Lost to time.

The thing we're all afraid of.

Even if you do or don’t do genealogy, please read this.

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

Yesterday, we had gone up to Mayo to visit family, the last person we had visited was the widower of my late 1st cousin 1x removed (on my Nana Carney’s side), Mary. Quick background. My grandmother was one of seven children. Two died young, one didn’t marry, one married but didn’t have kids and two more had one child each. Both of these children don’t have any descendants. So one of them (being Mary) has since died and once the other child dies, it’s just my Nana who has descendants. Most of my grandmother’s siblings had died before I was born, few more died when I was still a very young infant and the only one who was still alive was Mary’s mother Teresa. Teresa died six years ago, just as I was starting out my family tree and never got to ask her anything.

Mary had very much become the family historian on my grandmother’s side before I did. She had given me bits to start off with which really helped and most of my early knowledge of Irish genealogy had come from her. This was probably late 2017/2018 when I was talking to her about the family tree. She married mid 2018 and died in April 2019. One of her brick walls that she hoped to find out was what happened to her aunt Annie. All she knew was that she married a man with the surname O’Hara. I scoured Irish registers and I kept hitting brick walls. Until the WikiTree Challenge (August 2021) came in and broke it down in my week. Annie Lavin married Michael Joseph O’Hara in New York and had two sons. So, you can imagine my excitement when I discovered we finally had an answer yet I couldn’t tell her.

Anyway, once we visited her widower - Dad did most of the talking about catching up and then I asked did Mary had any family photos or her research written down. He pulled out a massive paper bag with many photo envelopes inside, there weren’t any labels on any of them so it was very hard to tell who most of them were, Dad recognised some of the people that were in them but not all of them. I was hoping to find an old photo that may jog Dad’s memory if any of them might have been my great grandparents James and Delia. Unfortunately, none of them stood out to him so there may not be any photos of them. Mary’s photo collection was my last hope. So this is the only photo I have of them: their headstone in Kilkinure Cemetery, Kiltimagh, Mayo. I do have a photo somewhere but I don’t have it to hand. So, instead here’s a photo of my grandparents Michael and Annie-Mae with my grandfather’s brother Thomas visiting James and Delia’s grave.

So, that leads me to action item number 1: LABEL YOUR PHOTOS! Click here for a piece from Family Tree Magazine on how best to do this.

As for her research, I wasn’t so lucky. He said he didn’t find any so it’s very possible she didn’t write it down. So, there’s another action item for you. Number 2: WRITE DOWN YOUR RESEARCH! Put it on a blog, put it in Word documents or wherever works for you, and put it somewhere because you never know, you could have a family historian wanting to pick up the reins a number of years down the line and your research could be very useful for them. Here are some ideas from Amy Johnson Crow to try out.

And this bit is for the non-genealogists. We made it aware one year helping my mum write Christmas cards that I was doing a family tree and if people had any info, to send it to us. I got a handful of letters and photos through the months after and the one thing I kept reading was to the effect of “Sorry it isn’t a lot”. I responded to them saying that any info was helpful. And this is my plea to you. If you have someone who is doing a family tree if you don’t know a whole lot, that’s okay! Even if it’s things you heard or family rumours or even just the birth dates of your partner or kids or other relatives you know - any little bits of information, help us to grow our family tree bit by bit. So here’s action item number 3. EVERY LITTLE HELPS, LET US KNOW! Even the smallest detail can help. For instance, the rumour in my family was that my great-grandfather John had a wife before Ellen (my great-grandmother) but nobody was sure. That little detail opened up a part of my history that hadn’t ever been covered.

Finally, this last bit applies to everyone. Action item number 4. WRITE DOWN ABOUT YOU! Records don’t tell us everything about our family history. There’s so much that is passed down through stories and other little pieces. For instance, my grandfather Michael - whom you saw the photo of above, died in 2000, so I never met him. But, hearing stories of him working on the roads, that he was a practical man and he loved gardening and his geraniums were his pride and joy - gave me a much more colourful illustration than records would ever give. Write it (could be anything about you or maybe memories you have of people) down in a journal, record it on your phone and back it up to the cloud, or put it on a memory stick or CD [yes, we still use those] - just somewhere that people can find it.

I’d learnt more about Mary from the photos that she had as well as the many newspaper clippings in there as well.

Don’t let it all be lost to time.