The Devil Is in the Details

I've been going back and forth about whether or not to write a post about the most recent work I've been doing on my family tree. I've hesitated because unlike my other posts, this really isn't about people, but about process. Ultimately, I decided to write about it as it's a learning experience for genealogy and aspiring family historians. I hope by sharing my experience here, I can help others avoid some of the mistakes I made early in my research.

After having spent much of 2017 wading through the Mullane branch of the tree trying to sort out Martin Mullane and his connection to my great grandfather T.J. Mullane, I happened to stumble upon an article from the US National Archives about the best practices for file naming digital files. I found the article very useful and decided to follow some of their guidelines. This required doing a global update to all of the digital files I had on my computer that were associated with my family tree. That part was relatively easy and once I figured out how to do it, I ran the process in about five minutes. Simple, right?

Well, not so fast. By making such a quick and global change, I managed to disconnect all of my media files from Family Tree Maker (FTM) which is the program I use to keep track of my tree. Oops. So clearly I needed to fix that right away. Again, it was a fairly straightforward process. Family Tree Maker has a "find missing media" option that I was able to run to reconnect everything. This worked fairly well, but there were still some files missing largely due to previous renaming I had done over the years. That's when the challenge started. In an earlier version of FTM, which synchs with Ancestry.com, files were automatically given a numerical file name. Great for database linking, not so great for finding a specific file outside of FTM. I had renamed those files outside of FTM and now had no idea what file 12020112482292.jpg was now called.

This started a methodical process that has had me doing a complete review of my files and making sure they are all linked to a specific source and/or person and/or place. First it was finding the missing files in FTM. Next it was discovering that the Windows folder that contained the media files for FTM had about 150 more files than were associated with FTM. That didn't include the 100 or so files I have stored in a folder titled "Pending Media" which are things I've found from sources outside of Ancestry.com (e.g. newspaper clippings, records from other genealogical sites.) Oh. This is going to be a bigger project than I anticipated.

Since I was going to have to go through all my files fairly slowly, I decided to take the opportunity to make sure I had captured all the data from the files I possibly could. One of the great features of FTM is that it is linked to Ancestry.com and can pull records from there and store them on your computer. The problem lies in what data is featured on the record from Ancestry.com. The record will almost always contain a name since that is what is used to locate the record, but it may miss a birth date or (more commonly) another relative on the record. It is very easy to amass records with out really knowing what is in the record, especially when you first start out with family history and genealogy. Your first response is often "Yeah! I found my great-great-grandmother! Merge now! Woo hoo! What's next?" and you don't look too closely at the record beyond the immediate information you need to identify your great-great-grandmother. Luckily, I slowed down on this massive record collecting after the first year or so and started paying closer attention to what was actually in the records, but even then I still missed things.

So, by having to go back through all my records, I began to double check everything and while I had gotten pretty good at capturing most of the information, I didn't always get everything. This was especially true as it relates to my Dwyer/Kenny side of the family. A lot of the information I have entered in my tree is based on information my mother's older brother has passed along over the years and idly clicking on the "hints" button that appears with those names in FTM. My main focus since 2012 has been on the Murray/Coleman side of the family because so little information was known, anything on the Dwyer/Kenny side was treated as "Oh, I should grab that and I'll get back to the details later." Sure, I'll pick up records here and there for the Muckles when I'm looking into the Mullanes and Murrays, but I tend to put them aside for later.

Well, now IS later. Since October, I've been working my way through my files and making sure everything is matched up properly and that I've gotten every useful piece of information from them. The only ones I've left unchecked so far are the records from city directories that I've collected. This is mostly due to this being the single largest collection of information I have and wanting to do about six things simultaneously with the information. With about 400 files the city directories (from several different sources) they are about a quarter of all my files. I've made sure they're all attached to at least one person, but will need to do my deepest dive into them another time. Or, more practically, go through them more slowly over time to gather everything I want to do with them, including mapping the locations out for my San Francisco relations.

As you can imagine, this process is slow and tedious and doesn't have the "wow" factor of a new discovery, but every once and a while I find some interesting nugget that will help me later on down the road. As of this writing, I still have about 60 more files to sort through and associate with a source and person in FTM (most being city directories of course) before I head over to the Pending Media folder to sort through those items. Some are "pending" because I'm not sure they are actually related to my family, but most are ones I gathered from sites outside of FTM/Ancestry that I've been meaning to add over the years and haven't gotten around to it yet.

While working on all of this, I decided now was the time to fix any other errors that might be in my tree. Call it a big spring cleaning. I've discovered some tools in FTM that I think will make things easier for me in the long run, but getting them set up properly will take some time. At the rate I've been going, it may take up a good chunk of 2018 to get everything cleaned up the way I want it to be. It's definitely not as fun as searching and finding new records, but it's valuable because once I'm finished I will have a better picture of what information I have and what I still need.

I won't stop searching altogether either -- I need to have SOME fun while working on this project. I've already done a few jaunts off here and there to sort out some people while cleaning up the records and I expect that will continue if only to break up the tedium of database maintenance. And now that I have a better method of organizing my files, those searches will help me gather more information all at once and help me avoid having to do a major clean up like this again.

So I wanted to share all of this because it really is important to make sure you slow down when gathering information for your family tree. By reviewing records more methodically you can gather all the information you want and need in one shot rather than having to go back and review it a year or two later when you stumble on some related information.

Kiss Me, I'm Irish -- An Update

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post highlighting my Irish background. I calculated my Irish ancestry based on the number of great-great grandparents (or 3x great grandparents in some cases) who were born in Ireland. Based on that, I said I was 90.63% Irish, 6.25% German, and 3.13% French Canadian [the French history is a bit more complicated.] That's pretty darned Irish for a fifth generation American.

Recently, my father said he wanted to take an Ancestry DNA test and asked me to order him one. Since this was something I'd been wanting to do myself for a while, I ordered two. We got the results back not too long ago and they were interesting to see. No, there wasn't any kind of family scandal -- my dad is my dad (and based on matches to an uncle and cousin, my mom is my mom.) What was interesting was the percentages that turned up. Knowing what I have uncovered about my father's side of the family, I had predicted he'd be mostly Irish with a bit of other British Isles thrown in since it would be unlikely he'd be 100% Irish. My predictions proved correct -- Dad's results came up 93% Irish (technically Ireland/Scotland/Wales) with a "very likely" connection to the Munster province of Ireland with "relatives who lived in this region in the past few hundred years." Dad's maternal grandparents were both born in County Cork which is part Munster, so that part is clearly correct. The rest of his test came up under "Low Confidence Regions" which showed the biggest chunk at 3% for Great Britain. So, yeah, my dad is Irish.

Well, what about my results then? I knew I'd be less Irish than my father since we know there is some German and French ancestry on my mother's side. Still, based on where I know people came from, I was pretty sure I'd still come up mostly Irish. My results turned up 83% Irish and 13% Great Britain. Like Dad, I showed a strong link to Munster which makes sense as in addition to the Coleman/O'Leary branch of my tree coming from County Cork, I have a great-great grandmother on my mother's side who was also from County Cork. County Tipperary is also part of Munster which is where the Dwyers come from, so that would also be included. What's most interesting though, is when you add up my dad's Ireland/Great Britain percentages and my Ireland/Great Britain percentages they total out the same -- 96%! So, yeah, I'm Irish too.

My "Low Confidence Regions" were a bit different than Dad's with 2% "Europe South" and 1% "Europe West" which is probably the French and German bits (though, oddly, Italy is the biggest land area for Europe South.) The fun stuff is in the trace amounts. Both Dad and I show up with less than 1% of Scandinavia (Vikings!), Dad comes up with less than 1% Middle East where I come up with less than 1% Caucasus which are overlapping regions and show the history of human migration.

The next task is to compare these results against other people who have taken the Ancestry DNA test to see if there are any relatives out there who might have more information on the family. There are a couple of promising results I've seen, but have yet to delve into them to see if they're worth pursuing.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A Little Bit More About Martin Mullane

At the beginning of the year, I decided to tackle the case of Martin Mullane. Martin appears in the 1869 San Francisco city directory living with my great-great grandfather T.J. Mullane. Other than knowing Martin was a tailor and likely T.J.'s older brother, I hadn't been able to find out much more information. I tracked him through the city directories up until 1880 when he disappears. I had to go back and see if I could find Martin in any census records.

The Mullanes have been very hard to locate in the census records, largely due to the misspelling of their last name. After some digging, I was able to find Martin in the 1870 Census listed as Martin Melane. Finally! That record gave me a lot more information. Martin was married to a woman named Mary, which should make things interesting since T.J.'s wife was also named Mary and they named their daughter (my great-grandmother) Mary! Such fun! Martin and Mary have three sons, Peter age 6 who was born in Ohio, Martin age 3 who was born in California, and Christopher age 1 who was also born in California. I will assume both Martin, Jr. and Christopher were born in San Francisco. Those names match up with the names I found in the 1890s voter registrations, so my guess that they were Martin's sons was correct.

There are a number of other families enumerated in the same building, but since the 1870 Census doesn't record street addresses, I don't know if there are several families living together or if they are living in an apartment building of some kind. The really interesting bit I found is a few lines down from Martin and his family there is another Mary Melane, age 23, who is a washerwoman with a son who is about 9 months old named John. I believe this is my great-great grandmother Mary Manning Mullane, but there's no sign of T.J. with them. Well, that makes for yet another Mullane mystery to figure out. Where the heck was T.J. when the 1870 Census was taken?

Finding this record, allowed me to trace Martin's family a bit more, and I located them in the 1880 Census record living on Shipley Street. Mary Mullane is listed as a widow when the census was taken in June 1880, and since I had records for Martin in the 1879 and 1880 San Francisco city directories, I suspected he may have died earlier in the year. The 1880 Census has a mortality record of anyone who had died over the previous year, so I went to see if I could find Martin in those records, and he turns up twice! Martin died in March 1880 of tuberculosis. I still haven't figured out where he was buried and there aren't any San Francisco papers available on line for 1880, so it will require a trip to a library with microfilm to see if I can find a death notice.

Knowing that Martin had died, I turned to see what I could learn about his wife and sons. The records I found for Mary stop in 1883, so that was a bit of a dead end. I was able to track Peter Mullane until 1904 when he died from tetanus. Peter was a woodworker who worked in mills in and around San Francisco. It doesn't appear that he married or had any children. Martin Francis Mullane went on to become a tailor like his father, but I can't find any record of him after 1898. I did find a Martin Mullane in the Calvary records at sfgenealogy.com who died in March 1900 who is about the same age as Martin Francis Mullane, but I couldn't find a death notice in either the San Francisco Call or San Francisco Chronicle that matched up with the date to confirm if it is the same Martin Mullane, so I don't know if it's the one I'm looking for. The youngest son of Martin and Mary Mullane, Christopher J. Mullane, became a peddler and I've been able to track him up to 1913.

So, as always with the Mullanes, there are a bunch of new puzzles and mysteries to work out and people to track down. I still need to find evidence that the elder Martin Mullane is indeed the older brother of my great-great grandfather T.J. as I believe he is. Knowing that his son Peter was born in Ohio gives me another lead to follow, so that will be part of my next steps along the Mullane branch. My preliminary searches thus far haven't turned up any Mullanes in Ohio, but I've not done much more than a cursory search. It also makes me wonder if Martin fought in the US Civil War. My direct ancestors all seem to have been in California for most of the war and I haven't found anyone who fought in the war, but with Martin living in Ohio which was more more located where the war was going on may have enlisted at some point.