Mapping Where They Met in the Middle

 

Maps, whether historic or modern versions instantly accessible online, are a wonderful addition to the toolbox we use to uncover the life details of our ancestors. Since I had had such good fortune using online maps to determine the feasibility of courtship connections for my father-in-law's Irish ancestors, I thought I'd turn to Google Maps once again to pinpoint the location of the towns in Poland where my paternal ancestors Thomas Puchała and Anastasia Zegarska once lived.

I had been amazed—and quite pleased—to discover that I could enter the name of a townland in Ireland and have it come up in the search results on Google Maps. If it worked for townlands in Ireland, it should work for obscure places everywhere else in the world, right?

Records I had found online for Thomas Puchała mentioned a town called Lubichowo. For Anastasia, I had found mention of a place now called Czarnylas. I plugged those two names into Google Maps, just to double check that they were within a reasonable distance for traveling by foot or even by horse. After all, it was unlikely, at the time they were married in 1868, that two people would even meet if the distance between their homes was prohibitively long.

The first result to my maps query, however, puzzled me. 

Even if they met in the middle, this trip of nearly 185 miles would take over thirty hours of walking for this potential couple. Hardly a reasonable commitment, even for star-crossed lovers.

I went back to my search terms to double check parameters. Looking back to entries at Wikipedia for each of the towns, I noticed the maps included coordinates for each location. This time, I returned to Google Maps and plugged in the coordinates I had found at Wikipedia, rather than entering the town names.

This result seemed more likely.

This time, Lubichowo and Czarnylas were a more reasonable hike of about two and a half hours, if one took the shortcut. If a couple met in the middle, they could arrive at their destination in little over one hour.

This, however, pointed out the obvious: Google Maps wasn't exactly wrong, per se, in outlining the first trip. As we find in more familiar territory back in our own country, sometimes there are two towns with the same name—maybe even within the same state. Frustrating, yes, but a reminder to ensure that when we research our family history, we've found the right town for the right ancestor, for surely, that other town might oblige us by featuring another search result with the very same names as the relatives we're seeking.

This little map-drawing experiment calls me to go back and double check my research on yet another detail. If there are two Polish towns with the same name, what if I've selected the wrong one? There's a reason for that question besides the unexpected results on this mapping experiment: the fact that, as the territory changed hands from one governmental entity to another, the names for the towns also changed. In this case, the revision was from the names the towns are called in Poland today to the German names imposed upon those locations during the Prussian rule. We need to go back and double check what we had found about that town of Czarnylas.

Above maps courtesy of Google Maps.

The Wife's Side of the Story

 

Using Y-DNA to uncover more about my great-grandfather's patriline may not have revealed much, as we mentioned yesterday, but what if we looked at the story revealed by his wife's DNA? Thomas Puchała, being my great-grandfather, was a close enough relative to be identified through autosomal DNA matches. But when I looked at my DNA matches using Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool, both Thomas and his wife, Anastasia Zegarska, yielded me only two matches. Problem: I know them both. This is no revelation.

Yet, if I move back one more generation and, rather than looking at the DNA matches showing for Thomas' father Jan—no surprise here, just the same two I already know—I look at Thomas' wife Anastasia Zegarska's parents, suddenly that match count jumps. For that couple, my second great-grandparents Jan Zegarski and Marianna Wojtaś, I now have twenty four DNA cousins to research. And twenty four more advocates for examining our jointly-held roots.

In this case, the exercise serves to provide one more data point to zero in on just who the Puchała men were. Granted, using autosomal DNA to track Thomas' wife's siblings' descendants—hint: these were the families who mostly emigrated from Poland to Wisconsin in the United States—did find me some cousins in the current generation. After spending a lifetime feeling like I had hardly any relatives, I like that sense of familial connection.

But tracing Thomas' in-laws did unearth one puzzling question. Having found a few documents on the two families, Puchałan and Zegarski, I now had the name of two villages of origin in Poland. Problem: entering that information on a map told me that the two families lived approximately 185 miles apart from each other. Not exactly a quick stroll to the marketplace.

That's simply not a likely scenario for courtship, 1860s style. Obviously, I need to turn back to those maps, add some additional information, and get a solid picture of where, exactly, the two towns were actually located. A distance like that might be a deal-breaker for a budding Polish romance in that century—not to mention, the accuracy of a pedigree chart.

A Targeted Testing Attempt

 

Though I started my DNA journey to confirm that closely-held family secret that we were, after all, Polish—and not Irish, as my grandfather had insisted—the very first DNA test I submitted didn't yield me much information at all.

That test was a targeted testing attempt on my part: I asked my brother if he would be willing to take a Y-DNA test. That test, currently offered by only one genetic genealogy company—Family Tree DNA in Houston, Texas—can reveal a deep ancestry, but only on one specific family line. That line, known as the patriline, belongs to the male test subject's father's father's father's ancestors on that one specific family line. Reaching much farther back in generations than the autosomal test can accurately reveal, its results are not wide as far as DNA cousins may go, but those results go deep.

While I'm grateful for my brother's willingness to serve as my proxy in seeking the truth about our father's genetic heritage—after all, women cannot test the Y-chromosome they don't have—his test has yet to provide me any solid leads. When I thought about this after the fact, I realized that not only was he my father's only son, but my dad—by then, long since passed away—had no brothers. Neither did his father, apparently. And I suspect that was the case in the generation preceding him.

Because this research question involves some generations relatively close to the present time, autosomal DNA testing could be the perfect tool for such a case. While I'm glad I have the results to my brother's Y-DNA test—with matches still being added over time as more people test—I asked my brother to also take the autosomal test. And I took one, too—at every genealogy company that offered such kits. I didn't want to miss any possible matches.

Perhaps it was serendipity that I discovered a lead. It was thanks to the auto-clusters program added to the tools at MyHeritage, which pointed out some unexpected Polish-American DNA cousins—in Wisconsin, of all places. It didn't, at first, make sense for someone whose immigrant family had settled not far from the docks of the New York City port where they first arrived in America. Of course, reviewing the details I had shared yesterday about the most likely locations for Polish immigrants to settle, that would make sense in hindsight.

Because I went overboard and tested at five different DNA companies, I checked for Polish matches at each of those testing locations. Apparently, I had company, for someone from that same Wisconsin line also tested at Ancestry.com. That connection turned out to be a godsend, for the administrator for that DNA cousin's test was quite knowledgeable about the family line, at least in the Wisconsin area, and also had found online resources back in Poland.

Where would we be in our research, if it weren't for other researchers willing to share what they have learned? When I first discovered these DNA matches, I had no clue how they connected to my family. There was certainly no sign of any geographic connection. Though I should have suspected it, that sleight of hand in slightly changing surnames came into play once again—from Zegarski descendants in Wisconsin to the surname Zegars in my New York City family's case. It took a leap of faith to make the first assumption, but as the DNA matches started piling up, it became far more obvious that I had found the connection.

But even so, those DNA matches didn't link with my research focus for this month—Thomas Puchała—but with his wife, Anastasia Zegarska. In fact, over ten years after my DNA test was taken, I've had many DNA matches added to the list of cousins connected to that Zegarski line of Thomas' wife. But for Thomas himself, I still have the same two DNA matches I've always had. Even if I step back a generation to Thomas' father Jan, I only have those two DNA matches—and they are close relatives to me, whom I know personally. There just aren't that many Puchała descendants to match, apparently.

Still, the question is: if we can't find any direct matches with the Puchała line, can we learn anything about the men in this patriline by inferring details from what we can discover about their wives? Let's take some time to check whether the DNA can lead us to any helpful records there. 

Not Many People Talking About it

 

Research on Polish family history doesn't seem to be as popular as, say, pursuing Irish or Italian roots. It's certainly not as widespread as interest in German genealogy, with an international society devoted to such a purpose. When it comes to looking for help in seeking those Polish forebears, it seems there are not that many people who are talking about it. But that doesn't mean there isn't any help out there for those who claim that ancestry.

Considering that, at least in the United States, there are 2.6 million direct descendants of Polish immigrants—not to mention another 8.6 million who claim partial Polish ancestry—you'd think there'd be a sizable group of potential researchers clamoring for more information on how to start their search. After all, that adds up to three percent of the American population, according to results from the 2020 census.

Perhaps the silence is deafening for someone like me, living out on the west coast, considering that most Polish immigrants to the United States settled around the Great Lakes area, or simply remained in the tri-state area surrounding the port of entry in New York City, as can be seen in one color-coded map based on data from the U. S. census bureau in 2019.

There are, after all, some resources for researching Polish ancestry, including the yearly RootsTech conference, which compiles recorded past sessions and still shares them on their website. There are a few sessions focused on Polish research, including An Introduction to Polish Genealogy by blogger Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz to help people get started pursuing their Polish roots. And there are some organizations dedicated to helping others research their Polish ancestry, such as the Polish Genealogical Society of America, which offers a free subscription to their monthly e-newsletter.

For the most part, though, when I peruse the offerings of various local genealogical societies, it would be a rare moment, indeed, if I found an upcoming presentation promoted for Polish research. It is far easier, at least from my west coast vantage point, to find meetings discussing Irish or Italian or German research. When it comes to Polish research, there are just not that many people talking about it.

So what does one do in that situation? Thankfully, now we have internet connections to meetings across the country—and even around the world. Perhaps someone in those Great Lakes regions is teaching about researching Polish records.

Better yet, I've discovered websites created by and powered by volunteers in Poland who are working to bring their historical documents to light for an international audience, linking them to their distant cousins in the Polish diaspora. For this, I am most thankful—and hope to spread the word so others can access these missing links to connect their brick wall Polish forebears to their proper place in their homeland.

The advent of the most helpful connection, at least in my case, comes from the now-widespread usage of DNA testing. What I couldn't find in past years from online documents, I can at least discover through a hint from the distant cousins I'm connected with, thanks to DNA. In anticipation of some DNA updates due out later this month, we'll take some time this week to review what DNA has shared about my family's once-secret connection to their Polish ancestry.

Pursuing the Patriline

After visiting with genealogy friends who are pursuing their American Revolution Patriots—or, even more impressive, their Mayflower roots—spending a month to discover more about my father's own grandfather seems rather uninspiring. After all, many people have even met their own great-grandfather in person, but I'm still wandering through a paper maze, trying to learn who this person is.

For this month's goal from my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025, I'll make the switch from a summer season of exploring my father-in-law's roots to discovering more about my own father's ancestry during this fall. This, however, is not an easy task; remember, this was the man who was tight-lipped about his background. Like father, like son, it's been said, and in this case it applies well: my father had his own father as an example of how to keep a family secret.

In past years, I've worked on this patrilineal puzzle. Five years ago, Thomas Puchała claimed the featured spot for my goal in November, and the following year, I explored records showing his father to be either Johann Puchała—according to church records in Latin—or, more likely, Jan Puchała in the vernacular.

Though I have discovered Thomas' father's name, thus pushing the patriline back another generation, there is still so much to learn about this branch of my family. I have found that Thomas once lived in Lubichowo, a small village in Pomerania, where he was likely born in 1844. I also have found mention of his marriage to Anastasia Zegarska in 1868 in the nearby village of Czarnylas, also in what was at that time the country known as Prussia. The difficulty is that those details only came to me, thanks to transcriptions of documents posted on websites in Poland. I have yet to locate and download copies of the actual documents, a task to include in this month's research goals.

In pursuit of this patriline, thankfully I've had some DNA help, mostly through my brother's willingness to take a Y-DNA test, but also through the few matches we've found through autosomal testing. This month will call for closer examination of the updated cousin matches as well as ethnicity updates due out this month at Ancestry.com. And I'll still keep a close eye on those Y-DNA test results, in case an exact match pops up in a timely manner for this month's exploration.

From Ireland to Poland

 

No, this is not about a text received from one of my traveling friends, laying out the itinerary while abroad for holiday in Europe. Having exhausted the resources for Irish research on my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery, I am giving up and moving on to my plans for October's research project.

That move is made with misgivings, however. It's not that finding my own father's ancestors in Poland will be any easier than pushing against the research brick wall in Ireland. But at least it is a new—or at least newer—project. Perhaps that will infuse some energy into the search.

For this month, my plan is to delve into what records can be found in the small village of Lubichowo, part of the Pomeranian Voivodeship—or province—in the northern coastal region of Poland. Not that we haven't wandered in that direction before; I've struggled over my father's roots for nearly my whole life. It's only been in recent years that breaking through that closely-held secret of my paternal ancestry—that we were not Irish, after all, but Polish—has enabled me to explore the truth of the matter.

For the remainder of this month, we'll review what we've already learned about my father's paternal grandfather, Thomas Puchała, and begin exploring what else can be found about his life in Poland during the mid-1800s.

Approaching Flannery Fatigue

 

It was bound to happen. After delaying my good intentions to find the roots for my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery due to a sickly September, I thought I'd try my best to make up for that lack. There is, however, no sense in trying to squeeze thirty days of research into a mere extra week. This goal, I decided, needed a decent full month of concentration sometime again in the future—sometime, that is, after I've recuperated from Flannery fatigue.

And then, wouldn't you know it, those DNA matches came back to haunt me. A Flannery cousin popped up in my husband's results—from Ontario in Canada, no less, home of the migrating Margaret and her husband Denis Tully and their children.

It was a small match, but big enough to tempt me into following the trail. From that Flannery cousin, I followed a Find A Grave clue for her father, (which conveniently included a copy of his obituary naming that same DNA cousin as well as all his siblings). That led to his father, and then that Flannery man's father—all while still remaining in Canada, in and around some of the same communities where our Margaret Flannery and her husband Denis Tully had settled in Ontario.

Tempting, that is, until I ran into yet another brick wall. This Flannery trail goes cold, still in Canada. I have no way to connect this ancestral Flannery from the DNA match's line to Margaret Flannery from my father-in-law's line. It seems I have a collection of stubs—dead ends on the Flannery branches.

It will take a lot more than a few days' work to unscramble this puzzle. Though I still regret not being able to work through the past month on this September goal, it's time to put it aside for another year's Twelve Most Wanted. It's time now to catch up with October, before another month disappears.

What we Find When We're Looking for Something Else

 

Rabbit trails—those tempting deviations from our intended research goal—can be dangerous, but I can't say I'd advocate ignoring them completely. Sometimes, it's what we find when we're looking for something else that turns out to be the answer to another question that has stumped us.

Take this Flannery puzzle that has kept me at bay for the entire past month of September. Granted, that month I had a rough go of it, thanks to unexpected illness and other troubles. Yet into this new month, I've still decided to persevere for at least a few more days to seek information on Margaret Flannery's roots in County Tipperary, Ireland.

Having made a listing of all the known children of Margaret and her husband, Denis Tully, my next step was to list each child's godparents, based on their baptismal record.

From that point, the tedium began: searching baptismal records from that same Catholic parish where I had found the children of Margaret and Denis—the church at Ballina—to look for the families of each of those named godparents. After all, if Margaret and Denis had selected these named godparents because they were siblings or in-laws, that would help me identify collateral relatives for both the Tully and Flannery lines. Besides, perhaps I would uncover a reciprocal baptismal relationship where Margaret or Denis were named as godparents for these siblings' own children.

Yes, I did mention tedium. I can't say I made much progress looking for the few Flannery names among the godparents. Basically, that included Kitty, William, and Bridget Flannery. Most of the rest of the godparents were from the Tully side of the family, so I continued my search on that branch of the family next.

My next search candidate, then, was Thomas Tully. Surely with that surname, the relationship would be clear: Thomas should have been a brother to Margaret's husband, Denis, right? But I couldn't really be sure because, for example, Thomas could have been selected as a godparent because he was an in-law to the new parents; he could have coincidentally acquired the same surname because he was, say, a cousin who just happened to marry a sister of one of the parents.

It was worth the detour to discover what could be found about this Thomas. In an 1834 baptismal record in the same parish for a son named Denis Tully, parents Thomas Tully and Margaret "Wilkisson" named as the child's godparents none other than John Tully and Margaret Flannery.

It just can't get any better than that. While we already know who Margaret Flannery was, we can now add John's name as another possible Tully sibling.

This, of course, brings up another possible theory, which in turn requires me to search for all the baptismal records for Thomas' children. If this Denis, born in 1834, was Thomas' eldest son, another Irish tradition would mean that Thomas' father's name would also be Denis. Thus, my Denis would, by necessity, have been the eldest son of his father—and, as far as I can tell, my Denis had also named his eldest son by that same name, in honor of his father. Perhaps looking further for this newly-discovered brother John Tully might reveal a firstborn son whose name resonates with this evolving pattern.

Unfortunately, the chance of finding baptismal records before the 1830s is near impossible for this area of County Tipperary, so discovering the exact dates and details for brothers Denis, Thomas, and John—and their parents—just wouldn't happen. But we can extrapolate from known traditions and piece together possible collateral lines, if nothing else.

Though it doesn't help me move forward yet with any Flannery discoveries, for now, I can at least add two collateral lines to my father-in-law's Tully ancestors, all thanks to the wanderings in pursuit of the answer to a different research question. You can bet I stopped to write that answer down so I wouldn't forget what I found.

Baby Steps

 

It may be the start of a new month, but after a month like the one I just finished, I'm not ready to relinquish the research goal I wasn't able to conquer last month. For the next few days—only a few, I promise—I'd like to spend a bit more time puzzling over Margaret Flannery and her home back in pre-famine-era County Tipperary, Ireland.

Today, I went back over the baptismal records for each of Margaret's babies—at least, the ones who were born in Ireland. The goal was to list the godparents listed in each child's church record. There is a reason for this: at that time in Ireland, the tradition was to name a sibling or sibling-in-law of one of the parents as the child's sponsors. If this custom held true for Margaret's time period and location, then we would see the formation of possible relatives to add to her family tree. Then, too, if the priest were consistent in record keeping, each godmother would also have been listed by her maiden name.

With the exception of a baptismal record for son Denis, born in 1830 as (possibly) the oldest child of Margaret Flannery and Denis Tully that I could find, here are the results of my search:

• Johanna, born in 1832: Kitty Flannery and - - ke [Luke? Mike?] Tully
• Michael, born in 1834: William Flannery and Bridget Flannery
• Patrick, born in 1836: Thomas Tully and Mary Tully
• William, born in 1839: John Tully and Judy McNamara
• John, born in 1842: John Brun and Mary McNamara
• Margaret, born in 1844: Mick Tully and Mary Gleeson
• Honora, born in 1847: John Tully and Biddy Tully

Of those children, I do know that William and Honora died before the family emigrated around 1851. (The name William must have been important to the family, for they named their youngest son, born after the family's arrival in Canada, by that same first name.)

Of those godparents, I have already discovered DNA matches linking back to the Gleeson surname from County Tipperary, an encouraging sign. And the name McNamara appears in the Griffith's valuation for the townland of Tountinna, where Margaret settled when she married Denis Tully. The only surname that puzzles me among the godparents listed is for John Brun; I have no idea of that connection.

As for the Flannery connections, I now have Kitty, Bridget, and William Flannery as possible leads. These three, however, could be either Margaret's siblings, or they could be spouses of either Margaret's or Denis' siblings. No matter which way this turns, a possible next step would be to look for those names as parents in the baptismal records for the same church parish in Ballina, Margaret's home church where her own children were baptized. 

Two Places at the Same Time

 

If Margaret Flannery Tully and her family migrated to that tiny town known as Paris in what is now Ontario, Canada, where did she come from? That question about the two places she once called home is not as hard to answer as it might seem, thanks to finding a handwritten letter confirming the baptism of their son, John Tully, kept over the decades in personal family papers. Not only was that document the key to discovering Margaret's maiden name, but it was how I learned the location the family called their home church back in Ireland.

That church location was in Ballina, part of what was once known geopolitically as the "North Riding" of County Tipperary. But as you probably have learned by now, the most important location for tracing an Irish ancestor is actually the land subdivision known as a townland. Finding that townland can be challenging. After all, County Tipperary has a mere 3,245 townlands—or 3,144 townlands, as one Irish website puts it, "that we know about."

Besides finding the handwritten note verifying Margaret's son John Tully's baptism, I've since been able to locate digitized copies of baptismal entries for the remainder of the Tully children born in Ireland. For instance, in finding that their oldest known son, Michael, was baptized on June 5, 1834, I could spot the priest's entry at the top of the register stating that the family came from Tountinna, the townland named for the highest point in the Arra Mountains.

I've been there myself, viewing the rugged terrain which once housed the Tully family before their departure for Canada. By all accounts, the Tullys arrived in Canada in time to be listed there in the "1851 census"—an anomaly in itself, as that census, due to other difficulties, was actually not enumerated until January 12, 1852. Still, the very document which led me to find the Tully residence in Tountinna, Griffith's Valuation, was said to not have been completed until June 29, 1853.

Yet, looking closely at the Valuation entries in Tountinna—transcribed, unfortunately, as "Fountinna" in currently-available typewritten records—it is quite clear that, despite the family's entry in the Canadian census in the previous year, there was an entry for Denis Tully, Margaret's husband, back in that Irish townland. It is only in looking closely at the details from the Tully entry in Griffith's that we see the evaluator's note, "Added to [entry] No. 1. House struck out of valuation."

It is sometimes only in the relentless pursuit of the tiny details that we learn more about our ancestors. In Margaret's case, it appears we will only—if at all—be able to learn more about her roots if we continue to follow suit.

The Gift of DNA Cousins

 

With a little help from our friends on the technology side of the world, it's not that hard to figure out who our distant cousins might be. And it's the gift of effective tools for being able to discover DNA cousins that has enabled me to paint a picture of the far-reaching connections that can flow from one ancestor's family.

In researching my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery in the past month, I've been able to reach down the generations to document all the way to her fifth great-grandchildren. Many of them still reside in Canada, the place where Margaret and her husband, Denis Tully, had settled after leaving their native home in what used to be called the "North Riding" of County Tipperary, Ireland.

Researching those more current generations in Canada had been, in the past, a challenge. Perhaps it might have been the cultural influence of a more reserved, British composure that left obituaries with an air of understatement. Finding an obituary for an ancestor we're researching might, in general, be cause for the genealogy happy dance, but when that hard-won victory leaves us with news stating the deceased "left a wife and four children," it's, well, rather deflating. I found many instances of that reticence about divulging information, even well into the twentieth century.

Granted, some countries embed a far more generous zone of silence, for privacy purposes, in divulging, for instance, contents of some governmental records. While for my American ancestors, I need only wait a mere seventy two years before being able to view their names in U.S. Census records, countries like Canada set a ninety-two year wait, and Ireland and Great Britain espouse an even more conservative hundred year rule.

With limited access to the types of documents genealogists normally rely upon to build a family tree, the advent of DNA testing has indeed become a gift. The tools that have since been developed to help sort that avalanche of new data speed the research process even further. In Margaret Flannery's case, I still am working my way through the many DNA cousins said to be connected to her line. Having recently acquired the ProTools available at Ancestry.com has accelerated my ability to connect the dots between these DNA matches, thankfully, though I realize I still have a long way to go before I can check that finished task off my to-do list. 

Connecting DNA matches to my father-in-law's tree, while helpful—hey, I've found some willing collaborators among these DNA matches!—does not always guarantee that the results will automatically point us in the direction of the answer to my main question. I still want to know exactly where Margaret Flannery came from before she met her husband Denis Tully and settled with him high up in the mountain townland of Tountinna.

That, of course, was my main research goal for this past month. Or, to amend that statement, my erstwhile goal. Still, I have one more day to lay out the details of what I know, so far, about Margaret Flannery's roots back in Ireland. We'll talk about that tomorrow, and figure out then what to do next.

This Past Month: Plans versus Reality

 

On the first day of September, I launched into the exploration of an Irish immigrant woman in my father-in-law's family. Women in our family history are always hard to trace, and Margaret Flannery had had me stumped for the twenty years since an uncle had provided me with the handwritten document that even mentioned her maiden name. This month, I figured, was time to right that situation and paint a fuller picture of this bride of Denis Tully from Ballina in County Tipperary, Ireland.

I started off well enough, with an overview on the first day of my plans to "throw the net wide" to discover Margaret Flannery Tully's many descendants, courtesy of DNA test results, combined with my new subscription to Ancestry.com's ProTools. Besides that work, I mentioned on the second day that I also intended to seek information on the cluster of Flannery families who seemed to appear in her neighborhood, once the Tully family had made the big move from Ireland to a Canadian town in Ontario called Paris. 

Then, I got sick. I think you know the rest of the story. Part of my intention was, as I had done the previous month, to hunker down with my computer and scroll through online copies of centuries-old baptismal records, seeking any sign of Flannery family mentions, whether babies, parents, or godparents. Somehow, this month, I just wasn't up to that level of concentration.

For the longest time, I didn't do any research—and, face it, in the past I had usually found a way to rig a breakfast-in-bed set up so I could get work done on my computer, even while resting. But not this time. 

Though I ended up blasting through one of my biweekly report sessions without so much as a peep about it on the blog, after two weeks of this malaise, I did wince and check the numbers. Surprisingly, even the few days I was able to go online, I was able to find some DNA cousin connections and note them in my in-laws' tree.

Of course, now it has been another two weeks, so let's take a look at the numbers. Thankfully, I eventually got to the place where mindlessly scrolling through Ancestry hints was at least doing something besides sleeping. Apparently, that progress was not too bad. For my in-laws' tree in those past two biweekly reports, I moved the head count from 41,485 at mid-month to 41,674 today. In the past four weeks, that meant adding 335 new names, all somehow connected to Margaret Flannery's descendants—and most of them still residents in Canada (though some of them managed to slip across the border from Sarnia to Port Huron in Michigan). 

Some of that progress is thanks to recent additions of Canadian newspapers to the collection at  Newspapers.com. Much of the guidance has come from the ProTools ability to see matches of DNA matches, and in particular, their relationship connections. As to the specifics of what I found, though, we'll have to save the details for a wrap up in the remaining two days of this month.

Well, It's Been a While . . .

 

Some months just take us by surprise. Or, put it another way, some months just grab us and slap us around. Knock the breath out of us. Fun stuff like that. 

It's been like that around here, but I hope it hasn't happened to you. Covid apparently snuck up on me. While I've had the original set of vaccines, I have also come down with the virus two times in the past—but never anything like earlier this month. Everything seemed to be different—and knocked me flat out.

Then came those gotta-catch-up sequels: travel to a business conference to attend, work projects yet to complete. And incredible tiredness and that persistent cough.

This is starting to sound like one of those "the dog ate my homework" sob stories. For those who did reach out to check up on me, thank you for your concern! Hopefully now, we can pick up where we left off and get back on track with family history exploration. I'll play catch-up with September's research goal in the last few days of the month, and then we'll start fresh with a new—and hopefully germ-free—month ahead.

Revisiting the Flannerys

 

I first discovered Margaret Flannery thanks to the thoughtfulness of a packrat relative. Uncle Ed, my father-in-law's older brother, had become the "keeper of the stuff," as author Denise Levenick calls it. In other words, Ed was the one who inherited all the "stuff" that his mother had kept before him—and she, in turn, had gotten it from her parents.

After Ed's passing, now years ago, several family members were sitting around his kitchen table when his widow brought out a box filled with some of that "stuff." There was, it seemed, something in there for everyone. Old keepsakes and memorabilia went to some of Ed's now-adult children who appreciated the nostalgia of times past. My husband was gifted with the World War II letters home from his own father, then serving in the Navy, to the family back in Chicago. And I, hoping for something to help with family history research, received a priceless gift: a handwritten letter from County Tipperary, Ireland, confirming the baptism of John Tully, my father-in-law's maternal grandfather.

As far as I was concerned, it was John Tully's mother who made the star appearance in that verification of his baptism. The letter identified her, complete with her maiden name: Margaret Flannery. Since then, I've explored what I could find of her family, both in Ballina, the place where the baptism was recorded, and even across the ocean in Paris, the small town in Ontario, Canada, where Margaret and her husband, Denis Tully, settled their family.

While receiving that document was an unexpected and irreplaceable gift, I have been able to trace Margaret after her arrival in Ontario—but not for long. Her earliest years in Canada unfortunately predate the available records from the local Catholic Church, as far as I and other descendants I've partnered with can tell. And I have yet to find any record of her death. Though it may not be obvious from her absence in the 1861 census that she had passed before that point, it is a given that at some point during that era, she certainly did so.

For the most part, thanks to collaboration with distant cousins in possession of labeled family photographs, I've been able to trace almost all of Margaret's children. DNA matches have guided me to build out the Flannery family tree even further. But the real key, I believe, will be to trace those collateral Flannery lines, especially considering the appearance of other Flannery families in close proximity to Margaret and Denis after they settled in Paris.

True, those could be coincidental appearances, but in a just-established town of barely one thousand people, I tend to favor such connections as a good sign. Take, for example, the appearance on the same page of the 1851 census on West River Street in Paris of both Denis and "Mrs." Tully and another family by the name of Flannery. Relatives? I've taken some time in the past to begin exploring that possibility, and we need to revisit that question once again this week.

Throwing the Net Wide

 

While last month may have been my moment to celebrate the small victories in ancestral research, this month I'm hoping to throw the net wide and pull in information on several family members. For September, we'll move on to another of my father-in-law's Irish great-grandmothers, this time looking at the Flannery family from County Tipperary.

Now that I'm equipped with Ancestry.com's ProTools—and especially the "Networks" beta version—I can easily put together a cluster of possibly related people. In this case, I'll be keeping close tabs on people with that same surname, both in the northern parts of County Tipperary, where my father-in-law's great-grandmother once lived, and onward into the 1850s and beyond, when she and her family began appearing in records in Canada.

Looking at clusters of connected people can be particularly helpful when we find no other pathway to move forward in our research. Particularly when working with families of Irish heritage, there are other clues which may help piece together a proposed family constellation, such as names of godparents for pre-famine baptisms in Ireland. Migrations en masse may also provide clues as to why names of neighbors back in County Tipperary soon afterwards showed up in census records in one particular town, far across the Atlantic Ocean. 

This month, we'll first review what we've already discovered about this great-grandmother Margaret Flannery, wife of Denis Tully. From there, we'll explore the other Flannery households which also appeared in records for Margaret's new home in Canada, as well as do a thorough search through church baptismal records back home in County Tipperary. As we widen the family network, we'll also keep an eye on any DNA matches related to this Flannery line to see what leads they may provide.

Granted, this month may be a repeat of last month's exhaustive searches through Catholic Church documents, but we'll do so, pen in hand. Any clue to help build this cluster of Flannery connections may lead us to the goal we're seeking: to connect Margaret Flannery with her siblings and parents, whoever they were.

Celebrating the Small Stuff

Sometimes, you just have to celebrate the small things in life. 

It's time for my biweekly count, and this time, I can't say much has been accomplished in my search for Johanna Falvey's roots in Ireland. The numbers bear that out. I've only been able to add seventy six new names to my in-laws' family tree. While that may sound like a good number of people—complete with documentation, I might add—the great majority of them are residual discoveries from last month's research. Finding the previous Falvey generation in County Kerry has been challenging. 

Most of this month has been spent trawling through baptismal records, one by one, looking for mothers' maiden names, and even names of godmothers, in hopes of finding a cluster of Falveys who might turn out to be family. There's not much to write about in that routine search—certainly not to put into my database of family connections.

Granted, that family tree now has 41,339 documented individuals included, so I guess I can take a pass for one report. However, I know that the going will be just as glacial in the upcoming month, as I battle the invisibility of more Irish ancestors of my father-in-law. 

On the other hand—and here's where I can celebrate the small stuff—I noticed that, despite adding not one single additional person to my own family tree in these past two weeks, I suddenly received a sizable uptick in DNA cousins at Ancestry.com. After gaining absolutely zero new DNA matches since the beginning of the month, I suddenly have eleven new matches to consider. I'm not sure what prodded such a jump; I don't recall any spectacular sales announcements...although I have noticed somewhat of a price war brewing between DNA companies lately. Could that be the inspiration? I now have 2,675 DNA matches on my side, and 1,442 matches to consider on behalf of my husband's family.

Tomorrow, we'll move on to a new Irish ancestor to mull over—and likely spend another month trawling through baptismal records and other document sources. One thing's for sure: if we don't look, we'll never find the answers—even the small ones. But there's always the hope for a big discovery. Besides, the small stuff eventually adds up.

Drawing Up a List for Next Time

 

At the end of the month, it's hard to move on from what is, essentially, an unfinished research project. While I did find possible parents for my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey, I'm still not convinced about her family constellation. Having DNA matches whose lines—at least at this early point—still don't seem to line up with my recent discoveries gives pause to reconsider.

At this point, as I do for all my month-long research projects for my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors each year, I draw up a list of what I'd like to find next. Though the idea is to provide myself a shopping list of what to do the next time I tackle this ancestral puzzle, sometimes, I can't help but continue working on that list, even well after the close of a month. Kind of like an addict to "whodunnit" novels, I have this compulsion to stay on until I discover the resolution to the mystery—but sometimes, the amount of work left undone becomes too unmanageable in the face of the next month's project. The "what's next" list reminds me to quickly return to the task, the next time I revisit this ancestor—and to tuck it away for now.

Struggling with Johanna Falvey's own family tree may be a guaranteed part of future research, as well. Due to her date of birth, some time during the early 1830s, this put her toward the earlier time period of availability of Catholic Church records in the more rural parts of Ireland. And yet, fast-forwarding to her likely sister "Debora" (Gobnait) and her marriage to Daniel Cullinane and the arrival of that couple's children into the 1860s puts us at another research disadvantage with so many Irish people of their age fleeing the country for the promise of a better life elsewhere—disrupting the age-old naming traditions and baptismal sponsors' selections.

With those disruptions in Irish traditions, the ability to build a tree's collateral lines, for instance, puts us on more shaky ground as we move beyond the famine years. While I will certainly examine the names of godparents for Johanna's siblings and search for those names also appearing in other family baptisms to build a theoretical tree based on those age-old traditions and the network of names linking the community together, that tactic won't hold quite so reliably in the next generation as emigration took its toll on the local population.

Of course, I can always hope for additional Falvey cousins to test their DNA. With the passing of time, however, even that wish may be weakened. After all, any descendants of Johanna's siblings would be my husband's fourth cousins, at the closest. As younger generations step up to test, that relationship level becomes even more distant—or vanishing.

Whether continuing to build the family trees of DNA matches, or exploring the handwritten baptismal records of 1830s County Kerry, Ireland, I still have plenty to do before I exhaust the possibilities for discovering more about Johanna Falvey. We will, in a few years, revisit her research challenges. For now, though, it's time to wrap up this month and move on to the third of my father-in-law's Irish ancestors to research for this year.

Sometimes, I Just Wanna . . .

 

...hop on plane and fly to Ireland and search for those ancestors' records in person. 

It's nearly the end of another month, and I've yet to make any breakthrough on my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey. I can presume that her sister was named Gobnait—or Gobineta, or Debora, or even Abby—but I'd feel more confident in that if I could find further documentation. I can also presume that Johanna had younger brothers named Patrick and whatever actual Irish name the family might have used instead of Demetrius. But find any further record that could reasonably be linked to those family members? Not really. Not even by a thorough search through microfilmed records online.

Even exploring the discovery of "Debora" and her husband, Daniel Cullinane, while leading me to a couple possible immigrant sons through DNA matches, has not yielded any further leads. For this family, too, I've searched through available Irish records to find any trace of the Cullinane children without much success. There is so much more work to be done on this collateral line.

And yet, those DNA matches taunt me to find a connection. There is obviously one there, even if I can't see it. 

Along the way, I've certainly built a list of resources to consult for similar research questions about Irish roots. As I explore Irish civil registrations post-1864, juxtaposing townlands and registration districts, I've found resources not only for my Falvey question in County Kerry, but for use in research in the other counties in Ireland. From an overall guide to finding registration districts at FamilySearch.org to some tools for looking up specific townlands and their corresponding overarching government jurisdictions—for example, the Falvey family's townland of Knockauncore—I've saved these resources, and more, for future projects.

There will be more such projects to come. After all, my father-in-law claimed one hundred percent Irish heritage, with three of his grandparents born in Ireland, as well as all eight great-grandparents. Even though this month is coming to a close—and thus, we'll need to set aside our quest to discover more about Johanna Falvey's roots—we'll have one more Irish ancestor to search for in the coming month.

The Nemesis: Name Twins

 

Independently building the family tree of a DNA match may seem a smart move—until, that is, we discover we have gotten swamped in the murky waters of unknown ancestries. In particular, my nemesis for this foray has been the realization that I've now been plagued with name twins. Time to move forward with caution.

My goal was to inspect Patrick, this supposed son of Daniel Cullinane and "Debora" Falvey, the supposed direct line ancestor of a DNA match. While I had found most of this couple's children baptized in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin in County Kerry, Ireland, I had not been able to locate such a record for any son named Patrick.

According to the tree posted for this line on Ancestry.com, Patrick had emigrated from his homeland bound for the United States, and showed up in records in the area around Boston. That's where I began my search.

As I mentioned yesterday, I had found Patrick's marriage record from May 15, 1890 in the city of Boston. I began tracing his descendants from that point, adding his wife and children to a floating tree I had set up on Ancestry's beta "Networks" tool. I quickly learned that Patrick's wife, though named Johanna, preferred to go by the nickname Annie. As I moved through the decades, census records enabled me to add the names of the Cullinanes' growing family.

A growing family, that is, until I realized one problem: there were apparently two families in the Boston area with parents named Patrick and Annie Cullinane. And, as you can imagine, each of those families contained some of the same children's names. My challenge was now to not take that left turn down the wrong family line.

Think about this for a moment. Patrick, born in the early 1860s according to the various ages he provided for documents, had moved to Boston from Ireland sometime before his 1890 wedding. Rather than focus on Patrick, for a moment, let's focus on the city which he adopted as his new home, and the time period in which he did so.

Ever since the first waves of Irish immigrants arrived at the port of Boston following the famine back in their homeland, Boston's population burgeoned. From 1850 to 1860, for instance, Boston's population grew by nearly fifty percent, and the phenomenal growth continued decade over decade until the turn of the next century. It's no surprise, then, to learn that people of Irish descent form the largest single ethnic group in the state of Massachusetts. By 1850 in Boston, those steadily-arriving Irish immigrants had already become the largest single ethnic group in the city.

It's easy to see, then, that name twins would be lurking in Boston's historic records. It doesn't matter whether the surname was widespread or less common. Couple that with a rather limited set of Irish given names, derived from saints and repeated through traditional naming patterns, and we still have reason to exercise research caution, even for a less-common surname like Cullinane.

I think I've found my way around this research hazard so far, but there are other challenges in piecing together this family tree. While Ancestry's ThruLines tool may have offered an explanation to lead me from the DNA match's supposed ancestor downwards through the generations, it may be prudent to return to that tried and true genealogical research advice: to begin, start with "yourself." I may just need to do that with this DNA cousin's proposed tree, in order to let the documentation lead me to the answer.  

Two Brothers Bound for Boston?

 

Discovering whatever became of the children of an ancestor's sibling can be a challenging prospect, especially if that ancestor lived in Ireland. While we can find baptismal records for many of the children of Daniel Cullinane and his wife Gobnait Falvey, tracing what became of those children after their birth in County Kerry in the 1860s and 1870s has not led to reasonable answers.

Then there is this question of whether any of the Cullinane children remained in Ireland. Though their birth post-dated the horrific famine, many Irish were still emigrating in hopes of a more promising future—which led me to a question to consider. Could two of the Cullinane brothers have been bound for Boston as young adults?

Though the reason which first prompted my question has to do with DNA matches to this line, on the other hand, there is substantial documentation to make me wonder. Take the Cullinanes' son Timothy. Someone by that same name showed up in marriage records for the city of Chelsea, just over the river from Boston in the United States. The 1883 register entry shows a twenty three year old Irish laborer by the name of Timothy Cullinane of Boston about to wed Margaret McCarthy of Chelsea. This would place his birth at about 1860, just a bit younger than what our Timothy's October 1858 baptismal record had noted. Coincidentally, this soon to be married Timothy claimed his parents were Daniel and Deborah.

A document only ten years later showed the unfortunate Timothy Cullinane yielding to death coming from pulmonalis phthisis—or tuberculosis. Though his age given at the time of his death would put his birth around August of 1861, and his parents' names as Daniel Cullinane and "Abby" Falvey, knowing what we now know about the nicknames for Gobnait Falvey, it is likely that we are still tracking the right Timothy Cullinane.

Or how about this other Cullinane immigrant to the Boston area. On May 15, 1890, this son of Daniel and "Debby" Cullinane married another Irish immigrant, Joanna Sullivan. He was likely the same immigrant, born in County Kerry, who filed his petition for United States citizenship in Massachusetts on September 26, 1889. And, of most keen interest to me, he was an ancestor of a DNA match I've been eyeing.

Though it seems promising that this, too, was a son of our Daniel Cullinane and Gobnait Falvey, there are several problems with this hypothesis. The first is that the man reported his occupation to be a marble worker—not a typical line of work for the son of an Irish tenant farmer. In addition, this man signed his name on his petition for citizenship, an unlikely ability for a Catholic raised during that era of religious discrimination in Ireland. But key to all this questioning is the fact that the name Patrick was not among those baptismal records I had found for Cullinane children, back in the Kilcummin parish in County Kerry where his parents attended church. Not, especially, for the date at which this man reported his birth: June 15 of 1860.

Whether that Patrick turns out to be a missing child of that same Cullinane family, I can't yet tell. But this is a call to go back to square one and examine the documents to build my own tree for this DNA match independently.

How Far Can Seventeen Stretch?

 

The number was seventeen—centiMorgans, that is. I wasn't sure how far seventeen could reach, so I had to take a look. Seventeen, after all, is the amount of genetic material shared by my husband and his most likely DNA match claiming Falvey roots. And that is not very much.

The possessor of that particular seventeen centiMorgan segment is someone who possibly descends from Gobnait Falvey and Daniel Cullinane of County Kerry in Ireland. Gobnait—or Debora, as she was listed in the many baptismal records of her children—was likely the sister of Johanna Falvey, my father-in-law's great-grandmother. If this DNA match is the same number of generations removed from Johanna and Gobnait's parents as my husband is, we'd be looking at a fourth cousin. Slim possibilities, indeed.

Just to make sure, I popped over to DNA Painter, the website which hosts an interactive version of Blaine Bettinger's updated Shared centiMorgan Project. There, I checked the possible reach of a seventeen centiMorgan match to see if it could indeed show up to connect fourth cousins.

As it turns out, sharing seventeen centiMorgans with a DNA match could indeed be a reasonable number for fourth cousins. And the connection could stretch in either directions. Probabilities are that both a third cousin and even a second cousin's child could be revealed by that amount of shared genetic material—and, heading in the other direction, so could a fifth cousin or even a more distant relationship than that.

With this particular DNA match, the assumption is of descent from Daniel and "Debora" Cullinane, but as often happens, there appears to be discrepancies in the proposed ThruLines line of descent. We'll take some time this week to examine whether this supposed son of the Cullinanes did indeed emigrate from Ireland. We'll also follow the route of another Cullinane son who supposedly did the same. Sometimes, in using DNA for family history, we learn far more about other people's family trees than we at first assumed.

Sloppy Handwriting and Line by Line Searches

 

Finding "Debora" Falvey's baptismal record happened quite by accident. Thankfully, I already had found evidence that her name certainly wasn't "Debora," though that was the name provided for some of her own children's baptismal records. Nor was it Debby or Abby or any other nickname I had run across in documents. When she was born in 1830, her parents' intention was apparently to give her the traditional Irish name Gobnait—hard to translate, but a name that resonated with her heritage, especially in her home in County Kerry.

And yet, I couldn't find her own baptismal record. Granted, reaching back to that early date can be a challenge for Irish records from the Catholic Church, given the history of that era. But what I hadn't counted on was a case of sloppy handwriting and the resultant indexing challenge.

Somehow, "Gobineta" Falvey turned into Gobineta Faley—not quite what the parish priest had entered, but an understandable misreading in the indexing process. The actual entry for the child's surname looked like Falevy—though her father's name came closer, looking like "Folvey."

Taking my cue from that experience, I decided to search those church records backwards from the point of Gobineta's 1830 baptism to see if I could find any record for her sister Johanna Falvey, my father-in-law's great-grandmother. While on that trail, I also looked for any other entries which included the family name Falvey, whether for the parent of a child or a godparent. I'm still trying to piece together a reasonable family tree for this line.

Well, I made it back to 1823 with only three mentions of that Falvey name. I know, I know, that even predates the 1824 marriage of Patrick Falvey and Ann Fleming, the supposed parents. But I had to do a thorough search, just in case.

Still no Johanna, making me wonder whether the not-unusual case of clerical error may have struck, making Johanna into the Latin "Joannes" by mistake, rather than using the feminine form of that name. The format used by this parish for baptismal record keeping didn't help. Instead of incorporating the usual Latin wording for "legitimate son/daughter of" to complete the baptismal statement—which would have indicated gender of the child as well—this record was laid out in a more chart-like fashion, giving solely the names in the required columns.

However, in this perusal of the baptismal register, page by page, I noticed a few details. For one thing, there was a multitude of Fleming relatives mentioned in that church's records. Gobineta's mother must have been from a large extended family, indeed.

The second thing I noticed was that the mention of the Falvey name—even if morphed into something else due to sloppy handwriting—was quite scarce. I did find one godfather by the name of John Falvey mentioned for a Sullivan child. And though I couldn't read the abbreviation for the godfather's name on an earlier record in 1823, it looked like Cos-- Falvey. Who knows? Perhaps the Falvey relatives were not from this area.

I'll continue this line-by-line search through the Kilcummin parish records to look for more Falvey connections, just in case—but I doubt I'll find many more. Though it will be more difficult, it may be worth my time to return to Gobineta's entry and follow that same path backwards through the years to see if this time I can reconstruct the Fleming family connections.

Or I can return to the DNA connections and start to pull my hair out in frustration over those missing pieces of the puzzle.

More About Ancestral Addresses

 

It's always nice to get a shout out from another genealogy blogger, and that's exactly what happened this weekend. Gail Dever of Genealogy à la Carte included my post about ancestral locations, "Measuring the Distances," in her weekly blog roundup. 

The added bonus was that right below the mention of my blog was a selection from another publication which expanded on the theme of my own post. Writing for the Genealogical Society of Queensland, Andrew Redfern explained, "Why Addresses Matter in Family History."

Featured toward the top of the article was a photograph of an item my grandmother used to call a "little black book." Just like the author of that blog post has described, my own grandmother kept one of her own—and now I have it. It is indeed, as Andrew Redfern put it, a family heirloom.

More than just describing the contents of that diminutive directory, the GSQ article goes on to explain all the ways addresses can help lead to revealing hints about those brick wall ancestors. The author challenges all of us to draw up an address history of our own lives as a keepsake to pass down through the generations.

I couldn't agree more. My grandmother's little address record was a valuable guide in my own family history research—even those little offhand notes and tidbits she filed within the pages of the book. Between that and those other "scraps" of paper that members of previous generations used to save—how odd that we now only see them as "hoarders" of such treasures—we sometimes discover answers to the questions which could not have been found any other way.

. . . But the DNA Says So

 

Looking at all the baptismal records for the children of Gobnait "Debora" Falvey and her husband, Daniel Cullinane, in County Kerry, I now have a pretty good idea of who those children were. In order, I first have Mary, whose godmother was my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey. Following that, the list continues with Timothy, John, Hanoria, Ann, Michael, and Daniel.

Having the documentation to verify that lineup may be all well and good, but when I look to those few DNA matches descended from that Falvey ancestor, their path to the past doesn't agree with those hard-earned results from baptisms and civil registrations. The DNA may say that they are connected to my father-in-law's ancestor, but the paper trail simply hasn't yet gotten the message.

One sticking point is Daniel and Debora Cullinane's second-born son. According to the baptismal record, that son was named John. According to the DNA matches who descend from that second-born son, his 1860 baptismal record should have read Patrick, not John.

And can you blame them? If the traditional Irish naming pattern still held sway—and after the famine, it didn't always do so—the second-born son should have been named after the maternal grandfather. In the case of Daniel and Debora Cullinane, her father's name was certainly not John; it was Patrick.

Fast-forward to our modern age, complete with Internet access to digitized church and governmental verifications of our ancestors' life history, and add DNA into the mix. While I am still in the process of confirming the line of descent offered in DNA matches' family trees, one thing is obvious: these are DNA cousins who descend from a son of Daniel and Debora named—wait for it—Patrick.

Now what? Looks like it's time to start from scratch and build the family tree for some of these DNA matches, to check every step of the way from the match to the specific ancestor. At best, we'll figure out what the exact connection might be between DNA cousins. At the least, perhaps we'll learn something new in the process. 

Measuring the Distances

 

One word of advice I've always appreciated receiving about researching Irish ancestors was to cross-check any possible marriage records with the distance between the townlands where the bride and groom were said to have lived. The question to consider would be to determine how the couple met. Given the typical modes of transportation in rural Ireland in the mid-1800s, if young people were to get out and meet each other, it would most likely have to be by foot.

Thus, the question becomes, how far a walk is that? The advice I learned was: no greater distance than the round trip which can be accomplished in one day. 

The most likely scenario for such travel would be a trip to market, whether to buy or to sell. Even if the potential couple were to meet up at market from homes in entirely opposite directions, each would still need to return home at the end of the day.

With the challenges of knowing just where all those tiny townlands are in Ireland, I accidentally discovered that Google Maps shows specific townlands in response to a user's inquiry. Having learned that, I simply set the app to get directions between two townlands, then indicate the mode of transportation I prefer to measure. In this case, of course, it would be transportation by foot; no trolley car rides for these inquiries.

Thus, if I found a couple with my ancestors' names, but living in a different townland than where I had last found them, this extra bit of information could help me determine whether I had found the right people, or simply stumbled upon name twins who would lead me astray.

As I go through records for possible Cullinane relatives descended from Gobnait (or "Debora") Falvey, I've been constantly popping back to check distances on Google Maps. Even when considering if the couple had moved from one location to another, it helps to see the distances measured. Townlands, after all, are rather small sections of property, so moving from one to another may be within reason—but moving far enough away to entail an all-day hike leads me to doubt the familial connection. 

The Tedium of Incremental Steps

 

At this stage of the search for Falvey family connections, we've entered what I call the tedium of incremental steps. Not much action is taking place, but the step by step moves are necessary in order to make any progress on our research question.

We've been focusing on the family of one possible sister of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey of County Kerry, Ireland. This sister married a man named Daniel Cullinane and, for the most part, remained in the same townland, Knockauncore, where I had previously found Johanna before her own  marriage and migration to the United States.

Since the Cullinane family had at least four children born after the date at which Ireland instituted civil registrations for everyone—finally including Catholics—I decided to locate the government records of their birth. I found an entry for each of those four—Hanoria, Ann, Michael, and Daniel—noting the discrepancy between dates of birth noted in each child's baptismal record and that of the civil registration. Who knows which date each child would carry throughout life as a way of secondary identification.

The tedium of it all wasn't necessarily in finding those four civil registrations. Where the true grunt work begins is in the next step: trying to locate each of these Cullinane children twenty to thirty years later in marriage records.

Such a task assumes a number of premises. For one thing, the assumption that the child lived to adulthood. A second assumption would be that the child, now grown, remained at home to be married in Ireland—not somewhere across an ocean in any of the locations where we've already found Falvey DNA cousins: Australia, New Zealand, or even North America.

The draw, though, is that it is possible to find such records, if those premises turned out to be true. If the children remained in Ireland, roughly in the same neighborhood as where they were born, not only might I be able to muddle through the many name twins who had gotten married, but I could theoretically push ahead yet one additional step: look for them in the death records of Ireland, currently available online from about 1871 until fifty years before our current year.

Finding marriage and death records is not a task limited to only those four youngest children of the Cullinane family. Though I can't find any birth entries in those civil registrations for the older Cullinane children, they might be discoverable in marriage or death records. Add even more tedium.

Still, considering the rare find of an ancestor in Irish records, wouldn't the tedium be worth the possible result? Though this process won't necessarily be something for which I'll write up the blow-by-blow details, if any surprises do show up, I promise to mention them. 

"All the Others Take Nine Months"

 

There is an old joke about newlyweds and expectant parents, with the snide remark that "the first one can come at any time; all the others take nine months."

Somehow, in noticing the discrepancies between baptismal records and civil registration reports for the Irish relatives of my father-in-law's Falvey family, I had been searching for possible explanations. I ran across one online observation the other day that noted the occasional entry of a birth even before a marriage.

Of course, now that I want to share that, I can't replicate that search. But noticing one comment to yesterday's post, in which reader (and blogger) Kat explained that dates given for a child's birth might be, ahem, adjusted so as to avoid any reporting penalties, I wanted to follow up. Hence the search for that missing article. (Where are these tidbits when you really need them?!)

Along the way, though, I did find some additional resources to support Kat's observation. As I had mentioned yesterday, beginning on January 1, 1864, all births, marriages, and deaths were required to be reported to government authorities in Ireland. The difficulty was in getting the word to the right location for an Irish family's jurisdiction. This registration process was overseen by Superintendent Register Districts (now called local civil registration districts).

The problem was that, especially in the earlier years, some Irish births were simply not reported. According to Claire Santry on her site, Irish Genealogy Toolkit, "Some estimates put non-registration as high as 15% in some of the vast rural areas of the west." The reason? It might be a long distance to the closest registration center.

That, in itself, incurred another problem: those who didn't report a birth in a timely manner may have faced a fine for late registration. That, in turn, might have somehow impacted the date of birth reported when the registration was finally made. As was observed in the article at Irish Genealogy Toolkit, "the longer the period between the birth and the date of registration, the more likelihood the date of birth is incorrect."

Being that young Daniel, son of Daniel Cullinane and Debora Falvey, was born in County Kerry—one of those "vast rural areas of the west" of Ireland—I'm guessing his father was almost one of that estimated fifteen percent of reporting parents who didn't quite get there as soon as they could. 

From Church to Civil Records

 

Seeking records for my father-in-law's Catholic ancestors in Ireland presented more than one kind of problem. The first problem was discovering the destruction of so many historic records in that country. The second one was navigating around the problem of the near-invisibility of adherents to the Catholic faith. Civil registration of births and marriages for Catholics did not begin until 1864.

Thus, trying to trace the descent of children in a collateral line related to my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey Kelly, has been challenging. While I have been able to access some baptismal records for the children of this collateral line—that of "Debora" Falvey and Daniel Cullinane of County Kerry—I'd like to also trace them through civil records.

Most of the Cullinane children I've found have been recorded in baptismal records prior to that 1864 date, so there would be no mention of their birth in government records. However, to test the process, I tried my hand at the youngest of the Cullinane children to see what I could find. 

Starting with the youngest, a son named Daniel, I first checked on the index at Ancestry.com, looking for all entries for Cullinane children in County Kerry, delimited by the mother's maiden name. That result was so huge as to be of no help, with the main problem being lack of use of the maiden name. Clicking on one of the specific entries for a Daniel Cullinane gave a readout with little more of use than the identifying number to look up the document in the FamilySearch.org collection.

I jumped over to the Irish Genealogy website, where my search for a Daniel Cullinane, born 1874 in County Kerry, produced three results. Clicking through, a readout of the indexed material indicated a disappointing entry for the item, "mother's birth surname," of "null."

I'm glad I happened to notice a line below that, "View record image." It was hyperlinked, so I clicked through to the actual birth registration image. There, on the top line, was the entry for Daniel Cullinane, son of Daniel Cullinane of Knockauncore, just as we had found it in the baptismal record. Baby Daniel's mother's maiden name was indeed listed as Falvey. The proud papa gave the birth report on the fifteenth of August, leaving for a signature "his mark," an "x" in the proper box.

The only puzzling part was that the date of this son's birth was listed as July 23, 1874—when the baptismal record had listed his birth as July 15 of that same year, and the date of baptism as the very next day, not July 23. Until I can sort out this discrepancy, I'll keep both reported dates in mind, if I can follow each of the later Cullinane children through their later years. I do want to track each of these Falvey descendants, in case any DNA matches turn out to connect with this same surname. I'll repeat this same process for each of the other Cullinane children to note their civil registration information, as well.

Documenting Daniel's Descendants

 

One of my prime reasons for documenting the descendants of collateral lines is to confirm connections to DNA cousins. In this month's research goal of determining the siblings—and, hopefully, eventually the parents—of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey, there are several possible DNA matches who might provide some guidance. That is if, however, I am able to document the line of descent for any of Johanna's possible siblings.

One such possibility would be the family of Daniel Cullinane, who married a Falvey. Daniel's wife was the woman whose distinctly Irish given name—likely Gobnait—we discussed this past weekend. She was the one who showed up in Latin baptismal records for her children with her own name listed variously as Latinized versions of the Irish Gobnait, or even Latin versions of English-language nicknames bestowed upon that Irish name.

The only sign assuring me that Gobnait—or Debora, as she appeared in some church records—was sister to our Johanna was the fact that Johanna herself was named as godmother for one of the Cullinane children. But if Gobnait and Johanna were siblings, now what? How do I proceed with tracing the descendants of Daniel Cullinane and his Falvey wife? The same difficulties plaguing anyone researching Irish roots also make their appearance as we move on to the next generation: missing census records, spotty Catholic Church records. The only positive sign was the beginning of inclusion of Catholics in civil registrations in Ireland after 1863.

It just so happened that, in perusing all my husband's DNA matches, I did find a likely Falvey cousin among his test results. This one, in particular, was said to have descended from Daniel Cullinane and Debora Falvey. In fact, the line of descent was handily outlined for me by Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool.

My appreciation of that fact, however, was short-lived: Daniel's son who was said to have been in that line of descent was someone born in 1860 by the name of Patrick. The baptismal record I had found for Daniel's son born in July of that same year was for a name recorded in Latin as Ioannes—or John in English.

True, ThruLines results, while partially based on actual DNA matches, are only as accurate as the family trees from which the suggested relationships are drawn. There may be something missing from the match's tree. Or John Cullinane's baptismal record could be for the child of a different Daniel Cullinane. Whichever way it turns out to be—and there could be other possible problems, as well—it shows me that we'll need to go back and take a second look. Or even more.  

Some are Faster, Some are Slower

 

When it comes to measuring progress on research goals, some seem to be achieved faster—and others seem slower. This month, so far, seems to be in the "slower" category.

Reaching back in time far enough to enter the realm of foreign research seems to put the brakes on progress for me. Despite having subscriptions to online genealogical services described as "international," I find that accessing records can be tempered by several variables. In the case of accessing documents for countries such as Canada or Ireland, privacy laws and other statutes limit public access to specific sets of records. Whereas the United States, for instance, deems privacy concerns to be protected with a seventy two year limit, some other countries have a trailing limit of a century mark.

This weekend, as I was working on some DNA matches linked to my father-in-law's Irish and Canadian relatives, I realized another research dilemma: information included in obituaries may follow different traditions or customs in other countries. I noticed this in particular as I read obituaries published in Canadian newspapers, which seemed reticent to even mention specific names of adult children of a deceased parent.

This puts me in a difficult position as I try to piece together the line of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey Kelly. Her Irish-born Kelly descendants, having grown up in the United States, gave me ample opportunities to locate them throughout their lifetime here in the States. But tracing the lines of Johanna's siblings, some of whom were said to have migrated to New Zealand, became more challenging because of this same dilemma with public records accessibility. Likewise even for those remaining back at home in Ireland.

It's no surprise, then, to see my research pace slowed in the past two weeks on my in-laws' family tree. In the past biweekly period, I added 204 additional documented relatives to that tree—a decent pace, but far from the progress I had made in past months. The Falvey line has been yet another Irish puzzle for me, though I keep hoping for a records—or even DNA—breakthrough.

Still, that family tree has grown to include 41,263 individuals, an effort reaching back for more than a decade. And even though work on my own family tree has temporarily taken a break until next October, when I return to work on my own father's side of the family, that tree also has topped forty thousand individuals—40,259 names, to be specific.

The main point is to remember the value of steady, consistent work towards a research goal. For some research goals, we may speed onward to the finish line, while other goals seem doomed with roadblocks from the start. There are so many variables impacting progress, not only whether we can find that magical way around that stubborn brick wall ancestor, but even details like accessibility of records from the right place during the right time period. In the case of reaching back to Ireland to trace Johanna's roots—or stretching halfway around the world to inquire of records about migrating collateral lines in New Zealand or Australia—a lot can go into whether we find those answers, or not.

Translating Gobnait

 

When we see a mother's name change from one child's baptismal record to the next, do we presume that the father listed in the documents had remarried? That, after all, was the situation we found when we assembled all the Catholic baptismal records for the children of Daniel Cullinane in County Kerry, Ireland. For some of his children's records, the child's mother was said to have been named Debora. In others, it was either Gubbenelas (for son John), Gubboneta (for Honora) or Gobinetta (for Michael). Where did that come from?

The actual name, as it turns out, should have been Gobnait—at least as far as the Irish are concerned. The trouble is, for those Irish families adhering to the Catholic faith, all church records were kept in Latin, not English, and certainly not in the Irish language. But not all traditional Irish names were translated into Latin—at least not easily. Indeed, translating a name like Gobnait even into English results in some unexpected options.

Indeed, one list found online of Irish given names and their anglicized equivalents—a helpful resource for those of us researching our roots back in Ireland—is quite lengthy and, I suspect, does not include the entire universe of possibilities. Another list provides the next step of translations between English names and their Latin equivalents. Somehow, we are stuck in the middle, juggling the two lists to figure out just whether the baptismal record we just found might indeed be the right one for our Irish ancestor.

In the case of a name like Gobnait—which, by the way, is officially supposed to be noted in Latin as Gobnata—it comes from the name of an early medieval Irish saint. Gobnait's long history, though, does not mean the woman has been forgotten over the centuries; to the contrary, there are regions in Ireland where she is still venerated, one of which is in County Kerry, the same place where my father-in-law's Falvey roots originated.

The difficulty is that, for whatever reason through the more recent centuries, the given name Gobnait attained a number of nicknames which, to an English speaking researcher, might not make sense. Take a look at this list of possible variants, said to include names as different as Abigail and Deborah.

Knowing this now, I can safely assert that Daniel Cullinane's wife, whether listed in church records as "Gubboneta" or "Debora," was indeed the same person. And since I discovered a DNA match who claims to have descended from a son of this couple, it won't surprise me to find more records with these variants for Daniel Cullinane's wife as I seek to verify how this DNA match connects with my father-in-law's family. 

A Johanna Sighting

 

Using whatever Catholic parish records are available to researchers online today, I've been on a hunt for any mention of the name of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey Kelly. Since this search entails finding her name in Irish records in the 1800s, I'm already at a disadvantage, due to the destruction of so many of such documents. 

Coming up empty-handed in so many of these searches, I turned to a new approach: looking for the Falvey name recorded in the mother's maiden name, or even as the name of a baptized child's godparents. Anything to find a mention that could point me back to Johanna's own family in County Kerry, Ireland. And, at last, I spotted my first Johanna sighting.

That first victory came when I was reviewing baptismal records in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin. In an entry dated August 10, 1856, I found the baptism of Mary Cullinane. I wouldn't have otherwise been looking for that surname, but since Mary's mother's maiden name happened to show up as Falvey, I had to take a look.

Mary's father was named Daniel Cullinane, and the mother identified as "Debora" Falvey. The family was listed as having been from the townland of Knockauncore. This was a promising sign, since I had already spotted several other entries linking the Falvey family to that same townland.

My next step was to finish reviewing that church entry to see who was listed as the godparents. In this case, however, there was only one name entered: Johanna Falvey. I wasn't sure why there weren't the customary two names entered for the sponsors, but nonetheless glad to have seen Johanna mentioned somewhere in records from this part of County Kerry.

With that possible relationship in mind, I then went on to find all the baptismal records for Daniel Cullinane's other children. After Mary's 1856 baptism, I located one for son Timothy in 1858, though the family was said to have been located in the townland of Clashnagarrane by then, five kilometers away. I found a nearly illegible baptism for a son whose name looked to be John Cullinane in July of 1860, also at that second townland.

Then, after a gap of nearly six years, suddenly the family was back in Knockauncore for the baptisms of Honora in 1866, Anne in 1868, Michael in 1871, and Daniel in 1874. In only one of those other children's baptisms was a Falvey included as a godparent: someone named Mary Falvey, who was the godmother for Honora.

If we could presume that the age-old tradition of only naming siblings or in-laws as a child's sponsors still held, we could conclude that Mary would be sister to both the mother, Debora, and our own Johanna, but after the years of the Great Famine, that was not necessarily always the case. We'd have to test those connections further.

However, there was something else I noticed in my survey of baptismal entries in the Falveys' home church. For some of Daniel Cullinane's children, their baptismal records noted his wife to be named Debora. But in others, the name appeared to be Guboneta, or Gobinetta. One might presume that Daniel had lost his first wife and remarried, but if we follow the baptisms in date entry, Debora makes an appearance in both the earliest and the later entries. (And, to confuse matters even further, there was one baptism in which the mother's given name was listed as Maria.)

There is a possible reason for this variance, of course, but to explain it will take a bit of time. We'll look into this matter tomorrow.