Is Meets Was

Meet Timothy and Margaret Ford of County Cork with two of their daughters, Eliza and Margaret, and two of their sons, whose names are still to be discovered. Timothy and Margaret are my great-great-great-grandparents. I have known their names for only two days. Based on a consultation last year with Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective, I believe that the above picture of Timothy and Margaret with four of their children is a photograph, possibly taken in the 1880s, of a daguerreotype dating back to the early 1850s. On Saturday I went to a class on New York City research offered by the California Genealogical Society (CGS) and taught by CGS’s President, Steve Harris. Steve told us about an indexed collection of probate records, New York, Kings County Estate Files, 1866-1923, now available for viewing at familysearch.org. I perused several of the probate files and oh joy! I found a probate file for one of Timothy and Margaret’s daughters, Catharine Ford. The file rev...

In the early 1850s, while thousands were fleeing Ireland and the devastation caused by the potato famine, somebody or something lured Henry Webster to leave Scotland and to move his entire family to Ireland. By 1851, Henry Webster, who I introduced in my first post, had become the farm overseer at Inch in the parish of Fettercairn, Kincardineshire, Scotland.  When the census was taken, Agnes was alone at their home in Scotland with three of their four children: John, age 4; Henry, age 2; and the baby, James.  Jessie, their 5 year old daughter, was staying across the river at Cowie Hill in Edzell with her Aunt and Uncle, Elizabeth and Richard Alexander. Henry wasn't home.  Perhaps, Henry was away scouting Ballykeenan, the farm in Ireland where they would soon be moving. Two years ago, I went on a most extraordinary journey to Ireland. One of the many highlights of the trip was finding my husband's ancestral home, Ballykeenan, near Myshall in Cou...