Turning Back to the Tullys

It's with a little melancholy push, as I recall last year's research trip to Ireland, that I realized it's time to revisit the unfinished strands of my husband's Tully roots.

Tully just so happened to be the surname that recently connected us up with another DNA-testing distant cousin. It was over a merely possible connection, actually, that I had first asked this acquaintance to consider testing. As I've already mentioned, when her results came back, it confirmed her connection to our Tully family. Between this cousin and my husband, they share a relationship of third cousin, once removed—just like we had thought, if my guess was correct.

Prompted by this—and likely by my melancholy mood over remembering last year's trip to Ireland—I've been going through some old Tully files. As it sometimes turns out, I have some loose ends yet to attend to in that Tully folder. Not only that, but in going back through some digital files of old pictures and scans, I unearthed some further unfinished Tully business there, too.

Looks like it's time for some Tully housecleaning. Who knows? Perhaps I'll locate some more cousins there.

As it turns out, there is another cousin in the Tully mix. Not exactly a direct line relationship, but recently I was contacted by someone who assured me she was a descendant of John Tully's wife's cousin. That's another Tully-related line I need to tidy up—especially now, with a real, live cousin calling!

There's even more than that. I recall, somewhere in all that pile of Tully personal papers I've inherited, an obituary or two which I hadn't posted here, simply because I had no idea of the connection. Maybe now's the time to pull those slips of paper back out and see if the research bears any fruit.

So many strands of unfinished research business. Sometimes, we run in so many directions, with so many useful leads, that the less promising ones drop to the wayside. And get forgotten. In the midst of all the name-snatching, our time gets devoted to the winners. The also-rans might have yielded results, too, but they weren't the low-hanging fruit on the first pass through this family garden.

I'll take the next few days and share what I've picked up, now that I've gone back to glean from what's dropped by the wayside. Especially considering there will likely be a fresh crop of DNA test results coming out of the Genetic Genealogy Ireland conference from last week, I want to flesh out the more barren of those branches on the Tully family tree, just in case. One never knows when another distant Tully cousin might come calling.