But For a Letter Saved

Here I am, grinding slowly through the microfilmed and digitized baptismal records of Flanagan descendants in 1870s Chicago. The pace is slow, despite the awesome advances in online search over the past few years. Even so, this may be no more than a dreary exercise in going through the motions; there is no guarantee I will find any more records from this family, once I move on to the 1880s. 

Thinking of this particular Flanagan line, it occurred to me that I wouldn't have been able to delve any deeper than I have into these Chicago records had it not been through one item: a letter sent in 1849 from Liverpool to County Limerick in Ireland. More to the point: but for that letter having been saved by its recipient, I would now be sorely lacking in any research direction for Anna Flanagan Malloy's roots.

How slim a thread upon which the realization of our family's history may hang. Yes, family research is indeed a case of here a little, there a little—but some of that information gathered here and there wouldn't make sense without the glue of some additional personal material. In Anna Flanagan Malloy's case, that otherwise missing glue would be the letter from her husband.

I've written before about that letter and what it revealed about Anna's possible home in Ireland. I first presented a copy of the letter in the early years of this blog, only months before our research trip to Ireland. Following that post, I added a copy of the actual envelope, which provided the location where Anna Flanagan Malloy was staying in her husband's absence. Only four years ago, I had revisited that letter once again, hoping to find anything more about Anna's husband Stephen Malloy. So far, I've drawn a blank, both about Stephen himself, as well as the Flanagan family.

The lesson that was missing from those experiences has been impressed on me as I revisit this research problem yet again: if it weren't for even having the letter to refer to, I would be hard pressed to move the search anywhere before Anna's appearance in the 1860 census in Chicago.

For those who are fortunate enough to have "packrat" relatives, that pile of hoarded papers may be just that—junk to be quickly discarded—or those papers could be the rare and precious key that links us to our family's otherwise obscure past.