Ancestry, Descendancy, or Both?

 

When I first walked into the Sutro Library—billed as the largest genealogical collection west of Salt Lake City—the first reference book I pulled off their shelves outlined the descendants of the founding Taliaferro settlers in America. I found that book years ago, and the book's format was not a rare one. Today, however, those pursuing their family history are far more likely to draw up a pedigree chart outlining the ancestors of one particular individual. (Remember the instruction in beginning genealogy classes, "Start with yourself"?) But with the advent of genetic genealogy, those mystery DNA cousins prompted me to do a hybrid approach: first, trace my ancestry. Then, identifying a founding ancestor, reverse course and plot the lines of all that ancestor's descendants back to the current date.

Now that I'm working on the DNA matches connecting my husband—the subject testing on behalf of my mother-in-law's family history—to the line of the earliest William Ijams, I've seen quite a jump in the number of names in that family tree. I checked once again, since it is time for my biweekly progress report, and saw that the past two weeks brought 214 newly-identified relatives to my mother-in-law's tree. That family tree now contains 35,045 documented individuals—and counting, as there are many more to document before the end of this month.

While pushing back through history one generation at a time can add to a family tree, adding the collateral lines to each generation can make for a very bushy tree. It's a matter of deep versus wide, depending on which research approach you choose—or, in my case, deep and wide, all in the same tree.

The Déjà vu of Wiregrass Country

 

It was only yesterday, when perusing my Twitter feed, that I came across Judy Russell's pertinent comment in The Legal Genealogist:

Genealogy is as much a matter of geography as it is of history.

Of course, she had no idea I was on the search for the whereabouts of my fourth great-grandfather's parents somewhere in North or South Carolina; she was looking for her, ahem, "German" ancestors.

While the point is well taken—as we've already discussed here—that borders do move from time to time, geography is a pertinent part of genealogy for more reasons than those shifting borders. As I find in so many of my family history puzzles, it helps to know the places where our ancestors settled. Like, really get to know them.

Instead of trying to trace my line backwards through time—following unsubstantiated reports that my fourth great-grandfather Job Tison came from Pitt County, North Carolina—I want to tack in a different direction. Here's why.

As I explored the place in Georgia where Job Tison and his future father-in-law, West Sheffield, came to call home, learning about Glynn County and Wayne County gave me this strange, déjà vu feeling, as if I had been there before. I guarantee you, the only time I've ever been to Georgia was to fly through the Atlanta airport when my original wintertime flight home had been cancelled due to predictable weather eruptions. In other words: I've never set sights on Georgia from any way other than an aerial perspective. So how could reading about those two counties make me feel as if I had been there before?

Simple: I learned about Wiregrass Country.

Glynn County, where Job Tison settled, and neighboring Wayne County where West Sheffield established his home, were considered to be part of what is called Wiregrass Country. Named for the aristida stricta (or "wiregrass") warm season grass native to the coastal plains of the Carolinas, the region in which it best grows stretches from there southward to Georgia and the Florida panhandle, and westward toward Alabama. 

The wiregrass region used to cover far more of Georgia than it does today, and it featured some other characteristics which I also found strangely familiar. The sandy soil of the region featured one additional familiar feature: the longleaf pine. Far more prevalent in that wiregrass region in past centuries, the longleaf pine was useful not only for timber, but for turpentine. And that is precisely why the look of the land seems so familiar to me: I had seen this same geographic appearance over the miles while driving to the ancestral home of my McClellan line in Suwannee County, Florida—where Job Tison's daughter Sidnah moved after her marriage to George Edmund McClellan around 1830.

Perhaps I am belaboring this point, but it is for good reason. Not only have people sought out new places to live which seemed familiar to them, but those who were accustomed to living off the land developed ways to assess whether new territories had the natural resources to enable them to continue making their living with the skills they already possessed. I'll never forget Mark Lowe's instruction on southern research at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, advising his students seeking their disappearing ancestors to pay attention to soil maps. If those ancestors moved, they likely removed to a place with the same farming conditions required by the crops they had raised back home.

As it turns out, there was a particular migration pattern bringing people into the southeastern Georgia Wiregrass Country. While I'm still working on framing that picture, it appears one typical inbound route brought settlers from the Carolinas, seeking a familiar environment in which to engage in "self-sufficient" farming and livestock herding on cheap land with open range and relatively few other settlers.

While that description doesn't necessarily solve my research dilemma—were Job's parents from North or South Carolina?—it does at least warm me up to the idea that he didn't originate from another location.

There is another bright side to exploring this geographical angle. Once learning about Wiregrass Country, one can't help but realize that the land's unofficial moniker inspired a massive biographical work to catalog the many Euro-American settlers to the region. Called Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia, the original seven volume set was written by Folks Huxford, with five additional volumes compiled by the Huxford Genealogical Society.

As you can imagine, obtaining all twelve volumes can be a prohibitive process—though a trip to Homerville, Georgia, during their pandemic-limited hours could gain you entrance to the Huxford collection of notes and books which became the impetus of what is now billed as "one of the largest privately owned genealogical libraries in the United States." Not on your itinerary for 2022? No problem: you can check the Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia index online for your ancestor's name, then tap the book's listing at WorldCat.org in search of the right volume closer to home.

I've already checked for Job Tison: he is mentioned in volumes four and five. West Sheffield? He's there also, in volume three. And why stop there? A glutton for more research resources, I checked for Charles McClellan, father to Job's future son-in-law George as well as witness to Job's will, and even another promising connection by the name of Andrew McClellan.

Now, all I have to do is actually find a library which contains all those volumes. If there's nothing closer, looks like that will be something to add to my to-do list for my next trip to Salt Lake City. I know there's a library there which can help...  

"The Ranch on Vincent Street"

 

Nothing can make our ancestors' stories come to life quite like being able to walk on the actual land where they once lived. That is the sort of magic which will fuel a once-in-a-lifetime trip across continents and oceans to experience for ourselves just the slightest slice of life for our forebears.

Though I can't make the trip just now to the property in southern California where Maude Woodworth grew up—though it certainly is a closer journey than what our family planned in 2014 for our pursuit of my father-in-law's Irish roots—there is a next-best option available. We can look up the Woodworth property on plat maps of the county.

That, at least, was the idea I was pursuing when I read in Maude's father's obituary that he had settled with his parents in the region near Covina in 1886. In that 1928 obituary, the Covina Argus had called him "a pioneer of the Azusa valley" and mentioned that the family had farmed "the ranch on Vincent street" which sometime before William's passing had become property of a Reynolds family.

It just so happens that the United States Library of Congress has an extensive map collection which includes some plat maps for locations across the country. Since the Woodworths had settled in Los Angeles County, I felt chances were good that the Library of Congress would include such a map in their collection.

Rather than search directly through the Library of Congress website, I used Google to direct me to the closest possibilities. I found three: one map drawn in 1877, another in 1888, and a third in 1898.

I already knew from William Woodworth's obituary that the 1877 map would be of no use in answering my question, so I tried the 1888 map. Though there were surnames inserted on many of the properties, others were identified only by numbers or letters. Bottom line for me: no sign of any Woodworth property. Not even any familiar names on the few labeled streets.

Trying the 1898 map didn't yield any better results. By then, the map revealed just how much development was occurring in the area as even back then, the push to move to the "suburbs" was gaining headway.

That's when it occurred to me that I had, years ago, found an unlabeled photograph in the collection of Bill Bean, Maude's brother-in-law. It was one of many pictures he had of men working in rugged California terrain, which for some reason I long ago got into my head might have been the Woodworths working their land in the San Gabriel mountains of southern California. Of course, I have no basis for that assumption—Bill Bean wasn't even a relative of Maude's family—but that is just an example of how things get stuck in one's head. I kept looking on the plat maps for property closer to the hills, when Covina itself, their stated residence, was not as close to the mountains as are some other cities in Los Angeles County.

With that, it became obvious that, though I drive through the area with regularity on my visits down south, I can't let assumptions drive my research. It was time to stop pursuing the trail and take a research break to bone up on some local history of the area which eventually became the city of Covina.

 

Photograph above: undated picture of three unidentified men in work clothes (with a fourth seated behind them) stopping on a hillside in California. Though this photo was from the collection of Maude Woodworth Bean's brother-in-law William Bean, I often wondered whether this represented members of the Woodworth family.

What You Can Find in Lafayette

There are some places with average collections—or sometimes, next to nothing—to offer the itinerant genealogical researcher, while other cities provide collections which manage to delightfully exceed expectations. In this latter category, locations like Salt Lake City and Fort Wayne come to mind. But not necessarily Lafayette, Indiana—unless you already knew about the Alameda McCollough Research Library housed at the Frank Arganbright Genealogy Center.

For a city of only seventy thousand, Lafayette is a place where you might not expect much, as far as research collections go. But for those pursuing documentation for Tippecanoe County, Indiana, we are fortunate to be recipients of the largess of an unassuming newspaperman who, upon his passing in 2008, left a gift sufficient to house the county's archival collection of books, vertical files, court records, and other genealogical treasures.

After serving his country during World War II, Frank Arganbright became a journalism alumnus of Indiana University at Bloomington. He first worked as a newspaper reporter at the Lafayette Journal and Courier, then attained the role of assistant city editor and, eventually, city editor. He remained at the Journal and Courier until 1972, when he assumed the role of senior editor for the Office of Public Information at Purdue University.

Somewhere along the way, this unassuming man—compared to "The Millionaire Next Door"—amassed enough of a fortune to bestow one million dollars toward a scholarship in his name at his alma mater, Indiana University at Bloomington, in addition to his legacy which established the genealogy center in his adopted home town, Lafayette.

For those of us blissfully unaware of who Frank Arganbright was—but who are keen to research our Lafayette roots—there is a lot to appreciate in this largess. While the center houses the Tippecanoe County Historical Association, a solid partnership with Tippecanoe County Area Genealogical Society members provides the volunteer staff hours to guide visitors through the collections of court documents archived at the Arganbright center.

Perhaps now that you know the research resources I knew I'd find at Lafayette, you can understand why I was so keen on making a stop here, the next time I got the chance to fly to the Chicago area. On a good day without (much) traffic, within a matter of less than a two hour drive, a researcher could be happily entrenched in the indices and card catalogs which are the key to Tippecanoe County family history answers. Better yet, managing to score a visit during the longest day in that very limited schedule in which the collection is open to the public—yes, I made it for the long Thursday schedule—is a bonus.

It wasn't lost on me how much the volunteers contributed to the collection's existence. While I searched for answers, behind me were volunteers, preserving and preparing additional local historic documents to be added to the collection. It is an arduous process, but one which the Society has been steadily working on for years. Some of those volunteers have devoted themselves to this process, shepherding Society members through such projects, while also using their knowledge and expertise to assist visiting researchers capably and effectively.

Thankfully, I once again was able to benefit from this assistance during last Thursday's visit, in my quest to determine whether Ann Kelly Doyle was indeed part of my husband's Kelly roots—and whether that DNA match was pointing me to the Kellys or someone else.

Had I Been a Millionaire

When you click through to the last slide on the PowerPoint, answer the last question, fold up your notes and pack up the laptop, there is a certain amount of satisfaction in having delivered a presentation. That is: if you like teaching. If you are built for that, you live for it.

Not to say that everything will run perfectly every time. Yet, it wasn't until after completing the presentation last night for our local genealogical society that I realized the detractors which became my stealth competitors. Not that I had any control over them; in fact, I didn't even sense their presence until after I stepped in front of the podium to answer questions from the audience.

It was the hiss from the speaker that was my first clue. Crackling, when nothing was being said. The muffled sound that volume just couldn't overcome. Then there was the stillness of the air, growing incrementally warmer until that "is it just me?" question got asked by too many people. How much my audience had to bear with the "technical difficulties" of facility maintenance in exchange for a meeting home, free of rent.

Our local society is hosted at one of our city's branch libraries. We like our borrowed home. We have a good relationship with the staff there—indeed, with those at the main library, as well. As organizational histories go, we can say we go back a long way with the city's library system.

But libraries aren't often on the top ten list for funding projects, come budget time. And when it's crunch time for city governments, "luxuries" like libraries find themselves in a precarious position. And so the audience in the library's community room sits through a class, roasting from the heat from this sunny California spring day, because someone sneaked up on the roof under cover of darkness to strip all the metal from the air conditioning system and sell it as scrap for pennies on the dollar. Now, not only does the library have to replace the material to regain an adequate air handling system, but devise a system to prevent future thefts.

When I hear stuff like that, part of me thinks, "If only I were a millionaire."

Another part of me wakes up to a realization. Had I been a millionaire, I would have missed the lesson.

There are some people who think that, if an entity is big enough, it can easily slough off any problems. "Stick it to the big guy" because "they won't notice." Deep pockets are a reality—in some people's minds.

The truth of the matter is, no matter how big "big government" gets, it is still us. We are the ones who lose when someone slips off with a piece of what we bought—if we, as "the people," bought it for the benefit of all of us. It is not millionaires—the big guys—who have provided these community benefits. It is the collective of all us little people.

True, in a poorer community, the amenities collected by the aggregate won't be as glamorous as the proud features in the community which is well off. The inverse should be as obvious: those little losses sustained by thoughtless theft represent a larger percentage of damage to that same little community. It hurts more when those who can least afford it have been hit by loss.

Perhaps that means people in our community's condition should be more alert to such damage—to sit up and take notice. Maybe that is why Neighborhood Watch programs are experiencing a renaissance in our area; it's harder to pay for something a second time when you could barely afford it the first time.

Building community—something I think the more successful genealogical societies are aiming to do within their own membership—goes beyond just buying stuff with money. It involves donations, sure, but it also takes commitments of time, effort, patience, talent, knowledge. We share what we have to offer—and are glad to do so—because we are building community. Because we are community, we amplify that effort by partnering with others sharing our mission. For genealogical organizations, libraries are our perfect allies.

Naturally, partners want to be mutually supportive of each other's organizational needs. So when the facility which has hosted our meetings for decades suffers a loss, our society wants to help make a difference for them. While we all wish we could be the millionaire in shining armor who comes galloping to the rescue, though, sometimes the best help is to stick to the method that built that relationship in the first place: be part of the day-to-day supportive community that realizes that what harms the whole harms all the parts of that whole. And be part of that shoulder-to-shoulder support system that says no to those who mean us harm. When we realize that a loss to any one of us is a loss to the entire community, that's rich. When we realize the actions we—the people—take can make the difference, that's priceless. That's when we become millionaires.

Above: "Under the Bridge at Hampton Court," 1874 painting by Impressionist landscape artist Alfred Sisley; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Starting From What We Know

One rule of thumb, in genealogical research, is to move incrementally from what we know toward what we hope to discover. No sudden moves. No surmising. That step-by-step discipline will lead you straight to the information you are seeking.

Right?

In working on my mother-in-law's family lines over the years, I had pushed back gradually, following that precept. For whatever reason, when I got to the point of Nancy Ann Jackson Snider on my mother-in-law's matrilineal line, I had stopped.

Then came a trip back east. We just happened to need to drive from Chicago to Columbus, Ohio. If we took just a little detour from the usual Interstate route through Indy, we could pass through Fort Wayne.

If you've been doing genealogical research for any amount of time, you know what that means. Do not pass go. Do not do anything else until you've stopped at the Allen County Public Library.

Why? They've got a genealogical center with holdings setting them in the number two position, behind Salt Lake City, for family history research. Actually, amend that: since the Family History Library in Salt Lake City is considered to be a private library, when it comes to the Allen County library, it is considered to have the largest public genealogy collection in the United States.

So I stop when I drive through Fort Wayne.

It was the last stop I had made to that wonderful reference collection that provided the clue that led me to realize that it might not be wise for me to discontinue my research with Nancy. Rather than be the end of the research line, Nancy might just open the door to the beginning of an interesting pursuit.

Since we need to approach this new foray incrementally, let's take a look at what material I have gathered for Nancy Ann Jackson Snider over the years.

One of the first items easily discovered for Nancy Ann was that there was apparently another married woman by the same name in Perry County, Ohio—so I was forewarned to tread carefully among the pages of that county's history. After living her entire life within the confines of Perry County, the woman I later learned was the other widow Nancy Ann Snider had died in 1891 at the age of seventy four. Our Nancy Ann lived her eighty three years, nine months and eight days until 1905. Besides, unlike her name twin, our Nancy Ann was born in nearby Fairfield County—a little research detail which will come in handy, later.

In addition, a trip to the cemetery at the Sniders' hometown church in Somerset quickly confirmed our choice of which Nancy Ann to favor. Our Nancy Ann was married to Simon Snider—on October 25, 1841, to be specific—although even here, the record was riddled with errors. Warning number two: beware of bureaucrats making mistakes in official documents. Although the note in the margin of page 38 of the Perry County Marriage Records, volume three, had listed "Simon Snider to Nancy Jackson," the handwritten statement read,

I do certify that I did on the 25 day of October A.D. 1841 solemnize the marriage of Simon Snider and Nancy Johnson.

Johnson? Really? Make my day.

Those slips of the pen didn't end there. Remember, research needs to progress incrementally—and here I am, jumping all over the place in my data-dumping rush to tell you everything. So let's look at what we can find in the census records.

Since our Nancy Ann died in 1905, the most recent census record for her was the 1900 census. There, as a widow living with one of her married daughters, Nancy Ann reported that she was the mother of fourteen children, eight of whom were still living—eight more opportunities to verify the details reported in Nancy Ann's life records. That was pretty much the same story, moving back through all the census records until arriving at the 1860 census.

Since Simon, Nancy Ann's husband, had died in 1867, this was the first census which included his name. That is probably a good thing. You see, once again, someone got Mrs. Snider's name wrong. In this case, though, the enumerator wasn't the one getting it wrong; it was whoever transcribed her record. There, she's "Mary Ann." However, when you look at the original document, it looks pretty clearly like a Nancy Ann to me. Warning number three: if at all possible, always go back to the original document (or a clear facsimile of it) to glean your information.

I'm probably mixing my sayings when I hope that "three's a charm" means no more problems with vital records. Even though our push to uncover more about Nancy Ann Jackson Snider's past is not guaranteed to go any more smoothly than this, we can hope we've already paid our dues with these few research tangles, and can now move on to the previous generation.


Above excerpt from the 1860 census record for Reading Township in Perry County, Ohio, courtesy Ancestry.com.

Uh-Oh…

Perhaps it was with a certain smug satisfaction that I concluded yesterday’s post—a little too prematurely. Yes, I discovered a record showing Thomas F. Rainey marrying someone named Mary E. Talafero in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. And yes, I’ve seen indications that that same Mary Taliaferro might have been sister to Charles Boutwell Taliaferro—the man who took in two of her unmarried children after her passing. But to find a Mary and Charles who are children of the same Georgia Taliaferro family? Well, that’s the catch.

There is more work to be done. Apparently, that is what the old reports are telling me.

Or, perhaps genealogies published by brick and mortar establishments of bygone years are no more infallible than are e-genealogies shared online today.

Let’s take a look at what can be found on those hallowed pages of another century's researchers.

The first task, logically, would be to seek the parents' names of siblings Mary E. and Charles Boutwell Taliaferro. A number of researchers have assumed a specific Taliaferro parent, but now that I’m trying to plug these two descendants into the larger Taliaferro picture, I’m not so sure.

We can assume, given Charles’ middle name of Boutwell, that he descends from a woman whose maiden name was that same Boutwell—and that we have in the person of the wife of Zachariah Taliaferro (1730 – 1811), named Mary. Given that date range, though, it is more likely that Mary Boutwell Taliaferro would be Charles’ grandmother, not mother. A number of researchers hold the father to be one of Zachariah’s and Mary’s sons, who went by either the name Warren or Warner. I’ve seen both versions—and frankly, looking at the handwriting in some census records, I can see how there could be confusion.

Just to surmount the current distress, let’s assume Charles’ father was Warren/Warner, son of Zachariah and Mary. That would not be too far fetched an assumption. Remember, the cemetery where Charles’ sister Mary was buried was a family burial grounds. If you took a peek at the link I shared yesterday, listing the names of all who were buried at that Johnson Cemetery in Coweta County, Georgia, you’d recognize a resonance in the name of Charles' sister Mary's son, also buried in their plot: Warren Taliaferro Rainey. Who do you suppose that child of Thomas F. and Mary Taliaferro Rainey might have been named after?

In addition, Warren/Warner’s siblings included another sister by the name of Frances, who married someone named Penn. We find her buried, along with Mary Taliaferro Rainey, in that same family cemetery.

All looks reasonably good—until, that is, we head for those time-honored genealogy books.

Before we start entangling ourselves within the annals of family history, let me provide you with a handy online scorecard for the Taliaferro family. No guarantees that this one is totally correct, either, but I like how it provides footnotes for key assertions. From Barbara Breedlove Rollins’ Family Files, you can find the specific section I’m referring to by clicking here.

So, what can we find in the old genealogical reports? Let’s look first at Historical Sketches of the Campbell, Pilcher and Kindred Families, compiled by Margaret Campbell Pilcher in 1911. If you are on Ancestry.com, you can find a copy of the text in question provided here. For those not willing to spring for Ancestry’s subscription fees, you can fortunately also access the public domain text through Internet Archive here.

In dense text at the end of the book, the author reviews the descendants of the Virginia colony’s Taliaferro family. At page 400, she begins a recital of all the children of Zachariah and Mary Boutwell Taliaferro. By page 402, the text covers the children of their son Zachariah—most pertinent to the daughter who married into the Broyles line I’ve been discussing for the past month. Two thirds of the way down page 403, the narrative arrives at that son of Zachariah and Mary we've been discussing today, given here as Warner.

According to Ms. Pilcher, Warner married a woman named Mary M. Gilmer, and together they had four children. Ms. Pilcher identifies those children as Nancy, Charles (Boutwell), Sophia and Polly.

If you arrived at the name of that fourth child, Polly, and breathed a sigh of relief, take it back. According to Ms. Pilcher, Polly married a man by the name of Landrum, not Rainey.

But wait! Another one of those four siblings did marry someone by the name of Thomas Rainey. If you are astute enough to notice that none of the remaining candidates, among those four siblings, was named Mary, you get extra points for your keen sense of the obvious.

Yes. We are in trouble.

Okay, so let’s not be too hasty with our judgments. Let’s cross check the Pilcher tome with another equally long-winded title, The Ancestry and Posterity of Dr. John Taliaferro and Mary (Hardin) Taliaferro. This one, compiled by Willie Catherine Ivey, was the volume I first discovered at the Sutro library in San Francisco during one of my early forays into the treasures hidden in genealogical repositories, years ago. This text, as well, is available through Ancestry.com, but unfortunately, the 1926 volume is not accessible in digitized form online (at least that I can find).

According to the Ivey text, the page 105 outline of Zachariah and Mary’s children lists the son in question as Warren, not Warner. Yet his four children are listed with the same names, and are paired with the same spouses as were listed in the Pilcher book.

What are we to make of that? I suppose we can assume that these old volumes were indeed correct, and take our search elsewhere. After all, there are hundreds of pages of genealogical reports of descendants of the Taliaferro line to be had in these volumes alone. Noting these records would, if nothing else, help me navigate the nearly seven hundred DNA matches I’ve been notified about since taking my own autosomal DNA test. At best, they might help me identify exactly which Mary Taliaferro it was who married someone named Rainey in time to give birth to my second great grandmother.

On the other hand, I’ve spotted mistakes even in revered publications such as these. After all—though not in the two titles cited above—I’ve run across reports insisting that my third great grandfather died young in battle, when that was not the case at all. Besides, one thing we have in our favor that these authors from the early 1900s did not have is digitized copies of all the census records. Where they would have had to take hours—no, more likely, days—of grunt work to slog through bound copies of original documents (if those were even accessible to them at all), we can now, with the tap of our finger, call up the documents in question in rapid succession. It is more likely to find all the verification we need now than it was then, closer in time to the occurrences in question.

So, the question at hand now—given this confusing array of conflicting details—is: where to, next?

And the answer is: actually, I really don’t know.

Last Day in Dublin

Friday was our last full day of research here in Dublin. After wrapping up my project examining County Kerry tax records at the Valuation office, I met my husband for dinner—he had just spent the entire day on a trip to Newgrange—and then we retired to our hotel room. There, I took the time to gather my thoughts on the day's progress and prepare the next day's blog post. Inevitably, after answering email, following online links and organizing notes for the next morning's blitz through my last microfilm roll, the evening was spent. The time was nearing one in the morning.

Shutting everything down for the night, we unplugged the laptop and set the iPad and phone up to charge. Just as we turned out the lights, there was an unusual sound from the electronic devices, so my husband went to check everything out. Apparently, the noise was to alert us that the devices were no longer charging. As he unplugged and then re-inserted the converter into the outlet, something in the wall popped—sounded like a small explosion to me—and there was the smell of something burning.

I screamed—not a wise move for that time of night. But hey. Every research trip needs a little excitement.

On Saturday, I had just three hours to crank through an entire decade of Catholic baptism records from the 1830s. It didn't help that the day started out with glorious sunshine. It's been culture shock for this California resident to spend so many hours under cloud cover. I hadn't realized how much my subconscious registered this deprivation until I actually saw real sunlight on Saturday.

Not to worry. I powered on. Fifteen minutes before closing, I realized I had only made it to 1834 in the County Tipperary parish—I had started at 1832—and if I were going to capture a copy of our John Tully's baptismal entry, I had better fast-forward to the appropriate spot and grab my opportunity now.

I do have to say, the journey through that Ballina parish register was informative. My hope had been to connect the dots between any Flannerys and Tullys in the area and our own Margaret Flannery and Denis Tully.

If you recall my consternation over the ink blot unserendipitously deposited upon the precise spot on the page of the 1851 Canada West census which contained relatives of our Flannery line, you will be happy to note that the name was Edmund Flannery after all. I came upon his son Cornelius' baptismal entry Saturday morning.

I'd like to say I hated leaving the rest of that microfilm roll behind at the sound of the closing bell, but I really can't say that. There was, after all, sunlight awaiting my emergence from the rotunda of the National Library. I joined my husband who, along with what seemed to be the entire residency of the city of Dublin, was out enjoying this novelty called sunshine. We walked along, taking in the sights of the city in which I had spent the last week sequestered indoors.

The afternoon presented a bonus, in that our research trip was deftly designed to coincide with Dublin's Back to Our Past conference. The DNA lectures there included a keynote presentation by Spencer Wells of National Geographic's Genographic Project. Being so far from home, I found it a treat to run into the familiar face of Katherine Borges of ISOGG, and even Maurice Gleeson, whom I had met and discussed this trip with, back at the Southern California Jamboree last June.

On today's agenda is nothing but time to enjoy the sights of Dublin and relax. Then pack. Tonight—if all goes as planned—we will be joined by our daughter, who once again will take the train from Cork to spend this last evening with us. Early tomorrow morning, we'll be off to the airport and the long trip back home.

 

Photograph: Looking into the ruins of the Aghadoe Cathedral in County Kerry from an outside wall of the building. Photograph courtesy of Chris Stevens.

Not on the Beaten Path

There comes a point in the intrepid traveler’s life—well, at least in my case—in which that insidious doubt of personal capability overwhelms the confidence that one can find his or her way in the world. In my case, that’s when I succumbed to the siren song of those well-marketed tourists’ guides.

You know those books: the annual issues of brand-name “See Such-and-Such Country” publications.

It started out in a harmless way. A friend passed along a copy of one book. She found it at a used book store and thought of me. A beautiful, glossy handbook, it was full of inspiring photographs and artwork from famous locations in Ireland.

That inspired my husband the other day—since he was on Amazon, anyhow—to take a look at what else might be available. After all, we have to have some idea of what we are going to do, once we land in Dublin.

The books arrived last week—a crazy week, as usual, so I didn’t get a chance to even peek until this weekend. Yes, this weekend in which I’ve been laser-focused on constructing an itinerary for what we will be doing, once we drive to Ballina.

Last night, I thought I’d crack open those shiny pages and see what could be found about my current destination of obsession. I found…absolutely zip. Nada.

Well, that isn’t entirely true. I found two page entries in the index of one book—did I mention it happened to be the only book which actually had an index? (Can you tell, the more ticked I get, the more I tend to use italics?!)

Don’t let those two pages get your hopes up. Remember Ballina boasts a double identity: one in County Mayo—the bigger one more likely to be mentioned—and the smaller one. Guess which one got the bigger mention in the tour book?

The other one—the one I want to know about—got a mention of one line’s length on the page.

Thanks.

Well, let me reconsider that. After all, I’m not really traveling to Ireland to do the tourist routine. I’m looking for a very different pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Maybe I’m even looking for a different rainbow. And for different rainbows, you have to look in different places.

My digital visit to the County Clare website, yesterday, inspired me to see what I could find in County Tipperary. Remember the GenMaps page I found? If, on that program, you clicked the choice for townlands, you could see the overlay of the borders on the map of the county. You could also click the choice for surnames from Griffith’s Valuation, which would then be superimposed on the same map.

I want that for County Tipperary.

Search as I might, though, I could find no results for such a treasure. County Clare, it appears, has a cutting edge institution, as libraries go. Oh, if only they were on the other side of the Shannon.

Of course, there is a County Tipperary library system. But, coming from a heritage of a bifurcated land mass—historically divided into the “North Riding” and “South Riding” jurisdictions—their town centers are spread throughout a sizeable county. And, of course, their branch libraries appear to be nowhere near Ballina—which is why I am fervently hoping the Ballina folks consider their local library to be the one across the river in Killaloe, oh please, oh please. That way, perhaps that County Clare library would have holdings including the local history and genealogy of this northern outpost of their neighboring county.

Thanks to Google, my searching yielded other local resources—though some of them turn out to be via the usual suspects and/or include some sorrowfully outdated links.

I found this Google Books link to provide a helpful list of local resources.

The County Tipperary library’s website seems to have some promising links. I am guessing the closest branch to Ballina would be the one in Nenagh. Apparently, the term I am looking for—the way the Irish put it, at least—would be “Local Studies.” The library provides a list of links for this, although frustratingly, the list includes contact information for national resources (not very local of them, now, is it?) or pay-for-service sites like the heritage centers. Apparently, there has also been a book published which (I guess) serves as a finding aid for local materials covering a wide range of topics having to do with Tipperary; the library website gives a further description. Of course, I cannot tell from the site whether the limited-edition volume is still available for sale. It might be a useful item to pick up while we are over there. However, the one item I wish I could find—a GenMaps feature for County Tipperary like the one I found yesterday for County Clare—is nowhere to be found on the Tipperary library’s website.

Another local resource I was able to find was the County Tipperary Historical Society. It seems their prime purpose is—or was—to publish an annual journal. I can’t tell if they are still in operation. Their website seems somewhat outdated.

I had to journey way back in time to find another website with links to local resources for County Tipperary. Predictably, it was the ubiquitous GenWeb site, this one specific to County Tipperary. Though the website seems outdated, and contains some broken links, it is packed with a wealth of resources. It provides a page for the specific civil parish in which I had found a Griffith’s Valuation listing for my (hopefully) Denis Tully: Templeachally. Drilling down a bit further, I also was able to find a page on our Tully family’s Tountinna Townland. And, scrolling down past the title of this additional GenWeb page, I found a long list of links referring to other researchers and websites having to do with County Tipperary genealogy.

But still no GenMaps. Which means I’ll need to polish my PhotoShop skills enough to work on graphically overlaying a very old map from the time of Griffith’s Valuation over a modern-day road map, to see if, once we are in Ireland, we can drive by that very location where Denis Tully once eked out a living in rural County Tipperary. If I can discern nothing else, thanks to Google Street View, I can tell things haven’t changed much there, out in that neck of the woods in northern County Tipperary.

Talk about being off the beaten path.

Above: Irish artist Henry Albert Hartland, "On the Moors," 1876 pencil and watercolor inspired by Achill Island in County Mayo; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Finding It in the Stacks

There is a saying that has gone around genealogy circles: when it comes to research, what you find on the Internet is just the tip of the iceberg. That very concept was incorporated into a graphic design on a poster sold by the California Genealogical Society. In fact, I only recently realized that the poster was designed by the daughter of one of this blog’s readers—Lisa Gorrell.

I take that concept to heart—especially now, on the eve of our research trip to Ireland. At least, I hope that maxim will hold true! For libraries will be one of my most depended-upon stops in the various towns and counties of Ireland.

My mind was turned to libraries last night, having just returned from the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the building that houses the main branch of our local library. Our local genealogical society was there to help celebrate those fifty years. And why not? That library has played host to our Society’s meetings, workshops and donated reference collection from the time it opened the doors of that new building fifty years ago.

When I think of the nearly four thousand books our Society has donated to the library over those fifty years, it reminds me that our city is not unusual in that regard. Across the land, there are mid-sized cities (and perhaps even smaller) with genealogical societies which have done the same.

In the aggregate, that adds up to a significant stack of books. Books that someone can reference to find a way around a research brick wall, perhaps. And if we are doing that here in the United States, surely someone is doing the same in other countries as well.

Hopefully, one of those other countries is Ireland. I think of all the local history books, family genealogies, transcriptions of records and documents housed in our own repository. And I earnestly wish for the same to be true of the libraries at my destination. Not just the national library in Dublin. But the small libraries in places like Ballina in County Tipperary, where I have some questions still needing answers.

Wouldn’t it be just the dream outcome to walk into a local library and pull a book down off the shelf that mentions the name of someone in my Tully or Flannery families there?

Since our libraries here have their holdings listed in online catalogs, I thought I’d test the waters on this one. I Googled Ballina, Tipperary and library. Perhaps because Ballina markets itself jointly with its “twin” city across the River Shannon, Killaloe, the best I can hope for is to visit the library at the water’s edge on the other side of the river—and believe me, the Killaloe library does indeed boast waterfront property. It is on the original site of the lock keeper’s house.

While the library is fairly small—it houses holdings of nearly eight thousand volumes—it is, after all, the closest collection to my target town of Ballina. The website is helpful, providing contact information—you know I’ll have questions—and links of interest to a researcher like me. Better yet, the wider county library system has played coordinator to a crowdsourced list of details to make a genealogist happy. Check out this sortable list of local graveyard inscriptions, for instance. Or this page on the Cathedral’s burials. Or, better yet, this “GenMaps” readout—be patient, this one loads s-l-o-w-l-y—which can be manipulated according to selected features listed on the left sidebar.

And, of course, like any forward-thinking library, the Killaloe library includes their own blog, which I was delighted to find.

Naturally, I couldn’t help but let my eyes wander over the entries in the listings of burials at the Cathedral just across the river from Ballina. Remember, the actual source of the baptismal verifications received by our Tully family in the 1870s originated from the Cathedral in County Clare, not the actual church the family attended in Ballina. And it wasn’t lost on me that there were a couple Flannerys in the cemetery listing, as well as Tullys. Who knows?

I can’t just satisfy myself with this resource from the next county over—though it is much closer in proximity to Ballina than the town’s own county seat in Tipperary. I’ll be looking to see what can be found online for the County Tipperary library system as well. But once we arrive in Ballina, I wouldn’t discount a trip across that eighteenth century bridge. After all, the bridge was already spanning the river, back when our family lived there.

Above: "On Suffolk Sands," 1887 oil on canvas by Dublin impressionist landscape painter Walter Frederick Osborne; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Always Worth a Try

Now supplied with that solitary tidbit linking the athletic and accomplished Denver man-about-town, Harry A. Sullivan, with Julia C. Sullivan—the right Julia Sullivan, I’m hoping—I needed only to find some conclusive evidence demonstrating that this Julia Sullivan was indeed the one related to our Kelly descendants from Lafayette, Indiana.

There’s just something about success: it begets more success. And that’s just what I was primed to see. After wandering around this newspaper wilderness about as long as I could bear—after all, I had neared the end of the date range for the digitized archive I was using for this search—I was ready for a little victory dance. But first, I needed Julia’s obituary.

Remembering a comment by A Family Tapestry reader Nancy suggesting the use of services at the Denver Public Library, I thought I’d try a little experiment. I already knew I had a date of publication for the obituary of a Julia Sullivan—the only catch was that it was mentioned in a Lafayette newspaper, not in Denver. Of course, I wasn’t even sure this would be referring to the same Julia Sullivan—after all, she had priors for name twins in Denver. But I thought it was worth a gamble. I would try and see if the Lafayette date got any hits in the Denver newspaper. What did I have to lose?

The Denver Public Library has this wonderful service in which it provides an index for the many obituaries it has on file. The only catch is that the process of indexing is apparently not yet completed. However, on the page in its website listing the years available in its holdings, the library added this note:

For years not represented here, refer to the print volumes or contact us.

Well, it was a cinch I wouldn’t be going to Denver any time soon, so I wouldn’t be consulting any print volumes there. Why not take them up on their invitation to contact them?

I clicked on the link, which brought me to a form to complete. I entered Julia’s name, the anticipated date of the obituary, and an explanation that it fell within the years not included in their available date range. (Fortunately for me, I hadn’t yet stumbled upon a separate page within the library’s website which includes the digitized index for that same year, which would have enabled me, by a tedious trial and error method, to locate the date of publication, myself.)

Of course, nowhere on the website did it indicate whether the librarians would be willing to extend their services to those not living in the Denver area, or even to those not possessing a valid library card. Not to worry, however, as I soon found out. A cordial email response indicated that, if it were available, I would be receiving a copy of Julia’s obituary in the near future. And I did.

From the July 13, 1930, edition of the Rocky Mountain News:

Julia C. Sullivan, 1320 Gilpin st., beloved mother of Tom, Harry, and Florence Sullivan and Regina McClinton. Rosary recitation at the residence. Sunday, 9:30 a.m. Requiem mass will be offered at the Cathedral. Monday, 10 a.m. Interment Mount Olivet.

As thankful as I was for the help—there was no charge, although mention was made of how I might express my appreciation by sending a donation to the address provided—I found Julia’s obituary only accomplished one half of my goal. It linked Julia C. Sullivan with her four children: Tom, Harry, Florence and Regina.

Still, receiving that obituary, dated about the same time as the one listed in the Lafayette, Indiana newspaper index, implied that the Colorado Julia and the Indiana Julia were one and the same.

But it didn’t say that. I wanted more.

Not satisfied to have inferences stolen by coincidences, I decided to find a way around what seemed to be a less-than-inviting library persona projected by the website for the Lafayette Public Library. If crowdsourcing gave me the encouragement to attempt my request of the Denver Public Library, perhaps some kind soul at a genealogy forum would provide some guidance for my dilemma in obtaining the Sullivan obituary I needed from Lafayette.

Twenty Four Hours: Still No Response

It’s been twenty four hours since I posted a private message on Facebook to a possible distant cousin. Still no answer. What’s up with this?

Apparently, instant gratification has not yet made its presence known in the field of family history research. Social media connectivity notwithstanding, it’s the people who need to make the connections, not their communication devices. And people need time to warm up to the idea of engaging with total strangers—family or not.

In the meantime, the impressive prowess of search engine Google keeps me informed on a host of possible cousin connections for this newly-discovered branch of my husband’s Kelly family. It’s incredible, don’t you think, that a family of Irish immigrants with a surname as common as Kelly could have slipped in, unnoticed, through the back door of this country—arriving through the port of New Orleans and sailing past the 1850s countryside along the Mississippi to the Wabash River destination of Lafayette, Indiana—and yet have their descendants of the fourth and fifth generation tracked through multiple online resources almost two centuries later.

It was on Find A Grave that I located burial information on the Anna Crahan whom I had originally discovered through Mathew Kelly’s 1880 census record. Listed as niece to Mathew, the head of household, she was identified there only by her initials. That mystery was resolved, once I located her name in her step-mother’s obituary, years later. That record clued me in to the name of the man she had married—John P. Quinlisk.

Like a chain reaction, each discovery led to new facts—like the census records for the new family, adding children over the years—until I came to the Find A Grave record of her son, John P. Quinlisk, junior, and his wife Edith.

What was interesting about Edith Quinlisk’s entry on Find A Grave was that it contained a transcription error that made me take a closer look. While the headstone itself showed her date of passing as 1989, what I had originally seen was the year on the transcription: 1929. A date that early threw me off, and I dismissed it out of hand—at first.

I had seen other indications for this woman leading me to think that she had died in California, rather than in Indiana, so I went looking for other entries on Find A Grave. Rather easily, I discovered one for an Edith V. Quinlisk who died there in Sacramento County on December 16, 1989.

Fortunately, this Find A Grave memorial came complete with one of those serendipitous entries including family information. While not an obituary, it was a brief listing of Edith’s family constellation, including the names and locations of her children, provided by one of her grandchildren. What more could I ask?

That, and an obituary for one of her sons, found through Ancestry.com, was enough to equip me to go looking for possible cousins. During my foray into additional Internet resources, I once again also ran into the Lafayette Journal and Courier newspaper index, as well as the websites for various Lafayette public library genealogy holdings and databases, and the Indiana State Library Genealogy Database for marriages. Bit by bit, I am adding to my repertoire for finding aids to Indiana’s past records beyond just the government documents, themselves. I’m keeping a file of these valuable resources for future research, you can be sure.

As I track how these generations unfolded through history, it eventually leads me to the point where I run out of dusty old archives and into the broad daylight of modern times. And that is a decision point. Do I continue the search to try and connect with those who are related to our family? Or do I satisfy myself with knowing a stranger’s name—and maybe city of residence—and leave it at that?

I, for one, want to push the envelope out just one more generation. Unlike the books, documents, and microfilms which have no vested interest in revealing their secrets to me, the flesh-and-blood repositories of family heritage in this current generation may or may not be willing participants in my quest. Unsure of whether I care to turn salesperson to further my cause, I hesitate at this precipice of the decision point, though I realize just one favorable invitation will be all it takes for me to transform this precarious decision point into my personal tipping point.

I’ve never been so impatient about getting to yes.

A Long-Winded Obituary

Receiving a copy of the February 15, 1917, obituary for Mrs. Anna Creahan, for me, was a delight. Not only was it effortless to obtain the record via email from the Indiana library serving as hometown repository for the Bloomington Daily Telephone, the report itself was composed in that genteel and flowery manner of Victorian sensibilities. It was sure to produce the kind of information I’d be seeking.

In many respects, the obituary did not disappoint. Though it started out with the blunt headline, “Mrs. Creahan Dead, Age 78,” it eased up considerably after delivering its duty as factual informer in the first sentence.

Mrs. Anna Creahan, age 78, step-mother of Mrs. Ella Fulk of this city, died Tuesday night at Lafayette from the infirmities of old age. Mrs. Creahan was a fine old Irish lady who came to this country from Ireland when she was a girl. Her husband died two years ago. The funeral will be tomorrow at Lafayette and Mrs. Fulk will attend.

Because I already had found the burial information for both Anna Creahan and her husband Michael, the date and location in Lafayette, Indiana, helped confirm that I was reading the right obituary. This was the Ann Creahan I was seeking.

After this introduction, the Daily Telephone noted that the rest of the obituary was gleaned from the Lafayette newspaper, the Courier—fitting, because that was not only where she had lived, it was actually where Anna Creahan had passed away.

Mrs. Anna Creahan, widow of Michael Creahan, an old and highly respected resident of Lafayette, died at 11:30 Tuesday night at St. Elizabeth hospital. Two weeks ago she was stricken with a severe attack of grip, and several days ago she developed pneumonia.

The Courier seemed in the mood to go into greater detail about Mrs. Creahan’s illness—something we’d rarely see in an obituary today—and though the narrative seems somewhat monotonous, it did provide additional family clues.

She was taken to the hospital a week ago today from the home of her niece Miss Louise Lenihan, 511 Kossuth street. Her condition had been critical since Saturday, and when she passed away she was surrounded by her niece and nephews. Mr. Creahan died in May, 1915.

Lenihan? Hmmm…I’ll have to make a note of this. Very helpful. Remember, I’m still tracing this line in hopes of uncovering who, exactly, that mystery niece “A. M. Crahan” in Mathew Kelly’s household was. Perhaps at last, I’ll find out what those initials “A. M.” stood for.

Right after the sentence that confirmed Anna’s husband’s date of passing—which we had already found, thanks to Find A Grave—my reading came to a screeching halt.

Mrs. Creahan was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, and came to Lafayette with her mother…

All was well and good up to this point. Not only had I gleaned the name of another possible relative, but I had received the bonus goodie of learning her county of origin in Ireland—something I’ve yet to determine for these impossible Kellys.

All in the same breath, I had grasped a victory and had it torn from my reach with the very next words:

Mrs. Creahan was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, and came to Lafayette with her mother Mrs. Mary Cunningham, when a little girl and had been a resident here for half a century.

With that, I lost all zest for the discovery—for anything following that sentence, actually. Did it really matter any more? This was not our Ann Kelly. It was someone named Anna Cunningham.

On general principles—the hope that someone will be searching for this Anna Creahan, even if she turned out not to be ours—I’ll post the rest of the obituary below, with the complete transcription. Maybe someone will be entering that phrase in quotes, “Anna Creahan” in a Google search box, and will appreciate the find. I know I would have.

As for the Kelly niece, A. M. Crahan, it seemed I was farther than ever from being able to determine what had become of her. There were too many obstacles to overcome in continuing the search.

Somehow, though, I couldn’t let the thing go. With some brick walls—combined with stubbornness—it seems they come in handy for a good head banging.

            Mrs. Anna Creahan, age 78, step-mother of Mrs. Ella Fulk of this city, died Tuesday night at Lafayette from the infirmities of old age. Mrs. Creahan was a fine old Irish lady who came to this country from Ireland when she was a girl. Her husband died two years ago. The funeral will be tomorrow at Lafayette and Mrs. Fulk will attend.

            Of Mrs. Creahan’s death the Lafayette Courier says:

            Mrs. Anna Creahan, widow of Michael Creahan, an old and highly respected resident of Lafayette, died at 11:30 Tuesday night at St. Elizabeth hospital. Two weeks ago she was stricken with a severe attack of grip, and several days ago she developed pneumonia. She was taken to the hospital a week ago today from the home of her niece Miss Louise Lenihan, 511 Kossuth street. Her condition had been critical since Saturday, and when she passed away she was surrounded by her niece and nephews. Mr. Creahan died in May, 1915. Mrs. Creahan was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, and came to Lafayette with her mother Mrs. Mary Cunningham, when a little girl and had been a resident here for half a century. For more than thirty years she resided at 1112 south Fifth street. Deceased was an earnest member of St. Ann’s church and had belonged to that congregation since the parish was established. Prior to that she was a member of St. Mary’s church. She was possessed of deep religious convictions, and her religion was exemplified in her every day life. She had been a member of the Rosary society of the church for more than thirty years and was also a member of the ladies’ auxiliary of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. She took an active interest in the Hibernian society and was a kind and sympathetic neighbor and friend. Mrs. Creahan had a wide acquaintance throughout the city and her memory will long be revered by those who knew her best. During her long life she was the author of many kind deeds and her passing will be regretted by many. She is survived by the following step-children: John E. Creahan and Mrs. John P. Quinlisk of Lafayette; Mrs. Ella Fulk of Bloomington, and Mrs. Julia Sullivan of Denver, Colo.

At Last! The Evidence!

It was while I was puzzling over the Find A Grave entry for Annie—was Mrs. Michael Creahan really the former Ann Kelley?—that I was struck with one of those serendipitous finds.

Serendipitous is one of those words that seems too long to be worth the trouble—until, that is, the trouble results in a discovery so successful, it melts away all the agony of former defeat. Then, serendipitous becomes not a word your mouth says, but a word your mouth savors.

So, on my tree in Ancestry.com, I was punching in all the data I had found so far on this branch of the Kelly family that had unexpectedly popped into view—remembering the lesson I had learned by neglecting to do so when I had found Johanna Flanagan Lee in another family line. What should happen when I got to the point of entering Ann as Michael Creahan’s wife—hoping fervently I wasn’t prematurely taking that liberty—but one of those shaky-leaf Ancestry hints popped up.

The hint breathlessly assured me there was a way to get Ann Creahan’s obituary.

No way, I thought. I had already tried every way I could to access the historic newspaper collection for Lafayette, Indiana, with no results.

I checked it out, anyhow. It was a worthwhile move.

The Ancestry page warned me that, with the next click, I would be whisked away from their site and into the domain of an entirely different website. Fine, I thought, I’m willing to take that risk.

With that, I moved to a small town cyberworld that turned out to be a pretty slick operation. It was the website for the Monroe County, Indiana, Public Library. More specifically, I was brought directly to their Obituary Index page.

Granted, like Dorothy in Oz, I suddenly had a gasp of recognition: this wasn’t Kansas, er, Tippecanoe County. Why would Monroe County house an obituary for someone I was seeking in an entirely different county? The two counties weren't even next to each other.

I decided to give it a try anyhow, and entered the name of the woman I was seeking: Ann Creahan.

Her obit was there! And for the paltry sum of $3.50, the library promised to send it to me. I wasn’t a patron, I didn’t have a library card number, I didn’t even live in the state of Indiana, for crying out loud. But they were game if I was. I entered my PayPal information on the secure page for that purpose, indicated which obituary I was seeking, and was done with the whole process in a few minutes. Easy.

It may seem rather mundane for me to marvel at this minor feat of computerized genealogical research aids. After all, we do have the technology. But how many of us local organizations actually use it? I, for one, having researched in counties across the United States, was impressed.

Within only a few days—I made this transaction over a weekend—I had an emailed copy of the very obituary I was seeking. Not only was the whole transaction easy, it delivered a long, detail-packed obituary, as well.

So detailed, in fact, that I’ll save my discussion of it for tomorrow’s post. I want you to savor the moment as much as I did.

Energized by Learning

Now that we’ve closed the current chapter on research about the Melnitchenko family, it will soon be time to return to my original pursuit for this year: research in preparation for a trip to find my husband’s roots in Ireland.

Before we return to that study, consider the posts of the next few days a seventh-inning stretch. Every now and then, I just need to take a process break and talk about what is going on right now.

Lately, I’ve found myself more and more involved with our local genealogical society. This is a good thing. It fits well with the philosophy behind many of the projects I take on—like writing this blog, for instance. It’s a philosophy of giving back—in return for all the help along the way, on behalf of the many who would also appreciate knowing what I’ve learned about family history.

For the past year, our society has taken on the project of giving back to the community by providing free classes on how to begin genealogical research. We conduct these classes in cooperation with our local public library system. The library provides the classroom and the administrative interface, the Friends of the Library funds the refreshments, and our genealogical society provides the instruction—once a month throughout the spring and fall semesters.

Last Saturday was our most recent training event. While our sessions are equipped for about fifteen attendees (complete with laptops and wifi access to the Library Edition of Ancestry.com), we haven’t always played to a full house, but last week we did.

The positive response we received last Saturday went beyond just seeing every seat in the house taken, though. It went beyond the subject matter taught that day. What was particularly rewarding about this event was what occurred afterwards. You see, our classes follow a general format like this:

            11:00 — Sign in and introductions

            11:15 — Begin instruction on specific topic

            12:00 — Q&A about the topic just taught

            12:15 — Break

            12:30 — One on one sessions with society volunteers

It is in this second hour that registrants for the class get to break open their own notebooks, open their computers, and share with our volunteers just what it is that has them stuck in their own research—or where they’d like to begin their research journey.

Our volunteers get all sorts of questions. We get attendees who have no clue where to begin but remember some story grandma used to tell them—was that true? And we get attendees who waltz in with three-inch-thick binders filled with pristinely-organized, studiously-completed charts, springing questions on us about their tenth-great-grandparents and the finer aspects of research in the native origins of their line.

There are two types of reactions that are notable, regarding these situations.

The first is the response of inspired awe at seeing, for the first time, a family member’s name—or even the actual signature—in a digital copy of a document online. That’s the my-hands-are-shaking, I-can’t-believe-how-incredible-this-is kind of response that has hooked us all and converted us into diehard genealogists.

The second is the transcending response of sheer relief: here, at last, is someone else who appreciates what I’ve discovered, who walks the same solitary road I have, loving the very pursuit that for others merely invokes that expression of my-eyes-glaze-over boredom.

What is interesting about generating these responses in a classroom setting is that they can achieve a critical mass if multiplied in sufficient amount over a short period of time.

That is what happened in class last Saturday.

Who knows. Maybe it was just a great bunch of students last week. Maybe it was the glorious advent of a spring sun bringing everyone’s spirits back from a winter lethargy. It could have been any reason causing the positive energy to flow.

On the other hand—and this is what I suspect is the more likely reason—there is something very affirming about gathering together to share one’s passion, even in a group as random as this assembly of strangers. Letting the vehicle of genealogy classes help hone the self-selection process results in the type of participants more likely to resonate with delight over discoveries.

And like a chain reaction of the nuclear kind, each burst of energy shared multiplies subsequent reactions, until the positive energy flow infuses the entire group—and spills out the doors to reach out into the community and invite others to come join in next time for more of the same.

In the case of positive energy flow in genealogical workshops, critical mass can be achieved by a group small enough to fit into a library classroom. It could be achieved by fifteen. It did last Saturday.

Or it could be achieved by a much smaller group. All it really takes is two: to listen, to share, to connect through the mutual fascination with what we are researching.

An energy level approaching that magnitude is, however, something near impossible to obtain, just sitting alone in front of a computer screen in your own home. When it comes to energy like that, it's something that just has to be shared with someone else.