Susanna's Siblings

 

For anyone wishing to find distant cousins useful in pointing to a specific shared ancestor, DNA is the best bet. However, where those cousins live and where they tested may signify the best possibility for testing companies. In my second great-grandmother Susanna's case, unless I find any more emigrants among her Polish siblings, the best likelihood for discovering distant cousins would be the most international of the major genetic genealogy companies. Hence, I'll be spending a lot of time at MyHeritage, scouring the match lists for descendants of Susanna's siblings—if, that is, those siblings lived to adulthood and had children of their own.

One dismaying detail about researching the collateral lines for my newly-discovered Polish ancestors was seeing how many of those family members died young. After reviewing the multiple tragedies of loss experienced by Susanna, herself, I braced myself in preparation for looking to the children of the previous generation. The 1850s, at least, were a rough decade for Susanna's family. What more could go wrong in the generations preceding that?

From what I'm seeing at this point, I may yet discover some distant cousins descending from that generation of the Radomski family. Though I am not yet done documenting Susanna's siblings, so far I've found transcriptions of baptismal records for Katarzyna ("Catharinam") in 1821, Susanna's younger brother Simon (likely Szymon) in 1826, Francisca (Franciszka in Polish) in January of 1828, and her apparent twin, Anna, also baptized at that same date. 

Bracing myself for the inevitable—after all, Susanna's own children didn't fare too well in that rural northern region of Poland known as Pomerania—I expected to find each sibling's baptism followed soon afterwards with a record of the baby's burial. So far, no. In fact, I'm finding some marriage records for those siblings, as well. Not only that, but I believe I've found a marriage record for Susanna's own parents in 1814.

Now to move on to mapping out the possible descendancy of those collateral lines. There may be a DNA match from among my Polish cousins, after all.

Wandering as I Wonder

 

At the start of each month, I sit down to form a research plan. I often follow the same basic procedure, and over the years, the process does become somewhat routine. In the case of my Polish paternal ancestors, the approach can be limited, leaving me to wonder, "now what?!" As I went through my usual routine, though, I began wandering through the results of what I found, more as if I were lost in the maze rather than zeroing in on my goal.

Looking to genetic records of DNA cousins is especially limited for Polish connections, based on the small number of matches I've found despite testing at five major genetic genealogy companies. Even though that is one of my first steps taken, in the case of my focus for this month (my father's great-grandmother Susanna Radomska). I have only four ThruLines suggestions given by that Ancestry tool. Each of those four ThruLines candidates happens to be a niece, nephew, or grand-nephew—each of them relatives I already know.

I tried a different approach. Rather than look at ThruLines to discover any alternate connections to Susanna Radomska, I picked up on a lesson I realized last month: stick to simply searching for the surnames. Though no DNA matches popped up with Radomska or Radomski in their family tree, at least I tried.

A second approach was to revisit the tree I've built at FamilySearch.org. First task was to make sure everyone was updated there, based on what I've already attained at my tree on Ancestry.com. FamilySearch is rich with foreign documents while Ancestry is lacking in such records, so that also provides a way to verify connections for both trees. As I wondered about each child listed in that Radomski tree—and made sure to connect documents back to my Ancestry tree as well—I began making new discoveries.

Those new discoveries, in turn, caused me to wander. And wandering is not exactly part of the profile of the "S.M.A.R.T." objectives researcher. Each time I entered a new name in my Ancestry tree, accompanied with the inevitable hints, I looked at the suggested trees to see whether the tree owner happened to be a DNA match. I then looked at that person's Shared Matches on my DNA readout, wandering from one possible match to another until I spotted the surnames I was seeking.

In the end, while ThruLines might not have provided me any direct links to the right people, this sidestepping approach, wandering from DNA cousin to DNA cousin, did eventually narrow down my focus. Some aspects of our quest can be so nebulous that there really aren't any exact links to lead us to our goal. But in the face of that blank slate, as we wonder what to do next, a little judicious wandering may just lead us to some answers—or at least productive realizations.

Simply Search for the Surname

If I had it to do all over again—and I will, the next time we revisit this puzzle of Johanna Falvey Kelly's roots—I would have first examined all the DNA matches whose family tree simply contained the surname Falvey. Of those, my husband has a genetic link to at least twenty nine others.

Interestingly, those twenty nine others are not necessarily the same ones that popped up when I used Ancestry's ThruLines tool to connect with Johanna, my father-in-law's great-grandmother. For one thing—and a very encouraging sign—the DNA cousins from this surname group match my husband at about twice the amount of genetic material as those ThruLines candidates I had previously checked.

Does that make this tree-based group closer relatives? Not necessarily. The connections are still rather distant. Yet that might be enough to help guide me back to the precise family in the right townland and parish of County Kerry.

This tree-based group comes from Falvey immigrants who settled in a wide variety of places. One group, as we discussed yesterday, left Ireland bound for New Zealand. A very small subset, I suspect, make up those who call Australia their home, possibly leaving for that destination after first landing in New Zealand.

Another very small set of DNA matches currently live in Canada, which is not surprising, considering the economic and political dynamics of leaving Ireland simply to relocate in another part of the United Kingdom, as their ancestors must have done during the 1800s.

Those Falveys who immigrated to the United States fell into three camps. Johanna Falvey herself came with her husband and children to Fort Wayne, Indiana. There are two other DNA matches who link to that family line. Another set of Falveys—whether closely related or not, I can't yet tell—headed to Massachusetts. A third set, which I'm having more difficulty tracing, made their destination the state of Michigan.

Each set of immigrating Falveys warrants their own attention. I'll be building out their family trees on my own to verify what each DNA match asserts in their own tree. Whether each one can lead me back to parish records in County Kerry, I won't know until I trace each immigrant family back to their homeland.

That, however, will be job number one for the next time I return to this research puzzle. Now that we're at the end of the month, it's time to move on to the next of my Twelve Most Wanted. Come October, we'll shift from a focus on the Irish and begin considering the first of three paternal ancestors from Poland. 

Assessing the (Diminishing) Possibilities

 

Finding the possible link between Johanna Falvey Kelly, my father-in-law's great-grandmother who had migrated to Fort Wayne from County Kerry, and the four DNA matches I've found in New Zealand promises to be a challenge. That is not simply because of the distance between North America and the South Island of New Zealand; it's the tiny amount of genetic material that these DNA cousins actually share.

Looking at the numbers, the possibilities for a more distant relationship stretch from third cousin once removed all the way to eighth cousin or beyond. That, at least, is according to calculations from The DNA Geek regarding a match of eighteen centiMorgans. You can get a snapshot of the hopeless probabilities from the "What Are the Odds?" diagram here.

To put it briefly, the closest of the four New Zealand Falvey descendants are two matches who each have one segment of eighteen centiMorgans in common with my husband. That's it. Each of them, as well as the other two with similar genetic connections—but divided into two or more segments, rather than one unified strand—descend from one of three daughters of Norah Falvey, the supposed relative of Johanna Falvey who had emigrated from County Kerry to New Zealand.

I have not been able to locate any documentation on a Norah Falvey in the Catholic parish where I had found Johanna's marriage to John Kelly. Nor has her location come close to the other supposed sister of Johanna, whose DNA matches also connect with my husband. The closest baptismal record I could find for a Norah Falvey was for a distant parish which, though still in County Kerry, would have required a walk of several hours.

My hunch at this point is that, though those New Zealand cousins are likely Falvey connections, the nexus between their specific ancestor and the ancestor of the American Falveys would be far beyond that of siblings. While I agree that it will be helpful to map out these New Zealand cousins' connection to each other through this Norah Falvey, the most recent common ancestor may well be two or three generations beyond Johanna's as-yet unconfirmed parents.

Beyond "Down Under"

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Missing the Connection

 

As frustrating as this seems—seeing we are nearing the end of the month, and thus time to move on to yet another of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026—I am having a difficult time making the leap from my husband's DNA connections in North America to their Falvey ancestors back in Ireland. Come to think of it, even the twenty of his DNA matches in New Zealand seem to be missing any connection to the parents of our specific Johanna Falvey Kelly. I'm beginning to wonder whether that sliver of matching genetic material is actually a persistent fragment passed forward from generations long before that time period.

Needless to say, this DNA puzzle has slowed down progress in adding another generation to my father-in-law's side of the family tree. In fact, not much of anything has actually been added to that tree. In the past two weeks, I've managed to find only thirty four individuals through tracing these Falvey connections, most of them through work on DNA matches. Truth be told, many of those new names hide within a "floating branch" of my father-in-law's tree, a token way to say, despite its presence, "I'm still not sure about this one."

Still, my in-laws' tree contains 44,402 documented individuals, which I'd consider a good start. Reviewing all the DNA matches yet to link to that tree, though, there is much work ahead, whether for the Falvey line or other branches of the tree. Other than what we might discover in the last few days of this month, we will need to move on to the next month's selected research subject.

With that shift, we'll also step from my in-laws' side of the family to my own. Not that that will be an easy transition; up next will be a leap from the dearth of documents in Ireland to the challenge of navigating foreign language records in the old dominion of Prussia. The last three months of the year will be the domain of the ancestral brick walls on the paternal side of my own family.

In advance of that move, in the last two weeks, I've had the opportunity to add ten more names to my own family tree. Most of those came, thanks to a recent email received from a distant cousin on my father's side of the family who shared some resources with me. In preparation for next month's move to research my paternal ancestry, that puts me at 41,979 individuals in my own tree.

Before we make that jump, though, we do have just three more days to muddle through some observations made evident by delving into those Falvey DNA matches which still stump me.

Circling Back to D N A

 

Not finding any further documentation for the family of Patrick Falvey in County Kerry, the supposed Irish patriarch for my father-in-law's great-grandmother Johanna Falvey Kelly, I decided it might be time to circle back to those DNA test results once again. Of course, I'll still be searching the baptismal records of the Kilcummin Catholic parish, page by page, but one thing I noticed in that process caused me to spin off toward another focus: those local surnames.

The original couple I've been seeking to verify through documentation has been Patrick Falvey and his wife, Anna Fleming. Since the first Falvey baptismal record I found was dated in 1830, my page-by-page tour through the church records began from that point. Entry after entry, I noticed lots of Flemings, but not many Falveys. There were, of course, other common surnames liberally scattered through the records, such as Sullivan.

Seeing that, my first question was whether Falvey was a surname of someone who married into the Fleming family from another townland. Where were all the other Falveys? After all, according to some records, Falveys were plentiful in County Kerry. What I should have also wondered, however, was whether there was any way to connect the many Fleming family members I was spotting in those baptismal records to Patrick Falvey's wife.

Eventually, the years gave way to a different set of recurring surnames as others faded away in my tour through the Kilcummin baptismal records. By then, I was researching records dated during the famine years, a formidable change agent which understandably could make some family names disappear over broad swaths of the territory. However reasonable my strategy might have seemed when I began it, it was time to reach for another approach.

That's when I went back to those DNA matches descending from unknown Falvey ancestors from County Kerry. There were plenty available to choose from at all the places where my husband has tested. Choosing the best bet of the bunch, I then used Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool combined with the ProTools capability of viewing shared matches, and moved from one confirmed descendant of Patrick Falvey to all the DNA cousins matching that tester.

Bit by bit, I examined each related match, looking for linked—and robust—family trees. Eventually, I landed at two possibilities for further checking, matches who, encouragingly, still live in Ireland. Rather than seeing the Falvey surname featured prominently in those matches' trees, though, I found Flemings. Could it be that I'd find better results following the Flemings than the Falveys? After all, the Kilcummin parish seemed flush with Flemings but barely offering any entries for Falveys.

Following the winding trail from one DNA match to that person's closest cousins, I'll be checking those trees, contacting those matches, and sharing notes. Perhaps there is more to find on that maternal Fleming line than I had originally thought.

If Jeremiah was the One

 

We may have found an Irish immigrant from County Kerry named Jeremiah Falvey who shared the same occupation as Gobnait Falvey's son Patrick Cullinane—marble polisher—but that doesn't mean we can stretch possibilities thin enough to support a connection with Gobnait's brother, the one baptized as Demetrius. And yet, another detail draws me to follow what can be found about a Jeremiah naturalized in Boston, Massachusetts.

That detail is the appearance of a Jeremiah Falvey in a family tree linked to a DNA match among my husband's results at Ancestry.com. This match is estimated to be a fourth cousin with a small centiMorgan connection, similar to other Falvey DNA connections of this generational distance I've seen. 

There is, however, one problem with that Jeremiah Falvey connection: the DNA match claims that ancestral line to have lived in Chicopee, Massachusetts, not Boston. The end result is that this pursuit is steering me clear of the Boston Falvey immigrant and towards one of the same name who settled much farther west in the state of Massachusetts. We may, in the end, discover there was no connection between those two Jeremiahs at all, despite both being from the same Irish county.

Furthermore, acting the part of a genealogical Doubting Thomas, I decided to see just how many Irish Catholic church records insisted on shying away from the use of the name Jeremiah, and instead substituting Demetrius, the name given in baptismal records for a son of my father-in-law's proposed Falvey ancestors Patrick and Anna. While a quick and dirty experiment can't explain everything, I figured if that were the tradition for transforming an Irish given name into Latin, there would have been no Catholic records for someone named Jeremiah.

Surprise. That wasn't true. There were several Jeremiahs out there, given under the hand of Irish priests in many Catholic parishes, at least according to this one quick review. There was even a marriage entry for a Jeremias Falvey in our Falveys' home parish in Kilcummin. At least in the later years of the 1800s, folks didn't shy away from using the name Jeremiah in formal records. Rather than truly being Jeremiah, that son's baptismal name Demetrius may well have been literally that: the name of our Patrick and Anna Falvey's son baptized in 1837.

So what about the Jeremiah Falvey who ended up in Massachusetts? Especially considering that he was an ancestor of a DNA match, this will be one line worth following. Building out a tree for this DNA match may point out more details allowing us to see not only how this Jeremiah connects with my father-in-law's Falvey ancestors back in County Kerry, but how his descendants cluster with other DNA matches connected to our direct family line.

Taking Stock of Progress

 

Every now and then—especially when I feel like I'm stuck in my research—I like to take stock of progress. Struggling with missing, incomplete, or illegible documentation does slow things down to a crawl, and it helps to have some encouragement to keep going. That is partly the reason for my biweekly counts: not for bragging rights, but for a reminder that, bit by bit, progress does happen if you keep at it.

This time, I was pretty sure the numbers would not look too encouraging. After all, right now I'm trawling through Boston city directories, trying to determine whether I'm searching for the right Patrick Cullinane (I'm concerned I'm not). But progress in the past two weeks has held steady, compared to the previous two weeks when I was wrapping up another hard-to-locate Irish ancestor.

So here's the count: fifty more names added to my father-in-law's branch of the family tree. My in-laws' tree now has 44,368 documented names in total, though it has been growing so slowly this summer while I pursue those hard-to-find Irish forebears.

Though I wish there were more Irish relatives out there to test their DNA, I guess we'll have to wait for one of those seasons best suited to sales. There were absolutely zero new DNA tests linked to my husband's results in the past two weeks. He still has 1,510 DNA matches at the estimated level of fourth cousin or closer, exactly the range I'd need to piece together the story of the many descendants of Johanna Falvey's sister Gobnait and her husband Daniel Cullinane. Thankfully, I've already found a few DNA cousins to help guide this search a bit further, something we'll attend to this coming week.

The Mother of Gobineta's Children

 

Tracing the descendants of Johanna Falvey's sister might seem like a great way to confirm Johanna's place in the Falvey family—at least by DNA—but there is one drawback to such a plan. That sticking point is Johanna's sister's actual name.

Johanna's sister was baptized as Gobineta, back in their homeland in County Kerry, Ireland. Her February 27, 1830, baptismal record clearly shows her parents as Patrick Falvey and Anna Fleming. Thus, if we can map her connection to descendants who happen to be my husband's DNA matches, that would support the theory of this sisterhood.

There's only one problem with this plan. A name like Gobineta—actually Gobnait—doesn't translate well from the original Irish version to either Latin or English. Thus, it would be no surprise to discover that records of her children might list their mother's name as something other than Gobineta.

Take one son, named Timothy. We'd expect to see his October 7, 1858, baptismal record listing his name in its Latin version, Timotheum. But the Latin was not helpful for his mother's name. In that record, Daniel Cullinane's wife was listed as Debora Falvey, not Gobnait.

But we already knew that. Armed with a name equivalent chart, we've been forewarned to be on the lookout for aliases like Debora or Abigail. So when I followed that one Cullinane son of the next generation to his immigrant home in Boston, I wasn't stumped by the vital records bearing his name. When Timothy Cullinane of Boston decided to marry Margaret McCarthy one cold January day in 1883, it made sense to see his mother's name entered as Deborah. Likewise with his death record, recorded late in 1893 listing his mother as Abbie Falvey.

Timothy Cullinane, son of Gobnait Falvey and Daniel Cullinane, is just one example. In Timothy's case, with his early death, he was predeceased by his only child, a namesake son who died in 1891. As far as I can tell, there will be no DNA matches linked to Timothy's line.

However, Timothy was not the only Falvey descendant to immigrate to Boston. There is apparently another Cullinane brother who also chose that New England port for his move from County Kerry. He, predictably, is also causing problems with verifying his line, not the least of which sticking points is that same particular detail about his mother's name.

I've reached out to some DNA matches who appear to be this second Cullinane son's descendants. Hopefully, on the other side of this weekend, we'll be able to get a fuller picture of this other potential Falvey descendant of the woman with multiple aliases. 

Bound for Boston

 

It should be no surprise to see Irish emigrants embarking for the American city of Boston. Of all the American cities, Boston may be considered the quintessential destination, even more so than New York City, another key port for immigrants. In the case of DNA matches descending from Johanna Falvey's possible sister Gobnait, Boston apparently was their ancestral port of choice.

There are still problems with following that branch of the Falvey family from County Kerry to America. Judging by my husband's DNA matches, as he is the surrogate tester on behalf of my father-in-law, who is long since deceased, Boston is among other locations where Falvey descendants have gathered. The ever-changing name for the matches' matriarch—sometimes Debora or Debby, sometimes Abby for Abigail—still plagues me with doubts that I am following the right family line.

Hopefully, during this week as we review the various branches of the Falvey line pointed out by their descendants' telltale DNA, we can review some of the documentation and determine whether there is any reason beyond name-switching to cause us to doubt we've found the right line. A cogent negative argument is just as important as explaining why a connection is correct. There are so many ways to go astray when researching these Irish lines with such potential to stumble on name twins and other genealogical hazards.

Before we zoom in on our most likely Boston immigrant connection, though, I need to settle the issue of why I cannot find the baptismal record for Johanna, herself. That has been bothering me for a long time. Despite searching page by page through baptismal records for the Kilcummin parish where the Falvey family went to church, I have yet to find a likely document. Tomorrow, we'll take that brief detour to make some notes on possible explanations, before we move on to examine the documents in the Boston area allowing us to track the descendants of Gobnait or "Debora" Falvey.

Floating Falveys

 

While I am absolutely certain that Johanna Falvey Kelly was my father-in-law's great-grandmother, I have no clue who her parents were or how she connected with the other Falvey family members in County Kerry, Ireland. I know this family line because I've done my due diligence to trace back through the generations on the short trip from my father-in-law to his father, Will Stevens, to his mother, Catherine Kelly, to her mother, Johanna Falvey. I've documented every ten years of the way from immigrant Johanna's landing place in Fort Wayne, Indiana, through to the current generation, including tracing every collateral line of all Johanna's surviving children and connecting that information with my husband's DNA matches at four different companies.

Tracing Johanna's line in the other direction, however, seems impossible. Though her obituary mentions her origin in County Kerry—and indeed, I've located a marriage record for her and John Kelly in the Catholic parish of Kilcummin—I've been unsuccessful in making progress back through time. There are, however, DNA matches signaling the possibility of Falvey siblings, or maybe cousins, for Johanna. Since it is possible to build out a tree for each of those lines, it means one thing if I hope to make any research progress: create floating branches in my father-in-law's tree and get busy confirming how those Falvey branches connect with Johanna.

Creating a floating branch for each of those DNA matches does mean I'll be building out a tree for each Falvey connection. Sure, that sounds like work. The process, however, is not as difficult—or messy—as it might seem. Granted, now on Ancestry.com, those who subscribe to ProTools have a way to do this through creating a "network" for the targeted surname in question. But even without the luxury of that subscription add-on, it is relatively easy to create a floating branch. Essentially, you add a person to your tree anywhere, then remove them from the relationship where you added that new person by "edit relationships" then remove the father, mother, or sibling from where you originally attached the suspected relative.

In other words, after adding that suspected Falvey relative, you snip him from any family connections and let him float free in your database. Then, you get to work building out that new branch until you arrive at a possible nexus where you can re-attach your mystery DNA connection.

I first learned this concept from Connie Knox on her YouTube channel, "Genealogy T.V." It's been an indispensable technique which I've used repeatedly. I've shared the technique with others in my local genealogical society and in classes I've taught. Although the technique's description may leave some people scratching their heads, when I walk them through the process, that learning light bulb fires up—learning by doing trumps all other teaching methods.

This coming week, I have several Falvey DNA matches to explore through this same "floating branch" process. They all do cluster together, though in closer examination, they clump into several distinct geographic regions, suggesting possibly descendants of Falvey siblings or cousins.

Beyond adding these Falvey floating branches, the next step will be to delve into the details—and documentation—as far back in time as I can follow each branch. Hopefully, each path will eventually converge in County Kerry in a way that will allow me to understand just how they all relate to Johanna. 

Those Falvey Forebears: What the DNA has to Say

 

There is another tale to be told about these forebears of my father-in-law's brick wall ancestor, Johanna Falvey. That is the telltale report held within these family members' DNA. With Johanna being my husband's second great-grandmother, any third cousins descended from her would still be within the range of discovery, if any of those third cousins would think to test. (Hint, hint: there are a few sales popping up lately, and if not now, surely when the holiday season arrives would be a golden opportunity.)

Even DNA matches who could point out a possible sibling for Johanna would be sterling. Granted, such descendants would then be fourth cousins, a much smaller match. But they might still be able to wave enough DNA in their representative sample to raise the Falvey banner for me to spot.

That, in fact, is what I'm on the lookout for right now. Just at Ancestry.com's DNA, my husband has eleven possible Falvey connections. Six of them descend directly from Johanna herself, and I know how each of them fits into my father-in-law's family tree. In addition to that, there are four more who descend from a possible sister who moved to New Zealand, exactly the detail we had found in Johanna's own obituary. And yet another DNA match descends from a different sister.

Using the ProTools "Shared Matches" device at Ancestry, I can then extend those eleven discoveries to see other matches connected to our Falvey cousins. So far, those who immigrated to the United States seem to center in either Massachusetts or Michigan, likely signifying a connection to the same Falvey ancestors.

To discover the connection may require me to do some tree building on floating branches, to allow me to sort out which Falvey ancestors each match points to. This, of course, will take some time—but that is what this month may be all about. We'll certainly be doing some experimenting with ways to open up the stories behind these Irish Falvey ancestors from County Kerry.

It's Only "Classic" 'til October 1

 

Here I was, getting ready for my biweekly count and looking forward to a new ancestor to pursue at the start of next month, when I decided to sneak a peek at that ancestor's ThruLines results on Ancestry.com.

Right now, Ancestry DNA is going through a revision process, which in my view means a whole lot more clicks just to get to the same information. In other words, there are some breathless beta versions which simply deserve a click back to the original program. 

I get it that some people may find revisions informative, helpful, or just the very spark to make things exciting again. On the other hand, I use Ancestry every day, and the DNA tools several times a week. I like to find things where I put them the last time I used them.

Trying to provide feedback to Ancestry—they provided a hyperlink, which once clicked, supposedly leads to a page where such can be offered—led me only to a blank page with a perky "Ask Leaf" dialogue bubble. I declined. I didn't want to ask him anything; I wanted to tell about something.

Thankfully, Ancestry provides a button for those who wish to revert to the way things had always been—in other words, back to the classic version. When I tried that last night, though, I saw—to my dismay, I might add—that the DNA classic view will only be available until October 1.

I guess that means I'll have to put on the brakes and slow down enough to take in the scenery in this new DNA drive. The classic option is only temporarily classic. Soon it will not only become antiquated, it will be non-existent.

As is often said in October: "Boo!" (Hoo!)

Well, on to other matters. The rest of the Ancestry universe still continues to serve my quest to expand my in-laws' family tree, though not as rapidly as before I began wrestling with my father-in-law's Irish ancestors. I only managed to find forty nine additional family members to add to his tree in the past two weeks, most of whom were collateral lines or floating branches expanded in my futile attempt to follow Anna Flanagan Malloy's F.A.N. Club. Right now, my in-laws' tree has edged up to 44,318 documented relatives.

Thanks to some unexpected DNA matches—both at Ancestry.com and elsewhere—I was able to add six more individuals to my own tree. Right now, that tree is parked at 41,969 people, waiting until I turn to my dad's Polish roots in October. I'd be ecstatic if I could find some Polish DNA matches, but that is a search better taken elsewhere than my international subscription at Ancestry, unfortunately. 

Right now, with my focus on my father-in-law's roots in Ireland, we've got plenty of time to delve into yet another near-impossible immigrant story, which we'll do at the start of September. Maybe by then, I'll make my peace with the ever-changing website bells and whistles at Ancestry.

When Every Piece Falls Into Place

 

One aspect of using DNA testing to flesh out a family tree is the added ability to glean missing details through what we discover about a collateral line's descendants. Some lines of descent can be easily filled in, pointing back to an ancestor, but other ancestors seem to yield nothing more than gaps in the information. That's the way it's been with my father-in-law's Flanagan ancestors from County Limerick, Ireland: a story full of gaps.

When every piece does fall into place, though, there you can find your answers. In the case of Anna Flanagan Malloy, the woman whose husband sent her an ambiguous letter which left her chasing him to America, there has been one Flanagan DNA match which seems to point back to Anna's own roots, yet I couldn't be too sure.

This DNA cousin's direct line pointed back to a Flanagan man living in the right place at about the right time to suggest he might be Anna's brother. Then, too, he could have been a cousin. With big gaps in the Catholic records for that particular religious parish, it was impossible to find any marriage or baptismal records to provide convincing proof of the two Flanagans' relationship.

Thankfully, over the years since I first found that key DNA match, others related to that family have opted to do their own DNA test. Coupled with Ancestry.com's ProTools, I could then build out that Flanagan tree in a floating branch within my father-in-law's tree, to more clearly see the relationships contained within that branch. With test results for each of these Flanagan candidates, I can now test my hypothesis to see whether that Flanagan ancestor would be our Anna's brother, or merely a cousin. Hopefully, the numbers on these five current DNA matches will be sufficient to soon answer that question.

With a Little Help From Some Friends

 

The trouble with using DNA tests to determine the missing people in our family tree flares up when we have a bit too many blanks among our ancestors' descendants. Right now, I'm still struggling with the missing parents and siblings of my father-in-law's great-grandmother Anna Flanagan. I do, however, have a very few DNA matches who may well fit into that branch of our family tree. The question is: just how do these living people fit into the puzzle left behind by unnamed ancestral members of the Flanagan collateral lines?

Thankfully, in this Irish Flanagan case from County Limerick, I can reach out for a little help from some genealogy friends. Yesterday, I mentioned reviewing some old notes from one Flanagan match. Following the details provided in those old emails, then combining them with observations gleaned from other Ancestry subscribers' Flanagan trees, I have been able to build out some additional lines for my own tree.

That, in turn, has allowed me to spot surnames of DNA matches who had eluded me in earlier attempts at match-making. Children of a Flanagan daughter now sporting a married surname unknown to me can be just as puzzling as any other Irish descendant—until a genealogy friend points out the connection. That is the value of reaching out and connecting with other researchers. In some cases, those genea-friends can even turn out to be distant cousins.

Now that I've been able to add some married names to my tree (still in a floating branch, as I'm ever the cautious one), it's time to take a fresh look at a handful of DNA matches who have had me stumped. Maybe this time, their results will fall handily into this Flanagan puzzle and help me calculate whether their ancestor was our Anna's sibling, or merely another cousin living in the same Irish townland.

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.

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. 

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.