A Second Glance

How many times do we look at a document and see just so many words—and then return to read it years later, and suddenly those words speak volumes to us?

That’s what happened yesterday, when I was reviewing the letter that was likely behind my grandmother’s inspiration to send those news clippings of her parents’ passing. After that letter’s advice to “send $1.14 to to Dr. Montague Boyd for one those books on the Broyles,” my grandmother’s Aunt Nellie went on to explain,

Dr. is your Great uncle Edward Broyles grandson. He was raised in Savanna Ga.

Somehow, the part about “Savanna Ga.” had been lost on me before. Not that this detail will help me any with my current project of documenting eligibility for the Daughters of the American Revolution. But it might help with that secondary project I’m working on: finding the link to my mystery cousin—the one who surfaced following a match between us on our mitochondrial DNA tests.

Since the mitochondrial DNA test—mtDNA for short—follows the genetic line from child to mother to maternal grandmother, and likewise upward through the female line of each generation, I took this discovery as a prompt to begin sprucing up my notes on each of those women in my family tree. Everything is in order, up through four generations—from me through my great grandmother, Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan.

When it comes to Sarah’s mother, however, the details disintegrate. There are researchers giving her maiden name as two different—though similar—surnames. There are differences of opinion as to who her parents were. The one surname that some claim doesn’t seem, on the other end, to have any such record of her as a child in that genealogy.

Then, there’s that story I remember my mother telling me, about one of her female ancestors likely being adopted. Was it Sarah’s mother?

Unfortunately, the woman died young. If she was buried with her husband, I can find no trace of a record supporting that. In fact, I can’t find much of any record of her at all—save for one possible marriage record for someone fitting her name, who married a Tennessean known as “Thomas F. Broyles.”

Thomas F. Broyles? Close. But not quite right. My second great grandfather was Thomas Taliaferro Broyles. It would take a lot of imagination to convince myself that the “F” in the marriage record was a poorly written “T.”

However, there is one bright spot in the scenario. Clerks do get the record wrong, sometimes. Unbelievably, they’ve managed to enter wrong names in the record a number of times. As many marriage licenses as I’ve read, I’ve seen it myself. I can hope that’s the case here, but somehow, I feel like I need something more to go on than mere hope.

Better than that possibility, though, is this: the marriage took place in Georgia. Not in Tennessee, where the man lived. Not in South Carolina, where he grew up. But in Georgia.

What would make someone from the northeastern hills of Tennessee want to head far across Georgia to claim his bride? He would have had to have some sort of local connection, I would think. But what? All the Broyles family had been raised in South Carolina.

Here it was, right below my own nose, though. I knew it all along, thanks to this letter from Aunt Nellie: there was a Broyles relative in Georgia. But somehow, I had always missed the significance of it. Could he have been the connection that led Thomas T. Broyles to find and marry his wife Mary?

Sometimes, the way to disprove a theory is to treat it as if it were the opposite: try to prove that it is true. When the theory doesn’t turn out to work, you know it’s an idea you can discard. For now, I’ll take my marching orders to be to examine this Broyles relative in Georgia, to see if somehow, his family would lead Thomas from Tennessee to his bride in Georgia. This will involve checking the census records from each pertinent decade, and also taking a look at the maps for each area named within the state of Georgia.

Hopefully, at the end of this romp through Georgia, we’ll have a better grasp on whatever led the Tennessee doctor to his Southern belle.  

Setting the Record Straight

Having a heritage that qualifies one to become a member of a lineage society like Daughters of the American Revolution is an honor. Having the ability to verify that bloodline is sometimes a challenge.

Take my maternal grandmother, for instance. I already know her mother, Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan, has a family tree that leads straight back to the documented patriot, Zachariah Taliaferro of Virginia.

Being able to connect my grandmother to that heritage is a problem. Why? Because her birth certificate—a delayed certificate, incidentally—gives her name as Rubie Broyles McClellan. Yet her marriage certificate—if the one I’ve located is indeed hers (I’m not yet fully convinced of that)—uses the name Ruth McClellan.

To complicate that issue, the person Rubie—or Ruth—chose to marry was someone who also changed his name. Our Davis family Bible showed my grandfather’s name as Roby Jake Davis. Yes, that’s how people from the hills of Tennessee sometimes named their children. Perhaps as he grew up, my grandfather might have felt that his name needed an adjustment to address some perceived expectation of sophistication. Or perhaps it was just that proper Southern style of only using one’s initials. Whichever it was, I saw that name morph from “R. J.,” as it showed in the marriage index, to “J. R.,” as I knew him, myself. The “J” moved from standing for “Jake” to representing “Jack.”

All that to say that now, I’m faced with the prospect of convincing the D.A.R. powers that be that Rubie, daughter of Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan, really grew up to be Ruth, who married Roby Jake, or R. J., who really was the J. R. Davis whom everyone called Jack. See?

So I’m grabbing at anything that can possibly demonstrate those things I know I know only because I grew up with them. None of those people I knew from the family is around to testify to the essence of what I’m trying to document.

Fortunately—though not quite to the extent of my husband’s grandmother, Agnes Tully Stevens—my grandmother believed in saving everything. Well, nearly everything. Enough to leave me scraps of evidence. Like a torn receipt from her request for a copy of her marriage certificate from Bradley County, Tennessee. And her delayed certificate of birth. These are just a few of the tokens of her identity change over the years that may come in handy, once I broach the subject with D.A.R. of whether my grandmother really was who she said she was.

Now you see why that obituary, naming “Mrs. J. R. Davis” as Sarah’s daughter, may be helpful. What is even better, though, is the big picture of the letter from which I extracted those three newspaper clippings. Apparently—though the letter is not addressed to anyone in particular—my grandmother had sent a number of documents to someone, asking for their return after they had served their purpose.

What could be the reason for her sending those clippings? My guess is that she was following up on her aunt’s suggestion to “send $1.14 to Dr. Montague Boyd for one those books on the Broyles.” You may remember that my grandmother did, indeed, contact Dr. Boyd, who in reply sent her a follow-up questionnaire for a revision he was planning for his 1959 book on the Broyles, Laffitte and Boyd families.

Whether he returned her certificates as she requested—he apparently did return those three newspaper clippings—I don’t know. What I do realize, though, is that, after all those years of signing her name as Mrs. J. R. Davis, my grandmother somehow decided to sign her note to Dr. Boyd as simply “Rubie B. Davis.”

Please be so kind as to return to me these death notices of my parents, also the birth certificate of my daughter.

Rubie B. Davis

Tying the Knot

I often wonder just how it was that my great grandparents Rupert C. and Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan met. As we’ve seen, Sarah Ann Broyles was born and raised in a small mountain community in northeastern Tennessee. Her intended, however, was grandson of a pioneer settler, and grew up in the remote northern reaches of Florida, not far from the border with Georgia, on what was once a little stop on the stagecoach route west from Jacksonville. What was there in those two locations to tie them together?

Whatever it was that allowed the two to connect, I don’t know. But clearly, they had met and married by the time of the 1900 census, as we saw yesterday. Between that moment in time, capturing their humble household of three in Bristol, Virginia, and their arrival back in Florida, Rupert managed to receiving his training—and, presumably, a degree—in dentistry. If only I knew where!

Details such as this I’ve only learned from documentation as I’ve managed to find it. So far, no actual record of their marriage. No record of their first child’s birth—key, of course, for my D.A.R. application. But stumbling upon newspaper clippings like the three in a brief note written up by my grandmother, years later, has helped. Bit by bit, I’m reconstructing the family’s story.

That third newspaper clipping I mentioned the other day happens to be about Sarah Ann Broyles’ husband, Rupert Charles McClellan. He was born in the town of Wellborn, Florida, on July 30, 1871, son of William Henry and Emma Charles McClellan—making it easy to realize that the “Charles” serving as Rupert’s middle name was from his mother’s maiden name, not merely a given name of his parents’ preference. In addition to the fact that Rupert’s paternal grandfather was one of the signers of the original Florida State Constitution, his maternal heritage was richly endowed as well—at least locally. That “Charles” name figured prominently in the history of Rupert’s hometown as well, as can be seen from accounts shared on the Suwannee County Clerk of the Circuit Court’s website.

With roots as firmly planted in Florida soil as were those of this McClellan and Charles descendant, it’s no wonder he and his Tennessean wife found themselves returning to Florida sometime after the 1900 census. And, judging from the details in Rupert’s obituary, that’s where the family remained for the rest of his life. Rupert died on March 31, 1943, in Tampa, Florida.

Finding this little clipping of my great grandfather’s obituary is helpful for the links it demonstrates. For one, just like my great grandmother’s funeral notice posted yesterday, it reveals lifelong connections with some friends—notice how three of the pallbearers for Rupert in the newspaper clipping below showed up as pallbearers in Rupert’s wife’s funeral as well. Then, the article confirms the names in Rupert’s extended family. But most importantly, it provides a mention that identifies his daughter as going by the name, Mrs. J. R. Davis. Between that and several other pieces of information on my grandmother’s various aliases, I’m hoping to argue the point that “if A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals C.”

I know that works in the world of mathematics. Let’s hope it flies in the field of genealogy.  

McCLELLAN, Dr. RUPERT C.—Dr. Rupert C. McClellan, 69, of 2804 Jefferson St. died Wednesday at a hospital. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Sarah B. McClellan, one daughter, Mrs. J. R. Davis; two sons, Charles T. and William H. McClellan; three brothers, Dr. Phil T. McClellan, Dr. George S. McClellan, and Frank M. McClellan; two sisters, Mrs. Fannie Rowell and Mrs. C. Price Bullard. Services will be held Monday at 4 o’clock at the Greenman Home with Rev. D. D. Dieffenwierth officiating, assisted by Rev. J. D. Hurt, of Lakeland. Pallbearers: R. F. Bolam, O. D. Howell, A. B. Carlton, A. D. Bardin, J. W. Spencer and Rubin Childers. Modern Woodmen of America will have charge of the services at the grave in Myrtle Hill Cemetery.

One Thread to Tie Things Together

Before we can link my maternal grandmother—and her various aliases—to her mother, my D.A.R. connection, let’s take a look at the other newspaper clippings I’ve recently found regarding patriot’s descendant Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan.

We’ve already seen her obituary yesterday, clipped from a nameless newspaper by her daughter, my grandmother, and pasted on the page of a letter. Alongside that obituary came a funeral notice, complete with the usual Southern listing of all the pallbearers at the ceremony.

What is interesting about that dull, dry litany of names is that, while from a cursory glance it may not seem significant, once we delve into the list further, I realize that some of these are names I do recognize, simply by virtue of immersing myself in this research for all these years.

Let me get a running start before explaining that statement. First of all, Sarah Ann was born November 13, 1873, in Washington County, part of eastern Tennessee. She was daughter of Thomas Taliaferro Broyles and his wife.

Depending on which researcher’s family tree you read, that wife’s maiden name has undergone several permutations, so I won’t even bother to mention it—whichever one it really is—here. To make matters more difficult, Sarah Ann’s mother may have been adopted, so who knows what her parentage really was. To top that all off, the woman died shortly after giving birth to Sarah’s younger sister—which, incidentally, happened before the kind of records you and I like to find started being kept by governmental authorities. So, let’s just say her name was Mary, and leave worrying about her real surname for later.

Through a story I’ve yet to uncover, somehow Sarah Ann Broyles from northeastern Tennessee met and eventually married Rupert Charles McClellan, a descendant of a Florida pioneer settler in the northern part of the state. They married in 1898, when she was twenty four years of age.

Some things never change. Apparently, the newlyweds-on-a-shoestring cast about for a decent place to live and a vocation for Rupert to adequately provide for his young family’s needs. By the time of the 1900 census, his was a family of three, living in a boarding house in Bristol, Virginia, where he worked as a telegrapher. Note their firstborn daughter’s name: “Ruby.” And Sarah’s mystery mother’s place of birth was reported to be Georgia. Later, we’ll need that first detail for our D.A.R. defense; the second tidbit will help us zero in on just who that mystery mother might have been.

In the next ten years, things had improved. By 1910, the household included both a daughter and a son. The most important detail was that “Rubert” C. McClellan was now serving as a dentist in the tiny central Florida town of Fort Meade—no longer the lowly telegrapher in Bristol, Virginia.

Those years in Fort Meade—totaling about ten, up until Rubie graduated from high school—came to a close with the relocation of the McClellan dental practice to Tampa. And that is where we pick up the story with today’s newspaper clipping. A funeral notice, it provided details of that last commemoration of the widow Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan after her death on October 7, 1950, in Tampa.

McCLELLAN, MRS. SARAH ANN BROYLES—Funeral services for Mrs. Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan, 76, a resident of Tampa for 31 years, who passed away Saturday night at a Tampa hospital, will be held Tuesday afternoon at 4 o’clock from Henderson Memorial Chapel, First Methodist Church, The Rev. E. L. Hollady of the Tampa Heights Methodist Church to officiate. Interment in Myrtle Hill Cemetery. Pallbearers, William Wall Smith, William Murray Meares, Jr., Reuben Childers, R. F. Bolam, O. D. Howell, Jr., and Lewis Edenfield. Mrs. McClellan was a native of Tennessee, moving to Tampa in 1919, residing at 2804 Jefferson St., and formerly of Fort Meade for 10 years. She was widow of the late Dr. R. C. McClellan, who practiced dentistry and who served a term as mayor of Fort Meade. She was a member of Tampa Heights Methodist Church. Arrangements in charge of Wilson Sammon Company Funeral Home.

So, there it is: that list of pallbearers. I start to dutifully read through the list, just to be nice, I suppose. But it doesn’t take long to realize I’m recognizing some of those names.

Remember “Wall” Smith, the guy I couldn’t figure out? The one who had his picture taken in 1949, on the front steps of a bank with half its name cut from the frame? He was the one who married my grandmother’s dear high school chum, Lula Childers. That was the marriage certificate that recorded Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan as witness.

And another long-time friend from Fort Meade showed up in that list as well: Reuben Childers, the one who, along with his wife, likely had hosted my grandmother’s visit back to Fort Meade in 1949. Now, in retrospect, as I re-consider those photographs of the visit, I wonder if that was my great-grandmother who was the unidentified woman in the group portrait. She seemed to have a life-long friendship with those past neighbors from Fort Meade—the kind of good memories that lingered to the end. And beyond.

While this funeral notice doesn’t supply much of what a genealogist prefers to find in such records, it does provide a brief biography of the woman and her husband. While none of the pallbearers were family members, they do represent a legacy of friendships that grew from that small town neighborliness in a special place they once called home.

Year-End Inventory

Ever work in a retail shop during its year-end inventory process? Perhaps right in the chaos of a huge sale, those barcode readers are beeping incessantly—or counting and tabulating by whatever next generation of computerized methods are now available.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, something like that is beeping and tabulating all those as-yet incomplete genealogy research projects still sitting in my files. At the end of this year, that unfinished business has found its voice and is calling out to me. Loudly.

Part of the reason, I suppose, is that I’ve still left that important D.A.R. application undone. Once, I thought it would be a neat idea to stake my claim in the founding moments of our nation. Now, I have a push and a shove from fellow relatives who would also love to get in on the action. If I do the paperwork, I become the guinea pig research pioneer upon whose shoulders those other applicants may stand.

More than that, though, is the fact that this D.A.R. line is the very line—well, up to a point, at least—from which my newly-discovered mystery cousin also descends. To help unravel that adoptee’s puzzle a little further, I’ve just taken advantage of Family Tree DNA’s winter sale on the “Family Finder” DNA test. I may as well finish up the paperwork on all my known lines and their descendants while I await those DNA test results.

While I have much more to catalog on my discoveries from our recent trip to Ireland, most of those notes are what might be called “raw data”—possibly vital clues, but buried in a terribly boring setting. It will take more work to extract and polish any discoveries mined from those findings. While I’m feeling the strong urge to re-direct, these notes can wait. A fresh start in the new year will be just the thing to insert some new vigor into that search.

Meanwhile, we’re now in the month that closes out the year of 2014 for us. I feel that strong call coming back at me again to finish up old projects. I may as well yield to it. Nothing feels quite so good as crossing something off that research list.

So, where to, now? Since just finding that stash of documents and records that I had—meaning well—set aside from my aunt’s papers, I may as well pick up the paper chase with those. In particular, we’ll re-enter the fray with an unsourced, undated set of news clippings pasted onto a page including a brief note handwritten by my grandmother—the one whose unofficial name change has given me grief of the D.A.R. application kind. We’ll talk about her note later, but for now, let’s take a look at the first of three newspaper clippings accompanying that note.

That first piece of newsprint happens to contain an obituary for my maternal grandmother’s mother. The D.A.R. line upon which I intend to base my application connects with Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan’s father’s line. It’s important—but, up until now, difficult—to demonstrate that my great-grandmother, Sarah Ann, was mother of my grandmother, the one who was born Rubie Broyles McClellan, but died Ruth B. Davis.

For now, let’s just record what that obituary reported, and move on from there with the next of the other news clippings tomorrow.

Death Claims Mrs. M’Clellan

            Mrs. Sarah Ann Broyles McClellan, 76, of 2804 Jefferson St., widow of the late Dr. R. C. McClellan, dentist and former mayor of Fort Meade, died Saturday night in a Tampa hospital. She was a native of Tennessee and moved to Tampa in 1919.

            A member of the Tampa Heights Methodist Church, she is survived by a daughter, Mrs. J. R. Davis, Columbus, Ohio; two sons, Charles T. McClellan, San Carlos, Calif., and William H. McClellan, Tampa; one sister, Mrs. Nellie B. Jones, Johnson City, Tenn., and five grandchildren. The Wilson Sammon Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

Traces of History

So, what’s the deal with all these research contortions I’ve been describing to you lately? It’s all on account of the challenges facing researchers seeking their roots in Ireland.

If you come at this genealogical pursuit from the perspective of a successful American genealogist, you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal?”

For those of us coming from the point of view of research in a place which managed to tick off census enumerations with the decade-by-decade regularity of a country like the United States—missing only one out of twenty three possible archived original sets—it may seem unusual to contemplate that kind of challenge.

Ireland, however, did not have that same good fortune. The fate of its national records has been embedded in its own history. For the bulk of almost every century since the advent of census-gathering, Ireland’s data was collected under the auspices of the government of the United Kingdom. Then, with the twentieth century came the twin upheavals of the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. It was during the latter period that the Four Court fire destroyed much of the national archives’ holdings, including most of the census records. Only traces of the original documents still exist.

That is why, during my week chasing the family history paper trail in Dublin, I had to resort to microfilms of church records, volumes of property valuations for tax purposes, and other governmental documents. These are what the Irish must resort to, when confronted with the challenge of tracing their lineage through the nineteenth century and beyond.

On my last day at the National Library, however, while playing around with their computers out of sheer exhaustion with the reading of impossible microfilms, I stumbled upon a less taxing possibility for research: the Census Search Forms for the 1841 and 1851 census records. These, wonderfully, were accessible through the National Library of Ireland’s computers, thanks to their in-house link to FindMyPast.ie.

In that limited time I had left to me on that last Friday in Dublin, I poked around the file to see if I could find any sign of other Falvey descendants who might be related to our John Kelly’s wife, Johanna Falvey. Of course, it was a long shot. I had no idea what her parents’ names would be—nor any siblings who might have survived and chosen to remain in Ireland. I did find a few possible leads, but nothing significant, before running out of time.

The idea of the Census Search Forms was that, by the time Ireland had set up provisions for an Old Age Pension system, they were faced with the difficulty of proving applicants’ eligibility for the program. Many of the initial applicants were born before the onset of Civil Registration in 1864.

The Irish government set upon a process to allow applicants to appropriately declare their possible year of birth—somewhat like a delayed birth record in the United States at the start of the Social Security program there—but instead of relying on affidavits and collection of collateral evidence, the Irish approach was to collect family information and former addresses to enable government workers to confirm approximate age by locating the applicant's entry in the 1841 or 1851 census.

At this point, the only surviving segments of the 1841 census are from Killeshandra in County Cavan. The only remaining part of the 1851 census is from part of County Antrim. Somehow, the index created through the process of the Census Search Forms was not destroyed, and subsequently found in the National Archives collection and “captured” by the FindMyPast organization.

Since leaving Ireland, I had thought that I left behind my only chance to seriously consider the records from that collection that might help me with our Kelly and Falvey ancestors. As it turns out, though, that same collection is contained as part of the nineteen collections specific to the nation of Ireland in the online site, FamilySearch.org.

You can imagine how overjoyed I was to realize this. Moving through the digitized original cards, finding viable possibilities for our family’s surnames, comparing those to geographic areas where our families were known to be, and then cross checking results with the Griffith’s Valuation records became a tedious process, despite the wonderful computer assist. Though I am no longer in Dublin, I can now go, at my leisure, to the collection at FamilySearch, as well.

In addition, another bit of archival news arrived yesterday to brighten my research prospects. Despite not being able to complete all the microfilmed records I needed to check during that week in Dublin, I may still be able to examine the extended family possibilities from those microfilms of Catholic church records as early as this summer. No, I am not returning to Ireland so soon. An announcement coming via John D. Reid's Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections blog from John Grenham's column at The Irish Times mentioned just the thing to make my day, though: the National Library of Ireland intends to make these records available online as early as this summer.

Free and online. After facing the realities of seeing much of one's national heritage gone up in flames, what more could I ask for?

Photograph: The Four Courts Conflagration. During the Battle of Dublin in 1922, an explosion of stored munitions resulted in the destruction of the Public Records Office, and with it, the loss of many governmental documents, including census records. Courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.   

Same Name, Same Place Different Person?

Have you ever been so focused on your task for so long that something snaps and suddenly, every bunny trail is shouting out your name? Even right there in the library?

That was me, at the end of a very long research week in Dublin. My brain was fried on uncooperative microfilm reading machines—can you blame me? It was halfway through Friday, when I remembered that the National Library of Ireland had another room with computers linked not only to their own catalog system, but to other genealogically-enticing subscription websites as well. Like FindMyPast.ie.

What more could a microfilm-crazed refugee want?

So I found a machine with all the right connections and began tapping in surnames. You know, just a look-see. Didn’t expect anything serious. All I really needed was a respite from a dismally hopeless foray into illegible nineteenth century ecclesiastical handwriting.

Besides, I was looking for any sign of what had become of our Kelly family in County Kerry—with a name as common as that, a hopeless quest, I might add. So, I switched to Falvey—after all, John Kelly’s wife, some time before 1860, was once known as Johanna Falvey. Maybe I could find some shred of evidence pointing to her existence.

I eventually wandered through the search results to a set of transcriptions of the Irish Petty Sessions Court Register 1828-1912. Even if that didn’t yield any information on my Johanna Falvey, it should prove to be interesting reading, eh?

While I didn’t, at first, locate a Johanna Falvey, I did find an entry for an Anne Falvey, dated 22 February, 1853. Anne was listed as the complainant at the Killarney court, and her residence was given as “Knockancore.” The defendant was one James Fleming of an illegible townland name that started with G-l-a. The charge? Refusing to pay the balance of yet another unreadable word, plus hire and wages. On the column of the register labeled, “Particulars of Order or Dismissal” where the amount to be paid would be noted, the only entry was the word, “Nil.”

Interestingly, there was an Anne Falvey living in the same neighborhood as the Mary Kelly I suspect might have been our John Kelly’s mother. Taking another look at the Griffith’s Valuation drawn up about the same time as this legal complaint, I also happened to notice the name of one James Fleming living in the same townland. Same James as the one withholding Anne’s wages?

An earlier entry in the same court records also proved interesting. On 16 December, 1851, a farmer—whose unreadable name I won’t even attempt to transcribe—brought his case against an entire family. The defendants were listed as Derby Falvey, Mary his wife, Darby Falvey junior, Johanna Falvey and Mary Falvey junior. The charge? “For abusing and threatening complainant on 11^th of December 1851 at Ministe - -.” The judgment? “Both parties ordered to find bail to keep the peace.”

Kinda makes you wonder what the original threat was all about.

Possible connection to our Johanna Falvey? Hard to say. For one thing, I couldn’t find a Derby—or Darby—Falvey in the Griffith’s Valuation. Not, at least, anywhere in County Kerry.

However, remembering that Darby could also be a variant for Jeremiah, I checked for entries in Griffith’s Valuation for a Jeremiah Falvey, and found several—though none in the vicinity of our Anne Falvey.

There were other Falvey records in the court reports, as well—though for none could I ascertain that they were our Falvey people. I chalked it up to the frustration of trying to conduct genealogical research in a country which had lost almost all of what we would normally consider to be the usual resources for such a search.

Still, it was an eye opener to see what charges were customarily brought, in that time period, and how they were resolved by the court system of the day. For some of the cases, they were, indeed, “petty.” For others—such as a complaint of assault lodged by one Johanna Falvey against a man who subsequently neglected to pay his five shilling fine and found himself spending a fortnight in “gaol”—I wonder if this, indeed, was part of the specific back story leading to some of our ancestors’ decision to abandon their homeland for a new life across the sea.