Sadness in the Family

My husband's younger sister died last week.  She was a lovely woman, only 57 years old, a wife and mother of three young men.  She had struggled for 18 years against cancer, and her funeral yesterday was a beautiful tribute to a loving, humble, talented and courageous woman.

Sometimes when I am discovering new ancestors as part of my genealogy work, I write down birth and death dates and quickly move on to the next discovery.  But other times I stop and reflect for a minute or two on what each life meant and how each family felt as they buried their loved one.  I note how old or young a person was when they died, and if possible, try to discover what ended their life.

For many of my relatives who lived in Ohio, I have been able to find obituaries or newspaper articles that tell me what caused the death.  I have a newspaper article, for instance, telling about the death of my maternal grandfather, A.J. Mueller, who was struck by a train and killed in 1930.  Strangely, my paternal great great grandfather, Ned Brennan, was also struck by a train and killed.  I have the newspaper story regarding his death in 1889.

I have other newspaper articles on cousins who died in automobile accidents, in childbirth, and from heart disease or cancer.  It is easy to treat each of these as a statistic when you are doing genealogy work, but I try to remember that each of these men and women had a family who loved them, and friends who mourned with the family.  I try to see what a tragedy each death was, especially the deaths of those who died young, or in childbirth when many small children were left  motherless.  I also try to see how much each person contributed to their own family and to the larger human family.

Yesterday was a time to mourn, but also a time to celebrate a life.  My sister-in-law, Karen Sherer, contributed so much to her family, not just to her sons, but to her sisters and brothers, her nieces and nephews.  She was the heart of the family, and there will be a gaping hole in the family without her.  That is what death does to a family.  And that is why I am trying so hard, through my genealogy work, to pay tribute to all who have died, and in some small way, keep them and their legacies alive in our minds and hearts.

Goals for the New Year

Last year was a big year for me.  In finally finishing my book, The Waiting Room, I closed a chapter in my life.  Not only did I accomplish something very important to me, in a way I also said good-bye to my parents again.  Even though they passed away over two years ago, writing about them nearly every day for over a year kept them in my thoughts constantly.  Now, it is time to return to genealogy and involve myself in family activities. 

And, in that regard, this is looking to be a busy year.  In June we will be traveling to Seattle for my son Terry's graduation from Seattle Pacific University (with a Master's in Education) and in August, we're heading to Ireland to meet a distant cousin, explore some genealogy, and get to enjoy the land of my great-great grandparents' birth. There will be at least one family wedding to attend, and a number of wedding and baby showers.  But in between all the planned vacations and events, I have some genealogical goals.

First, with the help of my husband, I'm writing an  Eterovic family history.  Last year I hired researchers in both Croatia and the Czech Republic and I have all of their findings dating back to the 1700s.  I have already written most of the narrative regarding the genealogy, but I am waiting on a few pictures and stories.  I have also collected Croatian recipes and even tried cooking a few.  Most of the narrative is already written. What remains on my to-do list are a few interviews with senior family members.  In the meantime, my daughter-in-law, who is an amazing artist, is working on the cover.  Fortunately, one of my husband's nephews went to Brac, Croatia on his honeymoon and brought back pictures of the towns of Milna, and Pucisca, the birthplaces of my husband's grandparents, and one of those pictures will be the focus of the cover.  My hope is to have the book completed and printed sometime in March. 

Once that project is finished, I want to return to my father's side of the family.  So another goal is to see if there is anything else I can find in the nearly non-existant Irish records regarding Ned Brennan and Mary Fahey, my 2nd great grandparents who arrived in America from Ireland in 1860, the year before the beginning of the Civil War.  I have asked a research company to do some preliminary work for me and they have suggested several possible avenues they can follow to see if there are any other hints regarding the family.  I have also been contacted by a second relative in Ireland who may be able to put me in contact with her uncle, who has done some genealogical work on the family.  Then, of course, I hope to meet more family members when I visit Ireland.  Maybe someone will have information that has so far eluded me. 

A third goal is to find out more about my mother's side of the family. Her ancestors are from Germany and Belgium and while I have many names and dates, there are a few ancestors who remain a mystery.  One is her great grandfather, Herman Henry Frecker.  He died in his thirties and while I believe I have located a sister and mother, I know very little other than the fact that he was born in Germany and lived in Delphos, Ohio.  Recently, my cousin Tim sent me a newspaper article announcing his death.  It said only that he had been ill for years because of multiple tumors.  I don't know when he arrived in America or how old he was when he came, though Tim believes he may have been born at sea on the journey from Germany.  I have so far been unable to confirm that.  I'm going to look into the possibility of hiring a researcher in Germany, though the cost my be prohibitive. Maybe in another year or two, I'll travel to Ohio and spend some time looking into records there.  I'm certain there must be information locked away in some dusty library or county hall of records.  In the meantime, I'm also going to learn more about Germany, its history, and its many geographical regions. After my visit to Ireland, followed by a visit to Croatia in 2013, I may have to visit Germany myself.

A fourth goal is to work on another family history - that of my mother-in-law's side of the family.  Hers is the one that goes back to at least three Mayflower passengers.  I have already written some of the narrative, as I find it so compelling, and I'm anxious to put it all together for the rest of the family to see.  (Before I began doing this work they had no idea they were descendants of Mayflower passengers.)

Finally, like all professional and amateur genealogists, I look forward to the release of the 1940 census in April of this year.  That census alone will answer many questions about many relatives, and I can't wait!

So, in terms of genealogy, (as well as family activities and vacations)  it's going to be a very busy year and I look forward to many exciting discoveries. 

Tracing the Irish Side of the Family

The difficult thing about doing genealogy, if you are an American, is that you are likely to find yourself heading off in half a dozen different directions, to half a dozen countries where your ancestors once lived.  To trace my husband's family I must look to Croatia, Czechoslvakia, Switzerland and England.  To trace my family I must access records from Germany, Belgium, England, and Ireland.

I have done fairly well with English ancestors, who have been in America the longest - since colonial days.  And I have found a book with the genealogy already completed for the Swiss branch of my husband's family.  I have hired a Croatian researcher, have the name of a Czech genealogist, and am starting to look at the German branch of my family.  And while I have had information on my Irish relatives going back to my 2nd great grandparents, I've hit a dead end on anything in Ireland before that, which has been quite frustrating. 

In some respects, however, I've been lucky with the resources I already had. In my father's files were several aides to my quest.  There was a story of my great great grandparents, Ned and Mary Brennan, and their migration to America,  and a book with the title Irish Diary.  Both were written by Ned and Mary's grandson, a Catholic priest who has often visited Ireland.  There was also the local newspaper of the town in Ohio where my great great grandparents settled, giving me much information on their descendants.  And there were the notes and records my father kept, including a family tree.

Still, I knew nothing of my great great grandparents' families who had once lived in Ireland, or the remnants of the Brennan family who currently live in Ireland. Most of the census records were destroyed by the Irish government or burned in a fire in 1922.  However, I did have the name and address of a man who was a distant relation and who lived in County Laois (formerly Queen's County), the area where the Brennans, Faheys and Finns were from.  So I wrote to him and asked him to tell me about the family, specifically about his branch, which went back to the sister of my great great grandfather, Ned Brennan.

He wrote back, telling me about Mary Brennan, Ned's sister, who was his great grandmother.  He gave me names of Mary's children, and some of their spouses, though he had no names of their children and only a few dates.  He did, however, give me an idea of how many children each of Mary's children had produced. 

Obviusly, there were large gaps and nothing prior to Ned and Mary. 

Then, at the genealogy conference last weekend, I learned that the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses had survived the fire of 1922, and they were now available online.  So I got to work and, putting together the clues from all of my resources I was able to find Mary Brennan and her husband James Clooney in the 1901 census.  They were 80 and 92 respectively, though by the 1911 census they were gone.  I had the names of their children and based on location and the number of children each had, I was able to find 1901 and 1911 census records on each of them. 

There was only one thing about which I was skeptical.  Was James Clooney really 12 years older than Mary, and did they really live to such an advanced age in the early 1900s?  So I went searching and found something that answered the question.

I had read in Irish Diary that James Clooney and his wife, Mary Brennan Clooney, were buried in the Aghaboe cemetery, so I googled "Aghaboe cemetery, Ireland" and found a blog discussing an ongoing project to index all the graves, many of which have unreadable headstones. The group doing the indexing had posted pictures of all the headstones, with the names of the ones that were readable.  I clicked on the one for James Clooney, hoping it was Mary's husband.  It wasn't.  It was the headstone for their grandson James and on it were listed the names and death dates not only for James, but for his father and mother, his two brothers, and his grandparents, James and Mary Clooney.  Indeed, James was 12 years older than Mary, and they did live to the ripe old ages of 92 and 84.

At the conference, I also learned that I may be able to access Irish church records from the 1700s and 1800s through the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, or one of its local branches, and I will be looking there next.