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.