I've been doing a bit of genealogy research this summer. I like it because it's like a puzzle or a scavenger hunt-- search the records to find the connection and fill in the family tree! Some branches of our family have been in America a looooong time. (I would be more impressed except for the fact that there are tens of millions of people living in the U.S. today who are descended from the Mayflower passengers and crew alone, and we are not among them... so far.)
Those folks are relatively easy to trace, both because they've created a lot of records in all the time they've been around and they have a lot of descendants researching them. The same can not be said about my ancestors who came here later. All of them so far have come from Ireland, and there is a certain commonality of both surname and first name that make them tough to pin down.
For example, when I began all I knew of my father's mother's mother was that she was named Margaret. Through some digging, I found that Borrie may have been her maiden name. But wait! A few records later, it turned out that Borrie was probably a mis-transcription of Bowler. Her mother was Helen Bowler. That made sense-- my grandmother was Helen, too-- but who was Margaret's father?
Scouring the records, I hit dead end after dead end, and I was just about to give up when something made me search for Maggie Bowler. That was the breakthrough. I found Maggie in the census at 2 and 12 and so forth, and even though her mother was variously referenced as Ellen Bowler, Helen Borrie, and Mrs.Thom Bowler, it was great grandmother Maggie who helped me piece together the story of a couple of young Irish immigrants who married in America, moved to Upstate New York, and built a family before Thomas died of consumption at only 39, leaving Helen with five children ages 15 to 2.
The 2-year-old was Margaret, or Maggie, my grandmother's mom.
Those folks are relatively easy to trace, both because they've created a lot of records in all the time they've been around and they have a lot of descendants researching them. The same can not be said about my ancestors who came here later. All of them so far have come from Ireland, and there is a certain commonality of both surname and first name that make them tough to pin down.
For example, when I began all I knew of my father's mother's mother was that she was named Margaret. Through some digging, I found that Borrie may have been her maiden name. But wait! A few records later, it turned out that Borrie was probably a mis-transcription of Bowler. Her mother was Helen Bowler. That made sense-- my grandmother was Helen, too-- but who was Margaret's father?
Scouring the records, I hit dead end after dead end, and I was just about to give up when something made me search for Maggie Bowler. That was the breakthrough. I found Maggie in the census at 2 and 12 and so forth, and even though her mother was variously referenced as Ellen Bowler, Helen Borrie, and Mrs.Thom Bowler, it was great grandmother Maggie who helped me piece together the story of a couple of young Irish immigrants who married in America, moved to Upstate New York, and built a family before Thomas died of consumption at only 39, leaving Helen with five children ages 15 to 2.
The 2-year-old was Margaret, or Maggie, my grandmother's mom.
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