Getting back to Ireland

 

                                                                              Boyne Valley, Ireland

Most of my family lines lead back to the UK. They are predominantly English and Scottish but include a smattering of Irish. It's that smattering that I'd like to put some shape to. My goal is to take it back to some particular place in Ireland. The Irish genealogy experts say that finding your family's records is a matter of finding out the particular place they come from. Finding out the county is good but getting them down to their townland is better.

This last point was emphasized in one of the talks at the BIFSGO online conference, Irish Lines and Female Finds, which I signed up for. It's an interesting mix of talks about researching Irish and female ancestors. Both strands of talks deal with particularly challenging areas of research. Areas that can benefit from accessing records beyond the top genealogical sources. Perhaps one of the presentations will point me in the direction of something that can help me.

My problem is that my Irish immigrated to England. I can trace my Irish line back in time in London but have been unable to find out where they originated from in Ireland. If it wasn't for the surname, I wouldn't know they were Irish at all. But unfortunately, it isn't one of those surnames that can take you back to a particular area of Ireland. The name Cavanagh can be found all over Ireland. Or perhaps that should be Kavanagh. Once, when my father registered at a hotel in Dublin, the receptionist told him that his last name should be spelled with a "K".

I had hopes that DNA would be able to pinpoint where in Ireland my Cavanaghs came from. DNA certainly seems to work that way for other people. Unfortunately, that doesn't work in my case. My portion of identifiable Irish DNA isn't large enough to trigger breaking down the regions down further. Either that or, like my English ancestors, my Irish ones didn't stay in any one place for long. So it's back to plodding through the records and listening to talks to see if there is something that can help me find that illusive place of family origin in Ireland. 

Research: lost or missing?

 

                                                                  War of 1812 monument on Parliament Hill

This week I was exchanging information with a fellow researcher. We're not looking in the same family lines but looking in the same area around the same time frame; early Ontario in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At that time the area was known as Upper Canada. My suggestion to her was to look for family members in the muster rolls for the war of 1812. I can distinctly remember begin able to look up my Tripp family in a book that contained the names of the sons of the original settler who had taken up land in the township of Percy, county of Northumberland in 1797. When I later found out that Charles Tripp, the family's original settler in Canada, had fought for the patriots in the American Revolution, it seemed rather ironic that his sons fought for the Canadian side in the war of 1812.

Strangely, because I generally keep copies of everything, I don't have a copy of the muster roll. It's a reminder of my lack of organization when I first started family history research. Sometimes I thought I would just remember things or that they were too mundane to note down. But I still have scads of information, so I obviously thought some things were worth saving.

All of the documents and paperwork pertaining to my research need to be put in better order. A daunting task but one that I hear other genealogists are doing by scanning and digitizing everything. I haven't come up with a solution about my storage problem as I still use the binder system. Until I find another system that works for me, I'll still consult my family binders when furthering my research or writing my stories. In the meantime, I need to track down those 1812 muster lists. Maybe I don't need to find the book in the library as there appear to be lots of sources online. This time I'll remember to save the information I find!

Image:

War of 1812 monument on Parliament Hill By Jeangagnon - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51188874

Reminded about a clue

 

                                                                   Some books with information about Tom Thomson

I read a lot. While devouring books I own that are related to my family's history, I often leave bookmarks between the pages to note where there is a relevant passage to be found. It will be somewhere in the text on the two pages flagged by the bookmark. At the time, I promise myself that I will follow up on the information later. But do I?

My intentions are good. My follow through, not so much. I was reminded of that when reading Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven. I bought the book in the hope that it would cover the life and influence of Tom Thomson. He wasn't actually one of the Group of Seven so it was not a given that the narrative would include him. But there he was at the beginning of the book.

Also included was the information that his mother was related to Sir John A. Macdonald. It was a distant relationship and one I'd heard rumours of before. Having recently read Reunion: A Search for Ancestors in which the author, Littrell, finds out that his MacDonald line goes back to the MacDonalds of Glencoe, I was intrigued to be reminded of this potential Macdonald family link. Did our Macdonalds also go back to the Glencoe line? Maybe the book about the Group of Seven would provide more information about Thomson's Macdonald link, which would also be my own link.

Checking the notes in the back of the book about the Group of Seven, I was surprised to see that the information about the Macdonald link came from The Thomsons of Durham, another book on my shelves and one that had a few bookmarks sticking out from its pages. Not only did the book about the Thomsons provide more clues about the Macdonald connection but those bookmarked pages showed me a few more clues to family records I hadn't followed up on. Maybe its time to do that now.

Change and deadlines

 

                                                         There used to be a townhouse complex on this corner

This morning, I could feel the change in the air when I took my morning walk. There was a definite chill in the breeze and, when I headed east, the sun was low and shone in my eyes at a time that, in the height of summer, it would be a lot higher in the sky. Change is all around as people get ready for the school year to begin after Labour Day. It's a time that many look forward to, conditioned by years of new beginnings and the pristine potential of brand new school supplies.

My thoughts of change were probably echoes from the PoCo Genealogy Zoom meeting I attended last night. After a demonstration of how to use various DNA sites, the general chat took a turn to the challenges of record keeping and media changes and how to transfer data from one type of media to another. I'll have to get on that when I have some time to spare.

It doesn't look like that will be any time soon. I'm currently writing text for PoCo Heritage, converting the F Words story from the text on the graphic novel pages from the exhibit panels and comic book, to text for a digital exhibit which will eventually appear on https://www.digitalmuseums.ca/funded-projects/ as one of their community stories. There are many stories on the Digital Museums Canada website already, a rich resource for those doing Canadian research. Working on the text is interesting, reminding me of the story of Port Coquitlam's early years and how we portrayed them. The past will also be related to the present in the digital story text and it is interesting to see how we initially coped with the pandemic and how our responses and interactions have changed since then.

The deadline for writing the text for the digital story is tomorrow, after that I'll have two weeks to deal with the edits. While feeling the pressure from those deadlines, I've also been altered by one of my travel partners that it is probably time to book travel arrangements for our 2022 trip. It's an overseas trip we had planned for 2020, which we postponed to 2022. It seems that next summer is not too far away to start arranging bookings for, another change to wrap my head around.