Currach - Discovering my ancestry before the canvas frays.

Dec13

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Maybe a Second Spring

Posted in: Books, History, Ireland

While researching my grandmother’s family, I thought it would be interesting (and important) to learn more about the religious order her sister Kathleen had joined in Ireland.

Sister Attracta (the name she chose when taking her vows) is recalled fondly in our home via her letters to my parents and a New York visit in the 1960′s.

Last year I posted a photo collage of Sister Attracta , and over the last year I’ve learned a bit more about her from a cousin in Ireland as we compared research.

After many years of service in China and Hong Kong, she retired to the Columban Sisters home in County Wicklow Ireland.

I found a bit of history on the Columban Sisters site that begins…

“The first group of Sisters set sail on September 13, 1926 from Cobh Harbour in County Cork. The 13,000 mile journey ahead of them would eventually take them to China. After many weeks travelling the Sisters finally arrived in China at a place called Hanyang.”

The small family stories I’ve heard of her mention the sisters being taken captive during the war, and their status as doctors and nurses was the one thing that saved them from certain terrible experiences.

The history page references a book entitled “Maybe A Second Spring: The Story of the Missionary Sisters of St. Columban in China”, which they will send you for free if you pay shipping. (I purchased mine at Kennys.ie)

I received the book last night and am looking forward to start reading it tonight – but I couldn’t resist a flip through right away. Near the beginning it describes “…dozens of (missionary) women would, in time, go to the heart of China. They would face a civil war, bandits, war lords, Communist Geurillas, and Japanese invaders, to say nothing of opium addicts, lepers, floods, famine, and plague.”

And what do I find in the center section of the book? A cache of photos, including one of Sister Attracta! Quite exciting – I also see her mentioned in at least one section where the sisters are heading off to found the mission at Nancheng.

Once again, reading is good.
Nov21

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Interment Control Forms Tip

Posted in: History, Ireland, New York

In a previous post entitled WWI Army Pay Card I spoke about using the veteran burial record for my great uncle to find his Army Serial Number (ASN). I used that info to finally successfully order his WWI records from the National Archives.

The source I used was the U.S. National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928-1962 database on Ancestry.com. Great uncle Michael died in 1936, so I was very glad when that database went online- I had every other piece of information on Michael short of his ASN and his shoe size, but NARA kept replying to my records requests with “not enough info.”

Just a month or so later, a researcher in Ireland contacted me about my grandfather’s first wife, Sabina Gilroy, whom he found in my tree. This cousin of my cousins has shared a great deal on a part of our tree that was bereft, which has been wonderful.

It turns out Sabina’s brother Michael was also a WWI veteran, but he died in service a few weeks before the war ended.

So, you’d think the Interment Control Forms database would be out since he died 10 years before 1928, no?

No. It turns out that groups of veterans were disinterred from their original burial places overseas and reburied back in the US.

Michael Gilroy was moved from a cemetery near the battle in Meuse-Argonne back to Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn some time after 1928.

So, now we have his interment card, his ASN and a way to now find his records at NARA.
Nov9

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Blizzard! The March Snowstorm of 1888

Posted in: History

During this interlude of post-Hurricane Sandy getting back to normal and trying to find gas without running out of gas and school JUST re-opened 11 days later and many neighbors still have no electricity and then we had a Nor’easter and 7 inches of snow and I can’t stop typing here is an interesting post from the New York Public Library entitled Blizzard! The March Snowstorm of 1888.

By the way, we fared very well in the storm and got our power back after 6 days. So many people on the south shore of Long Island and other places nearby were absolutely hammered by the storm and lost everything. Absolutely everything.

You can donate to the Red Cross effort for Hurricane Sandy here.
Oct25

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Get Out Yer Binoculars!

Posted in: Fun

Below is a result from my server logs. Apparently my genealogy blog ranks fairly well in Google’s search results for “binoculars strong enough to spy through windows.”

My work is done here.
Oct23

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WWI Army Pay Card

Posted in: Military, New York

A quick post for today: I have been trying to get my great uncle Michael Edward Tierney’s military records from NARA for awhile – even though I had everything but his shoe size and army serial number I kept getting the response “Not enough information to find his records.”

I was surprised at the response, actually since I included his birth and death dates, known addresses, parent’s names, burial location and his division and other Army info from his headstone. But I suppose there’s no cross-referencing for those old records

But, it wasn’t until Ancestry recently published the U.S. National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928-1962 that I finally turned up his Army Serial Number, and that unlocked the box.

I received about 48 pages of records, and even with duplicated info I have a fair bit of research to go through and write up. But for now I thought the service pay card below was an interesting thing to post – the soldiers were paid $1.00 a day when stationed in the US and $1.25 when overseas. Great Uncle Michael was paid a total of $416.50 for 337 days of service, including stints as a Wagoner in the Meuse-Argonne offensive and in the St. Die Sector of France.

(Updated later: looking at the records again, it appears this card may be a pay adjustment and not the complete pay he received during his service. There are some other records that mention $15 per month – and what looks like the application to receive this money was from several years post-war in 1925.)