Finding Family, the Next Generation

 

When it comes to finding family to research, pressing backwards in time to the next generation gets harder and harder. Couple that dilemma with research in locations such as Ireland, and the lack of available records can bring research to a standstill.

Still, as I push through my Twelve Most Wanted for each year, microscopic breakthroughs do happen—occasionally. Even that sense of "getting closer" to a breakthrough is enough to encourage a researcher to press onward.

As I select the last of my three ancestors from my father-in-law's line for research in 2026, I was actually torn between two family lines. Each of these lines represents ancestors for whom I may actually identify the next generation. One choice was the line of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Margaret Flannery from County Tipperary, Ireland. The other choice was his Falvey line from County Kerry.

While I worked on each of these family lines as selections for last year's Twelve Most Wanted, it was on the Falvey line that I experienced more success, tentatively identifying the parents of his great-grandmother Johanna Falvey. 

I say "tentatively" because I'm not quite confident about the records I've found, and whether I haven't simply stumbled upon what might turn out to be name twins. So this coming September, I'll name Johanna's tentative parents, Patrick Falvey and Anne Fleming, as my selection for the ninth of this year's Twelve Most Wanted.

This task will involve three aspects. One will be to scour available records in Ireland, where Johanna was born, raised, and married in County Kerry. The second approach will be to examine all possible DNA matches linked to this Falvey line—especially since I see many more added to the list since I last visited this research question in 2025. And—spoiler alert—since several of those matches currently live in either Australia or New Zealand, I'll explore what can be learned in general about family history research in those two countries, especially as it regards immigrant records.

With this bulging to-do list for September's research project, we'll be quite busy, indeed. Though the task will be international in scope, it will all point back to one small location in Ireland, where the Falvey family once called a rural townland in County Kerry their home.