Is Meets Was

I started this post twelve years ago, and unintentionally, I did not click the button to publish it. Never too late? In 2004, we visited our Canadian cousin, Olive Joyce Hudson, aka  Joyce Burnell   (1920-2011) . Joyce regaled us with family stories, especially with tales of her personal adventures. Kilquade in County Wicklow c. 1953 Kilquade, Joyce's childhood home in Ireland, came to life as she told us about its history and how her family came to live there. Joyce Burnell, Nick and Cathy Paris, and Irene and Dave Stradtman Filled with non-stop energy, Joyce put us to work picking plums and preparing them for canning.   Although she had been to Niagara Falls a gazillion times, Joyce personally guided us throughout the area. Thank you, Joyce. © 2012, Cathy H Paris

Olive, Eulie, and Cedric Hopkins October 1897 I am pleased to introduce you to Winifred Eulalie Hopkins. Everyone called her Eulie. She was born on September 3, 1894, in Milverton, England .  Eulie's father, George, was the son of an Irish merchant and minister from Wicklow, Ireland.  Eulie's mother, Emily Ruth Draper, was the daughter of a coach smith and livery stable keeper of Hackney, London, England.  Eulie, December 1901 Garry, Edith, Harold, Lance, Maz, Cedric, Eulie, Olive, and John c. 1918 Eulie was the 8th of 10 children.  While Eulie passed into adulthood, the Great War, now known as World War I, was raging in Europe. It began on 28 July 1914, when Eulie was approaching her 20th birthday, and lasted until 11 November 1918, when Eulie was 24 years old. More than 9 million people who fought in the war, mostly men, were killed. Possibly the vast carnage is the reason that Eulie and two of her sisters never mar...

For years I was proud of being the first woman in our family who left home before she was married, seeking my independence and destiny in another world. (For me, that other world was California.) How wrong I was! Researching family history, I have discovered a parade of woman in my family, and in my husband's family, who traveled a similar road years before my time. One of these women was Susanah Lavella Hopkins , and like me, Lavella was destined to become a Californian. Known as Lala to her family, she used Lavella as her given name. In 1869, Lavella's birth was registered under her mother's name, Fanny Hopkins, in Rathdrum, County Wicklow, Ireland. Her father, Nicholas "David" Hopkins, had been born into a family of means. David had a farm called Lamb Park in Coolbeg, near Wicklow Town. In 1881, when Lavella was only 11 years old, her mother died. Family correspondence suggests her father experienced financial difficulties. By the time she was 2...

Pneumonia took Andrew. It was May 10, 1912, and he was 46 years old.  Andrew was survived by four brothers (John, Matthew, James, and Joseph), three of whom immigrated to Australia. Ancestry.com now has birth, marriage, and death indexes  for Australia as well as electoral rolls and directories. I have been spending most waking hours pursuing the hunt I began 10 years ago to track Andrew's family in Australia, hoping that they will have family photos to share. The trail is hot, but so far no photos! Any leads are welcome. I wonder. Did Andrew have any sister(s) or brother(s) who predeceased him? So far, I haven't found any primary records of the birth of Andrew or the birth of any siblings. Andrew's and Joseph's obituaries indicate that Andrew and Joseph were born in Barrow-in-Furness, England. John's and Matthew's death records indicate that John and Matthew were born in Belfast, Ireland. Email exchanges with other Nimmo researchers several years ago, in...

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...

As a young man of 25, Ebenezer Webster left Ireland, sailing to India in 1887. He served the Methodist ministry in the Negapatam District for 24 years, rising to the position of Chairman.   A contemporary of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), Ebenezer Webster (1861-1954) "... was a scholarly man, and found much pleasure in reading good books.  He had great understanding, sound judgment, and a capacity for friendship that enriched all his work.*” In 2006, I had the good fortune to meet Sarah Pickstone of Vancouver, Canada who shared with us a family treasure, her grandmother’s album, the source for the above video. Sarah is my husband’s third cousin, and Sarah's great-grandfather, Ebenezer Webster, was the tenth and youngest child of   Henry Webster and Agnes Low . *This quote is from an article about Ebenezer circulated amongst family members without a source citation. © 2010, Cathy H Paris

Bradley Lake in Andover, New Hampshire     2002 by Cathy H Paris Little Mary may have been the price the Fitzgeralds paid for coming to America.  By the fall of 1852, James, Betsey (Graney) Fitzgerald, and their 3 sons had joined James.  What happened to little Mary?  Was she with her sister, Joanna, on the other side of the pearly gates?   In June of 1853, James and Betsey welcomed a new Mary into the world, the first of five children to be born in Andover, New Hampshire.  Mary was followed by Lizzie (1854), Annie (1856), James E. (1857), and Nellie (1861).   Meanwhile, back in Ireland, the family of Henry Webster and Agnes (Low) was growing too.  Like James and Betsey, they had 10 children.  Their first four children were born in Scotland:  Jessie (1845), John (1847), Henry (1848), and James (1850).  I don’t know where their fifth child, Margaret (1852), was born.  Their last five children were all born in Ir...

Sometime in the 19 th  century, the landlord forced the families living in Killelton to leave. James Fitzgerald’s wife, Elizabeth Graney, may have been one of the people who were evicted. The ruins of the abandoned village  are a reminder of the people who once lived there.   On our incredible journey to Ireland in 2008, we stopped in Dingle and found a living Graney, who spelled his name a bit differently. He said more Graneys lived over the hills on the northern shore, reinforcing our belief that our Graneys came from Killelton.  Killelton is across the peninsula from Dingle, the mountainous terrain separating these two coastal communities.   We returned to the car and continued along the road, heading around and across the peninsula. We stopped at a delightful pub in Camp, the John Ashe, for a bite to eat and an opportunity to chat. The proprietor didn’t seem to know any Graneys, but he reassured us that we were not far from Killelton.  We g...

James, a tailor by trade, arrived in Boston aboard the Catharine on November 13, 1848, having left behind his wife, Betsey, a little tyke (Thomas), a challenging toddler (Mary), the baby (John), a son just forming in the womb (Patrick), and the memory of the infant daughter (Joanna) who had died a few years before. James Fitzgerald was about the same age as one of my husband's ancestors, Henry Webster, whom I have previously introduced. James relocated from Ireland to America about the same time Henry immigrated from Scotland to Ireland. Both men were in their mid-thirties when they made these significant changes.  James Fitzgerald struggled to find a way for his wife and family to join him in America, whereas the transition was less arduous for Henry. James and his wife, Betsey, were both from county Kerry.   I believe Betsey was a Graney from Killelton, a townland on the north shore of the Dingle peninsula in the civil parish of Kilgobban. I suspect that James also wa...

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...

An avid reader as a child, I aspired to become a great novelist. Now approaching the onset of Medicare, my dreams and aspirations have changed. I still aspire to be a writer: Rather than a novelist be, I will write about my family tree. With much trepidation about going public and energized by yesterday’s inspirational news that prayers and modern medicine have partnered to shrink Joey’s brain tumor, I am writing the first article for my genealogy blog.  Joey is the firstborn of our four grandchildren. It was almost five years ago that I sent an email to the World Wide Websters heralding Joey’s arrival. From: Cathy To: WorldWideWebsters ; Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005, 5:33 PM Subject: New great-great-great-great grandson of Henry Webster Our grandson was born yesterday at about 7:20 pm ... Baby and parents are fine. Grandparents are ecstatic. I will send pictures soon. --Cathy To commemorate yesterday’s great news, I decided to write abou...