When you stand under an appletree and shake it you feel pretty certain that apples .... not peaches nor pears ......are going to conk you on the head.However ,when shaking your family tree the nature and quality of the fallout is not so evident and sure as in the latter . And thus it was for me. I have always been interested in family history and geneology but moreso these last few months...........even going so far as to drag poor Fluff through the back roads of Maine in early September to visit some old Swedish settlements and then , as though by serendipity , end up in nearby Mars Hill and Presque Isle , Maine where my great grandmother's decendants now lived. I renewed old aquaintances and met a few new ones with whom I have been communicating by phone and e-mail ever since ..... exchanging tidbits of info while hoping to clarify and put order into our mutually shared bloodlines.
I have been delving into the online federal and provincial records , passenger lists of ships out of Ireland between the years 1833 and 1852 and many other available sources such as my own excellent memory and especially from a sit-down session back in 1985 I had with my mother and father who were well into their eighties and very alert and knowledgeable about their origins. I wrote down the results of that meeting. I regret not making the rounds of Saint John City Archives , old newspapers and parish baptismal , marriage and death data while there on holidays last June. Might even make a quick trip with Fluff down that way before the snow starts to fly. Apart from my own interest for my ancestrry I am doing it mainly for my sons and as my wee contribution to the history of the McAnulty / McNulty clan in New Brunswick and elsewheres. The Irish Gaeilge way of writing our name Mac An Ultaigh ( Son of the Ulstermen ) shows up mainly McAnulty or McNulty when anglicized in the North American records. For the moment my sons don't give a hoot about the question but I feel certain that some day they will rummage through my belongings , find these papers and deem them worthy of interest.
All in all it's been a rewarding quest for roots. I found a few cases of children born out of wedlock , cover ups where daughters are calling a woman " auntie " while in reality " auntie " was her biological mother ..... and this same daughter addressing her true siblings as nephew and niece whereas they were her biological brothers and sisters . And there is more !! At least I found nobody doing hard time in federal or provincial slammers ! No ties to the Borgias !! BG I hope to post my results in more detail ........ the full unadulterated version .......in Multiply some time soon.
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