Today's Forecast - Cloudy with Genealogy

      

     After days of record-breaking high temperatures here in New York, we are back to our usual early spring weather.  Cold and damp ... I refuse to go outside.  Instead, I decided to dive into the O'Hora rabbit hole.  Many years ago, I met a distant cousin from that line on the internet.  Luckily for me, though she resided in Georgia she regularly visited her hometown of Auburn, New York, which was the first stop for the O'Hora clan after they got off the boat way back when.  Today, there are still O'Horas living in that place.

     I live fairly close to Auburn, and while planning to meet one another, we agreed to bring along our genealogy notes and copies to share.  Among the documents Rita gave me was a copy of the report she commissioned from the now defunct Carlow Genealogy Project.  There were pages of Hore/O'Hore baptism records, marriages, tithe applotments, it was absolutely amazing!  At that time none of those things were online.  It kept me busy for weeks, but after copying the data into my software, studying it, attempting to figure out connections, it eventually found its way into my filing cabinet.  Because really, there wasn't much more I could do with it. With nothing online, I had no way to double check the information it contained, look for proof of the hypotheses I had formed while reading it, or build on that research.  Things have changed now, so I grabbed the report, turned up the heat, and sat down to start hunting.

     I soon found that though the document was valuable, there was quite a bit the authors had missed.  Rita knew her great-great-grandmother was Mary Hore, but she could never find proof that Mary was the daughter of Michael Hore and Mary Travers, and the sister of my great-great-grandfather James Hore.  Going through baptisms at Find My Past, I found the baptism of Mary "O'Hara", daughter of Michael and Mary "Travis", born in the townland of Ricketstown, the same place my James and his siblings were born.  (The Carlow researchers really should have found that one, given the address and such similar names.)  This was clearly the proof Rita had been seeking but sadly, when I tried to contact her with the news, I found she was deceased.

The long sought baptism of Mary Hore/O'Hora

     Another omission was the address of the subjects.  Using information contained in the report, I looked up baptisms and marriages now available online and discovered many of them gave an address. That's really important.  It's very helpful to know which Hore families were living in the same townland.  There were also cases where there were actually three witnesses to a marriage, but only two appeared in the report.  Witnesses are also of importance.  I was glad to have the report though. Since many members of the family stayed in Ireland, I'd be flying blind without clues about what to look for.  The online records themselves are far from perfect, whoever indexed the parish of Hacketstown for the Find My Past site had particular trouble with the surname; in one case changing it to "Thara", and in another to "Garcia", Garcia???  I finally found those two baptisms by using just the parish, approximate date, and parent's first names for search terms, though that didn't always work.  In one case the mother's name Rose had been indexed as "Ton".

     It may sound as though I'm criticizing, but I don't mean it that way.  I'm over the moon about all the Irish records that have come online.  Using them and the report Rita gave me I've been able to put families together and even see how they relate to the O'Horas who came to the USA.  And I've had a ball doing it. DaVinci was right when he said, "The noblist pleasure is the joy of understanding". True, I was sad that it was too late to tell Rita I'd finally found the baptism she'd spent years looking for.  And that mis-transcribed "Garcia" surname?  That was exasperating, but at the same time it made me laugh, I doubt there were many Garcia families living in Knockananna in the 1800's.  I point it out because it's something researchers need to consider when that record we know is there just can't be found.

Baptism of Bridget "Garcia"

A New Family Photo!

      I've noticed something about Ancestry, they don't always find obvious hints.  This time it was the photograph of a family member on Find A Grave that the site failed to alert me to.  The name and dates match my tree exactly, and I already had an earlier version of that Find A Grave page in my tree from before the picture was added.  It's not the first time this has happened either.  A few months ago, while viewing the tree of a DNA match, I found a photo of one of my Travers relatives had been posted there with nary a peep from Ancestry.  I enjoy doing my own research, but pictures are the holy grail of genealogy, Ancestry needs to do better.

     Nevertheless, I'm excited to find the image of Arthur Worden, his wife Edna Warner, and their daughter Inez.  They aren't direct ancestors, but I'm related to both of them by blood.  Arthur was my 2nd great-granduncle, and Edna my 1st cousin 3 times removed.  I have a photo of Inez, found on eBay of all places, so I compared that one to Ancestry's.

Inez and her baby sister Gladys

Inez and parents from Find A Grave photo

     The strong resemblance between the older child in the first photo and the one beneath it is indisputable.  I'm always a little leery of online pictures with no provenance, but I'm confident this is a true image of the Worden family. Edna's hair looks a bit odd here, so I copied the picture into my paint program then used the little eyedropper tool to match her hair color from the unfaded, left side of her head and went over it.  The results are below, I think it's a big improvement.

     It's such a thrill to stumble upon images of long-gone relatives.  I wish Arthur's face was in better shape, but it imparts a good idea of what he looked like.  I wonder did he look like his father Paul or his mother Eva Benedict?  Eva was Paul's second wife and much younger than him.  After three children their marriage fell apart; 1892 found Arthur living in the "orphan asylum" while a neighbor adopted his younger sister, changing her surname to McClouth.  His younger brother lived with Paul.  I would love to know the details of how this all came to pass, but so far, I've been unable to even find a record of a divorce.  

     Eva remarried and gave birth to another daughter, but her three eldest children never lived with her again.  The 1910 census shows Eva, aged 54, living with her new husband William Brown, their daughter Ruby Brown aged 19, and a one-year-old child named Arthur Brown, listed as Eva's son.  I've always believed this baby was in fact Ruby's, not Eva's, but had no proof.  However, in addition to the photo, there on the F.A.G. site was Ruby's obituary; among her survivors was her "son" Arthur of Detroit.

     I don't know who posted the photograph to Find A Grave, but I plan to message that person through the site, and also recheck the Find A Grave pages in my trees.  Hopefully, more photos await discovery...