A Technology Tantrum

 

A little rant about technology tantrums may be in order, right at this point. I've been searching for online information hinting at the possible relatives of Johanna Falvey Kelly, my father-in-law's great-grandmother from County Kerry, Ireland. My strategy has been to find all the baptismal records I can for Johanna's children, in the hopes that the godparents named in the documents would be the traditionally-designated siblings or in-laws of Johanna or her husband, John Kelly. I want to use these to guide me in building a possible listing of Johanna's siblings.

Unfortunately at this point, I am not researching from home, but at our family's annual August vacation destination—which means I am at the mercy of hotel Internet connections. And yesterday's connection was spotty. Try as I might, I could not finish my final edit—nor add the updated link I had hoped to include in the article on Currow. As in providing a viable answer to my own question, "Where in the world is Currow?"

Turns out, the final word on Irish locations happened to be the final website I had consulted. (Isn't that always the case?!) According to the Placenames Database of Ireland, logainm.ie, Currow is indeed a "village"—or, as the website puts it, a "population centre"—within the civil district of Killeentierna. But conveniently for us, this website also provides one additional clarification: Currow is considered to be part of the townland of Ranalough.

Backtracking to my "oldies but goodies" map, I could then find Ranalough's location on the townlands map for Killeentierna (see townland number nine) and judge whether it was a reasonable distance between the earlier and later locations of the Kelly family home. It's not exactly what I'd call a sweet summer day's meander through the countryside, but doable for someone fit for a hike: from the Kilcummin townland of Knockauncore, where we had previously found mentions of Johanna Falvey, to Ranalough in Killeentierna, Google maps puts the distance at just under fourteen kilometers, a journey taking about three hours.

Whatever computer glitch dogged me on the final edit of yesterday's post has apparently become the ghost that disappeared overnight, for today, I've been back to searching for baptismal records again. In hopes that FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search has, by now, added enough resources from Ireland to help me find my Falveys, I've taken a closer look there, as well. 

Result: though many are transcriptions, not the actual digitized baptismal records—thus missing the sought-for element of godparent names—I've found a font of useful way-finders pointing me in new directions. We have a lot to review in the next few days, both in Johanna's generation and in the generation of her likely parents.