Happy Halloween and Merry Christmas

I met the Gravestone Girls at the New York State Family History Conference in September.  They were one of the exhibitors there.  I did some of my Christmas shopping at their booth.  Very appropriate gifts from someone who digs up figurative skeletons! 

Where to find Keen Tied and Family Sherlock

Family Sherlock

a genealogy, ancestry and family history research service (www.familysherlock.com)

and

Keen Tied

heritage crafts (www.etsy.com/shop/keentied)

will have a table at the following shows this winter:

Historic Palmyra Christmas Bazaar

Alling Coverlet Museum, 122 William Street, Palmyra

Thursday, November 21, 2013, Friday, November 22, 2013, 10am-5pm. Saturday, November 23, 2013, 10am-2pm

http://www.historicpalmyrany.com/events.htm

East Rochester Advent Craft Sale

East Rochester School Complex

Saturday, December 7, 2013, 9am-3pm

http://www.eastrochester.org/annual_events.php

East Rochester Christmas Festival

Piano Works Mall

Saturday, December 14, 2013, 10am-3pm

https://www.facebook.com/EastRochesterChristmasFestival

Keen Tied

Keen Tied means No Time in Plattdeutsch, a dialect spoken in Northern Germany.  It is, appropriately, the name of our boat which we never got out of storage this summer.  It is also the name of my Etsy shop where I have been showcasing hand-knit, hand-spun and hand-felted art scarves that I design on the fly, so I can work on them while watching TV.  This started when I was working in a cubicle farm and had way too much yarn and no time to knit sweaters.

Now that I have established Family Sherlock, I am considering ways to combine the two businesses.  This winter I will be in several craft shows in the Rochester, New York area. Some of the genealogy-related items I will be selling are art scarves based on my heritage and places I love, Aunt Eenie dolls, which are clothespin dolls my great-aunt designed, and maybe a magnifying glass scarf or two.  And a growing "litter" of knit cats, since I am a crazy-cat-lady-in-training as well as a professional genealogist.

Irish Roots

Many people in this area (Upstate New York) have Irish ancestry.  Family Sherlock even has a little, but never thought much of it except on St. Patrick's Day.  It turns out she was very close to her ancestor's hometown in 1989 but did not know it!  The following is a good example of a research report you could hire Family Sherlock to write for you.

Although most of my heritage is German, with a little British and Sicilian, there is some Irish blood in my veins. My great-grandma (who I remember calling Big Grandma) Ida Glossner's mother was Margaret (Margret) McCarthey Goodman, and she was born in Ireland¹ in August, 1865².

Family lore told us two things- she immigrated to the US on the "Bremen" from Cork to Baltimore, and she was a cousin of the boxer, John L. Sullivan. I was not able to find immigration records as many from Ireland to Baltimore were lost.  Cork was a main port for Ireland, and it did not necessarily mean that the McCarthey's lived there.  The information about the ship they sailed on was passed on to me by my paternal grandmother, Ida's daughter-in-law.   I was not successful searching for Margaret's birth records in Cork, as there were many McCartheys, but then I changed my tactic.

John L. Sullivan's father was Michael Sullivan of Abbeydorney, County Kerry³. When I search in Kerry for Margaret McCarthey, with a mother named Sullivan, I found her birth record from Sneem, County Kerry. Her parents were Charles McCarthey and Mary Sullivan, and her birth date was August 19, 1865.⁴

I was able to confirm this is my great-great-grandmother because I also found her death certificate which gave her parents' names as Charles Mccarthy and Margaret Sullivan and her birth date as August 18, 1865⁵. I was originally confused by this because she died in Illinois, but one of her children lived there. Otherwise the matches are very close.

Areas of further research are to trace the McCarthey and Sullivan lines back further, and to make a more definitive connection between Mary Sullivan and John L. Sullivan.  Also, further documentation into Margaret's relocation from Rochester to Chicago should be researched.

1"New York, County Marriages, 1908-1935," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XVGG-MHV : accessed 17 Mar 2013), August C. Glossner and Ida M. Goodman, 1910.

2"United States Census, 1900," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MSJH-JZN : accessed 17 Mar 2013), Margret Goodman in entry for Frank Goodman, 1900.

3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L_Sullivan#cite_note-1, accessed 3/17/2013.

4"Ireland, Births and Baptisms, 1620-1881," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/F557-4ZQ : accessed 17 Mar 2013), Margret Mc Carthy, 19 Aug 1865.

5"Illinois, Deaths and Stillbirths, 1916-1947," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/N3HZ-GXZ : accessed 17 Mar 2013), Margaret Goodman, 25 Feb 1941.

Genealogy on Television

There has been a lot of talk in the genealogy community about Genealogy Roadshow, a new PBS show.  The other recent TV show was the new season of Who Do You Think You Are? on TLC.  The shows demonstrate the spectrum of family history research.  Genealogy Roadshow solves a mystery in a couple minutes on television, but in reality, some of the top genealogists in the country have done hours of research behind the scenes.  Who Do You Think You Are? sends celebrities all over the world in search of their ancestry.

Real people can have their ancestry researched, and they do not have to travel all over the world to do it.  If they do not have the time or the resources to do it themselves, they can hire a professional, like me (shameless plug- this is my blog after all!) to do the research for them.  The Association of Professional Genealogists has a great search engine to help with this.  It can be searched for location of the ancestors or the researcher, or by other specialties.   You can also search by name or company.  Try searching for Family Sherlock!

Maybe it runs in the family...

Maybe it runs in the family...  My sister is an incredibly talented writer and storyteller.  When we were little she would tell me stories at night after we were supposed to be asleep....  I am sure my parents knew we were awake as they would hear us laughing.  I have never been a creative writer, but as I research my genealogy, my ancestors become characters in my head.  I am working on two books now.  She has had many short stories published and more on the way, and is completing a novel.

My sister featured me in her blog, and I will do likewise!  http://emilyglossnerjohnson.blogspot.com/2013/09/family-sherlock-genealogy-business.html.