It is hard to credit that nearly two years have passed since my last entry.  Time seems to pass more quickly  as old age creeps along.   Since my mother's death, dealing with her estate has taken a huge amount of my time and energy not least of which was clearing her home of contents and processing paperwork and photographs.  Legal and tax matters were tedious and challenging but eventually resolved.

In the summer of 2022 the family gathered from around the world in Dublin to pay our last respects to my mother as we fulfilled her last wish for her ashes to be put into the sea in Killiney Bay.

In 2023 I visited 'the house where I was born' .  The current resident was kind enough to show me around.  I was interested to hear that she inherited an oak tree planted at the bottom of her back garden from the previous occupant.  I am sure it was planted by my father during the years he lived there in Ballymun.   It had to be taken down as the branches were touching the back of the house.  It was a very small garden to put an oak tree!  In 1956 he planted another in his next house and that one is still there today.  We had gathered around to see it planted and even as a only a 4 yrs child I remember the day.

The same day I visited Glasnevin Cemetery and sorted out some incorrect records for the Daly family.  And for the first time saw a fine headstone for a mother and her children when previously I had thought they were in a public plot.  Poor Michael Daly had had to bury his wife and some of his children before he himself died but by then the plot was full and he went into a public plot some distance away.  By the time he died all his children had either died or emigrated to America.

Drangan Childhood

 At last we have been able to make a book out of the newly discovered memoirs of my Grandfather, Thomas Doran.  It was  marvellous to get hold of a copy of a copy of the original memoirs that he finalised in 1966.  The original has been 'lost' for over 40 yrs and we also had  a rough draft for same to work from.  The ease of publishing on the Amazon printing option is encouraging me to write down more 'stories' gleaned from doing the family genealogy for the past 20 years.

 February 2022

Another year has passed since the last entry in this blog.  It has been a difficult year with the ongoing covid pandemic. But the saddest point was the death of my death mother in October 2021.  She was a wise woman ever interested in the world and her family, with a keen intellect and great sense of humour. She kept up the habit of a daily newspaper to her last days but had given up on television. She enjoyed her radio especially the concerts on Radio 3 and listening to the highlights on the world service thru the night.  She was 101 yrs when she died.  I shall miss her greatly.  She had many insights concerning family history and life in general. It was my father who had the genealogy 'bug'  but his side of the family was not so interesting.

I should mention also the loss of my mother's brother who died in January 2021.  So now that is all of my parent's generation passed on and we can promote ourselves to be matriarch/patriarchs of our own families.

The highlight of the year on the genealogy front has been the finding of a copy of my grandfathers memoirs of his time as a boy in an Irish village 1890 to 1904.  We thought it was long since accidentally thrown away but in a very serendipitous route I found that someone had made a photocopy of this handwritten account. Eventually it make its way back to me minus just one page that had been censored at some stage.

The distant, very distant, American cousins are threatening to visit the emerald Isle.  I shall try and keep a low profile this time if they appear.

I have spent many days over past months clearing my mother's house.  There was a  lot of old furniture and ornaments going back to  a great grandmother's house (born 1860)  and also many thousands of photographs and boxes of diaries and letters.  It has been difficult to let things go.  We all have our own houses now and the younger ones are not interested in 'old' stuff and particularly so when they have no appreciation of the family history and how hard life was for previous generations.   I feel I am dismantling my father's house even tho he died 12 years ago because  so much of his grandparents' things had come down to him.  He was an only child and only grandchild.

Thru DNA matching on my husbands  side, I formed a lovely relationship with a cousin of his and we had some good research results.  Great to have another mind look at same puzzle.    Another cousin of my husband had been killed in 'the troubles' in 1972.  He left a young child and widow behind.  I often wondered what became of the child and we managed to tease out the story and yes, he had emigrated to Australia with his mother but had  been aware of his background and had returned to visit his father's grave at some stage.

I have been managing DNA matches on behalf of three relatives also.  So that makes three on the same line but with different companies and thankfully all seem to correlate back to same roots.

I no longer have access to a good genealogy website so am somewhat restricted.  I shall probably rejoin when I see a good 'deal'.  Covid has had an effect too in past couple of years with no visits to the Gilbert room in Pearse Library or the BMD register office in Dublin.

Sadly there are other people that were very helpful to me that are no longer with us.

RIP Chris Burge 

RIP Gemma Doherty

RIP John Doran 

RIP Mollie Green 

 The past year has been defined as the year of the coronavirus pandemic that has blighted our world.  It has meant more time at home for many people who have had to curtail other activities.  Some have turned to genealogy.  Two distant cousins have made contact with me and that is encouraging.  

A treasure trove of photographs was received from America but of a Dublin visit in 1929.  The detail in one photo led to a correction in an address associated with that family.   It was with with the help of a genealogy forum for like minded folk.  A nice sense of completion to see this puzzle sorted in space of  24 hours.

 A closer younger member of the family has expressed an interest in her ancestors so a 'family tree' scroll was posted off.  I hope that this curiosity will be followed up in future years.

Sadly, restrictions on travel have meant fewer  visits to close family that live in distant places. My mother celebrated her 100th birthday in July without a big fuss.  And we lost one of our older family members with the death of my Uncle John in January 2021,  on the 21st day.   He was the last of my mother's siblings.  A sign of the times we now live in was that I was able to attend his funeral commemoration  with the help of a webcam.  

And more babies arrive to continue on the lineage.

Another year to look back over. It has been busy with family matters but still the genealogy bug keeps ticking away.  

I found an old note taken from some website 10 years previously.  With newer research, it made a bit more sense and fortunately the email address was still sound.  Another line filled out! 

  Some three years ago I had posted up a photo dated c 1926 of a gr grandfather to a website of Irish interest.  Just a month ago someone  claimed said man as his gr grandfather also.   Eventually direct contact was made and another family legend was laid to rest and another unknown group of cousins detailed.   

I have been managing DNA links done by two brothers but with different companies and again some progress is made with two very fruitful lines opening up.

There was time this year also to revisit elderly relations and  discuss old stories.  Nothing beats a face to face chat!

I have been fortunate in having access to the big Ancestry website for most of this year.  Always worth revisiting old searches as daily new genealogists are adding more material  and more data is being digitalised and made available.

It is now two years plus since my last post.  This has been the era of DNA testing and have had some good results both on my Irish line and that of my husband.  One elusive contact that spoke of a family bible but did not respond to my excited post, very frustrating!

I have spend a lot of time going thru paper handwritten notes and old style files now superceded by digital family tree.  Two storage boxes of same have been reduced to one.  Much more detailed notes are now included in the Ancestry tree I have (but not uploaded).  I hope whoever inherits my accumulation of data will be appreciative.

The tools I have honed in using with family tree research have come in useful for other areas.  For example I was able to find out a long back story to an unsigned painting that had a framer's note on the back with the presumed owner at the time.  The painting was a wedding present 40 yrs ago and features a small fishing village that coincidentally was the location of one of my ancestral lines (200 years ago) and that of the person who gave me the painting.

Another year passes.

I am surprised to see how long since I last wrote anything.  My research is very low key now.  But my mind would always be on the look out for some now angle and I am more interested in watching TV shows that relate to time period, occupation or place of forebears.  Occasionally there is a book of interest, radio program or a local history talk..... 

This week I visited London and was able to follow up  on some long awaited lines of research. I visited the church opposite Waterloo Railway Station that a set of great great grandparents had married in in the 1860's.  It was badly damaged in WW2 so I did not hope for much.  I was however pleasantly surprised.   The church had suffered two 'makeovers' one in 1880's and another in 1924 but the restoration of 1951 was true to the original design.  It was a pleasant  to linger a while and definitely a place of worship still.  The original baptism font had survived.  This was where older siblings of my great grandfather had been christened.

Close by was the address of  my great great grandfather  at the time of his marriage, Lower Marsh.  It was close by to Waterloo station and suited his occupation being a cabbie driver..  Again I was pleased to see how it had retained its identity and was still a bustling street of commerce with some surviving building up to 3 stories in height on both sides.  The street had survived being acquired for the expansion of Waterloo station, a fate that awaited other nearby streets including a church.

Walking on from there I ended up at the former Lambeth parish church, associated with several marriages of family.  Sadly it is undergoing major redevelopment to suit its new role as a  museum of the garden and will be closed until 2017.  It was the only church  of many associated with the family that was not damaged in WW2 bombing raids.  It is just sad it is no longer a place of worship.