Thursday, September 17, 2020

Connemara connections

 My Irish ancestry is 100% from the Connemara region of County Galway.  It is a beautiful, remote area of Ireland.  Genealogy research in this area has been challenging, but over time more records, resources and collaboration has improved things greatly.   Now there are several Facebook groups dedicated to specific areas, villages and families;  webpages dedicated to village's heritage, and of course lots of DNA research!

I am challenged by common names, inter-marriage, and the small gene pool in my research.  Oral history is important since records rarely exist before the Famine, with some exceptions.  We've collected family stories, hand written family trees, etc over time -- and have been able to cross reference to some records over time.

This week I was sent a hand written family tree done in Boston many years ago, by someone I hadn't corresponded with in 4 years!  This led me to the original source and more pages of the tree.  It is truly an amazing find, as it shows linkages and recent descendants that have emigrated to Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, etc.

These are the kinds of genealogy gold that make all your hard work worthwhile!  And they always just seem to drop out of the sky!  And usually they come in bunches -- I call it Genealogy Karma.  And as a matter of fact,  I did get some other leads on one of my families last week that needs further research.

So it's either feast or famine, lots of new info to work through and research, or nothing new for ages! In the era of COVID, I have a bit of extra time to work through these bits of genealogy karma!  Can't wait to put my head together with some cousins and sort through it all!

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