A blog of musings, experiences and morning coffee…
Remember when your were a kid and one of your friends would say, “Let’s Play Pretend!”? And off the two of you would go, creating a world that most likely only the two of you could see or understand whether to play house or Cowboys and Indians..
So, let’s play ‘pretend’! You get to chose the setting for our game. You are a photographer today, I am your companion/assistant/model. However, since I am the one who said, “let’s play pretend”, I am dictating your choice of two settings:
How many times in your life have you walked past a mirror seeing your own reflection?
Does it ever occur to you to wonder: What if I could live the life of my reflection? Would that life be different? Is there another side to me? Do I really want to know?
The “Perfect” Life: I was destined to marry a boy from my hometown, have 2.5 children, a station wagon, a ranch-style house with a white 4-plank fence around it and be a school teacher or a nurse. This was defined as “happily ever after”.
When I was 18 years old, I had only two aspirations. The first was to be what is now termed, a “flight attendant”. Back then it was “stewardess”. The only class I truly loved was geography and my only fantasy was traveling to all those places I had read about. So many years later, I still have that grade school geography book on my bookshelves, even though the countries have changed names, politics and leaders more times than I could ever have imagined. I came from a farm near a little town in Kentucky where not a one of my immediate family, during my childhood, had ventured further than Lexington, Louisville, Frankfort or eastern Kentucky. My mother was a well-read individual with many books on her shelves. But no one ever left my hometown unless they had to and then they hurried back to it as quickly as they could.
See: The Co. Cork McCrystal — A Murder Mystery
A wonderful fellow member of the GREEN ROOM, Karen, did a search for me to help me solve the mystery in my own mind. (One of the many benefits of belonging to the Green Room!) Continue reading “UPDATE: Co. Cork Ireland Mystery”
Here lies a genuine mystery! While researching the McCrystal name for my family genealogy, I stumbled upon a genuine mystery in Co. Cork:
I was investigating Michael as being a potential name for a 3X grandfather in Ireland. There were multiple instances of family lore saying my 2X grandfather came from Co. Cork. Could this be a clue? Continue reading “The Co. Cork McCrystal — A Murder Mystery”
When I was unable to sleep (because of the heat?), I got to thinking about how to present all the research I have been doing over the past year/2 decades/since the late 1990s. I have uncovered so many McCrystals (and the derivations of spelling) that I become mind-boggled just keeping the different people straight in my head as well as in the database. I took on of the smaller quantity of a name – Francis. In the various databases I found 8 deaths, 11 births, 12 marriages over the roughly 140 years. Continue reading “Francis McCrystal – Between 1790-1930 in Ireland”
There are few if any ethnicities or countries that have as much information available as the Irish have. Everybody and their uncles and aunts are researching Irish ancestry though it involves a lot of angst along the way. every time I turn around, there is a new website (new to me) for me to explore. But none of them bring me any closer to finding more information about my 2X grandfather, James McCristle. Continue reading “Irish Genealogy: Questions without many answers”
When I started this journey of researching my paternal family name, I did not expect to find so many derivations of the spelling nor the number of people with that last name between 1795 and 1930 in Ireland. I also did not expect to find them in the locations I found either. I had been under the (obviously wrong) impression that my ancestor(s) came from what is today called the Republic of Ireland (Co. Cork). As it turns out, they are pretty much completely from today’s Northern Ireland. Of course, back in the day, it was simply Ireland. Most of the time in the census of the United State, they just stated they were from Ireland, if not born in the US. Continue reading “800 McCrystals and counting”
The research and effort I have been putting into this project has been exhausting, and at times depressing. I had decided I needed to review all the tabs in my browsers I have open (dozens!) and get some closure on a few. I happened upon things I evidently found months ago and did not relate to at the time. I am easily distracted by shiny objects in the rearview mirror so anything can happen to my concentration. A few open tabs were enlightening, but this one was moderately entertaining. I can’t decide whether the old lady really was a brat and liked conflict or if she was settling some scores. Her will, to me, was a hoot! Continue reading “A widow who left 6 children a shilling each”
When I picked up the threads of all my old research, I had no idea the journey I was embarking on. This has been an incredible 11 months. I had the basic DNA tests done from both My Heritage and Ancestry, became a Green Room member, bought a database program (Family Historian7) that I am happy with, found out that my James, in all likelihood, came from Northern Ireland, not Co. Cork as I believed for 3/4 of my life and so much more. Amazing what, after 20 years of ignoring a subject, can be revealed via the search engines and artificial intelligence if one just asks the right questions. Continue reading “The genealogical journey – McCrystal/McCristle”