Another Look At Facebook

   

   

Lester Robinson, Boy Scout

 
     I admit to having mixed feelings about Facebook, more specifically about it's founder, but that's the topic of another blog.  Today I was looking at a Facebook site I belong to called, "Things I Remember About Manchester", Manchester being the village in which I grew up.  My father grew up there too, as did both his parents and his grandparents. Needless to say, my family has lots of memories of this place.

      Every so often members will post old photographs of the village and it's denizens.  If I'm lucky the poster will know the identity of the persons in their photo. Today was one of those days.  I was taking a quick look to see what had been added recently and found a collage of photos I hadn't seen before.  I only clicked on the group because one of the pictures looked interesting, causing a slideshow to open. The next photo after the one that had piqued my interest, and shown above, was labeled, Lester Robinson, taken in the 1920's. Lester was the son of my second great-aunt Clara Warner and her husband Burt Robinson.  I'd never seen an image of Lester before though I knew from census records that as a young man my grandfather had lived with Lester and his parents for a time, so this was an exciting find.

     And how about this photo?  Lester in his home made car--

Maybe Lester took Grandpa for a spin in this baby.

     You never know what might turn up unexpectedly on one of these sites, so I plan on keeping a closer eye on this one in addition to the Facebook sites of Irish counties I belong to.  In fact, I think I need to go seek out sites for the hometowns of some other ancestors.

Tuesday's Tip/Personalized Place Directory

    

      When I first began researching my Irish ancestors, I was primarily working with records in the United States.  Once I was able to make the leap to Irish records it was slightly bewildering.  Civil Parishes, Catholic Parishes, Registrations Districts, Poor Law Unions-- there was so much to remember.  And they sometimes changed.

     After stopping what I was doing to look up the Civil Parish of Ballyraggan for the third time, (it's Graney), I hit on the idea of creating a word document listing all the relevant townlands and all the land divisions pertaining to each.  When I find a new place of interest, I add it to my list. This document resides in the upper right corner of my computer desktop, in easy reach when I'm looking at records.  I use my list constantly as I'm prone to jumping from one family line to another, it's one of the best research tools I've created yet. .  

A Perfect Day For DNA

     

     Being stuck in the house here in upstate NY with over a foot of  snow on the ground and more sifting down, this seemed like a good day to check my family's DNA tests.  The results from those Christmas gifts of DNA kits should be starting to show up on Ancestry about now, meaning there could be a batch of new relatives waiting to be found.  Checking for matches with my uncle's test, as close as I can ever get to my late mother's DNA, I found a few new ones but none had trees nor did the shared matches.  I run into that a lot in that line.  I've been having better luck with the group from Ireland.  As mentioned in the last blog post, I've found more solid DNA evidence that my White/Keyes connection is from Rathdowney Parish in County Laois (Queens), and today some new McGarr matches turned up.

     I also took a closer look at my new DNA results on Ancestry after reading somewhere that the results for Ireland are getting more specific.  All I can say is, yes they are!  Ancestry named my areas as Northern Tipperary, (my Ryans and O'Dwyers), North Munster, (my Gunn and Browne families in Kerry), and Leinster, (my McGarrs and OHoras in Kildare and Carlow--along with the Whites and Keyes in Laois).  That's pretty darn specific. Not to quibble, but the Ryans and O'Dwyers were actually from mid-Tipperary, technically South Tipperary, but their area does show up in the circled area on my DNA page map.

The red dot (mine) on the Ancestry map marks Churchfield in Tipperary, home to the Ryan and O'Dwyer families.

     Even with the lack of trees linked to many kit results and submitters who don't answer their email, I've never regretted being tested or hounding my relatives to spit in that little vial.  One of the great things about DNA is the way it can confirm your traditional research even if your matches don't cooperate.

     One "very high" match at the 4th to 6th cousin range I find very highly interesting is that with an attached tree containing a man named John White who was born in County Laois in 1818.  That makes him the right age to be a brother of my 3rd-great-grandfather James White Jr.  Even better, one of our shared matches is for a kit with the surname Keyes among it's branches. The John White tree has 50cM of matching DNA across 3 segments, I'm not an expert on DNA, but that's a significant amount.

     The names of John White's children are also significant.  If he is indeed my James' brother then, like James, he is the son of James White Sr. and Margaret Keyes.  My James named his first son James and his second daughter Margaret. John did exactly the same.  Is that conclusive proof John and James are brothers?  I have to admit it's not, but I think they most probably are.  And it gives me a strong clue this needs serious investigation.

Exactly What Is A Chartery? You May Want To Know And An Update

     The discovery of several new DNA matches in my Keyes line has me back on their trail as the new year begins.  The area this family lived in was very close to the border with Tipperary so you never know where a record might show up.  Which is a good thing since their parish in Laois, Rathdowney, has a large chunk of missing records in exactly the time frame needed for the ancestors who fled the famine to America.  They being in many cases the link between Ireland and the United States.

      Margaret Keyes and James White senior, the parents of my 2nd great-grandfather James White, were married in Ireland sometime around 1817.  Unfortunately, the marriage records for Rathdowney skip from 1810 to 1939 with nothing in between.  Checking the records from Templemore, across the line in Tipperary, I didn't find them, but did come across the marriage of William White and Ann Delahunty in 1846.  

     As it happens, there was an Ireland born James White living in Marion, NY , (close to my James White after his emigration), who married Margaret Touhey in 1878 at the Catholic Church in nearby Palmyra, NY.  His parents in the record of that marriage were William White and Anastasia Delahunty.  This James White was much younger than my 2nd great-grandfather and clearly not a son as his son James the 3rd is accounted for.  So who was he?  Given his marriage record, I believe he was the child of William and Anna from Templemore.  I also tend to believe this William and my granddad were brothers.

     If William lived in Laois it would be a great clue. Taking a closer look at his marriage record in Templemore, seeking an address which is sometimes included, all I found was the phrase "married at the Chartery", Chastery?  What was that?  It reminded me of something that was part of a church, but it finally dawned on me I was thinking of vestry... that couldn't be it. I ran some searches on Google without any luck, trying different spellings and the keyword "church" or no keyword at all.  The hand writing wasn't the best, as you can see below.

     Finally I hit on the right combination of letters along with the keyword Catholic.  There at the site "Catholic Online" I found a definition that fit-- the word was chantry, as in "a detached chapel chantry built in a churchyard or outlying district".  So apparently they were married in a small chapel rather than the main chapel.  Not that it really matters, sadly there was no townland given, but I like to know these things.  Familiarity with words in use by the clergy could be helpful in future research.  At least the word wasn't French  for workhouse.

Update-- The baptism of James White, the son of William White and Anastasia Delahunty has been found in RATHDOWNEY PARISH!