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…
Category: Irish Roots
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…
Religious Newspaper Comes to the Rescue
I knew that the city of San Francisco did not have a copy of the marriage record for my Great Great Grandparents, Thomas A. Jones and Margaret Kelly because the records were destroyed in 1906. I also knew that the state of California did not begin recording vital records until after 1905. I didn’t know…