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.
In the late 1990s and into the 2000s, I bought books and lists and information from sources that may not have been as good as I had hoped (some of which was not worth the money I spent but was all that was available at the time). This past 11 months I unearthed all these crates and began a serious search for my 2X grandfather, James McCristal.
It is only recently (like this month) that I have come to understand it is unlikely I will ever know his origins or anything about him prior to August 1853. What I have found, however, are over 600 people through the years living, marrying and dying with the McCrystal name, although with various spellings (there are about thirteen variations of the name).
I have delved into the history of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Plantation of the 1600s, the Flax Growers of the late 1790s and mostly, the stories told by reading the 1831, 1901, 1911 and 1926 census(s), the birth, death and marriage registrations of the people with my last name. Periodically I have swung from being depressed by, entranced, ecstatic and in awe of the lives of the people who may be my ancestors. Placed in the context of how we live today, those folk were tough, resilient, hard-working and admirable in more ways that I may ever be able to express here. So from here on I will be telling about my discoveries, the people who might be my ancestors and their stories of the lives they lived (based on the information shared by these people through birth, marriage and death registrations as well as the census(s) taken which reveal much more of their day-to-day lives than they may have realized at the time).
If you know your ancestors and their origins, share comments here to tell us about them. If you don’t know your ancestors and their origins, please share how you are doing your search.