Fall. The very word makes me cringe. My lovely perennial borders are now filled with dejected looking plants losing their leaves and sulking while a few brave roses struggle to bloom. Granted, the toad lilies are in their glory, as are the mums and asters, but not much else is doing in the garden. Even the hummingbirds have packed their wee bags and departed on their tropical vacations. This is my cue to prepare for hibernation and resume the only thing that keeps me sane during these long fall and winter months-- genealogical research.
I've already made a remarkable discovery this week. A previously unknown McGarr aunt has been identified! My great-great-grandmother Maria McGarr O'Hora was born in County Kildare in 1826. I long ago found her baptism as well as those of her six siblings in the church records of Baltinglass Parish in County Wicklow, but something about those records niggled at me. After Maria's birth in 1826 there was not another baptism recorded in this family until that of Bridget in 1831. Anyone doing Irish research for that time period knows it was typical for a baby to arrive every two years, maybe three, but not five. I always wondered about a missing child, but after meticulously combing the baptism records several times I could find no trace of him or her.
Now, sitting down at the computer after my summer sojourn, one of the first things I did was check to see if anything new had been added to my favorite websites. At the newspaper site, Old Fulton, I ran a broad search using names from my McGarr tree-- Shortsville, O'Hora, Quigley. Nothing. Then I substituted O'Hara for O'Hora. The name changed over time depending on who you were asking and being a tiny place, there was only one O'Hora or O'Hara family in Shortsville. That search brought up quite a few hits, with this description of one article particularly grabbing my attention, look at the last three lines--
What the what? It read, "Mrs. Elizabeth...", and "two sisters, Mrs. O'Hara of this place and Mrs. Quigley of Rochester". I knew exactly who Mrs. O'Hara was, it was Grandma Maria. I knew who Mrs. Quigley of Rochester was too, she was Maria's sister Anna. I excitedly clicked on the article dated 1904 --
There had indeed been another child born to Daniel McGarr and his wife Anne Donahoe! I don't know why her baptism was not recorded, but it's not the first church record problem in this family. The names in the baptism record of their daughter Bridget were so badly mangled and some even omitted by the parish priest that it took me and an employee of the heritage center in Wicklow to figure out it was in fact Bridget's baptism.
The article contained some important information, I now had the missing sibling's given name, her husband's name, names of her children, (surviving ones anyway), her death date, and amazingly, a residence. She had been in Shortsville, New York for fifty years. The same place her sister Maria lived, as had their late sister Bridget. Talk about hiding in plain sight. I felt slightly embarrassed she had been right under my nose, though in my defense the name Elizabeth Barrett meant nothing to me until the names O'Hara and Quigley were tossed into the mix. Her age in the obituary is off, but in the census records I discovered for her, in which she herself had given her age, she fitted in nicely between Maria and Bridget.
But now something else was niggling, surviving son Frank Barrett. His name was somehow familiar. Searching my tree, I found Frank, or Francis, had married Mary Ann Fitzpatrick, a sister of Andrew Fitzpatrick, who had married Winifred O'Hora (O'Hara) Grandma Maria's daughter. I had been looking at the Fitzpatrick family for a while, hoping I could link them to my Fitzpatrick's from Queen's County, Ireland. Now I wonder if there was a Kildare connection, one Fitzpatrick child married the daughter of Maria McGarr, another married a son of Elizabeth McGarr. Of course, it could be just a result of their proximity in this country. It's certainly not rare for siblings to marry brothers or sisters from another family. It is however, another research avenue to go down...
