An excerpt from In Search of Our Ancestors: 101 Stories of Serendipity and Connection by Megan Smolenyak. Many of us have a particular ancestor who calls to us louder than others, one with whom we feel a special kinship. For me, this is one of my great-great-grandmothers, Ellen Nelligan. Perhaps it’s because my own grandmother – her granddaughter – told me tales of her life. … [Read more...] about From Ellen to Eileen
Genealogy
On the Prowl for Springsteen’s
Irish Roots
Roots detective Megan Smolenyak explores the National Library of Ireland’s online collection of Catholic parish registers, uncovers entries for ancestors of a few well-know Irish Americans, including Bruce Springsteen, and offers a guide to finding yours.
Ancestors of Irish American Celebrities in New Online Catholic Parish Registers
The last few years have been kind to those … [Read more...] about On the Prowl for Springsteen’s
Irish Roots
NLI to Make 400,000 Parish
Records Digitally Available
The National Library of Ireland recently announced that it will be digitizing their parish records and providing free online access starting on July 8th. These records are considered the most important resource for researching Irish family history prior to the 1901 Census, and the NLI has referred to the digitization as the greatest ever genealogical project in the … [Read more...] about NLI to Make 400,000 Parish
Records Digitally Available
“Fully” Kearney: President Obama’s Irish Ancestor
It was seven years ago when I identified Fulmoth Kearney of Moneygall, Ireland as the most recent immigrant on the maternal side of Barack Obama’s family tree. Inheriting land in Ohio from a brother, Fulmoth’s father, Joseph, left Ireland for the United States in 1849. Fulmoth and his sister, Margaret, followed in 1850, and his mother and two younger siblings in 1851 – a … [Read more...] about “Fully” Kearney: President Obama’s Irish Ancestor
An Ancestral Tour of Stephen Colbert’s Family
It was a damp morning in late February 2008 when the phone rang. Harvard scholar and PBS host Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr. was calling with one of his random genealogical requests. He was going to be on The Colbert Report later that day. Did I, by any chance, know anything about Stephen Colbert’s roots? Luckily for him, I had two hundred years of family history at the … [Read more...] about An Ancestral Tour of Stephen Colbert’s Family