It's (Not) a Wrap

 

In genealogy, it's never "a wrap." There is always more work to be done, another generation to find, elusive documents to track down. That, at least, seems to be the story for my father-in-law's Irish side of the family. We've spent a month—again!—chipping away at his great-grandmother Margaret Flannery's side of the family, but with little more to tell than we had gathered after the last attempt. And now, that month is over.

I've got a bit of reading to do before tackling this family line once again, now that I've purchased Irish Migrants in the Canadas. Once again, I'll comb through the listed family trees of my husband's DNA matches at five different companies in hopes more distant Flannery cousins have tested. But my real hope will be to stumble upon yet another Flannery descendant who inherited that packrat, er, keepsake tendency to never discard any slip of paper in the family's records, no matter how insignificant. After all, if it weren't for descendants of two of Margaret Flannery's children holding on to a written confirmation of their baptismal record from the parish of Ballina and Boher back in County Tipperary, I wouldn't even have known her maiden name.

From this point onward, we'll move to another challenge in my father-in-law's family history, but this time it won't be an Irish immigrant. Last winter, when I planned out my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors to research for this year, I could already tell that I might be facing three brick wall struggles in a row with his side of the family.

So, for my third research challenge, I decided to switch to another member of the Stevens family—but one blended in to the family by marriage to a widower. Tomorrow, we'll start a new month with an introduction to the only Stevens grandmother my father-in-law and his siblings ever knew.