The Gift of Collateral Lines

 

Genealogy is a process of pushing backward through the years, one generation at a time. Eventually, we run into a brick wall that impedes our research progress. Then what? 

I've found one approach to making an end run around those brick walls is to research an ancestor's collateral lines—those brothers and sisters who might have been more fortunate to have their life's story captured by documentation. Using that research technique has been more than just another process; for me, collateral lines have often become a research gift.

With this current puzzle about my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan Malloy and the siblings who traveled with her from County Limerick in Ireland to, ultimately, Chicago, one key collateral line has been Anna's brother William. He was the one who made sure to leave behind a record—carved in stone, no less—of his origin in Parish "Ballygran." Once I took the search for the Flanagan family to that very parish in Ireland, I couldn't help but notice the entry in one 1841 record book signed, in a very clear hand, as Jacobus Flanagan, pastor of Ballygran.

It is in that same parish, whether you spell it precisely as Ballygran or Ballyagran, where the ancestors of one DNA match also happened to live. The ancestor, named James Flanagan—yes, that name, too, would be Jacobus in Latin—may have been born about the same time as Anna and William.

What is further interesting is to see how the names of the next generation echo those of the families of the Flanagan relatives who left Ireland for Chicago. While traditional Irish naming patterns may have been forsaken by those emigrants who left Ireland far behind, those who remained on the home turf were more likely to keep up a tradition which, in turn, could help solve our puzzle—with an added boost from genetic genealogy.

A further point to consider is to trace the changing hands of the property we had found, whose resident was, in 1853, listed as William Flanagan. As a first step in delving into this question about possible collateral lines, we'll take some time tomorrow to review my discoveries from that Ireland trip over ten years ago.