Genealogy alert
I have not been out and about in the past few days, other than to libraries and such. Travel has been strictly business. The weather has been awful and no photos have been taken. I have re-attached the dashcam but of course didn't have it on when I encountered the Hunt last Sunday.
The following are notes to myself, so you might as well toddle off and find something more interesting to do.
I've been in pursuit of Walsh and MdcDonald connections hereabouts. The information I'd collected prior to arrival remains almost all of what I know at this point. I did get some information from my researcher (thank you John O.) but although it has likely significance it is not absolute. The fact that there were three McDonalds on a townland way back in the 1820s does not mean that they were necessarily related, let alone brothers or first cousins. As in my other ancestral lines they were fond of using a given list of first names, so rarely strayed from that list of about 10 names. Always the same names. Not even one of them was unique.
I'd been planning to go to the National Library in Dublin after leaving Bunclody but it seems that I was following poor information and there would be nothing in the collection I'd thought of ordering. So, having seen quite a lot of Dublin over the years, I will now be flying home on Dec 1 and not stopping in Dublin at all. There will be future trips should I wish to see more. If I find another lead I'll find a local researcher to do the work for me.
On FB I noticed a post that had Fennells mentioned. Following up produced another dead end - wrong family. However, since I last pursued that elusive bunch, more records have come online. Perhaps somewhat more than I was prepared for. Not all are the right ones but the nuggets are there so careful separation of wheat from chaff should lead to progress. I had brief palpitations when I found the name "Gwendolyn" but now it seems that she is not part of the right line. Darn. Back to Mary, Margaret, Ann and Eliza.
Since connecting with the Byrne family 10 years ago, and the McGraths earlier this year, I still hold on to the hope that I will find more living connections to family lines. Are there Fennells, Whelans, Kehoes out there waiting to meet me?
When you are willing to engage in conversation and have a friend who seems to know everyone in Leinster, and probably everywhere else too, good things happen. Marg keeps me supplied with names to call but without an actual connection to them I'll leave the cold-calls to her.
The fruitless visit to the Bagenalstown library did yield a name. There is a family now on the townland I'm interested in, with the same surname as the 'missing' ancestors. Not wanting to bother them by showing up in their lane, or even calling out of the blue, I decided to write a letter.
At the time I had no intention of actually writing. I was planning to type it. However, the printer is no longer cooperating at all and I had to physically put pen to paper. I actually did it twice. Yesterday I mailed two letters. The second was almost on a whim because I'd contacted them once before.
You just never know. Today I got a call from the Kehoe connection and he has some information. [My compliments to the Irish postal service for less than 24 hour service.] The names I mentioned were used in his family. Lots of them have gone to the US - back even before the famine and many since. He does have some information and is going to have his children email it to me around Christmas. Yay. He also gave me the name of another lady, deeply into history and genealogy, who lives in Gorey. I'm going to phone her shortly. Fingers crossed.
Not being one to do anything in a straight line, I put aside the previous families to work briefly this morning on an old Irish connection in Quebec. It was my ggg grandmother Bridget Loughnane who married Jean Baptiste Hebert. One of the witnesses at her wedding just might turn out to have been her half-brother. It may be that she came to Canada with him sometime before 1832. The life of a genealogist may not involve a lot of physical exercise (yes I know, I have to move around more), but the brain gets knotted and twisted and worked out quite a lot.
Now here I am nice and dry inside out of the wind. There is absolutely nothing appealing about today's weather.
Now to make that phone call and get on with things.
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