attending this past week, I stepped into an ongoing conversation. The group meets online on the third Wednesday evening of each month. I anticipate I'll share some ideas from out here on the west coast, and gain quite a bit of inspiration from others joining in from the south, the east, the midwest, and the north—including two organizations in attendance from Ontario, Canada. We can sit there, isolated in our own communities, and watch our genealogical societies eventually capsize with the weight of our own organizational problems, or we can reach out and connect with others determined to make the pursuit of our families' roots vibrant and pertinent to today's generations in our own communities.

Yet Another Attempt

I confess: I can't give up. Trying every way I can to find any sign of the right John Kelly back in Ireland, I've backtracked to some original sources. In an old-fashioned way: microfilm.

Not that I've really resigned myself to cranking through records on a microfilm record. This attempt is the next "best" thing. (Admittedly, nothing is "best" about having to read handwritten records on a microfilm reader.) 

I've gone back—virtually, of course—to the National Library of Ireland, where lo and behold, there are some microfilmed records for earlier years of some of the locations in County Kerry where I first spotted John Kelly and his wife, Johanna Falvey. Keep in mind that the dates I've retrieved for John's birth vary wildly. Some of those dates reached beyond those available in a crisper, cleaner digitized form at either Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. Believe me, these older records show their age.

Thus, I now enter the stage of a "reasonably" exhaustive search. While I'm not sure it can be considered reasonable, I'll be reading through the birth entries, page by page, starting with the early 1800s in the parish of Killeentierna.

Though the copy is fuzzy, it is still fairly easy to differentiate "Kelly" from all the other blurry surnames, so progress won't be too agonizing. Much time to search means little time to write about it, though, but if I find something significant, I'll come up for air long enough to tell about it. 

In Search of a Genealogy Happy Dance

 

After rolling around at the very bottom of the doldrums over not finding my John Kelly—as opposed to the thousands of others out there in County Kerry—I now can understand the reason behind the Genealogy Happy Dance. Being so despondent about the possibility of never finding an answer demands an equal and opposite reaction, once the impossible is achieved.

I don't doubt there is some sign out there of that one particular John Kelly. It's just that I haven't been able to find it. Not this year. Not the last time I tried. Try enough times and the quest seems fated for just giving up entirely.

It's not that the "Happy Dance" concept is some Snoopy-esque over-exuberance to be winked at with a smile. It's simply that, when you look that hard for so long, actually finding what you were looking for erupts from impossibility to near-miracle status. No wonder people get so happy when they finally find their answer. I could use a little bit of that Happy Dance energy myself right now.

When in Doubt, Re-read Your Email

 

Yesterday, the wiser approach to my John Kelly impasse was to set the whole search conundrum aside to clear my mind and gain a fresh perspective. Did I heed my own advice? Of course not.

I did, however, recall a file that might be worth revisiting: the one containing old emails I had filed away for future reference. When in doubt, re-reading old emails can sometimes re-invigorate flagging resources. 

Over the years, I've set up a filing system to help me re-locate old emails I had received which were useful to current family research questions and worth saving for future reference. Mostly, I had set up a list of surnames I had been researching, creating the folders by surname within my email program. While I hadn't specifically set up a file folder for Kelly—a much too common name, and one for which I've got at least three different family lines to research—I had set one up for John's wife, Johanna Falvey.

As it turned out, a reader here on A Family Tapestry had sent me a note about a database she had found which contained a clipping about a Falvey death in County Kerry. While I don't think the man mentioned in the clipping was related to my Johanna Falvey Kelly, seeing the note again reminded me to return and take a look at that website.

The website was RootsIreland.ie. Now apparently a subscription-only website, I wasn't sure it would be worth it to test the waters only after ponying up the payment. But it did remind me that there are other websites which might be worth exploring besides the usual states-side companies I'd been using. 

Of course, now I'm kicking myself for not setting up a folder under the label Kelly, after all. That system has helped out for so many other surname questions in the past. But it did give me a needed nudge to see if there are any other new resources out there which can open the door just a crack further to enter the Irish world of genealogical records. Our John Kelly has got to be out there, somewhere. And having a system to review old messages can come in handy, after all.

Null Set

 

Sometimes, no matter how we jumble the terms and try new combinations, those family names simply refuse to appear in record sets. That's how it's gone with my search for John Kelly's roots in County Kerry. Though I have had better results looking for his wife's name—Johanna Falvey—I'm still missing baptismal records for two of their Irish-born children, Timothy and Catherine. And as for his suspected kinship to a co-worker in his adopted home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that Timothy Kelly has yet to appear in baptismal records back home in Ireland, as well. I'm drawing a null set here.

I tried jumping back to the original baptismal records in County Kerry without success—a search which not only yielded nothing, but took an enormous amount of time. If AI could search more successfully for these mystery ancestors, I might actually consider giving it a try.

In the meantime, I'm suffering research fatigue, a good sign it might be more productive to set this one aside, at least for a few days, and try an entirely different research problem. Sometimes, the mind needs some time to empty, and then breathe.

Mind Mapping Kelly

 

This month may have started out with the goal of seeking John Kelly's roots. That quickly changed. After all, even narrowing the search to an Indiana immigrant's homeland in County Kerry, Ireland, coupling such a search with a surname like Kelly didn't advance my position. I had to branch out to learn anything more about my father-in-law's family tree.

Thus entered the sideline of pursuing the history of Timothy Kelly, John's co-worker in the booming Fort Wayne railroad industry, and possible relative. Finding further information on Timothy then led to discovery of his sister Margaret in Toledo, Ohio. And that sister Margaret soon led to nieces and nephews in her home, recently immigrated from Ireland, with the surname Sullivan.

As the surnames piled on, the resultant search presented a case for the use of mind mapping the family connections. I'm not sure yet how John and Timothy Kelly were related—if at all. My plan, over the weekend, to review what could be found in newspaper mentions of the three Kelly names—John, Timothy, and Margaret—led to no more than I had found the last time I had revisited this research question.

This impasse convinced me to re-read all my posts on these Kelly connections, beginning with our family's trip to County Kerry in 2014, when we searched for the actual townlands which had been mentioned in Kelly baptismal records before their emigration. This tour through all I had written on the Kelly line reminded me of some rough times running in tandem with my intended research goals—recalling research collaboration with Kelly relatives now long gone, struggles to continue through Covid casualties and fire threats and serious family illnesses.

Despite the many detours on the path to finding that Kelly answer, I had discovered some connections which still could use additional verification—if there is any out there to find. Bottom line is that in County Kerry, I now have several linked surnames which beg for at least a dotted line of connection. From Timothy's sister Margaret, I had learned her reported parents' names from her death certificate: Timothy Kelly and Catherine Flynn. The reporting party on Margaret's certificate, Katie Sullivan, was a niece who thus provides us with another surname connected to the family constellation. And reviewing farther back in records, baptismal reports for John Kelly's oldest children provided godparents' names yielding a Fleming connection, as well.

With all these surnames swirling in my head, it's time to sketch out a mind map of their connections—and keep an eye out for their repeated mention in records drawn up, back in County Kerry.

Asking the Question

 

What makes a person ask the question about their roots? What prompts someone to decide the answer will only come through a personal commitment to the search?

I've always had my own thoughts about a possible answer to such questions, but when the discussion led that way in a local genealogical society meeting last week, it was interesting to hear what prompted other members.

One member began the conversation by noting that it was when one of her grandparents had died that she realized the additional implications of that loss: a personal repository of family remembrances of bygone generations was lost as well. Others agreed and added their illustrations. For another member, the oldest in her generation in that family, she realized her position as natural-born resource when any of the cousins wondered about a family detail; they would come calling her for information. She, correspondingly, complied by finding answers.

It has long been my conjecture that it is those for whom family details were hidden—versus out in plain sight for all to know—who felt a compulsion to seek out the real story on their roots. That was always my case. Despite my mother's ample supply of family stories—recounted to my generation, thanks to her mother's Aunt Fannie—there was an absolute vacuum when it came to reports about my father's family. Though amply filled with oral heritage on one side, the silence from the other side sucked me in.

As we move well into an era of instant online access to a wealth of information, including digitized historical records, I'm realizing it might be helpful to reach out to others and ask what motivated them to begin their family history pursuit. Technology introduces secondary changes to life—how we access information shifts whom we depend on—and sometimes we don't even realize how we, as a collective, are responding. Returning to our roots as genealogical organizations as well as individuals might help put us in touch with the original motivations which brought us here in the first place.