2021 in Review – Accentuate the Positive

So, yet another year has passed. Looking back, using fellow blogger Jill Ball's annual meme and prompts, here are some of my 'positive' genealogy experiences in 2021.

My main focus was on DNA. I've been happily analysing my DNA matches, and those of my extended family too. It is a great way to discover forgotten branches on my family tree and locate those I couldn't trace with paper records alone. It hasn't led to any 'new' ancestors YET, but I'm sure that's only a matter of time.

For example, last year, with the help of genetic genealogy, I discovered and wrote about a great-great-granduncle Thomas Carroll in New Zealand, and a great-great-granduncle James Byrne, a bottle-maker, in Dublin.

A lovely genea-surprise I received was this picture of Grandda Wynne, with some of his children. Isn't it fab?

I remember it as a tiny snap, much the worse for wear. But Aunt Bernadette had it restored and generously got copies made for everyone she thought might like one. It's of Kevin Wynne, with his daughters Frankie and baby Dympna on his knee, and Bernadette holding their hands. Colm watches from his seat on the windowsill.

They are out in the yard at the back of their home, 3 Lower Jane Place, Dublin. It must have been the summer of 1957. They're wearing their summer clothes and Dympna, who was born in April 1956, looks about a year old. The twins look about four years old.

Thank you again Bernadette, I love it.

A Facebook Group that helped me during the year was Old Malahide History, where members share their old photos of Malahide, Co. Dublin. Here I came across many previously unseen pictures of my Dad as a child and of the townland where we grew up - see Amazing family history to be found on Facebook.

My 2021 social media post journal article that I was particularly proud of was about my maternal third cousin once removed, Frank Teeling, an Irish Volunteer. It was published in The Irish Genealogist, the well-regarded journal of the Irish Genealogical Research Society.

Frank Teeling participated in the Irish War of Independence and was captured by the British on Bloody Sunday in 1920. He was imprisoned and sentenced to death by hanging, but escaped from Kilmainham Gaol, in this country's most dramatic jail-break. My article uses Frank's story as a case study demonstrating how the descendants of key players in modern Irish history, as opposed to the State, keep their memories alive, and in so doing, write the public history of Ireland and define Irish national identity.

I finally found Margaret Parsons, née Carroll six feet under. Margaret was my great-grandaunt, who I tracked to Gateshead, England, where she married Christopher Penrose, in 1923. I lost all trace of her after that. Now, her great-granddaughter has turned up in my DNA results and helped solve the mystery.

Margaret married Martin Parsons in Romford, in 1943 and moved to Yorkshire, where she lived to be some 80 years of age. She was buried beside her husband Martin, at Driffield Cemetery, East Yorkshire, in July 1974. Her great-granddaughter sent me this picture of their grave. Thanks again, Maria.

Lastly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my readers for their support, for reaching out to me, for helping me research our ancestors, for leaving comments on my blog, for liking and sharing my posts and generally for taking an interest in my family-history research.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

So excited to see what discoveries next year brings!

Happy New Year!

Nollaig Shona daoibh go léir

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas!🎄

My Ancestors' Surnames on a Christmas Tree, made at Word Art

Signature Silhouette ~ Mary Carroll

For many of my ancestors, there are no photographs, no treasured heirlooms, not even a funeral card to remember them by. But of those who could read and write, a few left their signatures behind. They often signed historical census returns, for example, copies of which still survive.

Apart from their descendants, a signature may be all that remains of them today. So, it's my intention to feature a Signature Silhouette for each of my ancestors, whenever their signature is found. Surviving copy signatures in my family are few and far between.

Here's one for my great-grandaunt Mary Carroll. Mary never married or had children of her own, but she did raise my grandfather Kevin Wynne. Kevin was her nephew, the third child of her sister Teresa (Carroll) Wynne. He stayed in Dublin with his Mary when his parents and siblings emigrated to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.

Mary Carroll (1871-1941)

Source of signature: Will of Mary Carroll signed in 1937, The National Archives of Ireland.

Are genealogy to-do lists a help or a hindrance?

I have to admit, I'm not generally into creating to-do lists. Why waste time writing about what has to be done, when you can just get on and do it? Plus, I don't feel that sense of satisfaction other people say they experience when they complete a task and tick it off their list. So I rarely make lists, except for my genealogy task list.

This list makes sense. When I'm happily engrossed researching a family tree and have a brainwave moment about another line, or come across a promising new source that's not readily available online, it gets added to the list. Then it no longer distracts me from completing the task in hand. Otherwise, I'd probably hop from one thing to another and never finish anything. My genealogy to-do list ensures no potential clues are forgotten in the process.

Then, when I find myself with a few hours to kill in Dublin city, it helps to have a pre-prepared list of the items wanted at each record repository. And there are often a few quick-wins listed too, for when I've a spare hour or two in the evenings. This all makes for the efficient use of my genealogy time.

Recently however, my to-do list has become a place of procrastination, a never-ending list of tasks added and put on the long finger. More time is spent managing the list than completing the tasks. It's nearly overwhelming. I'm even starting to feel a sense of underachievement and associated guilt... when genealogy is supposed to be fun!

It all started during the first Lockdown. Granted, the archives were closed and most of their staff were cocooning at home and not available to respond to queries. In fairness, there was nothing I could do. But many places have been open for a while now, albeit with restrictions. It's past time to get motivated and take back control.

Yesterday, I selected five tasks to work on this week. Three of them have been actioned already, one has even had a response. Five more will be selected when these are complete. Soon I'll be back on top of things, and may even find a new story to tell you.

Already I anticipate that sense of satisfaction. ✔

Reconnecting a lost branch to the family tree: James Byrne

Periodically, I revisit each line of my family tree in turn to examine any documents released since my last round of research. This time, while checking my maternal third great-grandparents Francis Byrne and Jane Daly, I discovered a new branch on my family tree.

Francis and Jane married in Dublin city on 11 October 1846 and had five known children:

	Name	Birth date	Death date	Spouse, marriage year
1	Francis Byrne	Bef. c. 1850	19 Dec 1912	Margaret McGrane, 1871
2	Hannah Byrne	Oct 1852	3 Apr 1926	John Comiskey, 1869
3	Charles Byrne	c. 1858	19 Nov 1888	Mary McCarthy, 1878
4	Jane Byrne	c. 1860	24 Jan 1887	William Cunningham, 1878
5	Catherine Byrne	4 Jan 1861	1 Jan 1930	Charles Carroll, 1920

Over the last few years additional Irish death records have been released online, including those of Charles Byrne and his sister Jane (Byrne) Cunningham.[1] Sadly, both of them caught phthisis (tuberculosis) and died young, but interestingly, Charles' death was registered by his brother - a new-to-me brother - James Byrne.

Death of Charles Byrne, Irishtown Road, Dublin, 1888

Subsequent searches showed James Byrne of 12 Upper Jane Place, the son of Francis Byrne, married Ellen Sweeney in St Laurence O'Toole's church, on 2 October 1885.[2] Their son James was born on 8 September 1887, followed by daughter Julia on 16 November 1890, son Francis on 12 July 1892 and daughter Ellen Mary on 12 August 1894.[3] They were all together at 16 Brighton Terrace, Ringsend, in 1911, along with Charles' children Edward and Ellen.[4]

Household of James Byrne, Brighton Terrace, Dublin, 1911

James, who was born about 1851, worked as a glass bottle maker. Charles had been a bottle blower. I'm not sure what the difference was between a bottle maker and a bottle blower, though obviously the blowers were the ones who shaped the molten glass into bottles. I suspect the bottle maker was the boss.

Charles and James settled in Ringsend, on the other side of the River Liffey to Jane Place, where their mother and brother Francis, my direct line, lived. Ringsend was known for its bottle factories.

The Byrnes had known ties to Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire), further south along the coast, but perhaps they had a prior connection to Ringsend too. Records for St Mary's, Star of the Sea, the church serving the area, were not captured as part of the National Library's Catholic Parish Registers, so it could explain why so few baptism records for the family were found.

Like all specialist trades, sons followed fathers, and it would have been nigh on impossible for an outsider to get an apprenticeship as a bottle blower. So the question is, who got the Byrne boys in? Their father Francis Byrne, who was dead by 1869, was a stoker or fireman. I always suspected he worked in the engine room of a steamship, but maybe not.

This discovery presents a number of new clues. And it shows, even when you think you've found all there is to find, there may be something new waiting to be discovered. 

Granny's relationship with James and Charles Byrne

Sources:

1. Copy death register, Jane Cunningham, Dublin North, 1887, Group Registration ID 6873739; Copy death register, Charles Byrne, Dublin South, 1888, Group Registration ID 7051208; IrishGenealogy.ie.
2. Copy marriage register, James Byrne & Ellen Sweeney, Dublin North, Group Registration ID 2344539, IrishGenealogy.ie.
3. Copy birth registers, Dublin South: James Byrne, 1887, Group Registration ID 11893293; Julia Byrne, 1890, Group Registration ID 9536729; Francis Byrne, 1892, Group Registration ID 9342758 & Ellen Mary 1894, Group Registration ID 11441412, IrishGenealogy.ie.
   
4. Byrne household, 16 Brighton Terrace, Pembroke West, Dublin, 1911 Census, National Archives of Ireland.

Celebrating 8 years at Black Raven Genealogy

This week I celebrate 8 years blogging at Black Raven Genealogy. 

On 6 October 2013, I wrote my first blog post - Welcome to Black Raven Genealogy – where I  promised to share my ancestors’ stories with family and friends. My main goal was, and still is, to keep my ancestors alive in living memory.

Now, as the 8th year ends, I’d like to say thank you. Thank you to my family and extended family, and all the other readers I have ‘met’ along the way. I really appreciate you leaving comments, sharing your knowledge and research stories with me, and returning to read my blog again and again. Your support means the world to me.

Here’s hoping, I never run out of stories to blog about!

Maria Radcliffe - a farmer at Yellow Walls

Is a family tree ever finished? Even when you think you have found all there is to find for a branch of the family tree, someone or something else always crops up, eventually.

This week, I came across a record for a Maria Radcliffe.[1] Maria died in Yellow Walls, the same townland in Malahide, Co. Dublin, where my Radcliffe ancestors lived. She was 56 years old when she died on 2 February 1888, indicating she was born about 1831-32.

Death of Maria Radcliffe, Balrothery, 1888

My family tree shows a great-great-great-grandaunt, Mary Ratty, baptised on 9 July 1831.[2] She was the only daughter of Peter Radcliffe and Anne Sarsfield. Mary is the English spelling of Maria and Ratty was a nickname commonly used in my Radcliffe family, so presumably Maria and Mary were one and the same person. Also, Peter Radcliffe, Maria's brother, and my great-great-great-granduncle, registered her death.

Baptism of Mary Ratty, Swords, 9 July 1831

Maria never married. She worked as a farmer. Isn't it unusual in Ireland for a woman's occupation to be mentioned! Most of my female relatives of the nineteenth century were described as 'wife of a carter', or 'daughter of a labourer', etc. But, Maria farmed.

Do you think she rented her own land, or did she live most of her life in her parents home and farm land rented by her father? Probably the latter. Her father died on 17 March 1887, less than a year before Maria. She is not recorded in Griffith's Valuation, created about 1850 in Malahide, but this was before Maria reached adulthood. It would be interesting to check the succeeding Cancelled Books, at the Valuation Office in Dublin, to see if she ever did lease land in her own name. 

During the last year of her life, following the death of their father, relations between Maria and her brother Joseph were seemingly quite strained. She even took him to court.[3]

Petty Sessions registers, Maria Radcliffe, Swords court, 1887

On 26 November 1887, at Swords petty sessions court, Maria gave evidence against Joseph to the effect that he:

'did unlawfully, willfully and maliciously damage, injure and destroy a lock on an out-office at Yelow Wallls, the property of [Maria], in the month of June 1887 under the value of £5'.

What had Maria got in that shed? We never had locks on the sheds at home when I was growing up in Yellow Walls, one hundred years later. We didn't even always lock the front door. Maybe the sheds had belonged to their father, and Joseph was seeking whatever he thought was rightly his inheritance.

The court concluded it had no jurisdiction in the case.

And Maria died of pulmonary congestion, as a result of valvular heart disease, barely two months later. And Joseph probably got whatever he was looking for.

Relationship Chart - Maria Radcliffe and my Grandfather

Sources:
[1] Death, Maria Radcliffe, Balrothery, 1888, Group Registration ID 6320631, IrishGenealogy.ie.
[2] Baptism, Mary Ratty, Swords, 9 July 1831, National Library of Ireland.
[3] Petty Sessions registers, Maria Ratcliffe, Swords court, 1887, FindMyPast.