A Little Early

 

It's been a long two weeks—but don't think that means I conquered a lot of family history territory. In fact, I've traveled to two different week-long conferences for our family's business and have little to show for my genealogy efforts.

Driving home late last night from—well, let's just say the host hotel's name rhymes with Schmizney—I tried to think of what to share today. I've done near zero work on the family trees, other than to check that I haven't missed anything on Johanna Flanagan Lee's branch. So in lieu of the regular commentary, it seems now would be a perfect time to post my biweekly count. It's only a little bit early. After all, it usually makes its appearance every other Sunday, so I'm one day ahead of schedule.

Checking the numbers confirms what I suspected: travel plans wreck research intentions. No surprise here, but I only added ten more names to my in-laws' tree, which now includes 44,269 documented individuals. Even so, though I'm taking a vacation from my own family tree until the fall, somehow I managed to add four more names there. That means adjusting the record on that tree to reflect 41,963 individuals.

Results for new DNA tests for each side of the family come in slowly, too—confirmation that summertime is a slow season for genealogy. At Ancestry.com, I gained one more DNA match, pushing my close cousin count to 2,813. One was the magic number for my husband's test, too, so he now has 1,509 matches, fourth cousin or closer.

Though there's a lot of summer looming ahead of us—fall doesn't really make an appearance here until well into October—hopefully I'll get back to building out those branches of my father-in-law's Irish ancestry this coming week.

Checking the Neighborhoods

 

It was a sure bet—I thought—that Irish immigrant Catholic families of the 1880s in Chicago would have been sure to have their newborn babies baptized, so I continued looking through records of the Church of the Holy Family to spot verification of John and Johanna Lee's youngest children. When I found none of them listed in the digitized files, I wondered if the family might have moved to a different parish.

Since the Catholic Church traditionally set up local parishes based on geographic areas, organized under dioceses, it made sense to discover which parish might belong to a Catholic family's neighborhood. Thus started my hunt to find Catholic Churches in the Chicago area, based on any newer addresses of the Lee family. Since Johanna had died in 1909 at a different address in Chicago—3414 Parnell Avenue—I entered that address in a search engine and asked for the nearest Catholic parish for that neighborhood.

The search result pointed me to Saint Gabriel's Church which, conveniently, has digitized baptismal records available online at FamilySearch.org. I'm still in the process of searching through that record set, page by page, because not all entries are in date order. However, even before I've completed that search, I can say I doubt I'll find the youngest of Johanna's children listed there. Perhaps the Lee family hadn't moved to that location until long after the arrival of their youngest children.

The next step was to find a way to locate Chicago city directories. It was time to go through the listings, year by year, to pinpoint the Lee family's location. From those addresses—assuming the Lee family had moved from their original address during the years when their youngest children were born—I could then search for the appropriate Catholic parish for accessing baptismal records.

Finding Chicago city directories is not a one-stop-shopping process. ChicagoAncestors.org pointed me to some directories digitized at the Newberry Library, such as this 1880 city directory. Looking under the entry for "L," then heading to the Lee surname, I quickly found twenty one listings for John Lee. Fortunately, I already knew from the 1880 census that our John Lee was a cooper, so that entry was easily distinguishable, and I saw that he was still living at the family's old address. So much for finding a new church for his children's baptisms.

To find city directories for other years was a challenge. Blogger "Sassy Jane" (Nancy Loe) provides a resource page, "Free Chicago City Directories Online," filled with clickable links for Chicago area directories and other resources, which was helpful. ChicagoAncestors also sent me back to Newberry for a directory for 1885, revealing a change of address in 1885 for our John Lee to a home on Forty Second Street. Once again seeking the closest Catholic parish for the Lee family's new neighborhood, search engines pointed me back to Saint Gabriel's.

While I'm still having no luck finding mentions of Lee children at Saint Gabriel's—at least for our John and Johanna—I realized I had a third mention of a possible Catholic parish for the family. On Johanna's own obituary in 1909, it mentioned the funeral was to be held at "Nativity Church." For this, I'm off again, searching for any records and history of that congregation to find mentions of the Lee family and point me to the right neighborhood for the family.

Nothing is Ever Easy

 

It may be hard enough to actually locate the digitized record set needed to find that elusive ancestor, but once that collection is found, proceeding to the long-sought document should be rather straightforward, right? Wrong. Nothing is ever easy, especially in genealogy. There's always a snag along the way.

Thanks to a generous Chicago researcher, I now had the link to the records for Holy Family Church in Chicago, home parish for Irish immigrants John and Johanna Lee. According to the 1880 census, John and Johanna lived an easy walk from one of the city's longest-standing Catholic parishes.

Despite realizing that this set of microfilmed reels was not indexed for computer searches, I was ready to hunt and peck my way through to family history answers. Information on the collection told me that the first film contained the alphabetized handwritten index to help find the records, organized year by year, so that was step number one for me.

Since I had scrolled way too far in that collection for my first jumping-off spot, I found myself stuck in 1879. I decided to begin my search with John and Johanna's fourth son John James Lee, who was born in October of that year. Problem: there was no sign in the index of anyone surnamed Lee, let alone someone named John James Lee. Thinking perhaps he was not baptized in the same month as his birth, I scrolled through the indexed names, month by month, until I reached January of the subsequent year. No sign of John James Lee.

By that point, I was so close to the entries for 1881, I decided to continue the search with John James' younger sister Lillian, who was born in July of that year. Surprise: no entry for Lillian, either.

Perhaps going in the opposite direction might yield better luck. Hey, who am I kidding? I already knew that my new-found genealogical genie had located that earlier Lee child's record. George Aloysius Lee, born in June of 1877, should be in that index. Holding my breath, I took a look.

Thankfully, there he was, his entry in the index indicating that he was baptized on June 22, 1877. If I cared to view the actual entry the priest made in the ledger, I could go to page 167 to see for myself.

That, of course, I didn't need to do, as I already had a copy of that record, thanks to the helpful Ancestry.com subscriber who shared her research finds. And I knew that two children younger than George would also be in the church's records.

What of the older children? Since the 1880 census seemed to indicate that the family still lived in the area of that particular parish, I had expected to see the Lee children included there. After all, even if the family moved away, the parish's territory covered an immense part of the city of Chicago, nearly seven miles wide.

With four more Lee children yet to find in baptismal records, I'll need to continue the search. My main purpose at this point is to find the names of each child's godparents, and hope that the Irish tradition for selecting sponsors had a strong hold on this immigrant family. I need some clues about siblings in these babies' parents' generation to reconstruct a missing family tree for both Johanna Flanagan and John Lee.

Thanks to Some Genealogical Kindness

 

If it weren't for the help of others in the genealogy world, how many chances would we have missed to find the details we're seeking on our brick wall ancestors? Thanks to someone posting baptismal records online to share with whomever needed them, I learned that the home church in Chicago for Irish immigrants John and Johanna Lee was named Holy Family. But which Holy Family congregation? As it turned out, searching online brought me to at least two, if not more similarly-named churches.

I first took my search to the records digitized at FamilySearch.org. Through their wiki, I discovered that there were plenty of resources for those seeking Chicago ancestors. Referred from FamilySearch, in a long list of repositories, I found a list for Catholic Churches in Chicago. Posted on the now-static RootsWeb site, the list didn't seem to exactly include a church named Holy Family, but it did mention one called Saint Francis of the Holy Family. Problem number one: the name wasn't quite the same as what I'd found on the posted baptismal records. Problem number two: the hyperlink clicked through to...nothing.

Another link brought me to a FamilySearch collection of records from Catholic Churches in the Chicago area, but that didn't seem to bring up any records for the family I was seeking.

I took my search to the search engines. There, I found two possibilities. One was a Chicago church called Our Lady of the Holy Family, but reading that organization's history, it seemed to be a newer parish. The other church was called, simply, Church of the Holy Family.

That parish seemed to fit the specifications more closely. The church's history, for one, made it the perfect fit. And its location was close enough to the Lee family's home, according to the 1880 census, to be within walking distance from their home on Fourteenth Street.

The only problem was locating a copy of digitized records for this church. According to FamilySearch, only records of closed parishes are held by the Archdiocese of Chicago; if the church is still serving a congregation and the records aren't digitized online, then what?

Thankfully, I had reached out to the source of that Random Act of Genealogical Kindness and asked about the baptismal discoveries she had posted on Ancestry.com. Within a matter of hours, there in my inbox at Ancestry was not only a series of useful links for Chicago research, but the specific record set she had used to access those Lee baptismal records from the Church of the Holy Family. Sure, it's a set of records on microfilm reels to be searched the old fashioned hunt-and-peck method but, grateful for the guidance, at least now I can start the process.

Retracing Steps

 

When you don't have every detail documented for a brick wall ancestor, there is only one thing to do: retrace your steps and check for more records to fill in the blanks.

It was thanks to some random acts of genealogical kindness that baptismal records for at least two of Johanna Flanagan Lee's children were shared on Ancestry.com. I had already spotted that, not due to my own efforts, but solely because of Ancestry's hints system. I had remembered cranking through the microfilm at a FamilySearch Center in decades past for my father-in-law's Chicago ancestors, but I was pretty sure I had never done anything so tedious for the Lee branch of the Flanagan family, so I was grateful for the discovery.

Little did I know how grateful I should have been. Since I had gone through this process in the past, I assumed it would be just as easy to do so now—if not easier, thanks to modern conveniences like computerized searches through digitized records, not to mention AI assistance and Full Text Search at FamilySearch.org.

Wrong. Looking at FamilySearch yielded no easy answers, though explanations in the heading for one particular collection did remind me of vital facts about Chicago records: 

• City of Chicago marriage licenses were separated from Cook County records...but only from 1894 onward
• For each hundred names in the index, the first set is for Cook County, then followed by City records
• The female index did not begin until 1878

Most important, though, was one main, overarching, glaring detail: if you were looking for a record before July 24, 1871, your luck was out. That's when the great Chicago fire wiped out most records for the city.

Considering that Johanna Flanagan and John Lee had a child as early as 1875—at least according to their entry in the 1880 census—one could conclude that history had snatched their marriage record from the jaws of complete destruction. It could be quite likely that they'd have married closer to 1874, at least in my thinking.

Wrong—at least if we can trust the Statewide Marriage Index at the Illinois Secretary of State's website. No matter which way I searched—groom's name only, Flanagan spelled as Flanigan, searching statewide versus Cook County records only—I came up with...nothing. Not, at least, for this couple. There were certainly many other men married in the state who claimed the name John Lee.

I returned to one of the baptismal records posted by the Ancestry subscriber, this one for a son born before the oldest child showing in the 1880 census. Details attached to the record noted that the church where the baptism occurred was a congregation named Holy Family Catholic Church.

Whether there were any records digitized at FamilySearch from that congregation, I couldn't yet say, so it would be important to check for availability. At any rate, it would also help to learn more about the congregation, itself. That, as my first step, I'll save for tomorrow's post.

Finding Flanagan Collaterals

 

One of the best ways to work around ancestral brick walls is to examine the family's collateral lines. Those descendants of aunts and uncles can sometimes lead us to connections we'd otherwise miss. In the case of my father-in-law's Flanagan line, that is exactly what I'm hoping will clear up the mystery about his great-grandmother Anna Flanagan Malloy's origin in Ireland.

I've been working on this Flanagan family connection for years—in fact, ever since I first began writing daily entries in A Family Tapestry. In one of my earliest Flanagan posts, I mentioned discovering a second obituary for Anna's bachelor brother William Flanagan, in which not only was Anna's daughter Catherine mentioned as William's niece, but a second niece was named: Johanna Lee.

At that point, I hadn't yet learned just how Johanna connected to the rest of the Flanagan family, but I was glad to have discovered that link. Since then, I've worked on Johanna's tree enough to document all her descendants plus their descendants, in some cases for three or more additional generations.

There has been an additional Flanagan connection to revisit: identifying Johanna Lee's father. He may well have been the additional Flanagan man buried in an unmarked grave within William Flanagan's family plot at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chicago, the immigrants' adopted home. Or perhaps that man was Edward Flanagan, identified as godfather of one of Johanna Lee's sons, meaning a likely brother. Whether these two identities lead us to a clarified family constellation for Johanna, I can't yet be sure, but it is important to investigate this further.

In addition, there may have been a connection back in the Flanagan and Lee homeland in County Limerick, Ireland: a man by the name of James Flanagan. He, it turns out, may well have been the ancestor of a DNA match showing in my husband's test at Ancestry.com. On the other side of Johanna's family, Griffith's Valuation points to someone leasing property in a nearby townland known as William Lee, perhaps connecting us to Johanna's husband's family.

With all these leads, there will be much to follow up on in this coming week—or perhaps longer, depending on how accessible records may be for these Flanagans and their related lines.

These Stars Weren't so Lucky

 

No matter how stuck we might be with a research brick wall, there is always wiggle room for further exploration. Before we turn to the collateral Lee family, tomorrow, to shed any light on Anna Flanagan Malloy's origin in County Limerick, there is one other option: seeking whatever became of her husband, Stephen Malloy, after he left home abruptly to sail for Boston.

Because several records already found with that surname—whether for Anna, her daughter Catherine, or Stephen, himself—sported a number of spelling variations, I figured the asterisk would be my go-to tool for this task. Rather than searching for Malloy, then Mulloy, then Meloy, I'd simply do the whole package, once and for all, using the wild card symbol to look for M*l*y. (Spoiler: while the idea seemed sound in principle, it turned out these stars weren't so lucky.)

Apparently, as Irish surnames go, that one device opened up far too many possibilities for me to handle. Maloney, Mullarky, Mulcahey, and even McCully and Modley entered the fray. It may have seemed like a good idea when I started, but the sheer number of choices made the technique unwieldy for this case.

To complicate matters, I also found a will in Massachusetts for someone by that same name, Stephen Malloy, who married and had two children before he drew up his will in June of 1882. Even then, I'd say chances are slim that this Stephen Malloy and Anna's missing husband by that same name were one and the same, but it was an interesting discovery. Perhaps the search for whatever became of Anna's husband will be a question which never finds an answer. Of that, I'm not entirely sure yet, but one thing I do know: this search will not be one for which use of a wildcard will find a sure-fire solution.

Off the Shelf: One in Six Million

 

Heading to a conference in Minnesota last week, I thought I'd grab a book to read on the flight. This was a title I'd long awaited the chance to read: Amy Fish's One in Six Million. 

I thought the flight would give me plenty of time to complete the brief volume—after all, its length is only 210 pages, including notes, acknowledgments, and even a book club reader's guide. That was not so, due to unexpected turbulence, a reason which has also kept me from reading in cars and trains. (I'll spare you the details.)

Thus, putting the book's engrossing story on hold, I attended an educator's conference which included a tour of a local synagogue, perhaps as an ethnic-awareness exercise, but which served as a timely enrichment of my reading experience as well. 

You see, encountering a story like One in Six Million is not merely an exercise in reading one page after another. Though the pages do turn—and sometimes, you can't help but read just one more—the story unfolds much like a Middle Eastern or Jewish explanation might. You simply must understand the background. And the author is more than happy to provide that enrichment.

Simply put, the book recounts the predicament of a woman who didn't even know who she was. Wrapped in a woolen blanket and set to the side of the road as an eight month old infant, her only identifiers were a first name and date—presumably of her birth—written on a note pinned to her only protection from the elements. How she got there or why can only be presumed by the events surrounding the town near the street where she was found: a village in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1942.

The baby, once abandoned, was eventually found and rescued, of course. Else her tale would have been a brief one. Instead, the story recounts how many people and networks came together over time to help one woman discover who she really was, and who her family had been. While the author pulls in many facets of the process and its international cast of volunteers, this requires understanding of several aspects, including the early use of technology to reunite Holocaust survivors, efforts to build a genealogical database now freely available to all, the introduction of DNA testing for family history, and the volunteers from around the world who each played a tiny part in reaching the conclusion, decades afterwards, of the infant's true identity. 

From my viewpoint—yes, I did complete the book on my return flight—this is a book not merely read, but absorbed. Perhaps it's my genealogical perspective—I've personally met some of the DNA players mentioned in the book—but I found One in Six Million to be a recounting which, after being completed, still remains on my mind. 

Turning Leeward

 

A surname like Lee can be misleading. While it is prevalent in the United States, where Anna Flanagan Malloy's niece Johanna Flanagan Lee settled in Chicago, it is not only a common surname across the English-speaking world, but also an oft-encountered surname in Asian countries. Despite being such a common surname, it may be the key to determining the origin of Anna Flanagan and her siblings, back in County Limerick, Ireland. It's time to turn toward the Lee family to see if we can gain any direction in our search for the Flanagan family back in County Limerick.

Anna's niece Johanna was born a Flanagan, but after she arrived in Chicago, she married a man by the name of John Lee. Understandably, it has been challenging to trace someone by a name like that, no matter where we might be searching for him, and I've found very little on the man in his adopted home, other than mention of his name in baptismal and birth records for his children.

However, I did discover that, back in the same townland in Ireland where Anna's husband once sent her that desperate and rushed goodbye letter, there was an assessment record for someone by that same surname, Lee. That record, for a man named William Lee leasing a property owned by John Mason, the same man for whom Anna's letter was sent in care of, might just be a coincidence, but I can't help but notice that, in yesterday's search through DNA matches, I ran across someone by that same name.

If learning more about the Lee family back in the County Limerick townland of Cappanihane could help me sort out family connections for Johanna, perhaps that could also explain why so many Lee matches seem to appear in my husband's DNA results. Perhaps this is a case of intertwining family lines, generation after generation.

At any rate, since I've been stuck on the Flanagan side of the equation, maybe pursuing the collateral line of Anna's relatives will unlock a way through this brick wall ancestor's family story. We'll give this detour a try again, come next week. 

It's the Little Things that Count

 

When using DNA to connect with matches who share second great-grandparents, those distant cousins share very little genetic material in common. But when the goal is to push beyond the brick wall ancestors just one more generation, it's the little things that count. As I mentioned yesterday, third cousins can share under two hundred centiMorgans—and the number can slide far lower than that. It's that little amount that is consuming my research time lately.

Anyone who might be related to Anna Flanagan through, say, an as yet unknown sibling, would share a very small amount of genetic material with her direct descendants, indeed. With that in mind, I conducted yet another hunt to see whether I could find a potential match among the many who share as low as ten, twenty, or thirty centiMorgans with my husband.

I used the approach of creating a custom cluster on Ancestry.com, naming one specific match as my key target. Keep in mind that, though this match has the Flanagan name in her tree, I don't yet know for sure that she is related to the same Flanagan line in County Limerick, though our email discussions over the past few years have led me to believe this could be a possibility.

I created the custom cluster to have, at its lowest amount, a centiMorgan count far smaller than the usual clusters offered at Ancestry. The result of my request provided forty one matches. Oddly enough, two of that group matched my husband on his maternal side, rather than the expected paternal side. I set those two results aside and did not consider them, though I have seen some matches in the past in which the wrong side of the family had been attributed as the nexus. I also know that, reaching back that many generations among American descendants can sometimes produce other lines in which someone from the paternal side coincidentally also ended up marrying someone from my husband's maternal side.

From that point, I went one by one through the remaining thirty nine matches produced by this custom cluster request. Where I could determine through viewing each candidate's "shared matches" option which branch of my father-in-law's Irish roots might claim each candidate, I eliminated those from other branches from my search.

In the end, I was left with...nothing. None of that grouping seemed to indicate roots either linked to Flanagans or descended from the Ballyagran area of County Limerick. There was, however, a surprise: a few matches who had the surname Lee in their roots. Lee, I had found out from prior years' experience, was the married name of a niece of Anna Flanagan who had also emigrated from Ireland to the Chicago area of the United States.

While none of these Lee matches were the same as the Lee family I had researched, they also were Irish immigrants who hailed from the Chicago area, the same area where Anna Flanagan had settled, prompting me to revisit that Lee connection I had found from so long ago. We'll take a look at that tomorrow, especially because there is one issue nagging at the back of my brain: there don't seem to be any DNA matches pointing to my husband's Flanagan-Lee side of the family.

What we Don't Have in Common

 

Perhaps in wrestling with a research problem, we struggle so much that we end up on the far side of reasonable conclusions. Perhaps, after comparing and contrasting DNA matches over and over today, I've reached that far end. But the thought this day left me with might have some validity, despite the mental exhaustion. I'm wondering whether it might be far more productive for me to partner with Flanagan cousins whose matches have nothing in common with my family, as far as DNA goes. What we don't have in common may provide the answer we seek.

I'm searching for DNA matches who share genetic material with my husband and a common heritage in County Limerick with his Flanagan ancestors. Other than close relatives descended from the very same second great-grandmother as my husband claims—Anna Flanagan—I've found very little to work with. If I search for DNA matches whose family tree includes Flanagan surnames, I end up with matches whose ancestors hailed from County Cork, or even County Mayo, not County Limerick.

Trying to find DNA matches with another descendant of a second great-grandparent would mean finding a third cousin, at the closest. At that point, it is quite possible that two such cousins would share absolutely no genetic material in common, despite both being descended from the same ancestral couple. In other words, the shared centiMorgans might amount to an absolute zero.

If what I am actually trying to accomplish is to push back even beyond that second great-grandmother, it would mean finding descendants of a third great-grandparent, thus looking for fourth cousins. At that level, it would be even less likely to find someone who shares the same Flanagan genetic signature as my husband.

In other words, the more distant the relationship, the less likely that two such cousins would share any genetic material at all. 

But what genetic Flanagan signature my husband might not share with his own DNA matches could very well be the exact segment that a Flanagan cousin might share with a different family member. In other words, rather than reading the ProTools results for cousins who share DNA with my husband's test and a match in common, I need to find the matches of our matches who share different Flanagan DNA segments with their own matches—not in common with my test, but in common with other Flanagan cousins.

While that might sound reasonable in theory, in practice, it would take cooperation between cousins who are willing to share their data. Perhaps a letter writing campaign might convince candidates to join up to solve this Flanagan mystery. On the other hand, at a third cousin level, the greatest amount of genetic material any one match set could share would be 234 centiMorgans—a small amount, indeed, but also an amount which shows us how much variability there is between what one third cousin could inherit versus another third cousin descended from the same second great-grandmother.

In other words, I'm looking for someone with DNA in common with my husband's Flanagan ancestor who has other Flanagan matches who do not share the Flanagan segments that match shares with my husband. Perhaps there's someone out there who inherited all the Flanagan genes that my husband did not. I hope that person took a DNA test and posted the results, along with a complete family tree. At least, I can dream.

Trying This, That, the Other

Some days, the research path leads in circles. Yesterday was one of those days. With plans to review Flanagan results at four of the DNA companies where my husband has tested, I ended up trying a little bit of this, a smattering of that, and some more of the other, and came up with...nothing. If I found Flanagan matches, they lived elsewhere. If I found County Limerick connections, they didn't merge with the Flanagan family. It was a zero sum day.

I tried every data manipulation combination I could think of, checking for matches in common with my husband and either of two sisters who had tested, plus matches shared with some of their children. Nothing led to the hoped-for connections.

However, spending hours being thorough must have put me in the mood to keep checking through other Flanagan files. I not only have made it a habit to check back through the fifteen years' history of this blog, but whenever I received a useful comment on a post, or an actual email, I saved it for future reference. In addition, as I found pertinent links for specific family lines, I'd save them in a set of electronic file folders delineated by surname. My Flanagan e-file has several gems saved over the years, some of which I had nearly forgotten about. It was good to review all those notes—some of which contained details I need to make sure to add to the right places in our family tree.

While the pursuit of DNA leads didn't, um, lead anywhere, it occurred to me to try a slightly different approach. While comparing matches linked to siblings can produce some insights—in the Flanagan case here, unfortunately, it didn't—it occurred to me that widening the circle might yield a more useful set of details. Over the years, I've kept in touch with distant cousins who also research their family lines. We've compared notes from time to time. Now might be just the right time to reach out and see whether those cousins have Flanagan matches where my husband's test just doesn't have the genetic details that would point to that side of his family. It's certainly worth the try.

Our Siblings' Side of the Family Story

 

One problem with using DNA for family history research is that we find silver bullet strategies often come crashing down. We put so much hope into such tests, but it turns out that DNA match lists may not contain the magic potion we've assumed would bring down those impenetrable ancestral brick walls.

There is a way around such disappointments, as I've found. It's in using DNA testing in combination with a lot of hard research work and testing strategies that can produce more useful results. One key is to test siblings. Where one sibling's DNA results may match the target test subject on certain chromosome segments, the other sibling may yield far different results, yielding another side of the family story. Perhaps this is the cause behind the red-headed step-child accusation, where one of several siblings doesn't seem to have the same appearance as the rest of the family, and yet is, indeed, a child of the same parents. Sometimes a hidden characteristic from a grandparent makes itself known in only one grandchild—and that can be the family quirk that leads us to a hidden ancestral story.

In my husband's case—as he is the proxy for my father-in-law's genetic profile—he has two sisters who were willing to test their DNA to help me with a class project I had, years ago, for a workshop taught by Blaine Bettinger at a genealogy conference. I'll call them Sister #1 and Sister #2. As I worked through the genetic differences that could be spotted between the three siblings, it was clear that Sister #2 had matches not shared by the other two subjects. Her matches, some of them quite distant relationships, all descended from her family's ancestors from County Tipperary in Ireland. I was able to confirm connections as distant as fifth cousin from specific matches which she did not share with her two siblings.

On the other hand, Sister #1 had matches from the more southern counties in Ireland. At the time when I had first realized this, I was working on connecting DNA matches from Sister #2 to the family's Tully and Flannery roots in County Tipperary and, while overjoyed to have discovered such a handy connection there, I gave little thought to the value of the other sister's DNA connections.

Now, as it turns out, Sister #1 may have the key to unlock at least some of the doors leading to Flanagan and Malloy answers from County Limerick. Because both siblings had tested at Family Tree DNA, rather than at the more popular Ancestry.com, this will mean working with a smaller universe of results, but it will also mean working with a company which, over the years, has focused on marketing directly to Irish residents at annual genetic genealogy conferences of the prior decade.

Hopefully, at least some of those many Irish DNA-testing subjects will have a useful match with Sister #1. The most likely approach will be to seek matches who are not "in common with" my husband's results at Family Tree DNA. However, I already did spot one Flanagan match from my husband's own results who leads back to a possible relative of Anna Flanagan.

Back at Ancestry.com, their ThruLines results show only seven matches connected to Anna Flanagan. All of those, unfortunately, are close cousins whom we already know. No secrets unlocked there. And though I had already prompted the system to find a father, simply labeled by his surname "Flanagan," the ThruLines system hasn't yet uncovered any more distant cousins, despite my father-in-law's tree including Flanagan descendant Johanna Flanagan Lee and her descendants down to the level of third great-grandchildren.

In addition, there are test results at MyHeritage and 23andMe, though these are only for my husband's results, not his siblings, so there is no way to compare or contrast those results, only to find matches with the rather common surname Flanagan.

Still, having DNA test results does provide one additional way to chip away at that Flanagan brick wall story back in County Limerick. Now that we're finally at the beginning of August—the official start of researching Anna Flanagan, number eight of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026—perhaps these updated DNA matches, especially from Sister #1, will provide some answers about Anna Flanagan's roots in County Limerick.

Summer Slowdown

 

I have often wondered whether the reasons some genealogical societies always chose to "go dark" for the summer might now be outdated. After all, with a major demographic in such organizations weighted heavily towards those who are now retired, who needs summer for a vacation? Extended travel can be done at any time.

This past week, I had my own personal proof that summer travel is still a reality: I spent the week in Minnesota. As you can guess, I gave very little thought to family history research. In fact, with today marking my biweekly review of progress, the numbers confirmed that summer slowdown for me.

Granted, I had an additional excuse for a less than stellar biweekly report: looking for clues about brick wall ancestors from Ireland can bring any search to a screeching halt. To package the slowdown entirely under that umbrella, though, would not be a fair representation. I was busy doing what people often do in the summertime.

With that in mind, I did add fifty one more names to my father-in-law's tree, which now includes 44,259 ancestral relatives. I managed to add two more to my own tree, to boot, though that tree is trailing at 41,959 documented names. That surprise addition on my tree was thanks to the discovery that twelve more DNA matches were added to my side of the family, which rounded out one branch by an additional generation.

DNA matches on my father-in-law's side have not increased by quite so much. For this biweekly span, there were only two new matches; the previous two weeks yielded zero. Perhaps not as many are testing from the Irish roots side of the equation, leaving me without answers where I need them the most.

Whether the DNA slowdown can also be attributed to a summer slowdown, I can't really say. Still, with the start of a new week, I'll be taking a long look at whatever can be gleaned from those matches I've already spotted, to see whether any new additions will help point me in the right direction for my Flanagan question, back in County Limerick.

With a Little Help From Family

 

An emailed note I recently received reminded me of another resource to use as I struggle to piece together Anna Flanagan's story. While my father-in-law, Anna's descendant, has long since passed away, I not only have his son's DNA test at Ancestry.com to rely on for potential Flanagan matches, but two additional children had also tested, using another of the four testing companies which we had used for my husband's test. With a little help from family members' DNA results—not to mention, a review of results at the other companies we had utilized—perhaps it will be easier to zero in on the closest Flanagan connections.

One thing I had noticed by testing three siblings is the variety of DNA matches linked to only one of the siblings. The matches' ancestors seemed to cluster around different geographic regions of Ireland. One test matched many of the lines from County Kerry and County Limerick, while the other sibling's matches pointed farther north to County Tipperary.

Admittedly, this was an effect I had noticed for more distant cousin matches—say, around third cousins—but that is exactly what is needed for this question about Anna Flanagan. Anna would be the second great-grandmother for all three of the siblings who tested, so any same-generation matches would register at about the third cousin level.

Since each sibling seemed to have a different set of matches at that distant relationship level, it may help me zero in on the one test which seemed more likely to match the Flanagan side, with its roots in County Limerick.

I hadn't looked at those siblings' test results for years. I had originally asked each of them to test as part of a project for a DNA class I was taking, and each candidate had kindly allowed me to serve as the administrator for their test results. Though that project was undertaken years ago, many more matches have been added over the years. I'm curious to see whether that geographic signature still holds for each sibling's DNA test results, and whether there might be any new matches who connect with our Flanagan line.

It will take some time to review it all, but hopefully by Monday, I'll see some new possibilities.

Picking up Where we Left Off

 

One of the challenges facing those of us who only have limited time available for research is batching our time in such a way that we can pick up where we last left off. When I was teaching school full time, that meant summers and winter holiday seasons provided my only "free" time for research.

Now, thankfully, I have chunks of time sandwiched into my schedule on a more regular basis—plus, we have the luxury of computer-assisted search prowess which is expanding all the time. Still, every time I set aside a research project, I need to leave myself notes for where I need to pick up, the next opportunity I have to pursue a specific ancestor.

As we enter the month of August, my formidable goal will be to massage all those incomplete Irish governmental and church records to coax them into giving up their secrets on my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan Malloy. I already know, mostly from private letters preserved by pack-rat family members, that she and her brother William originated in County Limerick. According to those family records, their Catholic parish was known as Ballyagran.

If we turn to government records from that area in the time period before the two siblings' emigration, a possible townland might be Cappananty. There, at least according to Griffith's Valuation, our William Flanagan might be the one recorded in the assessment document.

So, what do we need to find next? There, exactly one year ago, according to the recap after my last attempt at searching for the Flanagans, my plan for revisiting this research issue included

• looking for additional governmental records which may have come available online, even for the time periods long after Anna and William's departure for Chicago, to seek records of possible cousins still in Ireland
• finding additional resources in Ireland to explore for this research problem
• building out the family tree to identify other descendants of not only Anna, but her unnamed mystery Flanagan brother in Chicago—and possibly back in Ireland
• reconnecting with any Flanagan cousins contacted in past years to compare research notes since the last time we talked.

For a quick first stop, tomorrow we'll look at four DNA companies where my husband has tested to see whether any new Flanagan connections have since uploaded their results, and to review whether any old connections at Ancestry.com in particular can lead to new insights, thanks to last year's addition of the ProTools subscription.

Finding What's Missing

 

Being stuck on a research question—where I've currently been left, stumped—can leave one walking in circles. It feels like I've been trying the same approaches over and over again for some of my father-in-law's Irish ancestors. While I wonder whether the brick wall isn't his great-grandparents as much as the overall Irish predicament of the mid-1800s, a nagging thought makes me consider whether I'm missing something. There's got to be an answer out there somewhere, if only I could find it.

I had thought about turning my questions over to a search engine, or to AI resources. With that idea in mind, I thought it was timely to spot Randy Seaver's post in Genea-Musings earlier this week, in which he asked ChatGPT5 about twenty record types we should be sure to include in  any thorough family history search.

Actually, I had put some question to such resources last month while struggling with John Kelly, another great-grandparent from my father-in-law's ancestry. I had wondered why the man's family seemed to dance between two different townlands, and asked Google's Gemini what significant differences there might be about the two townlands, despite their contiguous situation. The result, while not answering my genealogical questions, was informative.

Now, in my search for Anna Flanagan and her brother William from Ballyagran, I went back to a map of the area, showing both the village of Ballyagran as well as the townland where I believe I had found William in Griffith's Valuation before he left for America.

Looking at the map again, I spotted the cemetery we had visited during our family's trip to Ireland back in 2014. The map shows the name as Castletown Conyers cemetery. During our visit, we could clearly see the ruins of the church yard as we walked through the old burial ground, but had no way of knowing whether that was the original church for the Catholic parish where William and his sister Anna had once worshipped. 

While I realize I'll need to revisit questions like this once again, I took my questions to online resources to see what might pop up. Almost immediately appeared a new-to-me resource for cemeteries in Ireland. The Irish Graveyards website provided an aerial view of the compound, a map of the burials, as well as a chart of burials, including individual photographs of headstones (if still in existence).

I'll still need to search through the thirty five pages of notes for this one sizable cemetery—though obviously Anna and William were gone from the area long before their own passing—but it also occurred to me to hold on to this resource, not only for the Castletown-Conyers site, but for all other sites also available on the website. It seems like a useful resource, and another approach besides what is already available through other online cemetery websites.

Of course, I'll need to review what I've already found in searching for the Flanagans, and check that inventory to see if there are other resources I still need to add, not only from sources of documentation, but through the posts on the Flanagans that I've written in the past. It's important to build upon what we've already found, but also to explore new horizons.

Map above courtesy of Google Maps.

About Anna's Husband

 

There are some extra details to know about Anna Flanagan, our eighth of this year's Twelve Most Wanted, to help us find her roots in County Limerick in the mid-1800s. As difficult as it may be to find someone with a surname like Flanagan, at least coupled with Anna's husband's name, it might make the challenge a little less daunting.

At least, that's what I thought. Looking for the marriage records for the Catholic parish of Ballyagran, where Anna's brother William had claimed his roots, I realize that not many church records have been preserved. The listing, according to the National Library of Ireland, leaves a big gap right where I'd guess Anna and Stephen Malloy might have gotten married.

The marriage date is only a guess, based on the date of birth for the couple's only child. Catherine, presumably born in the same place where her uncle William claimed his roots, and where Stephen's farewell letter to her mother was addressed, arrived in either 1847 or 1848, depending on the dates provided by later records in the United States, where she and her mother eventually moved after her father's disappearance.

I have yet to find any marriage record, but knowing how my eyes just love the blurry digitized microfilm records, I'll probably cry over that mystery once again, just to be sure. At least we still have something to search through.

Complicating matters is another detail: just how to spell Anna's husband's surname. Whether in Ireland or in Chicago, where Anna eventually migrated, her married name was treated to multiple variations in the spelling department. Sometimes Mulloy, sometimes Malloy or even Melloy—or take away an "l" to make it even more challenging—this is clearly a case of employing wildcards for the search.

All I know for sure is that one day in February of 1849, Stephen sat down—most likely with someone who could write the letter he dictated—to send fond farewells to his wife and let know that, due to a warning he had received, he was leaving from Liverpool, bound for Boston. That was the last that Anna heard from her husband.

On the other side of this story, nearly one hundred seventy years into her future, the envelope that she saved along with that letter guided us in our travels to County Limerick, and brought us, perhaps, to the very parcel of land where she lived while awaiting word from her husband. Even if institutions were not able to preserve records about a specific ancestor, I'm grateful for our own family members who realized the importance of preserving the few details they could find among their relatives' mementos.

Meet Anna

 

There are some ancestors whose stories we fall in love with, and Anna Flanagan's story is such a one. Though I've researched her in the past—she was my father-in-law's great-grandmother—there is so much that remains a mystery still. I'm hoping a concentrated look at the details of her life will bring something more to light as we get this early jump on the eighth of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026.

What I do know about Anna is rather basic regarding the beginning of her life. I know she was born about 1810—if we can believe the report of her age in the 1860 census following her first appearance after emigration from Ireland. There in Chicago, she was listed by her married name, Ann Mulloy, but she was not living with her husband. Rather, she was in the household of someone named William Flanagan—turned out to be her brother—and her thirteen year old only child, Catherine.

Thanks to the information etched on Anna's brother's headstone after his passing in 1893, we can be fairly certain that the Catholic parish of Ballyagran in County Limerick would be her birthplace as well as his. Unfortunately, existing baptismal and marriage records for that location do not extend back far enough to provide documentation for either of those two births from Anna's own family. And I've yet to locate her marriage record or her daughter's baptism.

Prompted by a copy of the letter sent by her husband, Stephen Mulloy, on the eve of his (possibly unexpected) departure for Boston, I did manage to confirm his name appeared in passenger records, just as he had told her he'd be doing. Whatever happened to him after that point, I have yet to discover, despite searching through multiple spelling variations in the Boston area. Nor can I find any record of Anna crossing the Atlantic in search of the man, or her daughter's passage at a later point in her childhood, as the family surmised had been the case.

Anna's story picks up just as abruptly in Chicago with the 1860 census. Through the many more-readily accessible documents from that point until her death in 1885, it is easier to glean an impression of this woman through the events in her later life shared through letters and family reports. Yet it is those early years before her emigration—and that of her two brothers—that still mystifies me. Hopefully, this year will allow us a peek into the rest of that story.

Back to the Flanagans

When plans don't seem to go as...well, as planned, it's time to move on. At the end of June, I opted to move on early to July's selection for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026, John Kelly. That was an impossible choice, and I knew it—but I had hopes.

Those hopes didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, so I'm taking my cue from last month's ending and moving on to the next. With this early start, we'll be headed back to the Flanagans for August. 

My main focus for this month's feature from my Twelve Most Wanted will be Anna Flanagan. Hers was a story which beguiled me, and despite the struggles to learn more, I just love retelling what unfolded in her life. Yet there are several points at which I've confronted closed doors in the timeline of her history.

This month won't just focus on Anna, though. There is her husband, whose mysterious disappearance still begs for explanation. And her one daughter's journey across the Atlantic—with whom, if not her mother?—has yet to be documented, though the fact that she spent the rest of her life in Chicago is proof that she did make the journey from County Limerick...somehow.

Besides Anna and her daughter Catherine, there was Anna's bachelor brother William, who also ended up in Chicago, possibly with another brother. While I still haven't discovered that other brother's identity, I know his daughter also made the journey to Chicago, as well.

If it wasn't for the bachelor brother's magnificent headstone in a Chicago cemetery, I might not have discovered where the Flanagans originated. Thanks to a message etched in stone, I not only have the name of the Irish county, but thankfully the parish as well.

Head starts in research only get us so far, though. Despite being the recipient of this fortunate set of discoveries, I have much yet to learn on the Flanagans. We'll jump in tomorrow with a brief sketch of Anna Flanagan and the pertinent details of her life—at least the ones I've found so far.

Some Thoughts on "Pack Rats"

 

Pack rats—and I'm not talking about the rodent variety here—can be people prone to hoarding unnecessary items. Some avocational genealogists have been accused by family members of being guilty of that very habit, and its related downfall, inability to resist bright shiny objects. But let's think about that for a moment.

As I prepare to launch into my research topic for the coming month—the eighth of my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors for 2026—I realized I would know very little about the early years of this woman's life if it hadn't been for the propensity of her descendants to hoard such items as old letters, photos, and documents. Indeed, the very story that endears me to this woman revolves around a letter which, once received, she folded, placed back in its envelope, and carried with her for the rest of her life. It was the last word she had received from her husband before he disappeared.

Then again, it might have been near impossible to locate records back in Ireland for another of this family's ancestors, except that a pack rat descendant decided to save the little slip of paper handwritten by a priest in County Tipperary, noting the date of baptism of another relative, along with the names of his parents—maiden name for the mother, included. I have yet to find that record in its original home, either.

From letters sent home by my teenaged father-in-law during his service in the early years of World War II to letters exchanged by his great-grandparents with family and friends almost one hundred years before that point, I've gleaned much about these family members which could not otherwise have been found. Others may complain about pack rat relatives, but I for one am grateful that someone saw the value in saving "unnecessary" items.

Don't Blink

 

Now that AI for family history has become all the passion, it seems as if DNA testing has taken a back seat. Not that it has become the red-headed step-child of the genealogy world—that happened after the Golden State Killer case became the breaking story—but there aren't quite as many breathless announcements posted on the topic lately.

Given that observation, I was almost surprised to see a banner pop up on my screen when I decided to take a peek at the latest DNA results for my tests at Ancestry.com.

Really? Ancestry is investing in upgrading their DNA services? I thought no one was talking DNA anymore...

Of course I had to click the second button, "Learn more."

And then, I waited.

The screen seemed to struggle to move ahead to the next item. Finally, it gave up with a screen left blank, all except for an "Ask Leaf" in the lower right corner. I guess AI won, after all.

I blinked. And I guess I missed it. I tried looking again, starting from the beginning of my search. This time, the announcement box didn't even show up. While I'm hoping that Ancestry delved further into accuracy in predicting close family relationships—I'm just really keen on reading their white papers—I've been quite happy with what they've already provided their DNA customers. But better is always, um, better. Right?

In Early, Out Early

 

What to do when stuck on a research problem? In John Kelly's case, I'm afraid I've worn out all the alternative approaches to finding the roots of my father-in-law's great-grandfather, John Kelly. While I don't know where he was born—other than Ireland—I can say for sure that he was married in the parish of Kilcummin in County Kerry to a woman from Knockauncore named Johanna Falvey. After the birth of a few of their children (and the loss of at least one daughter), the family decided it would be best for them to migrate to America—to Fort Wayne, Indiana, specifically.

Following the trail into their future in America was certainly easier than struggling to find signs of their past in Ireland. After nearly a month of not having much to "write home" about, I've decided: since we entered this chase to find John Kelly on the early side, thanks to a peach of a research project in the previous month, we may as well close out this month's struggle early, too.

In the process of checking all the details I could find this month on John Kelly, I've noted every discrepancy between records—from the multiple years of birth extrapolated from various U.S. Census records to the varying names reported for the townlands where the family lived at the birth of each child. I've tried to see if godparents' names might guide me to clues on Kelly siblings. I've studied the Irish naming patterns to see whether that might enlighten me on possible parents' names. I've turned over every stone in the pathway, in hopes I'd find some fortunate clue somewhere—anywhere.

Nothing yet.

This may be one of those times when it's best to take a break and move on to the next of my Twelve Most Wanted for the year. John Kelly was a tough candidate. I had high hopes for breaking through that research barrier to find his family. But sometimes, setting a problem aside to give a weary brain some rest might be the best policy. John Kelly will be right where I left him, the next time we revisit this puzzle. Next week, we'll pick up with a fresh challenge.

Checking the Pattern

One standard, when researching Irish ancestors, is to check the naming pattern which was held consistently by many Irish during earlier centuries. Since I'm having problems pushing back beyond the generation of my father-in-law's great-grandfather John Kelly, I'm trying every tip and trick I can remember to see whether anything can fill in those missing blanks.

The Irish naming pattern held that a man's first-born son would be named after that man's father. The second-born son would be called by his mother's father's name. For daughters, the pattern would be reversed: the first-born daughter would be named after the mother's mother, with the second-born daughter named for her father's mother.

Though I have not been able to find baptismal records in County Kerry, Ireland, for all of John and Johanna Kelly's children, based on the records gleaned after their immigration to Fort Wayne, Indiana, I think I have a fairly complete accounting of the family constellation.

Here's what I've recorded so far. First-born son was named Timothy. Following Timothy's birth about 1860, there were three daughters. The first of the daughters was named Catherine—the ill-fated woman who became my father-in-law's paternal grandmother, dying shortly after the birth of her only son. Following Catherine were two daughters named Mary; I presume the first of those two died in childhood, thus explaining the re-use of that same name signifying the importance it represented to the family.

Following the three daughters, John Kelly finally got his second son, whom he named Patrick. A final son trailed years afterwards, whom the couple named John.

If we use the Irish naming pattern to find reasonable suggestions for John Kelly's parents' names, we could presume that his father was named Timothy, and his mother, Mary. The fact that John Kelly, after immigration to Fort Wayne, jointly purchased a family cemetery plot with a co-worker named Timothy Kelly is thus doubly enticing. However, whether either man carried forward that Irish naming tradition from across the ocean is anyone's guess. I have yet to find any sign of an older Timothy to fill the shoes of John's missing father from County Kerry.

Another clue for us to ponder, while awaiting appearance of any actual documentation that can provide solid footing for our journey backwards through the generations—though somehow I can't muster the confidence to fly blind solely with this naming concept. I'm still holding out for some form of solid documentation. 

Circles Leading Nowhere

Encouraged by the approach of double-checking documentation for every detail of John Kelly's life, I thought I would continue the trend. I certainly am still in need of finding records to identify my John Kelly from among the multitudes bearing that name in County Kerry, Ireland.

In addition to looking at any details for this John Kelly, I also looked for records involving his wife, Johanna Falvey. Unfortunately, it appears I am now wandering in ever-widening circles, and going nowhere.

I did realize that the places where I found the couple settled—at least long enough for the birth of a child—were in the parish of Killeentierna, rather than Kilcummin, the latter location being where I can at least say with confidence that Johanna Falvey once lived. Indeed, returning to Griffith's Valuation, I can still point to the entry for Anne Falvey, whom I'm certain was by then the widow of Johanna's father, living in Knockauncore, just as her daughter Johanna's marriage record had noted. 

Still hanging on to shreds of hope that I'll discover something more about John Kelly's origin and parentage, I thought I'd return to that old standby, the Irish Naming Pattern, to see if I could extract some guidance there. We'll see, tomorrow, whether that can shed any light for the search for John Kelly's roots.

Double-check Double Take

 

There are some times when you are so sure of something, it never seems to warrant a second look. On the other hand, when we're faced with an unresolvable brick wall, we can't seem to double-check enough. 

John Kelly is getting to be one of those ancestors. I had been so sure of the documents I had already found regarding this man from County Kerry and his wife, Johanna Falvey, that I never looked back. After all, I had baptismal records for two of his Irish-born children, pinpointing their residence down to the very townland. Why take another look?

It was when any forward movement on this family's research had been stalled for far too long that I decided to backtrack and re-inspect every detail. That's when something I noticed caused me a double take: the documents disagreed.

This involves the situation of John and Johanna's daughter Mary, born in 1864, and another daughter, born in 1867 whom they also decided to name Mary. My presumption is that the elder Mary died in childhood, but the name was so important to the parents that they gave the second child the same name.

Because each of these Kelly daughters was born on or after 1864—the date at which civil registrations extended to Irish residents of the Catholic faith—I thus had not one, but two different documents I could access for each child.

Checking the first Mary, I located her baptismal record in the parish of Killeentierna. Her entry in the church register was dated September 25, 1864. There in the entry was mention of her parents—John Kelly and Johanna Falvey—along with the names of her godparents, James and Margaret Fleming. The family's domicile was listed as Currow.

When I looked for Mary's appearance in the civil registration, filed at the registrar's district in Molahiffe, the entry indicated her actual date of birth as 18 September in 1864, and that the registration was filed on September 24. The same parents were named in the civil paperwork, and I could see that John Kelly, not unlike many of his Catholic neighbors of that time period, signed his name with an "X."

For the place of birth, though, a different location was offered: Curraross. How had I missed this before? I took a second look; sure enough, the same residence was given for Mary's father, preventing any attempts at explaining that perhaps Mary's family lived in one place, but she somehow was born elsewhere.

Curious about the variance between the two documents, I tried the same experiment with the second Mary Kelly. Sure enough, her March 24, 1867, baptismal record named the same parents and another Fleming man as her godfather, while listing her family's residence as Barnfield in the same parish, Killeentierna. But the civil registration, filed by her father on March 23, had something different to say about her residence. In this second report, the Kelly family was said to live in a place called Currabarnfield.

Worse, looking up townland listings for Killeentierna gave me neither alternative. No Barnfield, no Currabarnfield—but there was a place called Currabanefield. Do I take that as my answer? One would presume government officials would surely know the official names of their geographic designations—but so would the priests who lived among their parishioners in those same vicinities. 

I am only slightly encouraged to remember that when searching for another Irish ancestor in a different county, the spelling for a townland in Griffith's Valuation differed from the way the place name is currently spelled. Couple that with the propensity for British governmental overseers to prefer writing phonetically the names rendered with a vastly different spelling in the Irish tongue, and perhaps I have my answer.

Or perhaps this is a problem meriting closer examination. After all, there are far more than just one John Kelly in County Kerry. 

Taking the Slow Route

 

There's one thing to be said for choosing to slow down and do that "exhaustive" search for a missing ancestor: you can take in far more of the scenery when you take the slow route.

It's a "stop and smell the roses" kind of search. When we look up our ancestors' records using current-day search provisions, with one click of a button, our search terms are instantly translated into possibilities. Better yet, we don't even have to perform that search; handy "hints" pop up unbidden to beguile us away to a possible record set (which, mostly, serves up the correct answer). But go page by page through that same record set, looking with our own non-AI eyes? That's putting the research brakes on, benefitting us with a more leisurely, up-close review of the bigger picture.

As I looked, this past weekend, for any signs of John Kelly's own baptism, I noticed a few details. For one thing, "FAN Club" surnames back in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where John settled after emigration, popped up with regularity in the parish records I researched. This included Denehy, maiden name of the second wife of suspected Kelly relative, Timothy.

In addition, recalling Irish baptismal traditions, I watched not only for Kelly baptisms, but for any baptism in which a Kelly was named as a sponsor. With several such appearances, I'm noting the families connected to those Kelly godparents, as possible guidance in piecing together a Kelly family tree back in their homeland in County Kerry.

I also began seeing rugged evidence which might explain why I haven't found any record for John Kelly in Ireland. On the records I accessed at the National Library of Ireland, the earliest dates began with baptisms on June 14, 1801. That sounded promising, as I've had several proposed dates for John Kelly's birth reaching back to that time period.

However, by the time I had reached baptisms in August, 1809, I encountered a problem: the next microfilmed page skipped to July, 1823, without any explanation. Gone, suddenly, was my chance to extract any hints about my target ancestor's baptismal sponsors, let alone the names of his parents, if he was indeed born in those earlier years.

For the Kelly records I am finding, I'm taking notes on the implied relationships. At some point, I'll sort these out and see if any patterns emerge. Before that can happen, though, I've got more transcribing to do—not to mention, a thorough search to see whether the missing years of this record set turn up anywhere else in digitized records at NLI or elsewhere.

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.

S O S : Saving Our Societies

 

Perhaps blogging has become passe in today's world, but I still follow several genealogy blogs. It's one way to keep up with what's happening in the world of people who still pursue their families' stories. Since I coordinate several local family history education opportunities on behalf of my county genealogical society, I find it important to keep my fingers on that pulse.

I also know what an uphill battle it has been for local genealogical organizations to remain pertinent in an ever-connected yet increasingly isolated culture of technology. Any society board member who might have caught a glimpse of John Reid's post in Anglo-Celtic Connections earlier this week might have found resonance in the title of Tuesday's entry: "Ideas on How to Save my Genealogical Society."

Mentioning an online meeting hosted by a board member of the Stanly County Genealogical Society in North Carolina, the blog post provided contact information for anyone wishing to become part of that meeting. The meeting was open to any society's board members interested in sharing ideas on what goes into maintaining a thriving organization now.

While our local society is still active and, despite losing members ever so gradually over the decades, providing multiple programs and services each month, I was grateful to have spotted the announcement and took up the offer to join in the conversation. In my opinion, it's good for us to share our resources. Granted, what might work well for one community may fall flat in another location, but if we don't gain any inspiration by seeing what others have already tested out, we're likely to continue our own downward spiral.

As it turns out, by attending this past week, I stepped into an ongoing conversation. The group meets online on the third Wednesday evening of each month. I anticipate I'll share some ideas from out here on the west coast, and gain quite a bit of inspiration from others joining in from the south, the east, the midwest, and the north—including two organizations in attendance from Ontario, Canada. We can sit there, isolated in our own communities, and watch our genealogical societies eventually capsize with the weight of our own organizational problems, or we can reach out and connect with others determined to make the pursuit of our families' roots vibrant and pertinent to today's generations in our own communities.

Yet Another Attempt

I confess: I can't give up. Trying every way I can to find any sign of the right John Kelly back in Ireland, I've backtracked to some original sources. In an old-fashioned way: microfilm.

Not that I've really resigned myself to cranking through records on a microfilm record. This attempt is the next "best" thing. (Admittedly, nothing is "best" about having to read handwritten records on a microfilm reader.) 

I've gone back—virtually, of course—to the National Library of Ireland, where lo and behold, there are some microfilmed records for earlier years of some of the locations in County Kerry where I first spotted John Kelly and his wife, Johanna Falvey. Keep in mind that the dates I've retrieved for John's birth vary wildly. Some of those dates reached beyond those available in a crisper, cleaner digitized form at either Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. Believe me, these older records show their age.

Thus, I now enter the stage of a "reasonably" exhaustive search. While I'm not sure it can be considered reasonable, I'll be reading through the birth entries, page by page, starting with the early 1800s in the parish of Killeentierna.

Though the copy is fuzzy, it is still fairly easy to differentiate "Kelly" from all the other blurry surnames, so progress won't be too agonizing. Much time to search means little time to write about it, though, but if I find something significant, I'll come up for air long enough to tell about it. 

In Search of a Genealogy Happy Dance

 

After rolling around at the very bottom of the doldrums over not finding my John Kelly—as opposed to the thousands of others out there in County Kerry—I now can understand the reason behind the Genealogy Happy Dance. Being so despondent about the possibility of never finding an answer demands an equal and opposite reaction, once the impossible is achieved.

I don't doubt there is some sign out there of that one particular John Kelly. It's just that I haven't been able to find it. Not this year. Not the last time I tried. Try enough times and the quest seems fated for just giving up entirely.

It's not that the "Happy Dance" concept is some Snoopy-esque over-exuberance to be winked at with a smile. It's simply that, when you look that hard for so long, actually finding what you were looking for erupts from impossibility to near-miracle status. No wonder people get so happy when they finally find their answer. I could use a little bit of that Happy Dance energy myself right now.

When in Doubt, Re-read Your Email

 

Yesterday, the wiser approach to my John Kelly impasse was to set the whole search conundrum aside to clear my mind and gain a fresh perspective. Did I heed my own advice? Of course not.

I did, however, recall a file that might be worth revisiting: the one containing old emails I had filed away for future reference. When in doubt, re-reading old emails can sometimes re-invigorate flagging resources. 

Over the years, I've set up a filing system to help me re-locate old emails I had received which were useful to current family research questions and worth saving for future reference. Mostly, I had set up a list of surnames I had been researching, creating the folders by surname within my email program. While I hadn't specifically set up a file folder for Kelly—a much too common name, and one for which I've got at least three different family lines to research—I had set one up for John's wife, Johanna Falvey.

As it turned out, a reader here on A Family Tapestry had sent me a note about a database she had found which contained a clipping about a Falvey death in County Kerry. While I don't think the man mentioned in the clipping was related to my Johanna Falvey Kelly, seeing the note again reminded me to return and take a look at that website.

The website was RootsIreland.ie. Now apparently a subscription-only website, I wasn't sure it would be worth it to test the waters only after ponying up the payment. But it did remind me that there are other websites which might be worth exploring besides the usual states-side companies I'd been using. 

Of course, now I'm kicking myself for not setting up a folder under the label Kelly, after all. That system has helped out for so many other surname questions in the past. But it did give me a needed nudge to see if there are any other new resources out there which can open the door just a crack further to enter the Irish world of genealogical records. Our John Kelly has got to be out there, somewhere. And having a system to review old messages can come in handy, after all.

Null Set

 

Sometimes, no matter how we jumble the terms and try new combinations, those family names simply refuse to appear in record sets. That's how it's gone with my search for John Kelly's roots in County Kerry. Though I have had better results looking for his wife's name—Johanna Falvey—I'm still missing baptismal records for two of their Irish-born children, Timothy and Catherine. And as for his suspected kinship to a co-worker in his adopted home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that Timothy Kelly has yet to appear in baptismal records back home in Ireland, as well. I'm drawing a null set here.

I tried jumping back to the original baptismal records in County Kerry without success—a search which not only yielded nothing, but took an enormous amount of time. If AI could search more successfully for these mystery ancestors, I might actually consider giving it a try.

In the meantime, I'm suffering research fatigue, a good sign it might be more productive to set this one aside, at least for a few days, and try an entirely different research problem. Sometimes, the mind needs some time to empty, and then breathe.

Mind Mapping Kelly

 

This month may have started out with the goal of seeking John Kelly's roots. That quickly changed. After all, even narrowing the search to an Indiana immigrant's homeland in County Kerry, Ireland, coupling such a search with a surname like Kelly didn't advance my position. I had to branch out to learn anything more about my father-in-law's family tree.

Thus entered the sideline of pursuing the history of Timothy Kelly, John's co-worker in the booming Fort Wayne railroad industry, and possible relative. Finding further information on Timothy then led to discovery of his sister Margaret in Toledo, Ohio. And that sister Margaret soon led to nieces and nephews in her home, recently immigrated from Ireland, with the surname Sullivan.

As the surnames piled on, the resultant search presented a case for the use of mind mapping the family connections. I'm not sure yet how John and Timothy Kelly were related—if at all. My plan, over the weekend, to review what could be found in newspaper mentions of the three Kelly names—John, Timothy, and Margaret—led to no more than I had found the last time I had revisited this research question.

This impasse convinced me to re-read all my posts on these Kelly connections, beginning with our family's trip to County Kerry in 2014, when we searched for the actual townlands which had been mentioned in Kelly baptismal records before their emigration. This tour through all I had written on the Kelly line reminded me of some rough times running in tandem with my intended research goals—recalling research collaboration with Kelly relatives now long gone, struggles to continue through Covid casualties and fire threats and serious family illnesses.

Despite the many detours on the path to finding that Kelly answer, I had discovered some connections which still could use additional verification—if there is any out there to find. Bottom line is that in County Kerry, I now have several linked surnames which beg for at least a dotted line of connection. From Timothy's sister Margaret, I had learned her reported parents' names from her death certificate: Timothy Kelly and Catherine Flynn. The reporting party on Margaret's certificate, Katie Sullivan, was a niece who thus provides us with another surname connected to the family constellation. And reviewing farther back in records, baptismal reports for John Kelly's oldest children provided godparents' names yielding a Fleming connection, as well.

With all these surnames swirling in my head, it's time to sketch out a mind map of their connections—and keep an eye out for their repeated mention in records drawn up, back in County Kerry.

Asking the Question

 

What makes a person ask the question about their roots? What prompts someone to decide the answer will only come through a personal commitment to the search?

I've always had my own thoughts about a possible answer to such questions, but when the discussion led that way in a local genealogical society meeting last week, it was interesting to hear what prompted other members.

One member began the conversation by noting that it was when one of her grandparents had died that she realized the additional implications of that loss: a personal repository of family remembrances of bygone generations was lost as well. Others agreed and added their illustrations. For another member, the oldest in her generation in that family, she realized her position as natural-born resource when any of the cousins wondered about a family detail; they would come calling her for information. She, correspondingly, complied by finding answers.

It has long been my conjecture that it is those for whom family details were hidden—versus out in plain sight for all to know—who felt a compulsion to seek out the real story on their roots. That was always my case. Despite my mother's ample supply of family stories—recounted to my generation, thanks to her mother's Aunt Fannie—there was an absolute vacuum when it came to reports about my father's family. Though amply filled with oral heritage on one side, the silence from the other side sucked me in.

As we move well into an era of instant online access to a wealth of information, including digitized historical records, I'm realizing it might be helpful to reach out to others and ask what motivated them to begin their family history pursuit. Technology introduces secondary changes to life—how we access information shifts whom we depend on—and sometimes we don't even realize how we, as a collective, are responding. Returning to our roots as genealogical organizations as well as individuals might help put us in touch with the original motivations which brought us here in the first place.

Saying Goodbye

 

We had an interesting conversation the other morning, the few of us who lingered after our genealogy society's special interest group meeting. A longstanding member asked, "What do you see as the future of our organization?"

Perhaps a question like that might seem reasonable, considering what prompted it was news that the three thousand volume collection of reference material we had amassed over seventy years was possibly headed to a future of being "purged" from the public library's bookshelves. Was it all over? Was it time we were saying goodbye?

Goodbye must have been on our members' minds for a season. Over the past few months' meetings, members had been bringing their personal books, journals, even unused pedigree charts—"free to good home"—for anyone who could use them. The reason? Members just wanted to clean up their personal office. Only problem was: everyone was hoping to do the same thing.

We talked about some of our longstanding members. These were people who were so fascinated by their own family's history that they had stayed committed to finding the answers to their questions for decades—and then helping others to learn how to do the same. They talked about reasons why they first were drawn to family history—for many, it was when they started losing their own grandparents—and wondered how to find the next generation of answer seekers. Were they even there?

Over the nearly seventy-five years since our local genealogical society was first established, the world of family history research has changed in ways so far beyond our wildest dreams. So has the world of volunteer action and dedication. And so have the individual members who had made all this possible for us to share.

In their own way, some of our most dedicated volunteers were ready to say their own personal goodbye—but hesitant to let go...to whom? To multi-national corporations with the power and resources to digitize all the handwritten records of the ages but limited reach into the world of face to face relationships? To a volunteer partnership of local residents in an age plagued by the curse of Bowling Alone?

In an ambience more befitting a late night conversation around a campfire, a mellow mood enveloped our morning coffee time gathering. We didn't come up with any answers, this gathering of researchers who, over the years, have become friends. In the hush of contemplating what could come next, we eventually said our goodbyes and each of us went about our day's schedule. But I couldn't seem to let go of the question that sparked the conversation: what do we see as our future, those of us who still want to gather to pursue our family's stories? Is it time for us to say goodbye to an era of collective effort?