Canada, Genealogy, and Ice Hockey: There May be a Connection

 

Perhaps it will come as no surprise to learn that this couch potato has never been much for professional ice hockey. Despite our city becoming home to a minor league team years ago—which, in politics beyond my comprehension, eventually gave way to another team up through last year—I've never been to any of their games. Even taking time to understand which local team belonged to which league was more complicated than my mind could take in.

For the most part, though, the connection was clearly with a major league team whose home base was located somewhere in Canada. And that is the only reason I've taken any notice in the sport for this week's posts at all: guess whose descendants played ice hockey professionally?

Yes, if you've been following along here for the past month or so, you've noticed that my father-in-law had some Canadian cousins, thanks to one newly discovered branch of their Tully line remaining in Ontario while our family moved onward to Detroit, Cleveland, or Chicago.

As I worked my way through the generations of this Dennis Tully's family, I feel as if I've "met" a whole new set of cousins. Briefly, I've been introduced to their stories, but for the most part, I know very little about them, other than their names, dates of their life span, and where they lived. But some stories stand out. And yes, despite my disinterest in ice hockey, I actually became quite interested in the stories of a few of these third cousins.

Granted, I'm still churning out that Tully family tree, generation by generation, for my main goal of placing eight DNA matches in their rightful place. While that is going on in the background, this week, I'd like to begin sharing some of the stories I'm uncovering. We'll begin, tomorrow, with the story of one of Dennis' descendants whose energy and skill on the ice brought him far from the family's adopted home in Ontario, Canada, while pursuing a passion close to the hearts of many Canadians.

Simply Plodding Along

 

As exciting as unexpected breakthroughs may be, most of genealogy involves simply showing up and doing the work, step by step. One name at a time, one document added each step of the way, and eventually the virtual paperwork takes shape in the form of a family tree.

That's mainly why, every two weeks, I step back to take a look at what's been accomplished in the past fourteen days of simply plodding along. A mere spark to re-ignite the joy, perhaps, but it keeps me moving on.

Most days, nothing exciting comes to pass. Knowing that the discovery of that new Dennis Tully line this summer could possibly lead to a mushrooming of my father-in-law's tree, I wasn't exactly surprised when I saw 458 new names added to the tree in the past two weeks, but it certainly was encouraging to see. My in-laws' tree now has 33,798 documented individuals listed. It's taken a little here, a little there for years to get to that point—but that's the point of it. Bit by bit, it all adds up, but each step of the way was really a tiny effort.

Sometimes—like yesterday, when I mentioned Ancestry's email alerting me to a new DNA match—there is a pleasant surprise. While I'm not working on my own parents' tree right now, that DNA match actually belonged to my mother's family. Adding that newfound relative to the tree actually garnered a total of seven new names, something I hadn't even expected right now with my research focus elsewhere. My parents' tree now has 33,907 names in place, all documented.

As I race through this new Tully line in my father-in-law's tree, I've been treated to "meeting" some new ancestral relatives. Many of them led average lives, but some had interesting stories, making me wish I could have had the chance to sit down with them and have a long talk about family history.

I suppose that is our collective regret in family history: loss of the many stories we may have missed when ancestors took them to the grave. Hopefully, despite the protective shield of privacy for the living, there may be opportunities to gather some of those family stories yet. 

Quick Tips and Record-Breaking Moments

 

Unless couch potatoes have become the new athletes, you wouldn't expect genealogy to become the domain of record-breaking accomplishments. And yet, that's what happened this weekend for this (very unathletic) family history buff.

It all started with an email from Ancestry.com announcing the arrival of a specific DNA match to my account. It was a fairly close relative—at an estimated second to third cousin, at least that is a close match in my experience. Of course, this brand new match notice came with a warning that the only other item to offer was an unlinked family tree. But hey, I'm game to explore. After all, one look at "shared matches" could provide all the information I need.

As it turned out, though the match hadn't yet been assigned to either side of my family—"unassigned" rather than listed on either the paternal or maternal side of my tree—the "shared matches" tab on my match's entry page told me everything I needed to know. That was a good thing, considering the unlinked family tree she offered contained only five people, three of whom were listed as "private"—in other words, living relatives. The two named ancestors were her paternal grandparents—assuming, that is, that the home person actually was my DNA match.

The shared matches list, however, contained almost twenty other DNA relatives. Some were quite closely related to me—including eight who shared at least one hundred centiMorgans with me, and several others whom I had already identified in my tree. Most helpful was the fact that the two closest in-common matches were children of my paternal half-siblings, an immense clue pointing me in the right direction.

Because I've long made it a habit to include collateral lines in my family tree, it already included the name of this DNA match's paternal grandparents, even though they weren't part of my own family line. Of course, that meant I also had this match's maternal side, the one which connected her to my own family.

In all, it probably took me a matter of minutes to find where this DNA match belonged in my own tree, mark her as a DNA match, and confirm the relationship on the Ancestry.com site. From the minute I saw the email to the point of looking at the match's limited information and checking with my own tree and confirming the match took far less than an hour—and that included adding some documentation, as well.

I thought it was a nice touch to see that Ancestry is now alerting subscribers when they receive a new, close DNA match. Along with the notice, the email included a green button front and center, labeled "Explore your match." Couldn't have been any more obvious. 

Besides that, the email contained a list of quick tips labeled "How do you start a conversation with a new match?" The third point resonated with me, considering my current research project: just ask if the match has any favorite stories or photos to share about the mutual ancestor. I'm finding collaboration on my newly-discovered Dennis Tully is opening up worlds of understanding.

To wrap up, the Ancestry email offered a quick overview of other tips in a video featuring the ubiquitous Crista Cowan in her "Genealogy in a Minute" series.

As far as my "record-breaking" DNA matching prowess, I can safely say it was thanks to spending years linking collateral lines to my family tree. Once the bigger picture was added, it is now quite easy to get one's bearings in a matter of moments, given Ancestry's search capabilities applied to my own tree. And a succinct email reminder from Ancestry didn't hurt, either.

New Month, Same Research Goal

Welcome to September! Are you ready? I'm not.

While I've made progress on my research project for August—admittedly, somewhat sidetracked with the unexpected appearance of new relative Dennis Tully in my father-in-law's tree—what should I encounter as the research plan for this upcoming month of September but the goal of delving deeper into another Denis Tully's roots.

Call that redundant, I guess. Or prescient planning. How was I to know, back in January when I set my research plans for my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors to research for 2023? At that point, I had written that I wanted to delve further into the details I had already discovered about Denis Tully. Back then, I had a hunch that what I was seeking was perhaps simply hidden in plain view, right in front of my face. Perhaps re-examining all the facts I had already found might lead to the a-ha! moment which has, so far, eluded me.

Right now, I'm continuing the chase for what most likely is Denis Tully's son, another Irish immigrant in Ontario, Canada, also going by that same given name. I'll keep working on that project through the beginning of this month, with hopes that I'll get more responses to my messages to newly-found DNA matches which might lead to further family stories and remembrances. Old letters, saved photographs, reminiscences about visiting distant cousins in, say, Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland might be just the thing to help confirm where the younger Dennis fits in the family constellation of the elder Denis.

Depending on just where this journey leads us for September, we may find the story line winding down far before we reach the end of the pages in this month's calendar. If so, at that point, we'll detour to another branch of my father-in-law's family to round out the month. With this many descendants of just one line of Denis and Margaret Flannery Tully's large family, we're sure to run into more stories at some point. 

Making Connections with Other Family Researchers

 

How helpful it is when the tools we have to reach out to others researching our family lines actually return useful connections. In the case of my current Tully project, I've met another avid family history researcher at Ancestry.com and we've been comparing notes on what we know about the family.

The rationale for connecting with such distant cousins is that some parts of a family may have benefited from more heirlooms or heritage stories than other members. In this case, the researcher has enjoyed a wealth of family stories passed down from previous generations. Added bonus: she is willing to share.

In a recent conversation, we were noting how many members of the Canadian Tully family had opted to cross the border to settle in nearby U.S. cities, such as Detroit and Cleveland. This researcher, who had already shared a number of local details with me, asked, "Have you heard of the Black Donnellys?"

While no, I hadn't, she piqued my interest further by explaining that due to that tragedy, that may have been the specific reason a number of family members may have left the area.

Of course, you know I had to race to Google to see what I could find about the massacre that occurred at the Donnelly home in 1880. I had never heard of the tragedy. Then again, here I am across the continent and south of the international border by almost one thousand miles. Give or take the distance that separates us, plus the years which have passed since the massacre occurred, there is a lot that separates me from the "local history" of that time and place. And yet, this researcher could explain how the impact of those events had influenced her family's choices in where they lived and worked. She urged me to consider whether that, rather than other reasons, might have been the impetus for the Tully family's choice to leave where they had settled in Canada.

Local history that is so far removed from us may not be a detail we take into account as we puzzle over the seemingly unreasonable choices our ancestors made. Yet, if we only knew of those details—could develop a knack to put ourselves in our ancestors' shoes, so to speak—perhaps their choices would make more sense to us. Perhaps, even, we could better intuit what their next steps might have been.

Granted, it is hard, from a vantage point so far removed from where these ancestors once lived, to learn how to put ourselves into their shoes. I am convinced, though, that taking the effort to learn more about the local history, geography, and living conditions of the time and place will help reap rewards in our research progress. If nothing else, this becomes a strong motivator to me to reach out to the others who are also researching the same family lines. There's someone out there who does know the family's stories—and perhaps that someone would be more than happy to share what she knows.

When our Family's Heritage Speaks to Us

 

Yesterday, my daughter and I spent a couple hours in the kitchen preparing a big batch of pesto to freeze for wintertime dinners. There was no recipe; just the oft-repeated combining of fresh ingredients which my daughter blended from that culinary sixth sense which seems to need no road map. It was a lot of work, of course, but an enjoyable opportunity to get together and talk—not to mention sopping up the last few drops with a morsel of fresh bread, a slice of mozzarella topped with tomato and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. As much as we relish a treat like this, you'd think we were re-enacting a centuries-old family tradition, but we weren't. We just appreciate delicious food.

Earlier in the day, I had gone to the library along with a few other volunteers from our genealogical society to help library patrons with their family history questions. We never know what to expect, but do our best to provide guidance and resources, based on our own prior research experience. It doesn't hurt that some of our volunteers are former real estate appraisers, or are well versed in researching Native American roots or using DNA for genealogy.

As it often turns out, this was one of those days in which that expertise came in handy. An African-American library patron came to us with a research brick wall, but not what you'd expect; she was attempting to find her ancestor in records of the Cherokee nation. Our volunteer did her best to equip this library patron with additional resources and some next steps to take before checking in with us again next week.

When I reflected on the day's experiences later that evening, I realized one thing: you can't always tell which aspects of a person's life will reveal the truth of their roots. You may think—especially since I sport a name like Taliaferro in my ancestral heritage—that my daughter's pesto recipe came to us, handed down through generations of Italian ancestors. But you'd be quite wrong in such an assessment. I have no such connection in my family tree, nor does my husband in his. It just so happens that we live near a farmer—he's the Italian—who grows wonderfully aromatic basil, which he will pick fresh for us when we need to do up a batch of our recipe. It's a matter of resources at hand in the local market and an epicurean bent to our nature.

Likewise, our friend who stopped in to see us at the library that morning might have had a more expected research question. At least, we had expected something far different. But in this researcher's case, she had something my basil-grinding daughter and I didn't have: a family tradition. Her family had paperwork which had been passed down from her grandmother, years ago. She just wanted to find a way to connect all the records available to complete the family story.

Granted, there are family history stories which may have been, to us, previously unknown—until we stumbled upon an unexpected discovery. Such is the case for the generations of descendants reaching back to that previously-unknown brother of my father-in-law's grandfather Tully. But for the most part, families which shared those stories over generations tend to know the general direction their research will lead them. In those cases, our task is more of one seeking to close the circuit, to come full circle through documentation as well as oral tradition, so that the story we pass down to the next generation is one we can confirm through a full array of resources.

 

Signs of Progress

 

Whether it is true or not, a little (former) bird tipped me off the other day that there might be changes afoot at Ancestry. Small ones, of course, but an ethnicity update was one specific mention. You know I had to immediately go take a peek. That doesn't mean I didn't look for other minor adjustments, of course. Ancestry has been tweaking their presentation here and there for months lately, so I launched my own exploration.

While I didn't find any earth-shaking DNA changes—both tests I administer noted the last update was in June of 2022—there were other handy modifications. Though I probably missed this the last time I looked, the bell-shaped icon in the top righthand corner of the screen not only kept pace with my work by adding in a steady stream of latest hints to inspect, but also advised me of my progress. And right now, I need that kind of encouragement.

This month, I've finally succumbed to the notion that my father-in-law's grandfather probably had yet another brother I knew nothing about. That is the Dennis Tully I found, thanks to multiple DNA matches. For the last several days, I've been building out the tree to add in this new Dennis' descendants, of which there are many. Clicking on the notifications icon today, that handy device informed me that, just in the past week, I had added 239 more people, along with reviewing 450 hints. All, thanks to the discovery of yet another Tully in my father-in-law's family.

Though I keep a biweekly progress report of my own, it's helpful to see at a glance how nicely a bit of work here, another bit there can add up over time. There are some times we need more encouragement than others. For me, these seasons of genealogical grunt work are one example of those kinds of times.

Since Ancestry has been quite consistent about keeping a feedback loop open, I can only presume that some of the comments made by subscribers may have led to such updates. Then, again, perhaps the many talented members of their staff have contributed valuable input which has gotten translated into a better user interface. Whichever way it is—or a blend of both worlds—it certainly is helpful to see signs of progress as we get lost in build our ever-expanding family tree.