Beyond "Down Under"

 

One of the fascinating gifts of DNA testing for genealogy is being allowed a peek at how far our genetic connections can go. In the case of my father-in-law's Falvey connections, that line not only leads this American family back to Ireland, but it also provides us a link to distant cousins "Down Under" and beyond even that.

While it was a relationship as close as my father-in-law's great-grandmother who came from County Kerry, there are now third and fourth cousins popping up as DNA matches to my husband, who serves as testing proxy for my father-in-law who has long since passed away. I've tried my best to figure out these matches, but other than those direct lines descended from that great-grandmother, Johanna Falvey Kelly, I have yet to uncover the connection between the rest.

Pulling up ThruLines at Ancestry.com, I discovered there are four specific matches who supposedly descend from a woman called Norah Falvey. She, like Johanna, was said to have been born in County Kerry. But unlike emigrating Johanna, Norah's route took her even farther away than Johanna's journey to Fort Wayne, Indiana. For Norah, her destination—and final resting place—became the old settlement of Nelson on the South Island of New Zealand.

From those four specific DNA matches, I've discovered through Ancestry's ProTools that there are more than twenty other matches affiliated with that line in New Zealand. Obviously, I've found a lot of incentive to learn who this Norah Falvey might have been. Yet, try as I might, a review this past weekend shed no light worthy of "aha" moments. I cannot find any specifics on where in County Kerry this Falvey descendant once lived—none, at least, pointing out how she connected to Johanna Falvey.

While those many matches linked to Norah don't show up as a cluster in any reports at Ancestry, that doesn't mean I can't sketch out the connections between these distant cousins. While such an exercise might not inform my original research question concerning Johanna Falvey Kelly's origins and parentage in County Kerry, I can't help but remember that one line from Johanna's own obituary: that she had one sibling who had moved to New Zealand.

Someone in New Zealand obviously could claim a genetic connection to Johanna's own family line. Whether these DNA matches connect directly to that unnamed sibling, I can't yet determine, but keeping in mind this might be a years-long research pursuit, I may as well get started sketching out the connections I can find. That, if nothing else, will be a valuable addition to the Falvey research log for whenever I do alight on those elusive telltale records.