Well it started like a regular Monday - but only for the first few minutes. It was finally happening, I had a short time to take a peek at the Irish vital records now online. The first record check was a Bingo! I had found and verified the date and place of death of Luke Byrne, the baker of Coolkenno. He died of pneumonia, in the infirmary in Gorey, Co Wexford, on 17 February, 1917. His occupation was listed as Baker. That's our guy!
Then there was the question of the date of death of his wife, Bridget Murphy Byrne. There had been rumours in the family that she had been despondent over the death of stillborn twin daughters and had thrown herself down the stairs. Hmm - does this record really show that it didn't happen that way?
Now we know that she died in Coolkenno on 9 Nov 1902. The cause of death was listed as "childbirth 7 hours, extreme weakness". Does this rule out Bridget getting out of bed and falling downstairs either accidentally or on purpose?
The mystery still remains, why was that young family in Mohill, Co. Leitrim at the time of birth of their son Edward in 1899 and also recorded in the 1901 census of Ireland. How did they get there? When and why did they return to Coolkenno? That will continue to be difficult to track down.
I had offered to give a little tour of Ottawa to Kyle Betit who had made several presentations at the BIFHSGO conference over the weekend. The records were put aside and the car was put in motion. We had our tour and both being genealogists, and more or less in the neighbourhood, we paid a visit to Notre Dame Cemetery in Ottawa. This is the largest and oldest mainly Catholic cemetery in the area, and the location of the burials of my McGrath ancestors.
I didn't know where their plot was and driving around wasn't helpful. A visit to the cemetery office, after some persuading, resulted in our getting the plot number from the person on duty. There was a card with the list of those buried in that plot and later I was able to get a photocopy. That confirmed the burials of my great grandparents, their three sons and one daughter. The question remained - what about Michael McGrath and Catherine Brennan McGrath, my great great grandparents? When I was able to find the date of death of Michael, lo and behold I also got confirmation that Michael and Catherine were buried in that same plot. At this point I think Michael must have purchased the plot when Catherine died in 1881. That's an investigation for another day. Maybe I'll find a more helpful cemetery attendant.
Armed with a cemetery map and the approximate location of the plot, Kyle and I went to the area and began the search. Well, rather like the gap in church records that is always where your ancestors would have been recorded, there was a gap between tombstones where plot #916 should have been. Or rather there was only a bit of a stone where I would have expected the McGrath stone to be. There was also an almost invisible flat stone in the ground, but it was so covered with earth that I'd have to bring a trowel and spend considerable time scraping to see if it was "ours". Now I'll have to phone Pat in Victoria to see if she knows whether or not there was a stone where her father was buried.
Once we left Notre Dame I began to question why it was so difficult to pry the information out of the staff person on duty. Aren't they there to help? The information was available on a computer if you knew the exact date of death. Heaven forbid an ordinary citizen should get beyond the information window! In providing the date of death of two McGraths I was off by 3 days - and was informed that I had the wrong dates. Well, since the records are ordered by date of death it certainly didn't take long to find the right information just three days off. I had used the funeral date by mistake. Sigh...
Those records also contained information that I could not see on the screen due to where I was standing. Kyle caught a glimpse so we know there is more. So - is there any effort being made to digitize these records? Or even provide a printed book that could be consulted? At Beechwood Cemetery, just around the corner, they trip over themselves to help. AND, their records are online. A long ago visit to Beechwood had a staff member offer to take me to the exact location of my grandparents grave and provide a copy of the record, and a cemetery map.
So - here's my dilemma. There is no headstone. There should be a headstone, shouldn't there? Should I be doing something about that? Of course I don't have a spare few thousand dollars and have no idea of the cost. I suppose I'll let that thought keep me up tonight.
Looking back on the day it was a winner - some confirmations and some 'sort of' discoveries. I had the added bonus of spending several hours with a professional genealogist who works on Who Do You Think You Are. Lots of suggested sources I have yet to explore. Yes indeed, today was a winner!
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