Brick Walls, Disconnected Dots and Outlaws—Oh, My!

Setting aside a research project for lack of any solid leads can be frustrating. Of course, happening this past couple weeks as it did—in tandem with our joyous celebration of our daughter’s graduation from college—the disappointment over research was offset by more happy occurrences.

I still, however, find myself back at that “milling about” place: the spot for wandering around in circles, not being able to light on one particular project idea. The looming question: Now what?

While I was spending the last couple months writing on Puhalskis, Kobers, Krauses and even Kusharvskas—instead of the purported McCann I am supposed to be—a number of other interesting diversions crossed my path. Perhaps today is an appropriate time to stop and smell those unexpected wildflowers that popped up on our way. These are, after all, loose ends that may need attention of their own.

First, my mtDNA results had an unexpected turn of events. While I have only one “exact match” in my matrilineal line—my mystery cousin, the adoptee—I supposedly received a second such exact match last week. Well, at least that person showed up on my mystery cousin’s readout as an exact match. On mine? Not one sign of a match. But wait! If A equals B and B equals C, then wouldn’t A equal C? Apparently not in this realm of DNA testing.

Something is woefully wrong. And will take some follow-up.

Task Number Two: when my in-laws came to visit for graduation, subsequent to doing their own DNA testing, they had lots of questions. So, in our spare time—we squeezed it in between all the celebrating!—we sat down and took a look at the readouts and what they meant. This means building a family tree for the in-laws of my in-laws. If you’ve been reading along here at A Family Tapestry for a while, you know what that means: more research on my outlaws.

But I’m okay with that. You know I love this research stuff. A challenge is a challenge—my family or yours!

Bonus challenge: back to researching in Ireland. No, really—not that fake McCann stuff, this time. It looks like I’ll be working on the Tully line a bit more. It seems extended family have converged, during this time and place, to bring up additional questions about the Tully origins. One cousin emailed me last week, asking for more information. And—this is the bonus—a distant cousin, who was here on the west coast, visiting from her home in Ireland, unexpectedly called with more Tully questions. I had not emailed her for years. In fact, I had lost touch with her brother years ago, because of a change of address, and had had no way to update their family on my research progress since that time. We’ll be doing some document and photo exchanges, and are both eagerly awaiting the release of digitized Catholic Church records by the National Library of Ireland this summer—hopefully, by the beginning of July.

Of course, it will only be a matter of a couple weeks until I head south for the DNA Day and conference at Southern California Genealogical Society’s Jamboree event, the first week of June. If you are planning on attending, let’s get in touch! If you are not able to go, don’t worry: I’ll take you with me—via the blogosphere, that is!

In the meantime, I’ll be packing bits and pieces of discoveries from the challenges I’ve mentioned today in my posts leading up to that point. Hopefully, when the dust settles, we can find a clear vision for the next direction to take in our research adventures.