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.
No comments:
Post a Comment