PUTTING ON MY DETECTIVE CAP

Being an amateur genealogist really is like being a detective, hence the title of this blog. 

In order to find some distant family members, you not only have to expertly navigate the web, you have to ask a lot of questions of relatives and other researchers, and you have to search through old boxes and files in your possession to find clues. 

On the Irish side of my family, I have a number of treasures that continue to give me clues to the existence of quite distant members of the family. 

For instance, my 3rd great grandmother is Sallie Fahey.  Her maiden name was Finn.  Until now, I haven't spent any time researching the Finn side of the family, but ever since my uncle Tom told me we are related to the Finns and there are still many in Ohio, I have been trying to find out what I could.  The place to start would be with any brothers or sisters of Sallie who may have come to the United States.  So I started with the Allen County Historical Society located in Lima.

Now I was just in Lima a few weeks ago and didn't think to search for Finns then, so I contacted the researcher  there and asked her to look into it.  She only found a Patrick Finn who married an Anna  Delaney and had a large family, and I made a preliminary assumption that Patrick may be Sallie's brother.  Hoever, I needed more confirmation.  So I turned to one of my most reliable sources, Father Robert Brennan (Father Bob) my 1st cousin, twice removed (i.e. the son of my great grandfather's brother.) 

Father Bob was an accomplished scholar, missionary, and writer and he left much of his writing behind.  Besides a textbook on psychology and other academic works, he wrote a personal memoir: Irish Diary, about his days traveling around Ireland and visiting with family there. I have found many family clues in that book.  However, some writings that have proved even more helpful are unpublished writings about his family.  I found these in a box my father had stored in a closet, and I turned to them again, to see if Father Bob had written anything about the Finns. 

Sure enough, within the first several pages of his writings, he mentions his great grandmother's brothers, John and Bill (William) Finn.  He even mentions the names of the children of John.  So I have a start now.  While he did not mention a Patrick, it is still possible that Patrick was another sibling.  I have more work to do, but at least I know the names of some Finns to whom I am related.  I wonder if Father Bob ever imagined how valuable his writings (and sometimes scribblings in the margins) would be to future family members.