Finally!

Just got word from my researcher in Croatia that she'll finish up the work on the Eterovic family next week. Once I have the final list of ancestors, which may take up to two months to receive (I've decided Europe operates by a different clock) I'll be able to complete filling in my husband's family tree, at least back to the late 1700s.  When I started, we had almost no names, now we have hundreds.  The next step will be to travel to Croatia and find some cousins, but that will have to wait until after my trip to Ireland.

An accidental find - and a new book

I haven't been working on genealogy for the past two weeks as I've been working on the final edit of my book, a memoir spanning the 18 months of my mother's battle against leukemia, and my father's struggles with a degenerative neurological disease. As I was re-reading a passage of the book, however, I realized I had the chronology of events wrong, so I began to search for a small diary of my mother's that would help me correct the mistake.  Of course, I couldn't find it.

Tony and I searched in the garage, where I'm storing many of my parents' books and mementos, and couldn't find it there.  Then I searched inside the house: in closets, boxes, bookshelves, and drawers.  No luck.  Finally, several hours later, I found it in a box underneath my bed.  Inside was another box with papers that had belonged to my father. I had never gone through these papers and for some reason decided to look inside the box.  It was a copy of a diary written by a third cousin who was a priest (Father Bob), and it had some amazing information that will be quite helpful in my genealogy quest, including information on places and people who are crucial to my research.  Of particular interest were two letters written by the priest's father to his relatives in Ireland.  In the letter he is introducing himself to the cousins he had never met, and he lists all of his brothers and sisters as well as his children.

Another crucial piece of information was something Fr. Bob wrote in an early entry in his diary.  He said that Ned Brennan (Fr. Bob's grandfather and my great great grandfather) came over to America first, and his wife Mary followed later.  I hadn't known this before, so I had been searching in immigration records for a passenger list that contained both of them.  Now I will be able to search for them separately. 

Now that I've completed the book, I will be back to the ancestor quest and reporting my finds on the blog.  I'll also be reporting progress on the book's publication, and making an announcement about a new website where I hope to post a few of the book's chapters.  Stay tuned!

How the Irish Saved Civilization but Couldn't Save their own records

I went to the local Family History Center (at the Mormon church) yesterday to spend some time on the three microfilms I'd ordered.  They were all "census substitutes"  and the one I focused on was the record of Roman Catholic marriage and baptism records from the parish of my ancestors in the years 1790 to 1825.  The reason we have to turn to census substitutes in Irish genealogical research is that all the census records prior to 1901 were either destroyed intentionally by the Irish government, or burned in a 1922 fire in the Records building.  There are only a few places to turn to find the names of ancestors.  One is a record of "title applotments" or taxes paid to support the protestant Church of Ireland.  Another is Griffith's Valuation, a record from the early 1850s of all landowners and their tenants.  And the third is an incomplete set of Roman Catholic parish records from the late 1700s to the early 1800s.

I spent 90 minutes attempting to find anyone by the name of Brennan in the parish I believe my ancestors came from, and could only find three Brennans, none of whose first names matched the names of my ancestors.  The main problem was that the films were in the negative format, meaning the background was black and the writing white.  This format is very difficult to read.  There were two other problems, though.  Some were images of originals so faded from time that it was impossible to read anything.  And all of them were handwritten, often illegibly, with names and places crowded together in some formula I could not decipher.  I decided that trying to read the records in this microfilm format would be futile, and I gave up. 

Obviously, these records need to be rephotographed in a better format, or someone who understands the formula needs to transcribe the records into something readable.  But for some reason, the Catholic Church in Ireland has now withdrawn its earlier permission to allow the Mormon church to photograph its records.  For the sake of genealogical and historical research, this is a big setback.  I wish they would change their minds, but my experience with the Catholic Church is that they move exceedingly slowly, so it's not likely to happen in my lifetime, if at all. 

In the meantime, I've received an estimate from a genealogical company in Ireland that will research the original records (which I assume must be easier to read) and look at other possible records in the Irish Archives in an attempt to find a clue as to the ancestors of my great great grandparents. The cost is over $400 and there is no guarantee of success. Of course, the other possibility is that I could visit Ireland and do the research myself - if I'm allowed to access the archives.  That would be even more expensive: flight to Ireland, hotel rooms, meals, etc., although it would be more fun.  Again, there's no guarantee of success.

I've already decided that I will be going to Ireland next summer.  The only question is: do I want to wait until then to search for information, or do I want to fork out several hundred dollars in an effort to find something sooner?

I keep thinking of the book How the Irish Saved Civilization, and I wonder why they couldn't even save their own records.