I’m borrowing this for Randy’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun since I wrote it only two days ago. This is by far my best research adventure of the year. I located obituaries that were out of my reach and I uncovered a new line of my Kelly family tree. None of this would have been possible…
Category: Irish Roots
Meet My New Ancestor, Michael Dolan
Finally! At long last I get to add a generation to my Dolan family tree. I found a possible entry for my ancestor’s brother, Patrick Dolan, in the Massachusetts Vital Records index at Footnote.com. The date, 1855, seemed a little late. Patrick would be in his 30s by the time he was married, but the…
Tombstones Have Errors, Too: Part Three
In the first post in this series, I told of Michael Kelly who committed suicide in 1881 and how that date differed from the tombstone. In the second post in this series, I used city directories to see if I could establish connections between Michael, John, and Martin Kelly. In this post, I’m going back…
Tombstones Have Errors, Too: Part Two
In my previous post, Tombstone Have Errors Too: Part One, I showed how my skepticism about the date on Michael Kelly’s tombstone lead me to search further for information on his death. I found a newspaper article in the Daily Alta that told of a Michael Kelly who had committed suicide on the same day,…
Martin Kelly, My Family’s First Business Owner?
Much of what my Grandma Shellabarger told me about her family turned out to be myth or exaggeration. She got one thing right. One of her ancestors owned boarding houses in San Francisco. That ancestor was my Great Great Great Grandfather, Martin Kelly. Martin was born sometime around 1820 in County Roscommon, Ireland. I’m not…