Yesterday was a day spent observing people ask each other where their ancestors were in 1776. For some, the answer was a proud, "right here in America." For my father-in-law's Irish roots, the answer could only have been a guess: somewhere amidst the green, green hills of Ireland.
Truth be told, as I tally my biweekly count once again, the amount of progress I made on my in-laws' family tree this time was not owing to a momentous discovery concerning my father-in-law's Irish forebears. For that question, I am still squarely stuck in the mid 1850s; there are simply no records available to pull me deeper into history.
I did, however, manage to add 373 additional documented relatives to that family tree, but only thanks to work done behind the scenes on the relatives from my mother-in-law's side, ancestors I had puzzled over this past spring. I'm still on the hunt for the parents of her brick wall second great-grandmother, Lydia Miler. Besides that, I did realize that her Jackson side did handily pull me back before that mesmerizing 250 mark on yesterday's calendar, so I worked on descendants from that line in hopes of confirming some DNA matches. There are so many yet to work on there.
That tree, as you can imagine, has been growing steadily despite the brick wall research obstacles. Right now, I count 44,002 documented relatives on the combined tree for my in-laws. On the other hand, not much has happened on my own side of the equation, where the tree count is still holding at 41,957. Come this fall, we'll turn our attention to that side of the family, but next week, it will be time to return to the question of John Kelly and his origin in County Kerry, Ireland.
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