RLP 136: Irish Research Part 1

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 136 Irish Research Part one, Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, The Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go, Hi everyone.

Nicole (45s):
Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (47s):
Hi, Nicole, how are you doing today?

Nicole (50s):
I was messaging DNA matches today, and some of them responded in five minutes. It was so great. Those are the ones where I have their email address already though.

Diana (1m 0s):
That’s always great when you get those responses and it’s nice that you’ve made some connections there.

Nicole (1m 6s):
Yeah. What have you been working on?

Diana (1m 8s):
I’ve been working on some of my own family history and also all of our listeners might know if they follow me on Facebook, but my, my mother passed away a few days ago and in getting ready to do the life sketch for her funeral, I’ve been going back through all the histories and scrap books and things that we’ve done in the past to document her life. And I’m so grateful that she liked to tell stories and liked to collect things. It’s making it really easy to put together the story of her life because of all we’ve done. And, you know, I think sometimes we take for granted that our elderly people will be around forever. So just a call to action for anyone listening. If there is someone in your family that you haven’t yet recorded their stories, you never know how long you’re going to have them.

Diana (1m 53s):
So get those stories, get that information so that you have that preserved.

Nicole (1m 59s):
I’ll always remember grandma’s family history room. I don’t know if that’s what she called it, but it was a guest bedroom where she had pictures on the wall and all of her binders and books. And she would take us in there. And I remember one time she gave me a paper that was about our handcart pioneer ancestor. I’m really thankful for her influence on me about, you know, wanting to learn about our past.

Diana (2m 21s):
Yeah. She had such a love for family history and her ancestors, really a great legacy to pass on to us.

Nicole (2m 29s):
Well, we have a couple reminders or announcements. If you would like to learn more about upcoming Research Like a Pro study groups, make sure to join our study group email list in the show notes. And if you would like to become a mentor for our DNA study group, the mentor application is open and you can submit any time from now until the end of the summer. And if you’re interested in finding out about upcoming sales, please join our newsletter to get that every Monday and information about podcasts and blog posts that we publish.

Diana (3m 4s):
Right? Well, we are excited to introduce our guest today. Our guest is an expert in Irish Research. Her name is Jessica Taylor Morgan, and Jessica is an accredited genealogists through ICAPGEN, the full title I think I’ve said that a few times, the International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists and Jessica has worked as a professional genealogist in many different ways. She was at Ancestry Genealogists for nine years, and she worked for both clients and television shows such as Who Do You Think You Are? Long lost family and A New Leaf. She is a graduate in medieval history and specializes and research in the UK, Ireland, United States and immigration.

Diana (3m 52s):
And she’s currently working at Brigham Young University as a fellow in residence for the Defense POW/Mia Accounting Agency. So she works with students locating descendants of soldiers who died in World War II. And we’re also really lucky to have Jessica as one of our team members at Family Locket genealogists. So we are absolutely thrilled to have her here today and talking to us all about Irish Research. So welcome Jessica.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (4m 21s):
Hi Diana. Thanks. It’s good to be here.

Nicole (4m 24s):
Well, let’s jump right into researching about our Irish ancestors. So I have to say that Jessica has wonderful blog posts about Irish Research have been so helpful. So if you want to read those, those are linked in the show notes. And this episode will cover the first three of her blog posts that she wrote. And they do focus on starting with an Irish person who was an immigrant to the United States, or the principles could apply to other parts of the world they immigrated to as well. So, Jessica, let’s talk about asking the right questions about our Irish immigrant ancestor.

Nicole (5m 4s):
What do we need to do first to kind of consider how to start?

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (5m 9s):
Yeah, I think it’s very tempting whether you have an Irish immigrant ancestor or you discover you have an immigrant ancestor from another country that you just want to dive straight into that country and just go, okay, what do they have? What can I find directly in that country? But Irish research, it’s important to remember is one of the most difficult fields in genealogy research. And we’ll go into exactly why a little later, but it is really important when you find that Irish immigrant ancestor to ask the right questions about them in order to properly find them and to take your time finding those answers out.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (5m 52s):
So the first question that is important to ask is when did they immigrate to the United States? And you don’t have to have a specific year per se, but it’s important to know the time period because the time period that they immigrated can determine what area in Ireland that they came from in the first place. We look at the history of Irish immigration to America. The first Irish immigrants who came over were indentured servants in the 1600s. And then we have the Scotch Irish migration or the Scots-Irish were originally from Scotland, came over and settled in the Ulster province of Ireland in the 1600s, and then were pushed out by their Catholic neighbors over into America.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (6m 37s):
So with that context, if your Irish ancestor was in the Carolinas or in Virginia in the 16 or early 1700s, odds are, they were Scotch-Irish, which can tell you that they came from the Ulster province in Ireland. And then the next huge wave of migration was between 1845 and the 1850s, 60s, 70s, the potato famine, which caused a million deaths in Ireland and caused a million more people to immigrate. And this was one of the most prominent waves of migration for Irish men, women, and children, to different parts of the world.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (7m 18s):
So just knowing the time period can be really important. And these people came from all over Ireland. So it’s good to know that few have an ancestor who likely moved over because of the potato famine, and then there’s later migrations from the 1880s to 1900s. So yeah, it’s very important to, to get that first question answered like that time period, that era in which they immigrated, because that’s going to dramatically determine the type of records that you look at.

Nicole (7m 50s):
Absolutely. That’s so important to be sure to focus on the right records in your research planning. So what a great question to ask.

Diana (8m 0s):
Yeah, I think that’s really interesting because so often when we have early roots in the United States, you know, the 1600s and 1700s, we don’t have an immigration record like we might have in the later 1800s. And so having some of that historical background of what was happening can give us some real clues on when our ancestor came over. I’m pretty sure we’ve got a good group of Scotch Irish that ended up in the Carolinas and Virginia, but we’re not quite back there yet. So it gives me hope that we can eventually figure out something. Well, I know religion is a huge part of researching your Irish ancestors. So what kind of questions do we need to ask about religion?

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (8m 43s):
Yeah, the religion is absolutely very important to Irish research because religion defines so much of Irish history and also the records that are available. So the next question to ask yourself about your Irish immigrant ancestor is whether they were Catholic or Protestant. If your Irish ancestor came over before the potato famine, the historical context can help you answer that because, for instance, the indentured servants that I mentioned earlier, who came in the 1600s, most of them were Catholic. Whereas the Scots Irish were almost exclusively Protestant. So context can help you there, but during the potato famine, both Catholics and Protestants were coming over, but knowing what church your ancestor attended in America, or just even the type of cemetery or graveyard they were buried in, can be a clue about their religion.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (9m 37s):
Back in Ireland, if they’re buried in a Catholic cemetery, they were very likely Catholic in Ireland, and it was rare for an ancestor to swap religions, to go from Protestant to Catholic and vice versa. So if you find your ancestor as a Protestant Methodist or a Baptist, basically non-Catholic religious group in America, they were very likely Protestant back in Ireland. And it’s important to know and distinguish which, because that’s going to determine the type of records that you are looking at back in Ireland because Catholic records and Protestant records, they’re very different. So, yeah, that’s a very important question to answer for your ancestor.

Diana (10m 16s):
That’s really good information. And maybe something that researcher hadn’t thought was really that important to figure out.

Nicole (10m 23s):
Yeah. That’s something that I hadn’t really considered. What else would you need to know before you embark in your research about your Irish ancestor?

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (10m 33s):
Sure. Ideally you would know when they were born, if you have an exact date of birth, that is the most ideal scenario, but that’s not always the case. It’s not always easy. Many Irish immigrants were illiterate. And so they therefore didn’t know their birth date. And a lot of times they would give a vague estimation of when they were born. I’ve seen censuses where an Irish immigrant would say that they were born in about 1865. And then in the next census, 10 years later say that they were born about 1870. And so there can be a wide range, five years, sometimes even 10 years that the ancestors will report their birth date.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (11m 15s):
And it’ll be a bit of a big range, but it’s important to know that range, even if you don’t have the exact date, because that’s a bit of information that you can use when you eventually look at Irish records, if you know, like, okay, I know that this person was born between 1825 and 1835, that helps narrow the field. At least, especially if you have an ancestor with a more common name, like John Kelly or things like that, then that will really help you be able to eliminate other possibilities. So getting an idea, whether it’s a date or a birth range is really important to find out in American records before you go over and jump over into Ireland.

Nicole (11m 59s):
Oh, for sure. Yeah. You can just imagine a scenario where maybe I would have like just one census and their age from that was maybe five years off. And then if I didn’t go and look at all of the different census records and get a wider range, then maybe I wouldn’t find the right record when I jumped back to Irish Research. So good idea to really get a range where they could have been born

Diana (12m 23s):
Well. And I think it’s important to note that this applies to all of our research, really that when we’re searching for births or even like marriages or death, sometimes we need to widen the range of dates because things could be incorrect in the records. And I’m thinking of some situations I’ve had where the ancestors only listed on maybe one census because they died young and then you’d really want to broaden your range because you don’t have anything else to compare it to. So just something to keep in the back of your mind. Well, let’s talk about some other ways that you could differentiate people of very similar names. So how do we get around that?

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (13m 3s):
Yeah. Unfortunately in Ireland, there are a lot of common names. They pulled a lot of names from the new Testament. So you get a lot of Mary’s, John’s, James, you also get a lot of Bridgets and yeah, finding the right Mary or John in Ireland can be like a needle in a haystack. So on top of getting an idea of their birth date range, like when they were born, it’s also important to know who their friends and family were, just any clues that you can find about names of other relatives or close acquaintances who were also born in Ireland can really help you narrow the field down.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (13m 44s):
And Irish immigrants often settled in communities in America that came from the same area in Ireland. A lot of times people moved as communities or in groups. And so getting an idea of that bigger group or going through census or records to find out who your Irish immigrant ancestor was living with, and if they were living with other relatives, even if it’s someone at a bit more distant, like a cousin, it can be really helpful because if you find a candidate back in Ireland for your ancestor, and you also find matching people for their relatives that you know, were in America, then you know that you’re on the right track.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (14m 26s):
So yeah, just expanding your scope to friends and family can be really helpful for you in tracing back to the right place in Ireland.

Diana (14m 35s):
So when we talk about place, how do we figure out the county they came from in Ireland?

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (14m 42s):
Yes. So when you’re researching your ancestor in America, you’re not always going to find the name of the county that they came from, but that’s always like the most ideal thing that you should strive for if possible is figuring out the county they came from in Ireland before you go over into Ireland, and the reason why there’s an emphasis on counties in particular is they’re not really small and specific like American ones. They can go up to 2,800 square miles in size. So if you have a name of a county in your American records that you’re looking at, it gives you a place to start looking in Ireland. So it helps narrow the field, but you know, there’s still plenty more to do, but ideally you want to get that name of the county.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (15m 30s):
And especially if you have a common surname like Kelly or Murphy, knowing which county they come from is just even more important. If your ancestor’s Scotts-Irish, that’s helpful because you know that that they’ve come from Ulster because of the historical context. And that’s a province covering several counties in Northern Ireland. So that helps you narrow the field a bit. But I will say that not all records in America are going to give a county for your Irish ancestor. And you might not be able to find out which county, but that’s sort of the gold standard when you’re doing research in America for your Irish ancestor is to just try to go through all the records that you can and see if there is a reference to a county, if there is then your life is going to be a lot easier when you’re doing research over in Ireland,

Diana (16m 21s):
That is so true. And when you do find that record, that names, the county, that it really is cause for the genealogy happy dance in Irish Research. I’ve done that a few times. Well, thank you for helping us understand so much about those initial questions. I agree with you that often when we see, oh, they’re from Ireland, you just want to jump to Ireland and find their birth record or their christening record immediately and it is a needle in the haystack. So this is a way to really narrow down some things to help you figure that out. So great questions to ask.

Nicole (16m 53s):
So then which resources can help us find the answers to these critical questions?

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (16m 59s):
Well, there’s a lot of different resources in American records. Censuses are incredibly helpful because they can provide you with lots of information with the ancestors birth year, like we discussed earlier, if its 1900s or onwards, It can give you the year of immigration and the year that they naturalized. It can also give you the names of relatives if your ancestor was living with relatives at the time of the census. And sometimes occasionally a census will give you a specific place in Ireland where they were born. Some census takers were just very specific like that. So you might get lucky and get a specific place in Ireland in a given census.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (17m 40s):
So that’s why it’s important to try to get every census that you can, whether it’s on a state level, cause I think a lot of people forget that there were state level censuses as well as nationwide censuses. So just try to get as many of them as you can. And that will give you a lot of good information on your ancestor.

Nicole (17m 58s):
Yes. I loved in your blog post about this, the example of a census record that said the county within Ireland where a person was born and you don’t always see that. So it’s really a good idea to check every single census because you never know what you might find.

Diana (18m 14s):
Yeah, census research really is the backbone of our research. So it’s exciting when we can get a lot of censuses to use. Well, another staple that we use in our research are the vital records. So what can we do with, with searching those for the Irish immigrants

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (18m 32s):
Vital records, just like in any other type of genealogy research you do, vital records are also really important and give a lot of really great information. Vital records can give you parent names, birthplace, birth date, the cemetery, or graveyard, where the person was buried. If it’s a death certificate and with the death records, if they provides the cemetery or graveyard, they were buried in, then you could find out right away what religion they were. So vital records can provide really good steps for further research and especially on parent names or names of relatives, knowing your Irish, immigrant ancestors’ names of parents, whether that’s through a marriage certificate or through a death certificate is going to go a long way with finding their birth or baptism record over in Ireland.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (19m 25s):
So yeah, I definitely recommend vital records. They are an intrinsic part of Irish Research, just like in any part of genealogy research.

Diana (19m 35s):
Well, and when you mentioned the parents names, you’re building up your FAN club, you’re building up those people that are going to connect them in, in Ireland. So really important to track everything down. What about newspapers? I know sometimes those can give some really good clues for where someone originated.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (19m 56s):
So newspapers are really great because depending on the newspaper and where your Irish immigrant ancestor lived, obituaries for your ancestor can be really detailed. They can give even the county or the specific place in Ireland that they came from. If they’re providing like a biographical sketch of your ancestor. But I will say that large urban areas, if your ancestor died in Chicago or lived in a place like New York city, you’re less likely to have a lot of newspaper articles about them or any real details just because there are so many people there, but if your ancestor lived out in a rural place or in a smaller town and you’ve got smaller town newspapers, then you’re going to get a lot more details about the citizens.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (20m 46s):
And that will include more descriptions in marriage notices or in the day-to-day lives, if there’s a social event. Or as I mentioned before in obituaries, and they’re just going to be a lot more detailed and there’s going to be a stronger likelihood that family relatives and, and even where they came from in Ireland is going to be mentioned,

Diana (21m 11s):
Well, I’m looking at your blog posts and you’ve got this really great example of an advertisement from the Boston Pilot, which I had never seen before. So tell us a little bit about these advertisements.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (21m 25s):
Yeah, so the Boston Pilot was created principally for families coming over from Ireland because a lot of times they couldn’t afford to all travel over in one family group. So a lot of times family would send family members over piecemeal whenever they could save up enough money to make the trip. And a lot of times family would lose touch of between each other, because it would take sometimes months, maybe even years to get another relative over to the states. And they don’t know where their other family is. So the Boston Pilot was created so that people could send out, they’re called advertisements, but really notices saying, Hey, I’m looking for my uncle or my parents.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (22m 15s):
Their last known location in America was this, and vice versa people in America saying, Hey, we’re looking for our brother or sister. They were supposed to come over on a boat at this time. And so, yeah, it was a very helpful resource for Irish immigrants to be able to find each other once they got over to the states. And it’s a really great resource for us because these newspapers will name specifically what place in Ireland. They came from as a way to identify them and to help locate fellow family members. And this collection is all available on Ancestry.com and you can search it if you just go to the card catalog on Ancestry.com and type in Boston Pilot, that should bring it up.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (23m 0s):
And that’s a great resource. If your ancestor ever put a notice in looking for relatives or had a notice put in about them, then that gives you specific locations right then and there not every immigrant ancestor did this, but it’s always worth taking a look.

Diana (23m 18s):
Great. Well, thanks for bringing that to our attention. That’s one that I had not really known about.

Nicole (23m 23s):
Yeah. Newspaper finds are always really exciting to me. So what about immigration and naturalization records? How can those help us?

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (23m 32s):
Well, immigration and naturalization records can be really helpful, but it’s depending on the time period, because I know that that’s something a lot of people want to go for first, when they think of an immigrant ancestor, whether it’s Irish or from another country, they think, oh, I want to get their immigration records. And it’s good to know, like when exactly they came over to the States and what port and what ship, but really depending on the time period, the records themselves can be very informative or not really informative at all. 1850s to 1880s, passenger lists and naturalization records typically don’t actually have a lot of information they’re handy and neat to find, but of times they will just give a person’s name and age and maybe occupation and that’s it.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (24m 24s):
And that they came from Ireland. Not a lot of like specific details. And it’s the sort of details that you can find in other places like censuses and vital records, et cetera. But if your ancestor came over from the 1890s onwards, then you get a lot more detailed passenger lists happening and naturalization records. And those have a wealth of information on them, including passenger lists from the 1890s onwards, what typically have a name of their nearest contact for the immigrant back in the country that they came from, which is just incredible. It’ll give like their name and address.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (25m 4s):
So that can give you a lot of great information right there for tracing your ancestor back. So passenger lists, it really depends. Honestly, if I’m doing research on an Irish ancestor and I know they came over in the 1850s, I personally don’t even look for their passenger list because there’s not enough information to really pin down, which John Kelly of the many John Kelly’s in the 1850s came over. And unless the client is really interested in knowing when they came over and is interested in the arrival port, I typically don’t look because there’s just a lack of information there, but it’s a good question to ask yourself if you’re really interested in learning about when they came over or if you’re just looking for information, they’ll take you back to Ireland and then looking at the time period when your ancestor would have come.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (25m 59s):
And just some extra historical context, a lot of people don’t know this, but most Irish immigrants initially escaping the potato famine in the 1840s, they came through New York, Boston, Philadelphia, typically, but they also came through Canada because there were less restrictions on traveling from Ireland to Canada at the time. And then later in the 1860s and so on, Canada started putting more restrictions on their immigration. So if you can’t find your ancestor going into the major American ports, Canada’s a good place to look.

Nicole (26m 34s):
You know, a project that I’m working on right now for a client actually has some of the family coming in to Canada and then moving down to Boston. So that’s a really interesting point that you make something really important to think about.

Diana (26m 48s):
Well, let’s move on to church records. We talked a little bit about determining whether they are Catholic or Protestant. So I am guessing that church records will hold some clues to an ancestor’s origins in Ireland.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (27m 3s):
Yes, absolutely. So church records in America can give a lot of good information for your ancestor. Obtaining church records for Protestant ancestors in America is a bit tricky because there’s a variety of Protestant churches and they didn’t always have consistent record keeping. So you might find some good church records for your ancestor. That entirely depends on which denomination they followed and then which church they attended and then how well that particular church kept records. So Protestant research is a bit trickier in America. However, for Catholics, they had a bit more of a consistent system with all of the different Catholic parishes of filling out baptisms marriage and burial records.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (27m 55s):
And you usually will have better luck finding good, consistent record keeping among the Catholic congregations in America. That’s something that I think a lot of beginning researchers with Irish ancestry, maybe don’t think about, they’ll think about the church records over in Ireland, but it’s important to think about the church records over here. There’s a lot of good Catholic records over here. And so if you can just figure out which parish your ancestor attended. I did research a little while back of a Irish couple that went over to Colorado and got married there at a Catholic parish and their marriage record, which was, it was in Latin and most Catholic records are in Latin, but they’re pretty straightforward to translate and to determine what they’re saying, but the marriage record in Colorado gave their parents names and also the county that the bride and groom each came from that was great.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (28m 57s):
And the Catholic records are typically held by the individual churches. So I had to contact that individual church to get that information. And sometimes you just need to do that. And it’s either helped by the church or by the greater diocese that the church is located in. And a way to figure out which parish your ancestor was married in, a tactic is to look at their civil marriage record and just get the name of the priest that was officiating, and then look up which church that priest belonged to. And then, boom, you’ve got a church that you can then contact for that record.

Diana (29m 30s):
Wow. Those are some really good tips. And you’ve kind of touched on something there that there’ll be a civil marriage record, but then also the church marriage record, which could have so much more information than the civil. So if you know that they were married in the Catholic church, they should look for both, right? Absolutely.

Nicole (29m 48s):
Well, how about some lesser known sources? Like tombstones,

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (29m 54s):
Tombstones are really great and they are not very well known resource for Irish immigrants, but they could be incredibly helpful because while they typically note the birth and death dates of the deceased, it was tradition for a lot of Irish immigrants to have their place of origin in Ireland inscribed on their tombstone. A lot of Irish immigrants did this, so tombstones are definitely worth hunting down and some tombstones only give the name of the county and then others give a specific Irish parish or talent that they came from. So it’s always worthwhile to track down the tombstone, if you know, what cemetery your ancestor was buried in.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (30m 38s):
I always follow that up with contacting the cemetery or going on to a site, like Find A Grave and just trying to track down a picture of that tombstone. So, you know, whether or not your Irish ancestor had that written down on the tombstone, it is a great resource. And that’s something I always pursue when I’m, when I’m doing Irish research.

Diana (31m 2s):
Yeah. I think sometimes we overlook these really basic sources. Well, I love to use county histories in my research in the south. Can that also be helpful for an Irish immigrant?

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (31m 16s):
Yes, absolutely. Especially for Irish immigrants who came back in the Colonial era. If you’ve got Scotch Irish ancestors, you’ll notice that a lot of the records I’ve been talking about, like vital records and censuses and newspapers, don’t really apply to the Scots Irish because those records aren’t really available for those people. But county histories can be a great source for them. So if they came over in the 18th or 19th centuries, depending on your Irish immigrant ancestors prominence in that county, if they were one of the original settlers or if they had a significant impact, your left and impression on that county, the county history can provide some good biographical information about them, including their immigration and names of relatives and a place of origin and Ireland.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (32m 11s):
So just sticking into the county history for your ancestor, if they helped settle a county early on, it can give a lot of good information.

Nicole (32m 21s):
So after you’ve looked at all these sources and maybe you’re still struggling to find any information about that county of origin, what are some of the different strategies that we can use?

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (32m 31s):
I think it’s really easy to worry that you’re not going to find the origin of your ancestor. If you can’t find the answers directly relating to your ancestor, like say you do all this research and you’re asking the right questions and you’re going to the right resources for your ancestor, but you’re just coming up empty for that ancestor. It’s easy to feel discouraged, but there are plenty of other strategies you can use to find those answers, the first one being family. So if you can’t find those answers for your ancestor directly, then you could find those same answers in the records of your ancestors, brother, or cousin or another relative.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (33m 16s):
As I mentioned before, Irish immigrants often traveled as families and where records may be scarce for your direct ancestor, they may not be so scarce for their relatives, especially if your ancestor died before death records get really detailed in the state that they’re living in. They may have a younger sibling who has a very good detailed death record, that names the parents. And then you’ve got the names of the parents for your Irish ancestor. Another lesser known resource are city directories, which can help between census years. So while census is only capture every 10 years, if your ancestors living in a city, the city directories can fill in the gaps.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (34m 1s):
And if you’ve got your ancestor living at an address, and then another person with the same last name, living at that same address at the time and the city directory, then odds are they’re relative. And then you can further pursue that person. And it might be a relative that you didn’t even know existed, but lived between those census years. Another way to track down family is with the grave sites. Oftentimes Irish immigrants would be buried with family members in the same plot. So if you’re contacting the cemetery to get their tombstone information, you should also ask them who were they buried with, who originally purchased the plot that they were buried in.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (34m 46s):
And often times you’ll get a nice, healthy list of fellow family members and their birth and death years along with that as well. So just expanding your search to family can be incredibly helpful for tracing and finding those answers to your ancestors questions that you may be not be able to find elsewhere.

Nicole (35m 10s):
Yes, this is exactly the strategy that I used on a recent client project. The ancestor of interest, the death record that she had in Massachusetts gave her parents’ names, but not her mother’s maiden name. But then we found her brother and his death record actually gave his mother’s maiden name. And that was a very helpful clue. So it was really important to research the family as well.

Diana (35m 33s):
I love all these ideas and I think it’s important to remember that generally people didn’t just travel by themselves. Sometimes they did, but when they came to a place, they often try to gather with people that they knew. And so I think there’s that larger point of community that we can also consider, you know, these are all things that we talked about with the FAN club. So how could we use that idea of the greater community as we are researching?

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (36m 2s):
Yeah. So as I mentioned before, Irish immigrants would often travel in groups and as communities, and so while you’re looking at family members, it’s also good to get an idea of the community around them. And I should note that if your ancestor is in a huge city, like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, it’s going to be harder to see a movement as a community because there is just such a mixture of different immigrant families from all over the place. But if your ancestor came over and settled in a small town or locale or rural area, then oftentimes they were joining other people who came from the same place they did back in Ireland.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (36m 50s):
So a way to tell whether or not they came in a community is again, historical context with the Scots-Irish. They typically came over to the colonies in large groups under their pastor. And that’s something that’s not, I think, as well known to the common researcher. So if you’re doing Scotch Irish research, get the name of their pastor because odds are, they traveled in a group with their pastor from Ulster. So if you get the name of their pastor, then that gives you an extra branch to research, because if you can trace their pastor back, odds are your ancestor came from that same place as their pastor did. So just knowing something like that, but then also take a look at your ancestors, neighbors, and censuses.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (37m 36s):
If everyone around them is also Irish, it would be worthwhile to figure out where those neighbors came from. And that’s kind of indicative of a mass migration from a location in Ireland to that town. Also checking out the towns or the county’s history, it seeing if it mentions an influx of immigrants from a specific Irish locale, that could be really helpful to you. Also just checking out the newspapers for the town’s residents, newspapers, obituaries, and see if they consistently name a particular place in Ireland that residents had come from, especially in obituaries, if they all consistently named the same place, then odds are your ancestor traveled with a group from that place over to America, same with the tracing friends and close acquaintances.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (38m 29s):
And also cemeteries are good again for this sort of information. I was doing research for an Irish immigrant ancestor in Rhode Island in a small town and as I was looking for his tombstone. I noticed in the database that a lot of tombstones had the exact same specific parish in Ireland, that they were all coming from and a bit more digging, pointed me in the right direction for where he came from. And so just having all these tombstones, all giving the same place, even though these people weren’t related to the ancestor I was looking for was hugely indicative of a mass migration of this community over to this one spot in Rhode Island.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (39m 15s):
So it’s good to keep your eyes open and to look not just at your ancestor, but at their family, and not just at the family, but at the community around them.

Diana (39m 24s):
That is so fascinating. I love that idea of looking at the entire community. And we do have some good resources now on the internet thinking of Billion Graves, where if you have the plus subscription, you can look at all the tombstones in that area easily and look at all the ones around your ancestor, but even on Find A Grave, you know, you can search by just the cemetery and then look through all of those memorials to see if you can get more information or you can always just go to the cemetery yourself and see what you can find. Those are just exciting ideas for research.

Nicole (39m 60s):
Yeah, those really are. Can we do anything with DNA and helping us determine the county of origin?

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (40m 8s):
Yeah, absolutely. So DNA is a very exciting and relatively new field in the grand scheme of things for Irish research, but it’s a very helpful additional tool for tracing your ancestors back to Ireland. A lot of sites provide ethnicity estimates, like what percentage of you is Irish or English, et cetera, and development and research and DNA has gotten so refined that they’re able to narrow down even specific communities and sub regions within Ireland, that your DNA could come from. Living DNA, that site has test takers that are from the UK, and Ancestry and 23and me have large databases that break down ethnicity by counties and communities within Ireland.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (41m 1s):
Back in 2018, Ancestry expanded their DNA database to cover 90 regions in Ireland. And the nice thing about Ancestry is that they continually update your DNA results for free based on the refined science that they have. So if you haven’t checked your DNA ethnicity estimate on Ancestry in a few years, go and check again, because it’s possible that you have some specific regions in Ireland that have been pinpointed by Ancestry that you might not know about. And there’s some great success stories that you can look at. I put links to those within my blog about DNA research. One of the blog posts is called Kiss Me I’m Donegal Irish.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (41m 43s):
That was a success story written by Elizabeth Anderson. And she talks about how her DNA results gave Northwest Donegal specifically, as a place of origin for her. And then her dad, who was where she got the Irish ancestry from, her dad’s results, gave Northwest Donegal and Munster. And I think that really reinforces the importance of getting not only a DNA test for yourself, but also encouraging your parents or people in the older generation in your family to also jump in and take a DNA test because the DNA results will show what you yourself inherited.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (42m 23s):
And if you’re inheriting DNA from your mom’s side and your dad’s side, there’s less of a chance it’s going to show more specific information. And so if you get your dad to take the DNA test, then it’s going to show more of your dad’s side and same with your moms. So I thought it was particularly interesting and insightful that Elizabeth Anderson took the DNA test for herself and got her dad tested. And that’s how they were able to find that additional region for their ancestors. Another success story that you can read is another Ancestry blog called DNA and Irish Research. And that was actually written by me under my maiden name, Taylor, and I wrote about helping someone who took a DNA test trace their Irish ancestry back, and their results were so specific that Ancestry traced their Irish community back to a region in Ireland that was only 12 miles wide, which was incredible.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (43m 23s):
So we basically knew where her Irish ancestors came from within a 12 mile space, which is insanely specific. And that’s not something that you can always get from records. So DNA is becoming more and more an incredible resource for doing your Irish Research. Definitely.

Nicole (43m 44s):
Wow. That is so specific. Thank you for sharing those success stories.

Diana (43m 49s):
Yeah. I am just looking at the ethnicity estimate and I never seen anything this specific with these really small townlands named and counties. That’s really cool. I’ve had a lot of people tell me, oh yeah, the only way I can do my Irish research is just to go there. And I think even going there, unless you know where you’re going, isn’t going to do any good. You can’t just show up in Ireland and say, okay, where are you ancestor? So exactly there is so much we can do from home to research our Irish. And I think this podcast has just been very eye-opening about how much we can do, and if you’ve been feeling stuck, I’m sure there’s something you’ve heard in this episode that has kind of given you some new ideas.

Diana (44m 35s):
So thank you so much, Jessica, for sharing your wealth of knowledge on Irish Research. This has been fascinating.

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (44m 43s):
Yeah, of course. And I really enjoyed being with you guys and being able to talk about this. It’s really exciting. And I think it’s easy for people to feel a bit overwhelmed or discouraged and not know where to start over, to go further with their Irish ancestry. And there are always options. So that would be my main advice is don’t give up.

Nicole (45m 5s):
That’s really great advice for all genealogists. All right. Well, we’ll talk to Jessica again next week. More about records in Ireland. So have a great week everyone. Bye-bye bye-bye

Jessica Taylor Morgan, AG (45m 18s):
Bye.

Nicole (45m 19s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our book Research Like a Pro a Genealogist Guide on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our Research Like a Pro online course or join our next study group. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com. To share your progress and ask questions join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our eCourse or study group. If you like what you heard and would like to support this podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.