Goin' back to my roots....

I knew researching my family history wouldn’t be straightforward, and made more difficult in my case by the fact that my parents had both died some years ago. As well as this, my parents and grandparents were Irish, so I knew I had a challenge ahead of me.

My grandmother (far right) as a bridesmaid

But I had faith in the powers of the internet. Type “family history” into Google and you get 237m results. I felt if I searched and googled enough I would piece it all together. Ancestry is big business. The UK Public Records Office is gradually putting more and more resources on line. Surely, I reasoned, Ireland is no different? I was confident I could do it all from the comfort of my own laptop.

What I hadn’t reckoned on was the Irish civil war. In 1922 a landmine blew up the Four Courts building along with all of the public records that were stored there, some of which went back to the 13th century.

This affects more people than you may think. 10% of the British population has one Irish grandparent and approximately a quarter have some Irish ancestry they're aware of. There are also 44 million Americans who claim Irish ancestry. You only have to type “trace Irish ancestors” into a search engine to see that the lack of Irish records drives them nuts.

But it also presents a business opportunity for thousands of on-line ancestry sites who claim to have millions of records – at a price.

In general, I distrust internet sites that ask for money and, I particularly distrust American sites that ask for money. So I didn’t cough up.

I kept plugging away using Google, and Google.ie. Typing in names, places, dates that I knew for sure.

My father was born in Co. Leitrim but lived in Co.Roscommon. While entering those details into a search engine and I came across the the Leitrim-Roscommon Database

This is a free database set up in 1996 by two family researchers, Ed Finn and Laurie McDonagh who came across each other by chance in an online geneaology forum. It holds surname databases, maps, parish indexes, but most importantly, the volunteers have transcribed thousands of returns from the 1901 census. These were the initial returns taken locally and not stored in Dublin. The 1901 census file now has almost 300,000 individuals for seven different counties Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, Wexford and Westmeath and they continue to add more and more.

I quickly found my grandfather who would have been 17 in 1901. And so now I had the names of my great-grandparents (Nicholas and Mary-Anne) and their ages in 1901.

-The Irish population fell from 8m to
 4.4m between 1841 and 1901

- 70million people worldwide claim Irish ancestry

- The population of Ireland today is 4m

Great-grandfather's house in 1967

To go back further, I needed their marriage details. I guessed from the ages of their children, that my great-grandparents would have married about 20 years before the 1901 census.

I searched Leitrim County Library’s geneaology site -Leitrim Roots, for couples with those names marrying around 1880. I found a few that might have been them.

There is a charge of 5euros per record. I probably looked at four or five before hitting the jackpot, an 1877 record of the marriage between Nicholas Flynn and Mary Anne McGovern. Now I had their fathers’ names and occupations. So I had traced the Flynn line back to about 1815. Not bad going from my armchair.

I got in touch with the only Irish cousin I knew to tell her all I’d found. Her branch of the family was in still in touch with my father’s relatives. One email led to another, and a family get together in Leitrim was arranged.

I met my father’s first cousin. She lives in the house that was built by her grandfather (my great-grandfather) Nicholas. I recognised the house from old photographs but hadn’t known its significance. Across the road from the house is the school (now a community centre) that Nicholas and Mary Anne founded. On the wall the dining room there were photographs of Nicholas and Mary Anne amongst a host of other ancestors. There was absolutely nothing my research could tell her.

Great-grandfather's house in 2008

So the search that had taken me months could have been reduced to a couple of phonecalls – if only I’d known who to call. But, I had been completely absorbed by my search, and as a result I have re-established contact with a branch of the family I barely knew.

Now, for my mother’s side …do you think there are many Kellys on that database?