Something Seems Familiar Here

Caroline Gorman b 1803, Ireland, emigrated to Pennsylvania
Anne Pearse b 1776, Ireland, emigrated to Pennsylvania
Ellen Magner b 1830, Ireland, emigrated to Illinois
Patrick Magner b 1835, Ireland, emigrated to Illinois
Thomas Ryan b 1859, Ireland, emigrated to Illinois
Michael Bambrick b 1830, Ireland, emigrated to Illinois
Ellen Bambrick b 1835, Ireland, emigrated to Illinois
Timothy O'Sullivan b 1816, Ireland, emigrated to Kentucky
Joseph Sweeney b 1855, Ireland, emigrated to Missouri
Jane Ellis b 1792, Ireland, emigrated to Kentucky
John Aiken b 1758, Northern Ireland, emigrated to Pennsylvania
Mary McQuigg b 1755, Northern Ireland, emigrated to Pennsylvania
Hannah Forsythe b 1775, Northern Ireland, emigrated to Ohio
Margaret Marrion b 1834, Ireland, emigrated to New York
Mary Healy b 1800, Ireland, emigrated to New York
John Thomas Cody b 1792, Ireland, emigrated to New York
James Donnelly b 1825, Ireland, emigrated to, you guessed it, New York
Mary Dwyre b 1800, Ireland, emigrated to Missouri
Bridget Kidney b 1835, Ireland, emigrated to Missouri
Edward Blake b 1835, Ireland, emigrated to Missouri

Obviously every family line has its dead ends. Obviously. At some point records cease, in every family. Mike's one Italian line, for instance, ends with a smack in Torino in 1873. It is unlikely I'll be able to find out more. Most of my Germans, and Mike's, go back pretty far because they were Lutheran or Catholic and those folks kept good notes of marriages, baptisms, and burials. Surprisingly far, actually, considering that it's all in this churchy German Latin mess.

And Mike's French Canadian roots are so clear and go back to the beginnings of French Canada. Fascinating. You do have to guess at some of the French (for instance, I kept looking for a Stephen and it dawned on me that he was Etienne).

I have some English--some folks from Jamestown, actually, who came over from England at the beginnings of our nation. I could join all those silly societies: DAR, Jamestown Society. Not Mayflower but still. Sophia and Maeve could join the Daughters of the Confederacy, too (my Civil War soldiers were Illinois Union, but Mike has one in the Missouri CSA battalion). Anyway, I can trace back to England just fine. Some extrapolation on the Grosvenors, sure, and those Dawes, those confounded Dawes, hide from me. But the English are easy to trace because England kept pretty good records and they're all, wait for it, in English.

Irish records, too, should be in English, or Latin, I suppose. But things are eerily silent. I can cross the Atlantic back to France, to Germany, to England, but I can't get to Ireland. All my Irish were diaspora from the famine; most of Mike's, minus that Thomas Ryan and Joseph Sweeney, were too. So their immigration notes are sketchy and condescending, and give you nothing but "Ireland" as their place of origin. But with names like Kidney and McQuigg you'd think I'd be able to find something--at least narrow it down. But there's this gap.

Turns out, and you all probably already know this but I'm fuzzy on my Irish history, the penal laws of Ireland helped create this gap--for 200 years, up until about 1830, Catholicism was suppressed (and Presbyterianism, to a lesser degree, so my few Northern Irish don't fare any better), and records were kept on the sly if they were kept at all. Baptism, marriage, death--those staples of genealogy, the rungs of the ladder that lead me back to almost the Reformation in Germany--are missing. So, sure, I can pretty much guess that my Blakes are from Galway and my Dwyres are from Tipperary and the Aikens and McQuiggs are from Antrim, but that's as good as it's going to get.

As much as I want to, I will never know if Bridget Kidney's parents were really Dwyres, or if they were Kidneys, or if her mother married twice or what the heck is going on there. I can surmise that Edward Blake's father was probably a Denis or a Richard, but unless Edward is the oldest child, it's unlikely I'll ever find a marriage record.

And I've decided that's ok--genealogy is a hobby, a mystery to solve, and there's an aspect of sorting and organization that appeals to my brain. But as my friend Tom said a few weeks ago on Facebook, genealogy is based on the misguided assumption that no one ever lies (illegitimacy, under the radar adoption, name changes, crimes covered up, and so on). I KNOW FOR A FACT that many of the folks I have solid information on lied through their teeth to census takers and priests and government officials. And those are only the ones in the last 120 years or so.

So I've got this handful of names and a handful of stories and things I can shiver about when I lie awake at night (urban poverty, having 10 of your 12 children die before you do, abandoning your children in an orphanage and going to Texas, getting married the day your child dies so he won't be illegitimate in the church record, killing a man in your bar and committing suicide the next week, and on and on and on). And that's probably enough. It is enough.