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?

Tracking Timothy Kelly

 

Sometimes, being stymied with a brick wall ancestor means wrestling with a person for whom we can find no further documentation, especially concerning the earlier years of his life. When that happens, discovering a cluster of possible family relationships—or at least friends, associates, or old neighbors—can help us bypass the impasse. In John Kelly's case, my father-in-law's great-grandfather, that key connector would be his co-worker, Timothy Kelly.

Before we can even decide whether Timothy Kelly might have been the linchpin bringing John Kelly and his family from County Kerry, Ireland, to a job in Fort Wayne in the United States, we need to piece together what we already know about Timothy's life into a timeline.

We've already discussed some of the key dates from Timothy's later years, such as his marriage in Fort Wayne, late in 1860, or his death in 1901. What I'm keen to do now is push back the man's personal history to the earlier years of his life. For that, all we have so far is a note in his obituary mentioning his work on the "Fort Wayne Road" in 1857.

Pinning a date on the opposite end of Timothy's life proves difficult. Depending on which document we use, Timothy could have been born as early as 1827 or as late as 1839. His death record on September 21, 1901, gave his age simply as sixty two years. That would yield a year of birth in the fall of 1839.

However, depending on which census record we rely on, Timothy's year of birth could have been in 1830 (from the 1870 census), or 1828 (according to the 1900 census, taken right before his death), or even in 1827 (if we rely on the 1880 census). To complicate matters, Timothy's headstone added the inference of another date: 1829.

When he came to this country, on the other hand, is only provided by one date—so far. The 1900 census noted that Timothy arrived in the United States in 1854. That record also indicated that Timothy was a naturalized citizen—though that is an event for which I have yet to find documentation.

If Timothy Kelly did work on the Fort Wayne Road as a "very young man" in 1857, we'd have to take that phrase with a genealogical grain of salt. If the death certificate had his birth fixed accurately, that would mean the "very young man" would have been about fifteen years of age at the time. But if the earliest date held true, he simply would have been a worker aged about thirty, no age to be surprised or concerned with at all.

Regardless of how old Timothy Kelly was when working on the railroad, the real question—at least for me—is how I can find signs of the rest of his family, if they had also immigrated along with him. For a young worker of fifteen years of age, we might expect to see parents, or at least a sign of older siblings. If, on the other hand, Timothy did turn out to be closer to thirty at that point, it would be no surprise to find he had immigrated on his own as a single man, seeking a better life in a new country—not unusual for many young Irish immigrants at any time after the devastating Irish famine years.

Despite this date quandary, it still would benefit us to look for any further connections between our Timothy and that sister Margaret mentioned in his obituary. An exploration of newspaper mentions next week might help point the way for a next step in this search for a possible collateral Kelly line.    

Revisiting a Personal Track Record

 

One positive aspect of writing about our research progress is that, eventually, we build a track record detailing what we've already tried. Whether successful or a miserable failure in answering our research questions, the log of our research wanderings charts details we won't need to revisit. It also, thankfully, can point us to spots in our previous searches which do need to be revisited.

In the case of Timothy Kelly, the co-worker and Fort Wayne, Indiana, neighbor of my father-in-law's Irish immigrant great-grandfather John Kelly, I had worked on his line in the past. Part of my task now is to review everything I've already written on him, both back in 2016 and more recently in 2020.

I'm hoping to zero in on gaps in that research and look for signs of possible additional record sets which could add helpful pointers. After all, a lot of digitized documentation has been uploaded to websites both in the United States and back in Ireland in the past ten years. I'm hoping to spot those gaps, discover which newly-added record sets could fill in the blanks, and then recap what's been discovered with this iteration in researching Timothy Kelly. And that, in turn, will hopefully point out any further connections between the two Kelly families.

Thankfully, those clues about a sister for Timothy named Margaret and family connections pointing back to Toledo, Ohio, were details I had touched on in past years' posts. It's time to recap the family's story by reviewing that material, then step out to fill in the remaining blanks. From what I've reviewed of past posts, though, it looks like the journey won't be entirely straightforward. It's time to set out a timeline of what's already been found.

The Fort Wayne Road

 

Perhaps it was a mild form of presentism which struck me when pondering the early years of Timothy Kelly. Since he was a contemporary and co-worker of my father-in-law's great-grandfather John Kelly, I've been trying to discern whether there was any further connection between the two Kelly men. Finding information on Timothy Kelly, I hoped, could fill in a few blanks regarding how the two were connected.

Timothy Kelly's September 22, 1901, obituary in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette mention his work, back in 1857, on "the Fort Wayne road." Since I had been unable to find Timothy in census records before 1870, I was keen to locate his whereabouts. A sighting in the 1860 census, before his marriage to Ellen Hannan in October, might provide the names of his parents, or at least a mention of siblings.

Wondering what the "Fort Wayne Road" might have referred to—here I was thinking of something historic like Zane's Trace, admittedly a too-far stretch into the wrong period of history—I took my question about the road to the search engines. When the responses mentioned routes far too early for Timothy's participation in a construction project in 1857, I added that specific year to my search terms.

Suddenly, the results were no longer discussing the early roads of stage coach travel, but a far different kind of road: rail roads. Of course it made all the sense in the world, once my mind shifted to the realities of that era. Even more than that, putting it in context with a man who spent the rest of his working years employed by the railroads—oh, duh, how could I have missed it?

Stuck in my own timeframe.

The Fort Wayne Road, if you're curious, was part of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Rail Road, later reorganized as the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway. Fort Wayne, as a city, played a large role in the development of railroad lines through the midwest, something I should have surmised from my research visits to the city over the years. The Allen County History Center mentioned in a social media post that Fort Wayne was considered one of the most important railroad centers in the nation.

While it was helpful to get reoriented to what was considered the prime "road" in the city during that time period, knowing these railroad details didn't quite pinpoint where I might find young Timothy Kelly. The entire railroad operation extended westward from Pittsburgh through Fort Wayne and on to Chicago. In fact, researching the term, "the Fort Wayne road," I found one mention which identified the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge as crossing the Allegheny into Pittsburgh—certainly far from Fort Wayne itself. If the entirety of the tracks was dubbed the Fort Wayne road, that would make pinpointing Timothy's location quite a puzzle.

On the other hand, mention of some of Timothy's family residing in Ohio might make more sense if the family had moved with the expansion of the work project. It might help to turn our attention to mentions of the Kelly family in various newspaper reports over time. 

Floating

 

When faced with charting an unexplained connection to a possible relative, my first step has always been to set up a separate family tree. On Ancestry.com, I usually created an entirely new tree, often making it private and unsearchable while my doubts yielded the upper hand. Once my sandbox experiment made it clear to me that I was on the right track, only then I might add the person as a "floating branch" in my own tree.

Once I caved and signed up for Ancestry's ProTools subscription, "floating" became a far easier proposition. While, yes, I could always create a floating branch in any family tree, the ProTools arsenal helped me tackle that a bit more easily. By creating a "network," I could link a person to a known relative in my tree, beginning the process by clicking on "Networks Beta" at the bottom of the "Relationships" column.

Though the next step offers several options, I simply named the network, specified the person I wanted to add, and that was it. In this case, I named my network Kelly FAN Club, wrote a descriptor for the network's purpose, and entered my first candidate, Timothy Kelly.

While it is true that I will be duplicating some effort—after all, I already had set up a small tree headed by this same Timothy Kelly—it was effort expended several years ago. With all the improvements in accessible resources over that time period, I am hoping more digitized records will help point the way to Timothy's family. After all, he did not come alone. I want to know not only who his siblings were, but whether his parents also migrated from County Kerry. Such a discovery as that, alone, would be a gift, especially if he turned out to be a close relative of John Kelly, his co-worker and my father-in-law's great-grandfather.

The next step, then, is to find any new additions to record sets, both at American resources such as Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, and also back in Ireland, and add them to this new floating branch. But first, I'll be following up on that newspaper obituary clue about Timothy's work on the Fort Wayne Road in 1857. I'll be looking, first, for signs of his residence right there in the same city where that other Kelly family was soon to arrive at their new home.

A Kelly Connection, Far From Home

 

When seeking clues on the roots of an Irishman with a name as common as John Kelly, any Kelly connection is tempting to follow. As it turned out, my father-in-law's great-grandfather John Kelly happened to move far from home in Ireland to a city in America where one of his co-workers turned out to also have the surname Kelly.

Imagine that.

This co-worker, by the name of Timothy Kelly, also happened to live around the block from where John Kelly settled in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with his wife and family of three surviving Irish-born children: a son who was also named Timothy, along with daughters Catherine and Mary Ann. 

By the time John and his family had arrived in Fort Wayne by 1860, Timothy had married Ellen Hannan and soon had a growing family of his own. Oldest daughter Catherine was welcomed by Timothy and Ellen in 1861, followed soon after by Mary in 1863, Andrew in 1868, Timothy in 1869, Richard in 1871, and Deborah in 1873, before Timothy's wife Ellen died in 1875.

A list of names like that was enough to also give me pause, as here was another Kelly whose namesake choices for his children echoed that of our John Kelly. Though there were many more years of life lived by Timothy Kelly before his own passing in 1901, what I had already found about this other Kelly man gave me much to ponder.

Unfortunately, Timothy died just before governmental record-keeping mandates sought the kind of additional personal information that makes genealogists do the research happy dance. Information on Timothy's death record, as reported by his son Andrew, did confirm he was born in Ireland, but as to any other details, Andrew was unable to say.

Fortunately, the wordy obituaries of the era helped to fill in a few blanks. The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette of September 22, 1901, explained that Timothy was born in County Kerry and that he "came to this country when he was a small boy." Though not fixing a date for his arrival, the obituary mentioned that "as a very young man" he "assisted" in the construction of the "Fort Wayne road" in 1857—three years before his marriage to Ellen Hannan.

The only other detail provided by the obituary, besides his work history and his regard as one of the senior members of the Fort Wayne community, was that he was survived by a sister named Margaret Kelly.

When I first attempted following Timothy's family line, it was likely a decade ago, if not earlier. I did try searching for Margaret Kelly, and through details provided in newspaper reports, I had traced her to a residence in Toledo, Ohio. At that point, inability to access archived newspapers from that location stalled my progress. It's certainly high time to pick up that chase once again, to see if we can isolate enough details on this Kelly man to pinpoint who his own family was, and where in County Kerry they may have had connections with our John Kelly—if any.  

When There's No One to Look Back to

 

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.

Beyond 250

 

Celebrating 250 may be acknowledging a significant historic landmark—and I hope fellow Americans' festivities today are enjoyable (and safe!)—but as genealogists know, there is much that goes into any story that comes from our roots. And there is much that will be required of us to move with any significance beyond this 250. But for this one day, may you, family, and friends enjoy together what the day means to you. Happy Fourth!

Family? Or Friend?

 

When researching a brick wall ancestor with a name as generic as John Kelly, we sometimes need to reach beyond the usual tactics. In this instance, not knowing for sure where in County Kerry our Irish immigrant John Kelly originated, nor having the luxury of any documentation on John's parents from his adopted home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I'd be at a loss in discovering his roots except for one tantalizing detail: John stuck close to another Irish immigrant by the name of Timothy Kelly.

There were some tantalizing parallels between John's family and Timothy's family. Each man had named their oldest daughters Catherine and Mary. Both had a son named Timothy. They both worked for the railroad in Fort Wayne, living around the corner and down the block from each other. And—I couldn't help noticing—Timothy lived next door to someone named Daniel Falvey who had the same surname as John's wife's maiden name. Could these folks be family? Or merely friends who coincidentally shared a surname, job, and other similarities?

The similarities reached farther than those details. I discovered that, in the aftermath of the unexpected loss of John's daughter Catherine after the birth of her son, she was buried in a family plot co-owned by John and Timothy, likely purchased in 1875 after the death of Timothy's first wife. Perhaps it's time to pull out some old notes drawn up when I visited the Catholic Cemetery in Fort Wayne to ascertain who else was buried in that family plot. 

Perhaps, too, it's time to revisit this unexplained connection between two Kelly men and their (coincidental?) neighborliness following a migration of over three thousand miles. It's likely been well over a decade since I last puzzled over this relationship. Though I can't yet tell whether these two were Kelly family members or simply good friends through thick and thin, the question warrants a closer look.

Looking for the Rest of the Family

 

In the quest to find the origin of an Irish immigrant named John Kelly—I pause while you laugh—I had hoped to find additional baptismal records for the rest of his family. 

In the decades following the Irish famine years, John Kelly had married and begun a family. His marriage to Johanna Falvey pinpointed the sacrament's location in County Kerry as the diocese of Kilcummin, and noted their residence to have been in Knockauncore. Baptismal records for two of John's children provided locations within the Killeentierna diocese: Barnfield and Currow. Other transcribed records mention Molahiffe, possibly a civil registration rather than a religious record.

The various locations given for the family have long seemed confusing to me. I remember pondering that very puzzle before leaving on our family's research trip to Ireland, over a decade ago. (Hint: the trip not only didn't help resolve the issue, but had some locals puzzled over the designated townlands, too.)

One way to resolve that issue about geographic designations was to simply graph the distance. My first stop was to the National Library of Ireland's entry on Catholic parish records, where I found a sketch of County Kerry's dioceses, from which I drew a close-up of the locations in question.

It was easy to see how close the three in question were to each other. Molahiff, mentioned in one transcribed record for daughter Mary Ann's birth, lies to the west of Killeentierna, diocese in which both Kelly daughters' baptisms were entered, and also to Kilcummin, where parents John Kelly and Johanna Falvey had been married in 1859. And as a point of reference, though it is not included in that map excerpt, Kilcummin lies directly north of Killarney, an easily-recognized name to many people.

Next, it was to Google Maps, to outline the distance between the locations mentioned in the records: the townland of Barnfield and the village of Currow in Killeentierna, the townland of Knockauncore in Kilcummin, and Molahiffe. If all locations were put into a circle route, it would mean a journey by foot lasting nearly six hours. However, I doubt Molahiffe was mentioned as a place where the family lived, but possibly where they needed to file a civil report of the birth. Eliminating that outlier from the map meant a trip of about three and a half hours to travel between the other locations, a very possible distance to travel by foot.

The key, I hoped, would be to find records for the rest of the Kelly children, but though I tried searching through the Irish Catholic Parish Registers collection at Ancestry, I was unable to find any further records for Timothy, Catherine, or even Patrick Kelly, whose birth has been listed in subsequent American records as both Ireland and the United States.

Lacking any further Irish records for John Kelly's children, I still have other ways to search for John's origin. One way, which I had tried years ago with little success, is to examine the one close associate of the family who had also migrated to the United States and lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, same as John and Johanna. Perhaps it's time to revisit that connection once again.

Map above courtesy the National Library of Ireland entry on Catholic Parish Registers.

Before the Journey Began

 

One way to trace the route of immigrant ancestors is to look to their children. Not just the locations where those children were born, but the year of their arrival can give us a sketch of their parents' meanderings.

Before the journey began for John Kelly, he had married Johanna Falvey and the couple had at least four children before leaving their homeland in County Kerry, Ireland. The baptismal records help pinpoint the family's whereabouts before their final decision to set sail for America.

John and Johanna were married in 1859, and by the next year, they had welcomed in their oldest son. They named their boy Timothy, and as practicing Catholics, the Kellys surely had him baptized, but where is the question. I've yet to locate that record, as well as that of the second-born child, a daughter they named Catherine, who eventually became my father-in-law's ill-fated paternal grandmother. 

For their third child, however, John and Johanna chose to have that daughter baptized at the Catholic parish in Killeentierna in County Kerry. The September 25, 1864, record noted that the Kelly family was residing in the village of Currow at that time. The only other bit of information was the note concerning the godparents, James and Margaret Fleming, surely one or the other of which would be a sibling to either parents.

From that discovery, we now have a Kelly couple named John and Johanna who have been said to reside in either Currow, as we saw for this one baptismal record, or the townland of Knockauncore, as we saw yesterday for Johanna's entry in her marriage record. At any rate, these two locations help us zero in on the vicinity where John Kelly and his wife once lived—or remind us that there could be more than one couple with a husband claiming a name as common as John Kelly, urging us to look further for more information on the family's whereabouts for the baptisms of their other children before they left Ireland.

John Kelly's Wife

 

To find an ancestor from Ireland with such a name as John Kelly means relying on a "F.A.N. Club" full of helpful hints about the man's whereabouts. That's why I was elated when I first discovered that John Kelly had married someone with the name Johanna Falvey. With a name like that, I reasoned, John Kelly's wife possessed a surname uncommon enough for it to stand out in the crowd.

Initially discovering John Kelly was not difficult at all. I relied on the oral reports of older relatives who had kept notes on such details. After all, John Kelly was my father-in-law's great-grandfather, a relationship close enough to have been held in the memory of relatives my father-in-law knew personally. And even though my father-in-law is long gone, his brothers—and then their children—have carefully kept those records.

But discovering where John Kelly came from is another matter. We already knew he died in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1892—and that was the problem. John Kelly's passing fell just a few years short of when government records expanded their reach to include pertinent details such as parents' names or place of birth.

John Kelly's wife, on the other hand, lived long enough to provide details which, preserved on paper, could be passed down through the generations. Johanna Falvey's passing in 1903 provided not only a death certificate but two different obituaries full of details. A more straightforward newspaper entry provided a place of birth as County Kerry, Ireland, and the news that "several sisters" still lived in Ireland, as well as one in New Zealand, while notes from another obituary mentioned that Johanna came from the Lakes of Killarney.

More to the point was the information that Johanna came with her children to America, inferring a marriage before that point in Ireland. Sure enough, there was a March 2, 1859, entry in the Catholic parish records of Kilcummin in County Kerry noting the marriage of one John Kelly and Johanna Falvey, noted to be from "Knocanscore"—likely the townland of Knockauncore.

Now that I've returned several times over the years to learn more about Johanna and her supposedly uncommon surname, the experience has taught me that Falvey is not an uncommon name at all—at least for that region of County Kerry. That, too, may complicate this month's search for more information on her husband's early years in Ireland.

There are, however, other possibilities for approaching this research question. Tomorrow, let's look first to the children born to the couple before they left Ireland. 

Looking for THAT John Kelly

 

Choosing to search for an Irish ancestor named John Kelly may end up being a hopeless genealogical battle, I'll admit. But here it is, nearly the beginning of July, and I'm ready to move on to the seventh of my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors for 2026.

Yes, the Irish did love to give their sons saints' names like John, and sure, the family name Kelly has historically played the number two spot, behind Murphy, in Ireland's surname lineup. But this month, yep, I'll be looking for John Kelly. But not any John Kelly; I have a special one in mind. I'll be looking for my father-in-law's paternal grandmother's father. That John Kelly.

That John Kelly was an Irish immigrant to America. But not like the hordes of emaciated Irish, escaping the doom of starvation in their beautiful homeland in 1848. That John Kelly actually arrived late on our shores, possibly right before the 1870 census. And unlike the majority of Irish immigrants, that John Kelly came not to New York or to Boston, but to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where possibly a relative or former neighbor had sent a tip back home about available jobs in the railroads.

Following our John Kelly was his wife Johanna and their three surviving children: Timothy, Catherine, and Mary. To the rest they had bid a final goodbye beneath the Irish sod before their long journey westward.

Most of what I already know about that John Kelly I learned from researching his wife. She, the former Johanna Falvey, not only presented a surname which I thought might be unusual enough to provide helpful leads, but lived a life which stretched just long enough to attain the more modern record-keeping conveniences that enable descendants to better trace their roots.

To get started, tomorrow, on our search for our John Kelly, we'll take a look at what's already been discovered about his wife, Johanna Falvey. After that, we'll take a blind leap into the void and hope we can somehow find our way to that one specific ancestor named John Kelly. 

Genealogy as Endurance Sport

 

The other day, a question came to mind: is genealogy an endurance sport? Setting aside the objection that genealogy could not possibly be considered a sports activity—after all, we spend most of our time hunkered over our laptops in a sedentary position—let's consider the "endurance" part of that question.

My first reaction was to dismiss the thought immediately. Having lately been analyzing the state of local genealogy society membership, I realized that perhaps it is a quixotic quest for society boards to attempt maintaining consistent membership levels.

Why? The answer is simple. Interest in family history ebbs and flows. People expecting their first baby—or even grandbaby—might wonder what could be said about that child's heritage, or where those good looks or blue eyes came from. Or a great-grandparent dies, the keeper of the family stuff, and now the family is wondering how to figure out all those unlabeled photos left behind.

Inspirations like that come and go. Sure, there are some who roll up their sleeves and dig in, faithfully attending beginners' classes and starting the long trek to find family history answers. They may even work on that fledgling tree for a year or so, maybe even a decade. But then, something else comes up, and they're off to pursue a new project: an eldest daughter's wedding preparations, or that cruise they always wanted to take. Or maybe life just got in the way.

Those are the scenarios which make me wonder whether we have adopted an organizational format which better fit our grandparents' generation—the kind of community barn-raising spirit that got things done by forming "societies" for specific long-term purposes, to address needs that would otherwise never go away. 

That generation was then; now there is the once-and-done generation, with just-in-time delivery, automated and computer-generated. Yet, we still try to fit our "society" mold around the answer-seeking mode of newer, fresher cohorts. Perhaps genealogy for them never was a marathon; maybe it was a family history sprint. Or a relay race between teams collectively chasing the same answers.

Every generation has its own approach to problem-solving. Genealogy is simply another question to be answered in life. And yet, despite some people arriving on the scene and staying only until they've found their answer, there are others for whom pursuing the answer to "where did my family come from?" does turn into an endurance sport.

There are some of us who came to this party early, and stayed late. Perhaps these were the kids whose grade school project turned into a lifelong pursuit. Or young people with questions about the missing parts of their family story. They—we—are on a quest, and the answer, once found, only provides fuel to power us through the next question. For such as these, genealogy is an endurance sport. We've been at it for ages, and we know we're built to keep going, long after others move on.

Perhaps the real question is about how to accept the reality of such a situation when tasked with forming an organization to address the needs of both the sprinters and the marathoners in this "sport" of genealogy. No matter how adept our program directors might be at finding great speakers for the next society meeting, an hour-long lecture might not be the answer to everyone's family history question.

Summering

 

Our local genealogical society recently wrapped up what I suppose we could call our spring semester. Each year, we host monthly membership meetings through June, then take a break over the summer, before resuming our schedule in September. 

This, apparently, is not how every local family history organization operates. When I first started looking at what other groups were doing, I noticed several that continued meeting straight through the summer. Sure, there were events like a July "ice cream social" to round out the year's activities, but those groups kept at it, month after month. For some, the idea of summering is apparently quaint and so nineteenth century.

On the other hand, genealogy to me was always a summertime-only event. If I was lucky, I might be able to squeeze in a few frantic research trips during the winter break, but otherwise, the teaching workload demanded full attention the rest of the year. I've had readers of A Family Tapestry contact me and mention that was the case for them, as well. It made sense to learn that our local society called it quits, come mid-June.

Around here, apparently, the idea of summering is still in force. Perhaps that's because we are a university town, populated by enough residents who expect to escape for the entire summer. Come to think of it, at our June meeting, two board members were already absent—one heading to Mexico, the other one traveling in Europe. And that is only the start of the season.

A second group of summer absentees is comprised of those for whom family vacations came with built-in side trips to visit family cemeteries along the route, or to pick up documents at nearby governmental offices while on the way to visit relatives. I wasn't sure whether that was still part of today's summertime existence, but the other day, a former genealogy class member emailed me to joyfully note she was actually on her way to pick up a grandparent's paperwork from a county nearly a hundred miles from here. There is no time like the present, true, but I imagine a trip like that would be more enjoyable in summer weather than wintertime storms.

Still, I'm hardly convinced that today's researchers reserve summer months for their genealogical pursuits any more. Or is it a sense of "keeping up with the Joneses" that pushes me to think that in our times a genealogical society should keep operations going full steam ahead, even through those summer months? 

Looking Ahead

 

While I'm working on extricating myself from the current tree-building mess I'm in, I thought I'd take a moment, despite being early, to introduce next month's research project. After all, tree-building, while a lot of work, only rarely provides the kind of fascinating discoveries worth writing about.

As the Twelve Most Wanted project has done for the past several years, come July, I shift my focus away from the three selected ancestors from my mother-in-law's line and move on to my father-in-law's tree. With a step like that, we leap from colonial America to land in the turmoil of mid-1800s Ireland, a very different part of the dominion of the United Kingdom.

In the next three months, we'll focus on three Irish ancestors from my father-in-law's family. The process will begin with the selection for July: John Kelly.

Regardless of who he was in my father-in-law's family tree—we'll get to that next Monday—we first need to consider how convoluted a search like that can be. 

Just by considering his name—John Kelly—we already realize what a challenge we face in the coming month. A given name like John, bestowed upon an Irish-born son of the mid-1800s, would put him in ample good company. While I don't have statistics for popular names in the exact year of his birth, just taking a glance at name popularity statistics for a time period just after his death, we can see that the name John was a popular choice for Irish parents. One source indicated that, by 1911, John was the most common man's name in Ireland.

Add to that predicament the fact that the surname Kelly won't make the situation any easier. Based on data available in the mid-1800s, the surname Kelly wasn't exactly the number one surname on the island but it came in close—the second most common surname in all of Ireland, after Murphy.

And there you have it: the task lying ahead of us for next month's selection for my Twelve Most Wanted. Truth be told, I've needed to jump into this messy research project for years but being aware of the challenge just seemed to help point my attention in other directions. Now that I'm running out of low hanging fruit in my hunt for ancestral history, it's finally time to face up to the challenge when July gets here next week.   

Each Step Makes the Next One Easier

 

As I work through the finishing touches of last month's research project, adding DNA matches to my mother-in-law's Jackson ancestors, I realized one encouraging detail. For every DNA match whose place I secured in her family tree, it made the next step easier to complete.

There are requisite tools to have at hand in order to make such a statement. I'm working now on those Jackson DNA matches by way of Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool, along with their ProTools capability of listing shared matches. Each identified match fills a known place in the family tree, thus becoming a beacon of relationship for all the others in this line, no matter how small the match may be.

The last time I checked, that Jackson progenitor, Lyman, had seventy three matches listed in his ThruLines results. But for each of those seventy three, there are multiple others who show up if I click on the Shared Matches tab under ProTools. Many of those share very little genetic material with my husband, the proxy test taker for this project. Yet, bit by bit, identifying each one's place in the Jackson family presents a second helpful clue by showing me how even more mystery matches fit into the tree.

It's amazing to see how many DNA matches turn out to have siblings, parents or children, or close cousins who have also tested. Identifying one's place in the tree brings the others into the picture more clearly, multiplying my effort. All I need to do is keep at it, adding more and more matches until I run out of options. Then, usually after a short waiting period, even more DNA matches show up—perhaps thanks to a Father's Day sale or other promotion—and the relationship clues help zero in on where the newer ones belong, as well.

I'm still quite a long way from completing those seventy three ThruLines matches—plus those other affiliated cousins—but it has helped find some otherwise invisible Jackson descendants. Of course, only six of the original thirteen children of Lyman Jackson have appeared in those DNA results, represented by their descendants, but I'm hoping this process will coax some of the other Jackson lines out of their hiding places and onto my mother-in-law's family tree. 

Dime a Dip

 

Yesterday's summer cleaning adventures—both of the real-life and genealogical kind—brought to mind some unexpected memories. On the real life front, cleaning projects unearthed an unused gift certificate for one hundred dollars—an impressive gift when it was received years ago, though just enough to purchase a decent restaurant dinner for two nowadays.

A day's worth of such discoveries, going through old files in the summer heat, was enough to prompt our family to head to our favorite ice cream shop after dinner. That, in turn, put me in mind of the dime-a-dip ice cream parlors of bygone years. Perhaps it was owing to the many projects unfolding during the day in our family—our daughter was helping a friend explore potential real estate projects, comparing prices today with original purchase prices on eighty year old homes—that put me in mind of an entire world of dime a dip life.

Meanwhile, on the genealogical front, I was delving into my mother-in-law's Jackson roots, a reach so far removed from today's generation that I barely can find matches who reach a mere ten centiMorgans of shared genetic material. As rarified as that "dime" of genetic material may seem in today's inflated economy, just like the dime-a-dip of the ice cream world, it can yield some useful results. 

This was my day to chase those "shared matches" of Jackson descendants to help build out that family tree. Simply by using the ThruLines results for Lyman Jackson, my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather, I used as a next step the "Shared matches" option from Ancestry's ProTools to find close relatives to each Jackson DNA match.

One after another, those mystery matches who shared such dime-sized genetic results helped guide me to build out that Jackson branch on my in-laws' tree. Yes, of course I used documentation to verify connections; it's just that without that chain of discoveries, I would otherwise not have known to even look in those directions.

Such small DNA matches are often lost in the myriad results at the bottom of the pile. They otherwise would have totally stumped me—if I even bothered to try connecting them to the family tree. But with the right tools, and a huge helping of patience added to the mix, it is possible to let each match find a place in the family tree, no matter how small. 

A DNA Housecleaning

 

Face it: when confronted with twenty thousand DNA matches, it's hard to place those distant relatives in their place on the family tree. Far easier to concentrate on the other, smaller category—fourth cousins or closer—for whom we have much better chances of confirming connections.

But—and there always is a caveat—since I've decided to pursue DNA cousins who share descent from my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandparents Lyman and Deidama Jackson, her proxy test volunteer (her son, my husband) must find connections with matches who are at least sixth cousins. That's where we start dipping into that larger pool of twenty thousand contestants. Facing a number like that, it's time for a DNA housecleaning.

That larger pool of possible cousins is further restricted by genetic limitations. After about the level of third cousin,  some distant relatives will share no identifying genetic material at all with a percentage of their cousins. That is not to say, of course, that there is no DNA shared at all. There is a high percentage of genetic material that all human beings have in common—it's just that the selected SNPs that genealogy companies use to identify closer family connections may not include the array of items passed down from specific distant ancestors.

However, combining use of both a paper trail of documented family connections and data about distant DNA matches may still confirm a distant cousin's place in the family tree, despite sharing only a small number of centiMorgans. In such cases, what I've done is build out the lines of descent from the distant ancestor—the Jackson line in this case—then move from already-confirmed known cousins to "shared matches" identified by tools such as Ancestry's ProTools.

Of Lyman Jackson's thirteen children, there are six whose descendants are itemized in the ThruLines listing at Ancestry.com. Of course, the bulk of those matches come from John Jackson's own line, which is the line of descent leading to my mother-in-law. However, through this process I've managed to connect the majority of other ThruLines Jackson cousins to her family tree.

From that point, my next step is to take each one of those verified Jackson cousin matches and open the "Shared Matches" tab on their own entry. I then look to see how many of those connected cousins I can trace through the family tree. Sometimes, that task presents problems, but in many cases, that two-step sweep leads to discovering other Jackson descendants among those twenty thousand distant matches. And each match confirmed makes the next ones easier to place, as we place more pieces of the puzzle where they belong in the tree.

From there, it's basically "rinse and repeat" as far as I can go with that same process. Bit by bit, it opens up possibilities for where DNA matches fit in the bigger picture of a much-extended family tree. 

More Month Than Projected

 

I remember a phrase from my starving student years, something about always having more month than money. I've always hated running out, no matter what supply was dwindling too fast for comfort. Thankfully, I'm far from those student years, but I still struggle with any sense of not having enough.

How strange it is, then, to find myself with more month than research project. With each month's Twelve Most Wanted candidate, I usually run out of material to secure my research goal before I get to the close of each month. What a shift it has been to find myself ten days away from the start of a new month, yet finished with the goal for that time period.

What to do next? Granted, I could just jump ahead and move on to July's project. With the shift in this upcoming quarter from my mother-in-law's family to that of my father-in-law, that might work, but it would take a leap from colonial American research to the brick wall woes of tracing Irish immigrants back to their beloved homeland. That may become a project never completed, no matter how many months are allotted to the effort.

However, there are so many odds and ends scattered in my wake as I plow through those family history questions each month. What comes to mind most are the DNA connections hinted at, but never quite confirmed, from the collection of literally thousands of matches. 

I'm thinking mostly of the thirteen children of Lyman and Deidama Jackson, whose lives spanned the era in which a nation was birthed. When we last left that endeavor to document the Jackson family, all thirteen children had been identified—barely. There is so much more yet to do.

There are now seventy three DNA cousins among my husband's Jackson matches, according to Ancestry's ThruLines tool, cousins who descend from that couple we had followed for April's version of this year's Twelve Most Wanted. It's time to wrap up those dangling strands and tie them into this family tapestry. Sounds like a "summer cleaning" project to me.

Tipping Towards Summer

 

Perhaps there's something about passing the longest day of the year that begs me to crest other tipping points. We've waved the flag for Flag Day and bid everyone a happy Juneteenth while celebrating dads and the last of the grads. It's time to get on with summer. For some reason, I'm already chomping at the bit to move on with my next project before July ever gets here.

First, though, comes some spring cleaning. Yes, I know we are officially into summer already, but there is no such picturesque way to classify summer cleaning. Dusty, sweaty, and chores are words that come to mind for such a designation, but what I've been working on in the past two weeks has edged into something far less distasteful than that.

Having decided that I'm as good as done with this month's research project—finding the roots of Elizabeth Plummer Ijams, my "Twelve Most Wanted" for June—I decided to do some cleaning up of old projects which didn't have the luxury of acquiring the satisfying label of "done."

First on the list was to return to May's research project, my quest to discover the parents of my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestor, Lydia Miller. I continued building out the lines of descent for three DNA matches sharing ancestors by the name of Anspach, a surname strangely linked to the circle of people connected with Lydia in her earliest years. There's still a lot of work yet to do, but I'm edging closer. Maybe next year, I'll finally cross that finish line.

Next came a general housecleaning of all the open tabs on my computer. When I am building out a line of descent, I keep a tab open specifically for that family. Locking that tab in place allows me to return to the place where I last left off with that family, making it easy for me to pick up the trail at a moment's notice. I went through each of those tabs—after a year or so, that collection can grow cumbersome—and deleted those which are not on my research radar at this point.

That process left me with some Polish lines remaining from my father's ancestry, plus some other more recent lines I'm still wrestling with. All that considered, I actually gleaned eighteen more names for my father's side of the family tree, so that count edges up to 41,957 documented people.

The main focus for this month—actually, the culmination of three months' work—has been my mother-in-law's family. Granted, I didn't add many people this month as I wandered through reports of colonial family in 1600s Maryland, mostly because seventh through tenth great-grandparents won't add much meaningful data for my quest to place DNA cousins in that tree. But in returning to Lydia's project—a much closer reach for my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother—I had plenty to add to that tree.

All told, the past two weeks advanced the count by less than usual—166 new relatives—due to the different nature of the work on those Maryland ancestors. My in-laws' tree now contains 43,629 documented individuals, a number that will remain at about that level as we close out this month's research project.

For the last few days of this month, I'll revisit a few of those older projects and provide updates. After that point, we'll jump into summer both feet first as we move from my mother-in-law's family to my father-in-law's Irish roots. Hopefully, new resources there will allow for some encouraging progress in our research for that side of the family. 

. . . But Then, There's Charlemagne

 

Notwithstanding my reasons given yesterday about not needing to pursue my mother-in-law's colonial Maryland ancestors any longer, there is yet one nagging thought. What about Charlemagne? After all, I have a book that says as much: that my mother-in-law is a descendant of an emperor.

So what? Some sources speculate that, based solely on statistics, anyone of Western European descent could have a chance of being Charlemagne's descendant. After all, Charlemagne was said to have had five wives and several other partners. Those, in turn, gave him at least twenty children. Then, just do the math to see how those generations could multiply over the centuries since Charlemagne's death in the year 814.

Granted, tracing one's lineage back to a date smack dab in the middle of the Middle Ages can be a challenge. Just think of how much I struggled to get back to colonial Maryland.

There is, however, one catch: if we can manage to latch on to European royalty—or at least nobility—someone in our distant past has been diligent to keep proper records of such details. From those records, one organization has, over the decades, compiled three volumes of such lines of descent. Not surprisingly, that organization is known as the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne, whose Genealogist General has been tasked with overseeing such verification.

Published by the Order in three volumes over nearly forty years, Pedigrees of Some of the Emperor Charlemagne's Descendants happens to include a chapter concerning the family line of none other than my mother-in-law's ancestor, Elizabeth Plummer. Thankfully, I was able to access that second volume through a subscription to Ancestry.com, where I easily followed the trail from Elizabeth to her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, just as I had noted here in the past few days from other records.

Winding my way back through the genealogy laid out in that chapter was an eye-opening excursion. Sure, there were earls and lords, but there were also ancestors who "died" at the Tower of London, or were beheaded, or hanged for whatever political infraction they might have committed.

The litany brought me back from Elizabeth Plummer's point to the lead entry in the chapter for Isabel de Vermandois. From Isabel's vantage point—she died in 1147—there would still be a long way to go before reaching Charlemagne's era. The book refers the reader to three previous chapters to continue the genealogical saga.

But the story actually does reach back to Charlemagne, himself. Who would have thought? Especially since my mother-in-law, during my initial interview with her before launching into her family history, was so certain that the generation preceding her grandparents had "just gotten off the boat." How wrong she was.

As for my pursuit this month of Elizabeth Plummer's life story and that of the ancestors preceding her, it's sufficient—not to mention, fun—to see someone's research pointing the way to Charlemagne. Do I wish to replicate that search myself? Hardly. There are too many other questions yet to resolve—research adventures for which no keepers of the royal line of descent would care to concern themselves.

To go Deep, or Wide, or Not at All

 

Perhaps this is the genealogist's question: to go deep or wide when researching family lines. At the beginning, for many people, the idea of going deeply into the past seems a compelling goal. How far back can we go? What will we find in the stories of past generations?

The advent of genetic genealogy may have upended the draw of that proposition. After all, a sure-fire way to locate those umpteenth cousins in our tree is to build out the branches of our ancestors' collateral lines.

For the most part, that is where I've focused my time. After all, with upwards of twenty thousand DNA matches—if you count all the distant cousins in the mix—it takes a bushy tree indeed to find a place for each of those cousins. That is mostly the point of my biweekly count, incidentally: keeping track of the expanding family tree and my progress in filling in the blanks.

But when I get to a case like Elizabeth Plummer's—my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandmother—it hardly does me any good to add that ancestor's siblings into my in-laws' tree. Why? Because most DNA tests show matches that are capable of reaching back to the sixth cousin level. That means connecting descendants of fifth great-grandparents—if those cousins even share any genetic material in common at all.

Since it's my husband who stands in as test taker for my mother-in-law's genetic legacy, it would be a rare match indeed that would connect him to his seventh great-grandmother Elizabeth. And examining descendants of Elizabeth's siblings would mean tracing the lines of an eighth great grandparent.

That is the result of using the most widely available DNA test, the autosomal test. If, however, we had used either the Y-DNA test or the mitochondrial DNA test (mtDNA), our reach could be extended even farther. But those tests, in our case, would not apply. For one thing, Elizabeth Plummer lies on my mother-in-law's line of the family, so my husband's Y-DNA results would be of no help there. But for the mtDNA test, we could almost have qualified. The necessary matriline held steady for six generations—but then veered off to that woman's father's line, before returning to that ancestor's paternal grandmother, Elizabeth.

And so, we are left in the nether reaches of genetic genealogy. Choosing to trace the lines of Elizabeth Plummer's siblings would be an exercise chosen simply for the fun of it. With so many other fifth and sixth great-grandparents still a mystery to me, I'd take that as my cue to move on to other family history puzzles.

More Trailblazers

 

When first starting my search for Elizabeth Plummer, my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandmother, I was concerned about access to records from such an early time period in American history. After all, researching ancestors from the mid-1800s onward is so nicely facilitated by multiple record sets, documents which were not so robust in their more formative years of governmental oversight.

As it turns out, I am finding more trailblazers willing to lead me to those earlier ancestors than I've found for the average "garden variety" specimens of more recent ancestral eras. A twirl through FamilySearch's Full Text Search the other day, using for a key word the property name "Dodon," the lone results came not from documents, but from two published genealogies.

They're not actual documents, but I'm not proud; I took a look. Trailblazers are simply that: researchers willing to point the way. It's still up to us to determine that genealogy assertions can be properly verified with documentation, whether we accessed the trailblazer's announcement through a published book or from Aunt Mary's oft-repeated family tale.

A closer look revealed that the original source of the collections, which FamilySearch had listed as United States Genealogies 1891-1995, turned out to be Genealogical Records of Members of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in Maryland.

In those collections of membership applications to The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, the Full Text results zeroed in on references to Thomas Plummer, whose daughter Elizabeth married William Ijams. From that one paragraph of a genealogist's report regarding the membership application, we find several points explained:

• that Thomas Plummer was father of Elizabeth, the eventual bride of William Ijams
• that Thomas Plummer had married someone named Elizabeth Stockett, not Elizabeth Yates
• that the elder Elizabeth's parents were Thomas Stockett and Mary Wells, daughter of Richard and Frances Wells.

We had seen elsewhere that there was confusion about Elizabeth Plummer Ijams' mother—mainly in the work of genealogist Harry Wright Newman, before he had amended the error. The annotated NSCDA membership application helped point the way to a trail of explanatory records.

And with that, as long as the trail proves reliable, I've been gifted with a path to the past moving far beyond what I had expected to find in the quest for this month's Twelve Most Wanted. Indeed, going to the national organization's website today, I can search for those names in their Register of Ancestors, but I find the annotated applications preserved at FamilySearch.org for all to see to be a far more complete guide than I had expected.

There Were Three Brothers. . . or was that Four?

 

Looking for the history of the properties mentioned in various wills connected to the family of Elizabeth Plummer Ijams—Dodon and Bridge Hill—I thought the name of the one estate, Dodon, was unusual enough to try my hand at an online search for more information. That attempt led me quickly to an entry on Wikipedia which involved generations of an entirely different family. Sorting out the actual narrative meant searching even farther down a convoluted path.

Inevitably, the tale led me to one of the banes of genealogy: that legendary opener, "there were three brothers." Or was that four? Even that story line had me confused.

The chase started with an entry in Wikipedia. According to that article, Dodon—also spelled Doden in some documents—is currently a 550 acre farm in Maryland near a village called Davidsonville. The farm, still in operation, is said to have been in the hands of family members descended from the Scottish immigrant who originally obtained the land in 1669.

That the ancestor, called James Stewart in one descendant's memoirs referred to in the Wikipedia article, was the original owner of Dodon was countered by another report in that same Wikipedia page. The second version noted that a doctor, Francis Stockett, had owned that very land in 1668.

The Stockett version of the property's history was thankfully footnoted in the Wikipedia article, so I jumped to the identified source, Joshua Dorsey Warfield's 1905 history, The Founders of Anne Arundel and Howard Counties, Maryland. 

The Warfield account did provide some helpful details, yet at the same time gave off the air of legend with its genealogy trope, "there were three brothers."

The information referred to by the Wikipedia article was contained in a section of the Warfield book headlined, "The Stockett Brothers." There, the author explained that there were four Stockett brothers, naming them: Thomas, Lewis, Henry, and Francis. These brothers had first obtained land grants under the Calverts in Maryland in 1658.

The book then provided some background information on each of the Stockett brothers and their involvement in the early years of the province. Following that brief history, the author picked up the timeline ten years later, stating, "In 1668, all three brothers removed to Anne Arundel." No explanation for what became of brother number four, making my confidence in the account diminish.

Despite that glitch, Warfield noted the names of the properties obtained after the Stocketts' arrival in Anne Arundel County. Familiar property names surfaced with this note. For Henry Stockett, there were 664 acres of land called "Bridge Hill." To his brother, Dr. Thomas Stockett, an equal portion of land was designated, "Dodon."

With that explanation, we're now left with our earliest sighting of land called by those two estate names, and the explanation of who obtained those two parcels in 1668. The next goal is to find documentation to map out how those estates came to be part of the inheritance passed down to Elizabeth Plummer's Ijams descendants.

Even after that sequence, though, there are gaps in the explanation of who owned the land. As we noticed yesterday, Harry Wright Newman had explained that brothers Isaac and Thomas Plummer Ijams had inherited both Bridge Hill and Dodon and, in 1796, had sold the properties to someone named James Davidson.

But how did Dodon move from that new owner to the ancestor of Dodon's current proprietary family, George H. Steuart? Steuart, according to a Wikipedia article, had purchased the property in 1747 from Stephen Warman. Could there have been two different properties in Anne Arundel County called by that same unusual name?

The dizzying effect of conflicting narratives is almost enough to make me want to start from scratch and scroll through microfilms of early property records to see for myself—or at least hope to find accessible digitized versions of such records to answer some questions.

 

Dodon and Bridge Hill

 

Yesterday, I had wondered whether it might be possible to simply search the names of tracts of land mentioned in family wills, following the family by following the land. My reasoning was this: if the land was known by a singularly distinguishing moniker, could it help point me to the ancestral origins of its owners?

The two tracts of land mentioned in the wills of my mother-in-law's Maryland ancestors did have identifying names. While the one granted by William Ijams to his son John had the seemingly common name of Bridge Hill, it was often coupled with the mention of another, more remarkable name: Dodon.

Sometimes written in documents as "Doden," that particular tract of land had passed from the Stockett family to the Plummer family and then eventually to the line of the senior William Ijams. While I am still working on pushing the timeline back before the Stocketts claimed the land, in the meantime, I have discovered that the property has, moving forward, had a long history of multiple owners.

Just entering the name of the land—Dodon—in a search engine, either on its own or coupled with the name of the paired property, Bridge Hill, has been informative. While my original attempt to find results through FamilySearch's Full Text Search for those property names in colonial Maryland's Anne Arundel County yielded no land or tax records—material which might better be found through Maryland State archives—taking that question straight to the Web turned out to be a more productive route.

Also, searching the line of inheritance of Dodon in Harry Wright Newman's Anne Arundel Gentry produced seven passages in the book. The land moved through branches of the extended family until two Ijams brothers sold the property in 1796, and, as Newman noted, "thus passed from the family the hereditary estates...which had been in the...family for five generations."

Dodon as a parcel did not entirely disappear with that sale, however. Nor did it simply cease to be part of a family's estate, no longer passed from generation to generation. It was interesting to discover its new identity, once it had been sold out of the Ijams family's possession. We'll take a brief detour tomorrow to explore what can be found, simply by searching online for the name of a family's estate.