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Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 2006-03 > 1143330263


From: "Linda Merle" <>
Subject: Re: [Sc-Ir] Re: Scotch-Irish-D Digest V06 #62
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 15:44:23 -0800


Hi Jane,

You asked:
>I mean
>finding his parents in Ireland and so on back in time.

You need to do the same things the rest of us are doing <grin>.
There are some directions on our website:
http://homepages.rootsweb.com .

But basically, you can hire someone in Ireland to find you
plenty of records for George McClenahans. The same George?
A hundred different Georges? How do you expect to tell?

You need some unique information about this guy, don't you?
You need to find that in Canada or the USA. The courses at
www.genealogy.com/university.html explain how to do
migration research. It don't matter if your guy got off
a spaceship -- you gotta use the same ol' records here to
find out where he came from. because there ain't no records
where ever. The Germans and Scandies did keep some -- but
of course the port that my Germans left from was bombed and
the records destroyed. Your's too! We don't have a lot of luck!
I found where they came from by reading three county histories on the same county in PA. The third one had the story! Yahoo!
Then we fou nd the town's name when my mother and sister
visited a county library we've been haunting for 3 generations.
A book fell open in front of them. They looked down. THERE IT
WAS!!! THis genealogy was on their neighbors and it happened to
mention where our ancestors came from. Very weird but we're
not complaining.

Beyond that you need to learn how to do Irish genealogy
at a time when for the majority of Irish, it's impossible.
If you haven't heard this before, it's a sign you need to
get busting learning Irish genealogy. It's impossible for
Catholics, largely because they are not likely to appear
in the types of records we got in Ireland.

What types are those? People are always saying "Well, I've
been doing genealogy for 40 years and I traced my ancstor
back to colonial times..." COOOL, but there is NO GENE for
knowing how to do Irish genealogy. We all gotta learn how to
do it. The first thing we should learn is it's impossible.
THEN we have to learn how to 'sort through' the methodologies
to do it.

A new guide just published is "Researching Scots-Irish
Ancestors" by Rouston. He, unfortunately, is in Ulster.
So you either move to Belfast to do the work or you spend
your life's savings hiring soemone or you learn how to do it
from here.

Our archives, various websites, the LDS library, etc, ec --
that's how we do it.

What religion was he? What occupation did he have? What
did he do when he first came? Did he have $$$ Did he bring
his wife? Did he come as a young single man? All these things
help to build a profile about this man. If he could afford
to lug his wife and family over, he wasn't poor. That suggests
his social class and the types of records he may be in.
So does all the other.

You can also do the old Irish "Preliminary Report" whereby
you sweep up lots of easy to get records to identify places
in Ireland where there were people with your surname. Ulster
Foundation will do that for a couple hundred dollars. You'll
get and and say WAH! They didn't find "MY" George. Hey,
they weren't trying! They absolutely could not because you
didnt' give them any information to uniquely ID your George.
But you can use this stuff to go deeper into estate records
and local history and to read all the county deeds, all kinds
of horrible things <grin> (Reading them deeds is grim......).

Most people stop though. They don't know how to proceed.
ANd they cannot interpret the results, so they go back to
needlepoint. Like a cousin of mine. I did my own. Took me
a year. At the end, I could do Irish genealogy. I had the
same stuff as him, exactly. But mine didn't cost a trivial
$200 (a drop in the bucket) and I knew what to do next.
I think he's out golfing....

But it's always the same stuff you do. In your case you
got an extra country to hope to find him in. I think in
some of the Canadian censuses they ask where the person came
from and some of the Irish gave the counties. Of course they
are not well indexed. But ancestry is indexing the Canadian
censuses. You can then use them. Whatever they charge, it'll
be a pittance compared to not having any indexes like now!

If you check those free courses (lemme know if you'd rather
buy a book!), they will tell you they can't tell you what
record will give you the clues you need. You search for ALL
records. ALL. You search collatoral lines in the hope that
one has a family Bible that ids their village or a family
history. It's a lot like playing bingo ... maybe for a couple
years, the same game.......

So if you read the emails on the list you'll hear us say
the same things over and over and over and over. Many of
those same things are on the website and in various books
that are recommended. THe same ones.... So you just have
to dive in. The first few dives are never too great but
you will learn as you go and it'll get easier and easier.

My limited experience with early Ontario has been grim....
If he lived to be old, you are lucky. One client's ancestor
died in middle age. He never told his family about himself.
Geez! I could track everyone with that surname in Ontario
but him. He died too young. However another family with the
same surname DID come from Sligo so....maybe him too? We
couldn't find a father around, so I think he came as a young
man. Otherwise you find the dad on a muster list or tax roll.

If he was UEL the family would probably retain that knowledge.

Also look for neighbors in Canada who also are in SC -- it's not likely his kids did it alone. DId you read that email
yesterday about the man who had cousins everywhere with stores?
The USA was one big extended family. Only criminals came alone.
That's true for yours too. One old secret : If you can't trace
the target, trace the neighbors. Often works.

I guess your's didn't like the cold??? Or maybe they
couldn't deal with the black flies?? Hmmm.... Alligators
or black flies....some choice!

Anyway probably Toronto is a better place to research him,
but I found a huge amount of record in Boston at NEHGS on
Ontario. They have far more on Quebec of course. There are
a lot of published newspaper extracts of marriages, deaths,
and births, for example. Also histories of counties is
as critical as it is in South Carolina. If you get stuck
hire a pro in Toronto. If you need one, email me and I
can ask on a pro list.

Linda Merle

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From:
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 18:00:32 EST

>Linda Merle,
>What do you suggest about finding George McClenaghan, b. 1790 in Belfast,
>migrated to Prescott, Ontario, Canada in about 1817-18, married and had three
>children, two of whom migrated to SC, and he died in Prescott in 1832. I mean
>finding his parents in Ireland and so on back in time.
>Jane Jones
>
>





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