Gone Fishing

Despite good intentions to complete this seasonal genealogical cleaning process, a suddenly-appearing ooh-shiny bauble appeared before my cyber-eyes yesterday, and I had to follow it to its source.

The bauble was the FindMyPast offer to explore their British and Irish records online for free. There was, of course, one caveat; that deal wasn't going to last forever. In fact, it's only good through the end of the weekend—a long weekend, for some of our friends up in Canada—closing at 6:59 p.m. Eastern Daylight time on Monday.

I simply cannot be sitting here, dutifully scrubbing my genealogical records until they squeak, when such an attractive offer is tapping on my shoulder.

So, it's off to see what can be found on my father-in-law's tree—everything from that scoundrel Stephen Malloy, who left town in such a rush, his young wife grabbed their baby and went after him all the way to Boston, to the predictable Denis Tully, who is now quite findable on the County Tipperary records where our trip to Ireland proved he would be.

Only, this time, I don't have to go scrolling through illegible microfilms at the National Library of Ireland; I can search for further gems all in the comfort of my—ahem, still air conditioned—home.

As with all good things—nothing is ever truly free—in exchange for this wonderful opportunity, one needs to sign up for the offer. That, of course, means giving up your email address—and, presumably, means you may be subject to further offers from FindMyPast...like offers to explore their international records for a limited, but free period. Sure, I'll take that.

In fact, I had signed up for a great opportunity from a prior offer, in which I have a very limited subscription for one year at this same company. I'm operating on the principle that the more places where I can post my tree, the more opportunities I will have to attract the interest of a distant cousin who may also be researching my hard-to-find ancestors. And I'm all for crowdsourcing the answers to those difficult genealogical questions.