[Research Journal #6, Entry #1]My Gr Gr Great Grandmother was Maria da Conceicao (de Mello) de Braga left for Hawaii in 1882. She didn’t leave many clues as to who her parents were. I knew she was from the town of Maia, Ribeira Grande, Sao Miguel Island, and that she married Jozimas de Braga. Beyond…
How do you spell Kelly?
[Research Journal #5, Entry #10] I set off to find the Kelly’s in Massachusetts. But guess what? There weren’t there! All the Martin Kelly/Kelley’s were a wash. What to do? What to do? I decided that there had to be a problem with the surname. Online census indexes are notorious for creative transcription. I had…
And We’re Back at the Census
Since I came up with nothing in the 1880 census for San Francisco and the 1850 Census for New Hampshire, I decided to revisit the 1870 and 1860 census. I was pretty sure my family was in San Francisco at that time. As long as they didn’t avoid census enumerators, I should be able to…
I’ve Been Searching…City Directories
[Research Journal #5, Entry #9] Since the 1880 census was a bust, I went back to the Oakland Public Library and buried my head in city directories. I wanted to see if I could find Margaret (Kelly) and Thomas Jones and Martin Kelly. My hopes were that they’d be living near each other. I soon…
As Klondike Cornelius Would Say “Ah Nuthin!”
Normally, we work our family trees backwards from present to past. Sometimes we get impatient. My Kellys were supposed to be in New Hampshire in 1849, so I jump the census years to see if the Kellys were there in 1850. I searched through many, many Kellys. Unfortunately, no one matched my family in Manchester…