Not Bad, for Being Stuck

 

It's time for my biweekly check-up. Being stuck on John Kelly—as in, I can't find word one about the man's roots in County Kerry before his marriage to Johanna Falvey—I suspected that the count this time would be underwhelming. Actually, it wasn't.

That fact can be credited to my habit, over the past several months, of not letting go of previous months' research goals. There are always loose ends to tie up into a tidy resolution, and I can't bear to let family history mysteries remain unsolved. So this month became the perfect excuse to pick up a former month's unsolved puzzle, and to continue building on to that branch of my mother-in-law's family.

Thanks to the effort there, 206 more individuals found their place in my mother-in-law's Jackson line, that colonial line from New England which migrated westward through upstate New York, then on to Pennsylvania and Ohio. Boasting a start with a family of thirteen children, that Jackson line is sure to provide our family with many DNA matches, so I'm keen to research all the lines of descent. It was no surprise to learn that a little effort over the past two weeks provided documentation for that many Jackson descendants—all while puzzling over my Kelly brick wall from this month's research puzzle. That brings my in-laws' count to 44,208 relatives stretching back multiple generations.

Needless to say, nothing has been accomplished on the 41,957 names in my own family tree, a task I won't pick up again until this coming October. Nor has there been much to augment the Kelly line. Behind the scenes, that challenge requires some background research. Hopefully, that will yield results over the next two weeks—or I'll face finding myself reaching back to this research goal in months to come, just as I've found myself doing with the Jackson line.