Using Google Maps: Where is Spink, Co. Mayo, Ireland?

I've always been a fan of using Google maps for genealogy, but recently found another way they could help my research. My O'Hora family lived in Co. Mayo in the second half of the 1800s, and they were typically recorded as living in either Spink (children's baptismal records, Petty Session court records) or Tawnyshane (Griffith's Valuation, 1901/1911 Census). I assumed that they were two words referring to the same area, or that one was a smaller subdivision of the other.

Tawnyshane is easy to find on Google maps, very near Crumlin and the Crimlin National School that the O'Horas attended.

Spink is not.

I e-mailed the always-helpful Mayo County Library in Castlebar, and they sent me an image of an 1814 map that identified Spink as an elevated place near the modern town of Shanvalley. That's about 6 miles away from Tawnyshane, which seemed far, to be referring to the same place. Could the O'Horas have lived in one place and farmed in another? Could they have moved back and forth over the years? Or was I conflating two O'Hora families?

I decided to ask a local about Spink, and sent a message to my cousin Mary, who grew up in nearby Tawnykinaffe. She's been a huge help to my Gillan family research, but luckily my O'Horas lived in the same area, so I could draw on her expertise.

I created a Google map of the area, dropping a pin on the area labeled "Spink" on the 1814 map (blue, near the top), and another one on the area of Tawnyshane where the O'Horas had held land, according to Griffith's Valuation (yellow). She identified the yellow marker near Tawnyshane as the Spink she was familiar with, and was able to put me in touch with other locals from the Spink/Tawnyshane area for some additional context and local color.



I've used Google maps, frequenty, to look up places that Google recognizes; I've used it to create maps to plot places that my ancestors would have lived or interacted with, or to figure out where to look for records. But I had never realized how useful it could be to create personalized maps for asking questions of people who know an area better than I do, when we're in different countries and can't sit around the dining room table poring over maps together.

Using Church Records: A Cautionary Tale

I have long been confused by the fact my great-grandfather's youngest sister, Mary O'Hara, was missing from the 1910 census and missing from the baptismal register at the church where she should have been baptized. I eventually found a birth record for her, but these omissions still troubled me. It's one thing for a child here or there to be misnamed, misrecorded, or passed over, whether by the census taker, the parish priest, or the family legend, but for the same child to be missed in every case made me wonder.

I had contacted the Catholic Church nearest the O'Hara family home to try to find the family's sacramental records, and was rewarded with only one: Mary's older sister Malinda was baptized in April 1905. They couldn't find any of the others.

I contacted the same Catholic Church, on a different occasion, to request sacramental records for my Quinn family, who also lived nearby, and was told that, despite a search, there were no sacramental records for any of them. "Must have attended a different parish," I thought. "They don't call Brooklyn the 'Borough of Churches' for nothing." But during a recent visit to my great-uncle's home, he was able to show me a copy of the baptismal certificate of my great-grandmother, Molly Quinn. She was baptized March 28, 1897 at that very church.

Baptismal Certificate
Anna Mary Quinn
28 March 1897

The certificate that I saw was dated 1923, so it's not a question of the baptism never having been recorded. (This certificate was acquired in preparation for her wedding.) But Molly was baptized not Mary Quinn but Anna Mary Quinn, so the person searching the records must have missed it. It's not unreasonable that a parish secretary, whose job has nothing to do with genealogy, doesn't check each record for middle names and mothers' maiden names, but looks for Mary Quinn when asked to look for Mary Quinn.

Using second-hand church records that are closed to the public is a dicey proposition, but I think we have to do it anyway. There are other avenues for some of the information on some of the records (parents' names are on birth certificates, but in NYC births were only unreliably registered prior to about 1900), but others - like godparents - are exclusively available from baptismal records. What is essential to understand - and what I didn't realize before - is that they can be positive evidence when they're found (Malinda O'Hara's godmother was Malinda McGlone, as recorded on her baptismal certificate), but never negative evidence when they're not (The lack of a baptismal record for Mary O'Hara suggests that the O'Haras moved or changed parishes between 1905 and 1908).

What is your experience with contacting churches for records not available for public use?

Poor Law Union Board of Guardians Minutes

My Rothwells and Mulvaneys lived in Kells, County Meath, Ireland, and immigrated to Brooklyn, NY, sometime in the early 1850s. In an effort to learn more about their story, I ordered the microfilm of the Board of Guardians Minute Books for 1851.

I had no idea what I was going to find. I don't actually know if the Mulvanys or Rothwells were in the workhouse, but I know they were poor, and that sometimes people ended up there until they could immigrate. I also didn't know whether there was much if any chance that they would actually be mentioned in the minutes if they were.

So far, having spent only a couple hours on these records, I haven't found my ancestors. But I thought I'd share a few of the things I have come across, so you know what kinds of gems may be found in these records.

By far the vast majority of inmates of the workhouse are not included in the minutes by name. Every week's meeting begins with an accounting of the number of inmates. The week ending Saturday, 31 May 1851, there were about 1300. Most weeks pass without any naming of inmates, but occasionally, there are notes like these:

"The master reported that a pauper named Betsy Gearty fell into a boiler of hot water in the laundry on the 29th Instant and was severely burned."

"Letter from the Clerk of Trim Union noting that the Board of Guardians discharged Margt Soraghan from Trim Workhouse as they assert she belongs to Kells Union."

"Moved by Mr. Dyas
Seconded by Mr. Arthur Radcliff
That James Hopkins Shoemaker, get a suit of Clothes on his going out of the Workhouse . . . . . . .Passed."

"Moved by Mr. John Christie
Seconded by Mr. John Radcliff
Resolved That John Brady, Edward Brady, and Catharine Brady, Inmates of this House, be allowed a suit of Clothes each to enable them to proceed to America, as their passage has been paid by their Mother . . . . Passed."

There's even some follow up on the Bradys: letters from the Poor Law Commissioners asked how much was spent on their clothes, and then expressed approval of the amount, and finally an order approving spending a sum of money to defray the cost of their travel.

"The Clerk was directed to write to the Commss. to call their attention to the case of Paupers named Plunkett from Oldcastle Union, and also to the case of Soragham from Trim Union, and the request they will give directions to the Guardians of these Unions to admit these paupers."

"Letter from the Poor Law Commissioners [???], 28th June '51, stating with reference to a case of a Pauper named Thomas Divine from [???] Union, that the Attorney General has given it as his opinion that an Indictment by [???] a Board of Guardians for causing Pauper to be removed from said Union to another."

"Letter from the Poor Law Commissioners No. 40,518/57 - 1st August 1851 stating with reference to a pauper named Sarah Soraghan that according to the minutes of Proceedings of the Trim Board of Guardians on the 5th Ultimo, this Pauper was residing four years with her mother in the town of Kells."

If you determine that your ancestors were in the workhouse, these minutes have plenty of information about their lives, even if they're not mentioned by name. In Kells in 1851, the minutes talk about a scarcity of water due to broken pipes, about the Master's absence from the schoolroom due to travel and illness, about where the dead are going to be buried, and list what food and other provisions were purchased. You may also be able to find your ancestors here if they weren't in the workhouse, as the Board of Guardians is listed by name, and everyone who won a contract to provide food or fuel or build a storehouse was named. 

Accentuate the Positives Geneameme 2015

I have not had a lot of time or money for research or writing in the past couple of years, but I thought I'd give Jill Ball's perennial Accentuate the Positives meme a shot and see if I can rustle up some things I may have managed to accomplish in the last year.

1.  Elusive ancestors I found were Patrick King and Bridget Fadden. They were elusive because they were being hidden by impostor 3x great-grandparents (in other words, I was looking at the wrong record). I'm still working on corroborating their names. 

2.  A precious family photo I found was of my 2x great-grandmother, Pasqua Occhiogrosso

4.  An important vital record I found was Mary King O'Hara's 1949 death certificate. 

7.   My 2014 2015 blog post that I was particularly proud of was RootsIreland and Latin Parish Registers

8.   My 2014 2015 blog post that received a large number of hits or comments was Trust but Verify; or There goes 1/16 of my family tree

10. A social media tool I enjoyed using for genealogy was Facebook. After many years of keeping my genealogical activities off of Facebook, I finally joined a couple of geographic and surname groups and have enjoyed them immensely. 

14. I taught a friend how to Find Italian vital records free online at Antenati

17. A new genealogy/history book I enjoyed was On Doing Local History by Carol Kammen

19. A geneadventure I enjoyed was exploring the newly released Irish Catholic parish records through the National Library of Ireland. 

Trust, but verify; or There goes 1/16 of my family tree

(Protip: Just jump straight to "verify." We can "trust but verify" on Cold War relations and Iranian nuclear deals, but not genealogy!)

I received the death certificate of my 2x great-grandmother, Mary King O'Hara, a couple weeks ago. I had wanted it for years, but had always put off jumping through the Department of Health's hoops. Big mistake.

A relative interested in genealogy had sent me Mary's presumptive birth record years ago, and I took it at face value. It was, of course, a real birth record, for a real person named Mary King, but it no longer seems likely that she was the correct Mary King. There goes 1/16 of my family tree!

Lesson learned. Always verify the research of those who have gone before you. (I always knew that I should check this particular piece of information, but took it as a "starting point" until I could do the research myself. Nothing lost but time, I suppose.) (Also, don't take online trees as gospel, either, because mine is out there and it's (at least) 6.25% wrong.)

I had for years operated under the assumption that Mary King's parents were Michael King and Bridget Hopkins, and that she was born in Claremorris, Co. Mayo, Ireland, but her death certificate puts her parents as Patrick King and Bridget Fadden. I'd like to confirm that with a birth certificate that matches, of course, but right now, I don't know where to look. I've contacted the relative who sent the first birth record to see why he thought that that Mary King was our Mary King. If it was, for example, because Mary (whom he knew as a child) had talked about her childhood in Claremorris, then at least that's a place to start. If it was just because the dates matched on an index search, then I have all of Ireland to search. I'm waiting to hear back from him.

I have Mary's death notice, and it does not include a place of birth.

Mary was born in the 1870s (3 December 1875, according to her death certificate), and the civil registration indexes available for free online in this time period do not include mother's maiden name. Otherwise, this could be a pretty easy search. Other than browsing the registers of every Catholic parish in Ireland at the National Library, I'm not sure how to find Mary's actual birth place and birth record and confirm her parents. I might have to stoop so low as to subscribe to RootsIreland, despite my serious misgivings about the service they offer.


What are your best suggestions for locating an Irish town of origin? 

Ordering Vital Records from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

I was missing the death record of just one of my American great-great-grandparents (Brazil being a nut I have yet to crack). Mary King O'Hara died in Brooklyn in 1949, which meant I had to order her death certificate from the New York City Department of Health (DOH). She survived the latest of my 2x great-grandparents, and so was the only one whose death record was not held by the NYC Municipal Archives. In New York City, the Archives holds death records until 1948, and the DOH holds death records from 1949 to the present.

Being more than 50 years old, a death record from 1949 should be considered a public record, available to anyone. My understanding, however, is that the DOH has simply stopped retiring vital records to the Archives, and treats all the vital records that they hold, of whatever age, as equally confidential. So these records can be challenging to access. They can be ordered online, but only by certain family members, and in this case, I didn't qualify.

If you cannot order your record online, you can go in person to 125 Worth St. in Manhattan, or you can order through the mail. I chose the latter, which means filling out an application, having it notarized, and mailing it along with the $15 fee, a self-addressed stamped envelope, and a copy of your photo ID. (It was the notarizing that had held me back all these years. It seemed like such a hassle!) Then, you wait - the DOH helpfully provides regularly updated information on processing times.

I got my SASE back on my birthday, and was super excited to receive an awesome birthday present. I was disappointed.

My application was rejected because I hadn't provided the parents' names or the decedent's social security number, and because my ID was not expired but soon to expire. I know that this is the case because my drivers license, like most, is valid through my birthday, so it was still valid on the day the rejection arrived. If they'd just filled my order instead of filling out a form to reject my application, I could have had the certificate before my ID expired!

I couldn't fill in the parents' names because I didn't know them. In fact, finding those pieces of information was my primary motivation behind ordering this record. I hadn't even bothered to see if I could find a Social Security Number because the form actually said "Social Security Number (if available)." And yet leaving that field blank was indicated as being one of the reasons my application was rejected.

Not knowing the parents' names, and not even knowing if a 1940s housewife would have had a SSN, I was afraid that this certificate would remain unavailable to me. I decided to take a chance. First, I had to wait for my renewed license to arrive, and then I filled out the application again. For each field where I didn't have the answer, instead of leaving it blank, I wrote "unknown."

A month later, I received Mary King O'Hara's death certificate.

It feels a bit like they were just looking for reasons to turn me down.

Learn from my experience: Don't try to order records if your photo ID is expiring in the next 60 days. And write whatever you need to to avoid leaving any blank fields, even when the form explicitly states that the information is not required. Don't give the Department of Health any excuse to deny your application!

Irish Catholic Parish Registers: Baptism Questions

As I explore the Catholic parish registers recently put online by the National Library of Ireland, I've realized that I don't know as much as I should about the conventions that would have dictated how they were created. In that light, here are the questions that are piling up as I browse:

• Was it standard operating procedure for an illegitimate child to have only one godparent/sponsor at baptism? I've seen this appear to be the case on two occasions, in two different parishes: different dioceses, different counties, different decades.  

• How common was it for the father of an illegitimate child to be publicly known? Most seem to have a father listed, even when that father appears to be married to another woman. What mechanisms were in place to discover the father of an unmarried woman's baby?  

• If a married woman was a godparent, would she be recorded in the register under her maiden or married name?  

• Were parents ever recorded by their titles rather than their names? (Specific to my family: What English-language name (or title) could be recorded as Mayistri?)

If I can find the answers to any of these questions, I hope to write some follow-up posts to provide as much context as possible.

What sources would you recommend to learn about the context surrounding birth and baptism in 19th century Ireland? What do you find yourself wanting to know about the Irish parish registers?

RootsIreland and Latin parish registers

The National Library of Ireland has recently digitized and made available online, for free, Catholic parish registers from throughout Ireland. This is an incredible boon to Irish family history researchers, many of had previously relied on the transcriptions made available, for a fee, by the Irish Family History Foundation at rootsireland.ie.

Relying on transcriptions is always a dicey proposition*, and around the web and throughout the Irish genealogy community, there has always been annoyance that you had to pay so much to access just a transcript. But I have never been as upset about it as I am now that I have access to the originals.

The RootsIreland website clearly states that "The records have been transcribed directly from the original Parish registers and Civil records in Ireland." Somehow it never occurred to me that it was strange that of the dozens of "records" I had paid to access, and hundreds of search results I had seen, all were in English.

Now that I've seen the originals, I can tell you that it's very strange that all of the "transcriptions" on RootsIreland are in English, because a substantial number of those are so-called transcriptions of Latin records. Those aren't transcriptions at all, but translations. I can't find any mention on the RootsIreland website of the fact that many of the records they provide are no longer in their original language. In fact, on their page about first names, they list the Latin names among "common variants," along with nicknames and abbreviations. As in, "Even if you knew your ancestor as Charles, don't be surprised if he shows up as Carolus instead." But never, in all my searching, did I find a Carolus, even though I'm now discovering that at least some of the results I was looking at came from registers written in Latin.

Take, for example, the sister of my 3x great-grandfather Richard Toner. She was born in 1828 and the IFHF had told me that she was Mary, daughter William Toner and Margaret Walsh. But here is an image of the parish register that recorded her baptism:

20 April 1828. Baptism of Maria Toner. Maynooth Parish, Co. Kildare, Ireland. registers.nli.ie

She is clearly recorded as Maria, and every other first name is in Latin, too. This is a particularly problematic example because there were plenty of women in Ireland named Maria. Searching the 1901 Irish Census returns over 21,000 women who gave their first name as Maria. 639 of those women were born within 5 years on either side of 1828. So while I'm fairly certain that my 4x great-grandfather was not called Gulielmi in his daily life, I can't actually assume, on the basis of this record, that his daughter was named Mary and not Maria.

I don't know why the Irish Family History Foundation thought they could make that assumption, and try to sell me the record without being open about the assumptions - and changes - they were making.


*And I should note that responsible researchers didn't "rely" on them, of course, but for many areas accessing the originals or microfilmed copies was difficult or impossible unless you were in Ireland.

Why you must understand history to understand family history

The story of my great-grandmother's immigration, as passed down through the family, went something like this:

Maria D'Ingeo's family lived in Italy. After her mother died, her father wanted to move the family to America, but while they were crossing, the quota was filled and the boat was turned away. They ended up in Brazil, where they lived for several years before continuing their journey and arriving in New York. 

I began looking for their records years ago. Passenger manifests showed them arriving in New York in 1917.

What's wrong with this picture?

The United States didn't impose quotas on European immigration until 1921, and the first permanent quotas were enacted by the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924. These were in place until the Hart-Cellar Act abolished them in 1965.

Now, I don't actually know if a filled quota meant that ships would change course mid-voyage; it seems unlikely. That is another bit of historical knowledge that I should acquire. But I can guarantee you it didn't happen to the D'Ingeos, because I know enough about US immigration history to know that they wouldn't have encountered quotas at all.

Understanding the historical context in which your ancestors lived can sometimes make all the difference when it comes to verifying family lore, finding their documents, and, most importantly, understanding their stories.


How has your historical knowledge helped you research your family's roots? What areas do you need to learn more about?

False Positives - Who clogs up your search results?

I suspect every researcher has them. The people who turn up again and again in your search results, even though they're definitely not your guy.

Search the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for Mulvaneys in the 19th century, and you'll find occasional references to the family of James and Bridget Mulvaney, my ancestors. But you'll find dozens of references to Deputy Sheriff Mulvaney, whose job kept him in the papers all the time. The search term gymnastics you have to do to exclude the good deputy sheriff would probably eliminate a number of more promising results at the same time.

I have eBay alerts set up for a number of the names of my families. Some almost never show up, and when they do, I get excited by the prospect of a real find. (Nothing yet!) But others pop into my inbox with amazing - and utterly unhelpful - regularity.

My "Lanzillotto" search is routinely confounded by the book L is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir by Annie Lanzillotto. Interestingly, this one actually is about my family, written by a cousin of my mother's. But - I already have a copy!

Some of the more common names in my family need geographic qualifiers in their search terms, so I have an alert set up for "Quinn Brooklyn." And I get alerts more days than not. 99% of them are baseball cards for Jack Quinn, who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1930s. People list Jack Quinn baseball cards for sale just about every day. The other 1% were Christine Quinn campaign pins from the 2013 NYC mayoral campaign. (I'm not related to either of them, as far as I know.)

I have an "O'Hara Brooklyn" alert set up, too. All of the results are vintage magazines featuring articles about John O'Hara, the author, not John O'Hara, my great-grandfather.

All of these e-mails get deleted. It takes all of my willpower not to delete them without reading them, but what if one day it's a Quinn family Bible, not a Jack Quinn baseball card? And so I read a daily e-mail about Jack Quinn baseball cards that does nothing to help my research.


Who clogs up your search results? How do you craft your searches so that these false positives don't show up over and over again?


Disclosure: This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links. This means that if you choose to make a purchase from Amazon after clicking one of these links, I will receive a small portion of your purchase price as a commission - and the price you pay doesn't change! I personally make a point of starting my Amazon shopping through the affiliate links of bloggers and friends whenever possible, so that large corporations are not the only beneficiaries of my purchases, and encourage others to do the same, regardless of whether they use my affiliate links or another blogger's.

FAN Club: Looking for Mary Ennis

The premise of the FAN Club method of research is a focus on the Friends, Associates, and Neighbors of your research subjects in order to trace your own ancestors and contextualize their lives.

In looking over some old posts recently, I found a reference to an excellent candidate for this type of search. In 2009, I had posted briefly about finding the death notice of a Mary Ennis, whose funeral left from the home of my 3x great-grandfather, Richard Toner. At the time, I was not keeping good records, so she had fallen off my radar in the interim. In fact, it took me quite some time to track down where I'd even found the newspaper notice in the first place. (I added a citation to the old post once I figured it out.)

Brooklyn Daily Eagle. "Died." 5 May 1866. via eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org

Mary Ennis's death notice was published on May 5, 1866, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. She was born in Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland, like the Toners. She died on May 5, 1866. Beyond that, there was no biographical information - no age, no address, no place of residence, no relatives. This does not make her an easy person to track down, but she obviously had a connection to the Toner family, and I'd like to figure out what it is. Did it go any deeper than being from the same hometown? How do I find out?

To begin with, I'm using the technique outlined in this excellent tutorial and the Irish Family History Foundation website to draw up an index of all the Ennises in Maynooth prior to 1866. I've already determined that there were no marriages between Ennises and Toners, Ennis births to women with the maiden name Toner, or Toner births to women with the maiden name Ennis. 

Next, I would like to order Mary Ennis's death record. In 1866, it would have been a line in a ledger, not a certificate, and would have included only minimal information. However, I might be able to learn her age and where she was buried. The former could help narrow down the Mary Ennises I've identified in Maynooth, and the latter could lead to cemetery records or a tombstone that could further locate Mary Ennis's relationships.

I also looked into the Kings County Estate Files series on FamilySearch, and found that Mary Ennis does not appear.

I am hoping to find Mary Ennis in the 1865 NYS Census, as well, but since it is not yet indexed, I haven't had a chance to search for her yet. Additionally, while I could begin the search for her in the Toners' neighborhood, she could have actually lived anywhere in Brooklyn or Manhattan, or even further afield, and without the additional information possibly provided by the death record, it will be hard to know if I've found the right Mary Ennis.

Am I missing anything? Where else can I look to find out about Mary Ennis and her connection to the Toner family?

Irish Genealogical and Historical Resources

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

In honor of the holiday, I'll be baking soda bread, eating corned beef, and reviewing some of my favorite resources for Irish genealogy!

Online Resources
-The 1901 and 1911 Irish Census
Earlier Irish Census records were almost entirely destroyed, so 1901 and 1911 are both the earliest extant censuses and the only ones that are currently available to the public. (1926 will be the next to be released.) Both the 1901 and the 1911 Census are available and searchable online at the website of the National Archives of Ireland.

-Griffith's Valuation
Griffith's Valuation, the property valuation overseen by Richard Griffith, serves as an excellent census substitute for mid-19th century Ireland. It was undertaken between 1853 and 1865, so it predates the earliest available census records, and lists the head of each household in Ireland, as well as the name of the landlord from whom the property was rented (source). Griffith's Valuation is available online from askaboutireland.ie.

-The Irish Family History Foundation
The Irish Family History Foundation (RootsIreland.ie) offers online access to Birth/Christening, Marriage, and Death/Gravestone records through the individual county genealogy centres. Now, this is not a website without its problems. Credits are expensive, there's no subscription option, you need to pay even to view search results, and the records you're paying to view are just transcriptions; there aren't actual images available. A search can yield many results, and you then have to pay to view each of them individually, at a cost of 2.75-5.00 Euros per record, depending on whether you've purchased credits in bulk. Nonetheless, the sheer volume of records available makes this a valuable resource, and when you search intelligently, the cost can be reasonable. Using the technique outlined in this tutorial has made all the difference for me!

-Irish Church Records
While most Irish church records are most easily accessed, for a fee, through the Irish Family History Foundation, lucky researchers with ancestors from the counties of Kerry, Dublin, and Carlow, and the Diocese of Cork & Ross have a FREE option! Parish records from these areas can be accessed through the Irish governmental site http://churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/. (Availability varies by year and denomination; for more information, see the list of available parishes on the site.) While my ancestors don't hail from any of those areas, my husband's family was from Kerry, so I've occasionally had opportunities to use the site, and it definitely made me wish this resource were available for my areas of interest.


Books
A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland
This is one of the most useful, practical books for Irish research that I've come across. It has maps of each Irish county, divided into civil parishes, Catholic parishes, baronies, dioceses, and poor law unions. It's invaluable for helping figure out which jurisdictions you should be checking for records, and I definitely couldn't be as productive without it.

A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland, Second Edition

Annals of the Famine in Ireland
This book, by 19th century reformer Asenath Nicholson, was assigned in an Irish history course I took in college, and I found it fascinating. It's not a book of records or a research aid, but it's a fascinating contemporary look at conditions in Ireland - particularly the west of Ireland - during the famine, valuable for anyone with famine-era Irish ancestors. Nicholson also wrote Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger before the famine struck, which is a book I haven't read yet but have on my list.

Annals Of The Famine In Ireland, In 1847-1849 (1851)

The Course of Irish History
This is another excellent book that was assigned in one of my college Irish history courses. It consists of expert essays on various topics in Irish history, arranged chronologically. They provide brief, usually quite accessible looks at these various topics, ranging from "Prehistoric Ireland" to "Ireland, 1982-94" and all major aspects of Irish history in between. As a result the book provides an excellent overview for any researchers who need to add some historical context to the search for their Irish ancestors.

The Course of Irish History

Enjoy the day, and take the opportunity to use some of these resources to delve a little deeper into your Irish ancestry!


Disclosure: This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links. This means that if you choose to make a purchase from Amazon after clicking one of these links, I will receive a small portion of your purchase price as a commission - and the price you pay doesn't change! I personally make a point of starting my Amazon shopping through the affiliate links of bloggers and friends whenever possible, so that large corporations are not the only beneficiaries of my purchases, and encourage others to do the same, regardless of whether they use my affiliate links or another blogger's.

John Joseph O'Hara's WWI Service Record and a Plea for Help

Although WWI Navy records were supposed to have fared better than Army and Air Force records in the 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center, I still received no results when I requested a search for my great-grandfather John O'Hara, despite his Navy service. (This was probably due at least in part to the fact that I couldn't include his Social Security Number on the request, as I just can't find him in the SSDI, no matter how hard I search, and despite knowing when he died.)

For whatever reason, not being able to get records I thought would be available led me to research alternatives - which I had never done to try to find the Army records I knew probably weren't available for my other 3 great-grandfathers. I discovered that the NYS Archives holds state-level versions of military service records - and for the low, low, price of just $1!

I figured I could splurge enough to spend $4 and order the records for all four great-grandfathers at once, which I promptly did.

WWI Service of John J. O'Hara

WWI Military Service Record of John J. O'Hara, NYS Archives

According to this service record, John J. O'Hara enrolled at the Navy Recruiting Station on 4 June 1918.

WWI Draft Registration Card for John J. O'Hara, Ancestry.com

According to his draft registration card, obtained from Ancestry.com, he registered for the draft on 5 June 1918 at Local Board No. 45 at the YMCA at 55 Hanson Pl.

Something seems funny here. He registered for the draft the day after he enrolled in the Navy? My husband and I started coming up with theories:

"Maybe when he enrolled he was told he needed to be registered for the draft, so he went home and did that the next day?"

"Maybe he knew he was going to have to register for the draft, and wanted to sign up first to make sure he ended up in his preferred branch (the Navy)?"

However, the fact is that neither of us knows enough about military history or the rules and regulations of wartime conscription to know whether we were making any sense. (I first wrote this post using "enlisted" as a synonym for "enrolled," assuming they meant the same thing. Then I noticed that both were options on the service record, and "enlisted" was crossed out. If "enrolled" doesn't mean "enlisted," what does it mean?)

Beyond that, the service record doesn't provide much information about John O'Hara's military career. It seems that he spent the entirety of it in the Naval Training Camp at Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx - at least, that's the only place that's mentioned. However, the dates of service and the number of days served don't match up exactly, so I can't help but wonder if something is missing or incorrect. Based on the 4 service records I received, only 1 of my 4 great-grandfathers (not this one) served overseas during WWI, though all served in the military.

Plea for Help
Needless to say, that this is an area in which I have very little knowledge is severely hampering my interpretation of this document. (I understand the Army service records I received for the other 3 great-grandfather better . . . or else so poorly that I don't know what I don't know!) I've run into this problem before, when I realized I didn't know how to interpret a Civil War Service Record well enough to figure out whether it belonged to my 3x great-grandfather. That question is still just as open as it was in 2009, because I still don't know how to interpret a Civil War Service Record, or where to find out how to interpret a Civil War Service Record.

So here's my plea for help: What resources are available to help me learn to interpret these and other military records? I can find the records, but I'm not doing anything more than accumulating papers if I can't understand them. Are there websites that focus on this type of thing, blogs run by experts in military history, books I should be reading, or a guy your cousin knows who's made interpreting service records his life's goal? Please tell me in the comments! (And if you're someone who knows about this stuff, an "explaining and interpreting military history" genealogy blog might really fill a niche!)

2014 Family History Goals

I didn't do a full-fledged "goals" post at the beginning of 2013. Using the still-undone of my 2011 goals as a starting point, I'm going to pose some questions that I want to try to answer in the coming year. For a variety of reasons, I expect this to be harder to accomplish in 2014 than in years past, but I hope to make at least a little headway.

1. Who were Mathew Madigan's parents? Who were Margaret Sullivan Madigan's parents?
2. Who built the house at 85 Luqueer Street?
3. What happened to Mary Mulvany, daughter of James Mulvany and Bridget Rothwell?
4. Where was Maria D'Ingeo Gatto born, Italy or Brazil?
5. Who were Hugh Quinn's parents? 
6. What were the relationships between James and John Mulvany and between their wives, Bridget and Ann Rothwell?

Additionally, I'd like to:

1. Commit to a schedule of 1 blog post per week
2. Correct my apparent errors in the King family line
3. Get back in the habit of visiting my local Family History Center
4. Track down a photograph of each of my 2x great-grandparents (I'm currently at 5 out of 16)

As of this writing, the question that occupies most of my mental space is that of Maria D'Ingeo Gatto. At various times over the past year or two, it has been the Rothwell-Mulvany conundrum, or the old family homestead at 85 Luquer St. I have not systematically investigated any of the other questions, but they are all mysteries to some degree - or at least interesting questions - and all things I would like to find answers to.


Here's to a 2014 full of accessible records, online indexes, background reading, archival trips, focused research, serendipity, cousin bait, and genealogical happy dances!

Blind Spots

Every so often, in the course of my research, I come across something that makes me say "Duh! I already knew that!" or smack myself on the forehead and ask "Why wasn't I looking for that?" These moments always make me doubt myself, because how could I be so dumb? One occurred this weekend.

It had been awhile since I focused on Italian research; thanks to my recent trip to Ireland, I'd been seeing genealogy through emerald-colored glasses. This weekend, however, I finally had some free time and decided to return to Antenati, the Italian government website that houses vital records online.

I was looking for the family of Domenico D'Ingeo and Anna Pace, and I really thought I wasn't going to find any more of them; I was just being thorough. They had 5 kids (right?): Vincenzo, Rosa, Angelica, Giovanna, and Maria. The eldest two were certainly born in Italy, but it seems that the younger girls were born after the family had moved to Brazil. (This is a point of contention in the family, but although I can't prove it yet, I fall into the "probably born in Brazil" camp.) Having already found birth records in Italy for Vincenzo and Rosa (plus an earlier Vincenzo and Rosa who died as infants), I wasn't expecting to find anyone else. However, the Brazilian records on FamilySearch are not indexed, so I wanted to cover all my bases in Italy before tackling that project. (The Italian records on Antenati aren't indexed, either, but I know where they lived in Italy, and browsing the town of Toritto is far less daunting than browsing the entirety of Brazil.)

Coffee berry pickers, probably in Sao Paulo state inland, Brazil
By Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection. Copyright by E.M. Newman. No known restrictions on publication (Library of Congress) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lavoura_de_caf%C3%A9.jpg

I was surprised, then, to come across a D'Ingeo born in 1896, and it was not Angelica, Giovanna, or Maria - it did not disprove the "born in Brazil" theory. It was someone I'd never heard of before: Francesco D'Ingeo, b. 5 Oct 1896. Unknown babies are, of course, not uncommon in genealogy, and I figured that this boy was another baby who had died young and who hadn't been recorded in the family oral tradition or shown up in later records. (See: the first Vicenzo and Rosa, who I hadn't known had died in infancy.)

Then I realized how wrong I'd been: I don't think Francesco actually was unknown. Another child, likely he, figures prominently in the family's "creation myth," as it were:

After Anna died, Domenico remarried (or lived with someone? or had a housekeeper? There was another woman in the house) and she mistreated the kids. When he found out, he decided to move the family to America, but while they were on the trip over, the quota was filled and the ship was turned away and went to South America instead. They settled in Brazil, where they lived for a number of years. While there, one of the sons was run over by a trolley (or horse and carriage? or wagon?) and killed. Sometime thereafter, the family moved to America.

There are a lot of differences of opinion in the family, and plenty of demonstrated inaccuracies in this account, from the fact that it all happened before the US even had immigration quotas; to likelihood that several of the children were born after, not before, the family arrived in Brazil (and that Anna was likely with them when they made the move); to, apparently, the fact that they went from Brazil back to Italy and then to America. But no one has ever expressed any doubt that there was a brother who was killed.

The brother's death certificate was on my list of records to find. His birth certificate was not. I always though of him solely as a boy who died, and somehow, not as a boy who was born. I never wondered what his name was, or whether he'd been born in Italy or Brazil. He showed up in an otherwise-suspicious story and while I didn't doubt his existence, I really didn't give it any thought, either.

And when I came across him (probably) in the 1896 Atti di Nascita, it never occurred to me that it could be him. Of course, I'm not done with the Italian birth records yet, and haven't begun on the Brazilian ones. Maybe Francesco was a baby who died young, and the brother who was killed was someone else entirely. Regardless, I had such a blind spot where he was concerned that I found myself inventing a place for this "new" child in the family - a plausible one, of course, but one that completely ignored what I already knew.

I'd like to close by asking you to look at your own blind spots, but they're the kind of things you don't know exist until they show up and make you feel like idiot. So instead, I'll ask you to make me feel better: am I the only one this happens to? Or have you ever realized that you're completely ignoring something you already knew?


May 30, 2016: This post submitted as a part of the Genealogy Blog Party at Little Bytes of Life, for the topic "What Was Your Genealogy 'Duh' Moment?"

HOW many? A look at the children of Mary Madigan Mulcahy

I got a shock when I recently ordered the birth certificate of my great-grandfather's brother, Vincent Mulcahey, born 21 Feb 1909. He is the youngest of his siblings, and apparently the only one whose birth was registered with New York City at the time. (Two other relative, slightly older, show up in the index with certificate numbers that include an "S," which I believe means that they were delayed certificates and are only available at the NYC Municipal Archives. They're on my list for the next time I get there.)

I got read through almost the entire certificate before encountering anything that struck me as out of the ordinary.

Vincent was born on 21 Feb 1909, at 85 "Luquere" Street, the family home. His parents were Michael Mulcahy (occupation: Liquors) and Mary Madigan. Michael, 49, was born in Ireland, and Mary, 40, was born in Brooklyn, NY. Mary had had 19 previous children and currently had 10 living.

Birth Certificate of Vincent Mulcahy, 21 Feb 1909

19 previous children?! Could that possibly be accurate?

I know it's possible - larger families have certainly existed - but I had really never had any indication that the Mulcahys had lost any children at all, much less 50% of them. I had spent all these years thinking about how fortunate - or healthy, or wealthy, or otherwise privileged - this family had been that all their children had apparently survived to adulthood. Could I have been so wrong?

I always thought that the family's 100% survival rate was a bit unusual, so I wouldn't have been surprised to have a found a between-the-censuses baby somewhere. I aim to cultivate an open mindedness to new information, but *10* babies who had escaped my notice? This was stretching even my already-open mind. It was time to a trip back to review the records in my file, and see if I'd missed something or if this was inconsistent with the existing data.

 The Mulcahys first appear as a family in the 1892 NYS Census. Prior to that, Mary was always enumerated with her parents, Mathew and Margaret (Sullivan) Madigan.

Mulcahy, 1892 NYS Census

In 1892, Michael and Mary have two children, Maggie, 3, and James, 1. Although there's no address on the census, when Mary's father Mathew Madigan died later that year, the Mucahys' address was given as 227 Hamilton St., just down the street from the home where she was raised at 85 Luquer St.

In 1900, they are nowhere to be found. They are living at neither 227 Hamilton St., nor at 85 Luquer St., the home where Mary was raised and where they later raised their family. 

Mulcahy, 1905 NYS Census

In the 1905 NYS Census, they're living at 85 Luquer St., where they'll stay for the rest of their lives. They now have 7 children: Margaret, 15, James, 14, Mathew, 12, Joseph, 9, Michael, 6, Mary, 4, and John, 1.

Mulcahy, 1910 US Census

In the 1910 US Federal Census, the family has 9 children, including Vincent, and according to this record, Mary has only ever had 9 children. These children, Margaret, 20, James, 18, Mathew, 17, Joseph, 13, Michael, 11, Mary, 9, John, 6, Gerard, 3, and Vincent, 1yr 2 mos, are the only children I've ever encountered. They're the only ones who show up in census records. They're the only one anyone in the family has ever spoken of. 

The family continues to look pretty similar in the years following Vincent's birth, even as his parents eventually die and his older siblings get married and move out (rather: move to other apartments in the building, but for now we'll just treat the household). 

Mulcahy, 1915 NYS Census

In the 1915 NYS Census, the family appears all together for the last time - by 1920, Michael Sr. has died and the eldest daughter, Margaret, is married. For now, though, the family looks identical to what it looked like a few years earlier. No one's died, and there are no further children. I could keep going through the next 4 census records I have, but they wouldn't speak to any of the supposed 10 missing children who were born before Vincent. 

As I suspected, there is no indication that 10 children were missing. In fact, these census records bring to light one additional inconsistency: there's also no evidence that Vincent was the 10th living Mulcahy child. He appears to have been the 9th, instead. Now, I had heard from a relative that Vincent had a twin who died at birth, which could account for at least this discrepancy. However, the Italiangen indexes give no evidence of another Mulcahy being born or dying on 21 Feb 1909 or in the days thereafter. Had the twin been stillborn, he might not have been recorded in birth or death indexes, but he also shouldn't have been counted towards the number of children "now living." 

For a bit of context, the birth certificate was filled out 5 days later by G.W. Welty, who certified that he had attended professionally at the birth. I thought this name sounded familiar, and a quick search revealed that Dr. Welty was also the doctor who had attended the death of Vincent's grandfather, Mathew Madigan, 17 years earlier. Could this account for some of the discrepancies here? Long-standing family doctor though he was, had Dr. Welty just gotten confused by how very many kids Mary Mulcahy had given birth to over the years? 9? 10? What's a baby or two between friends?

I think that there are a couple of ways to interpret this information. Either the "19" is a mistake for "9," or it's not.

If it's not, Mary Mulcahy gave birth to a lot of babies who died young, and all 10 of them were between-the censuses babies. This is especially difficult to achieve considering that between NYS and federal census records, the family is enumerated almost every 5 years. There is, of course, a substantial enough gap between 1892 and 1905 to allow for plenty of babies to be born, but that gap seems to be pretty well filled by surviving children, born every 2 years or so. There are a couple of gaps large enough to be filled by other children, particularly between Mathew and Joseph (4 years), and then later a slightly smaller gap between John and Gerard (3 years). That suggests the possibility of at least a couple of children who didn't make it to the next census enumeration, but it doesn't seem to allow for 10. And yet, the number 19 is very clearly written on the birth certificate, isn't it?

If the number 19 is, in fact, a mistake for the number 9, one of 2 things is possible. Either Dr. Welty simply was wrong about how many living children the Mulcahys had (my guess is that 9 noisy, excited kids can sound an awful lot like 10 . . . or 30), or there actually was a child living in February 1909 who had died by the time the census was enumerated in 1910. I don't know why that child wouldn't have been included in the Mulcahys own count of how many children Mary had given birth to (the enumerator records "9" for both "mother of how many children" and "number of children still living), but 1 baby seems easier to miss than 10. Of course, searching the Italian Genealogy Group archives doesn't show death records for any probable Mulcahy children between 1909 and 1910.

So where does this very long, very detailed analysis leave me? As much as I hoped that this close look at the available documentation would give me an answer, it has not. The birth certificate is the only evidence of a high infant mortality rate in this family, but I'm not comfortable disregarding it entirely. The other evidence indicates a total of 9 children, but that "other evidence" is strictly census data, not always an accurate and in-depth look at a family's circumstances.

What conclusion would you draw?

The Problem with Italians

And probably with a lot of other ethnicities, too.

Imagine a family consisting of a widowed father and his 5 children: Domenico, Vincenzo, Rosa, Angelica, Maria, and Giovanna. The census taker can't spell their last name, D'Ingeo; the only time you've found them on a census, it's spelled Dengao.

Vincenzo, in that unusual trick of Americanizing the name Vincenzo, goes by James, or Jimmy.
Rosa can be Rosa or Rosie.
Angelica might go by the Italian nickname my grandfather pronounces "Yaneen" or "Aneen;" she may also take on an American nickname the way her siblings did, but I have yet to discover it.
Maria, of course, is sometimes Mary.
Giovanna is Giovannine in Italian; she's Jenny in English.
Their father, of course, could be Dominic, Dominick, Domenico, Dominico, Dom, etc.

They immigrated in 1909 (Jimmy), 1911 (Rosa) and 1917 (the rest of the family). Some portion of them should show up on the 1910 Census (I've found no one), the 1915 NYS Census (no one), the 1920 Census (I may have found Maria, grown-up and married to my great-grandfather), and the 1925 NYS Census (no one). They finally start showing up in 1930, grown-up and married, where I've found Jimmy with his family, Jenny with her family, Maria with her family, and Domenico with Jenny's family.

I simply can't figure out how to search for them more thoroughly. Usually I'd resort to exact-search functions and searching for the relationships between family members, but between the misspellings and the nicknames, the permutations are absolutely endless and I haven't had any luck.

Who has a tip who can get me back on track with these troublesome Italians?

Brooklyn Catholic Churches Map

I recently added a new Brooklyn Genealogy Resources page featuring, among other things, a map of Brooklyn Catholic churches. I created it a number of years ago, to assist in my own research, but I've always hoped it could be useful to other people, too. I've featured it in posts in the past, but thought I'd like to have it more prominently featured and more readily accessible. A number of people have told me they've found it helpful when I've linked to it on mailing lists and elsewhere, so here it is, permanently accessible. I am not the most tech-savvy person, so it had literally never occurred to me that I could embed it, other than in a post, until a couple of weeks ago.


View Brooklyn Catholic Churches in a larger map

The map currently includes the Brooklyn Catholic churches founded through 1900, though I hope to one day update it to include younger parishes.

Google has unfortunately rather gutted the functionality of this map since I originally created it. It used to be possible to take a custom map like this one, and then search for an address, like the address where you've found your family in census records. That address would then show up on the custom map, surrounded by the markers for the nearest churches. Now that searching for an address brings up that marker on a new map, you have to use two different tabs, or otherwise make sure that you're looking in the right neighborhood, rather than being able to plot the addresses against each other. It's still useful, I think, and I return to it frequently to work on different family lines, so I hope that my readers with Brooklyn roots will find it helpful, too - along with the other resources highlighted on the Brooklyn Genealogy Resources page.

This map was compiled using information from the Local Catholic Church and Family History & Genealogical Guide by Ann Mensch as well as the page Roman Catholic Churches of Brooklyn, N.Y. by Tim Desmond.

Book Review: Brooklyn! An Illustrated History

When I was at The Genealogy Event last year, I attended a session by Laura G. Prescott on Timelines: Putting Your History into Historical Perspective, and it made me realize that I need to do more background research on my family's history. Luckily, after they immigrated, every line of my family (except 1) settled in Brooklyn, New York, and stayed there. While there's plenty of research still to do in various areas of Ireland, two towns in southern Italy, and Rio de Janiero, Brazil, I've been focusing my reading on Brooklyn, because it kills so many birds with one stone.

I started with Diocese of Immigrants: The Brooklyn Catholic Experience 1853-2003, which was a very interesting read, but I found it too heavy on the modern-day experience to be particularly useful in my research. Once I'd gotten through the first couple chapters, on the founding of the diocese, etc., I felt like I had to keep reading, in case anything good was in there, but wasn't finding it relevant to my work.

The next book I read was Brooklyn! An Illustrated History by Ellen M. Snyder-Grenier, and it was fantastic. This book covers so many aspects of Brooklyn's rich and varied history, from its relationship to New York City, to the rise and fall of industry, to entertainment and recreation (Coney Island, anyone?) to a whole chapter on the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The book starts near the beginning*, with the original 5 Dutch towns that made up what is now the Borough of Brooklyn, and includes everything up to the more modern trends that were emerging when it was published in 1996. With nary a mention of hipsters, it's clear that this is not a book about Brooklyn that was published within the last decade! However, I know plenty about hipsters from my own friends, relatives, and personal observations - I don't need a book to tell me about skinny jeans, yoga, and mustaches. Brooklyn! An Illustrated History covers all the other important aspects of the borough. I found it particularly useful that it focused on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as those were the years of my family's primary residence in the area. (My earliest immigrant ancestors arrived circa 1851, and stayed until the mid-1950s.)

Of all the topics that the book touches upon, a few that interested me the most, in terms of situating the facts of my ancestors' lives in historical context, included the New York City draft riots in 1863; the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883; the expansion of the subway system through the early 20th century, the industry centered around the docks in Red Hook through the 19th and much of the 20th centuries; the development and popularity of Coney Island; and the rise and fall of the Brooklyn Dodgers. I particularly appreciated that the chapter on industry gave so much insight into Red Hook and South Brooklyn, where the docks were located, and also where my ancestors were located.

It would probably be an overstatement to say that this book is a tearjerker, but I'm beginning to worry that I've gotten a bit too invested in the lives - and geography - of my ancestors, because it made me cry. Twice.

• I couldn't quite hold back a few tears - on the subway, no less - when I read about the Dodgers' move to LA. This one hit particularly close to home, as I could imagine my Brooklyn-born, baseball-loving grandfather's dismay at the loss, made all the more vivid by the book's archival images of protesting fans.  

• After reading about the vibrant industrial center that Brooklyn once was, and the long and defunct history of brewing beer there, and knowing that my great-great-grandfather Michael Mulcahy was probably serving locally brewed beer at his pub in South Brooklyn, reading that "In a former matzoh factory on North Eleventh Street, the Brooklyn Brewery . . . revives Brooklyn's brewing tradition" made me cry. On the subway, once again. Now, this was not news to me. I've walked past Brooklyn Brewery dozens of times. I've drunk plenty of their beer. And I happen to be well aware that in the decade and a half since this book was published, Brooklyn Brewery has been joined by a number of other brewers making beer in the borough. But apparently I'm a big crybaby anyway.

While I can't guarantee that you'll be as moved as I was - probably a good thing, considering that this is not actually a book that's aiming to play on readers' emotions - I can unreservedly say that Brooklyn! An Illustrated History is a must-read for anyone looking for a good overview of the important parts of Brooklyn's history and development. It also has a very thorough bibliography at the end, offering lots of further avenues for research for those who are looking for a more in-depth examination of any particular topic.

*The earlier Indian inhabitants are treated with an unfortunately cursory description.


Disclosure: This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links. This means that if you choose to make a purchase from Amazon after clicking one of these links, I will receive a small portion of your purchase price as a commission. I personally make a point of starting my Amazon shopping through the affiliate links of bloggers and friends whenever possible, so that large corporations are not the only beneficiaries of my purchases, and encourage others to do the same, regardless of whether they use my affiliate links or another blogger's.

Accentuate the Positives Geneameme - 2012 in Review

I didn't have time to do a year in review/resolutions post as 2012 waned and 2013 dawned, so I'm going to take advantage of Geniaus's most recent Geneameme and Accentuate the Positive:

Remember to accentuate the positive - please delete the statements that are not relevant to your situation.

1.  [Some] elusive ancestor[s] I found [were] the Italians (I found a bunch, but they weren't particularly elusive, just on a line I hadn't explored before.)

2.  A precious family photo I found was not a photo of my family at all. I found a photo of other people that identified the location of this photo of my grandfather, and thus what school he was graduating from. I'm planning a post on it, so I won't say more now.

4.  An important vital record I found was Julia Mulvaney's death certificate. I didn't think it would be important, but boy was it!

6.  A geneasurprise I received was finding out that my great-grandmother, known to all as Molly throughout her life, was actually named Anna.

8.   My 2012 blog post that received a large number of hits or comments was On serendipity, and obstinately ignoring conflicting evidence - the above-mentioned post about my Grandma Molly. My actual post with the most hits was this one, for the 118th Carnival of Genealogy, but the CoG probably led to inflated numbers, so I won't count that.

10. A social media tool I enjoyed using for genealogy was Google+, not for research, but for connecting with and interacting with other genealogists.

11. A genealogy conference/seminar/webinar from which I learnt something new was The Genealogy Event.

15. A genealogy book that taught me something new was Brooklyn! An Illustrated History by Ellen Snyder-Grenier. (I'm reading it now, but I started it in 2012. That counts, right?) I recommend it highly for anyone with roots in Brooklyn at any point during its history.

16. A great repository/archive/library I visited was the Brooklyn Historical Society. I seriously need to get back there!

17. A new genealogy/history book I enjoyed was Hey America! Your Roots are Showing! by Megan Smolenyak, which I read on vacation soon after it came out. Very entertaining, but also a bit excruciating to read on the beach with no internet access, because it had me itching to renew my research exactly when I had no opportunity to do so!

19. A geneadventure I enjoyed was appearing on an episode of the Irish television show The Gathering, when my husband and I were interviewed about his ancestors, whose decades of correspondence can be found on our other blog, The Gleasure Letters.

20. Another positive I would like to share is that while posts on this blog have slowed to a trickle, that's mainly because I've been making a real effort for them each to be interesting, content-rich pieces, so I've been able to use my blogging to really help me organize my thoughts and my research and make connections I otherwise wouldn't have - and it's been pretty successful so far!