Thoughts on Wild Chases

 

Despite the fact that the attempt engendered thoughts about wild goose chases—what's a goose, and why are we chasing it anyhow?—I couldn't set that Kelly research problem aside. I had to chase that Irish immigrant Kelly family back to Ireland one last time.

Using my plan yesterday, I began the exploration. Ancestry.com, for instance, has a search setup which partially accommodated my wild plan. Searching all Irish Catholic baptismal records for each of James and Mary Kelly's children, my plan was to harvest the most promising results, baptism by baptism. Then, compiling a list from each set of results, I'd scour each lengthy list for possible locations in common shared by two or more of their children. When I'd find the one location shared by all six of the children, bingo! That would be my answer. What could possibly go wrong?

It sounded like a reasonable methodology—until I realized the many pitfalls on that research pathway. Even though I was searching for one child's name at a time, it was coupled with both parents' names—but computer searches being what they are, those machine brains take things literally. For instance, I not only had to look for "James" but also the common abbreviation "Jas." Although many Irish Catholic parishes entered their records in the English language, some adhered to the more traditional Latin; thus I had to add "Iacobus" to the search. And the English letter "J" having its own peculiarities, that also meant seeking entries labeled "Jacobus" as well.

Though not as many records seemed to have trouble finding entries for a mother named Mary, there still were some hiccups there. The most logical deviation might be to find Maria instead of Mary, but there were other considerations. Having spent time in the past looking for baptismal records for babies whose mother's name was Margaret—often abbreviated "Marg"—I knew that sometimes that "Marg" might be read incorrectly and transcribed as Mary. Hence, my search expanded to include all mothers named Margaret as well as Mary, requiring visual verification of the right name.

The actual names of the children could themselves cause trouble with searches. Second-born son Thomas might have been entered by a common abbreviation, "Thos," thus requiring me to broaden those search terms once again. And, no surprise here, Catharine might have been abbreviated as well to "Cath."

There were other complications, too. Having researched such records in the past while traveling in Ireland, I had picked up a few tips there of other anomalies to watch for. Priests doing rounds in the outback, such as might happen with circuit riders in early American history, would go from house to house, baptizing newly-arrived infants—and possibly joining in the celebration afterwards. Perhaps then, the son's name might be confused for the father's name, or the daughter for the mother, resulting in the official marking of that information on a piece of scratch paper shoved in his pocket, to be forever recorded such for our "benefit."

Since I knew the difficulties facing some Catholic parishes in Ireland during the late 1820s and 1830s when James and Mary raised their family, I started searching first with their middle children. I thought that perhaps the earlier births—such as eldest son Matthew's birth about 1825—might not have been preserved in registers lasting until our day.

Then, too, I wondered whether the later births, such as baby of the family Ann's arrival in 1839, might have occurred after the Kellys left their home parish and traveled toward the British port from which they'd eventually sail. My goal, after all, was to determine where in Ireland the Kelly family had once considered their home.

But even taking that middle of the road approach didn't yield much hope of finding the answer. The usual challenges of seeking information in those two hundred year old registers are compounded by the fact that paper does eventually crumble, or sustain ink spills, or nibbles from mice, or...or...or...

I'm far from finished with this Irish version of a quixotic mission. But while I was still in the process, it did dislodge a memory from my mind about an old story that keeper of the family stuff Uncle Ed had told me. I don't know whether to trust it or not, family legends being what they are. But when we close out the month next week, I think I'll revisit it, if nothing else but for the sake of recording it to remember for future directions on how to find James and Mary Kelly the next time I try this hide and seek research game.