Genealogy is like a roller coaster, sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. I have been both this month. Cindy and I recently finished going through thirteen (13!) LDS microfilms of Hartford-area vital statistics and didn’t find anything new. After all these years researching my Irish roots, I still haven’t made much progress, but we have done a very thorough search. Apparently they never recorded the births and marriages in ‘the New World’ (we won’t even talk about the Old World!) Now we won’t waste money on a local search of pointless records. However, I did re-find a record I had long ago disregarded. It’s one of those “may or may not be helpful” kind of things.
My great, great-grandfather, John Gallagher died between 1871 and 1880. (His last child was born in 1872, and the Hartford city directory shows my great, great-grandmother, Bridget as a widow in 1879). We know little else about him except that he was either born in New York or Ireland! The record I re-found was a death record of a John Gallagher who’s in a good age range to be ours, married, born in New York, who died of an accident January 15th, 1878. So far so good, what were not recorded were names for spouse or parents. We cannot prove or disprove that this is our John with this record. I have three options now that we have a possible death date: probate records, newspapers, and coroner’s records.
Since our local county records are going online, I am going to start there and see if there are any Hartford County indexes for the 1870s online. Either way, I will search the Probate records for a will or estate record. Since he had minor children at the time, there “should” be something. Because this man died in an accident, there is a slight chance of its being printed in the newspapers of the time. If it was a public accident, there’s a better chance, but if it was something like falling off a ladder at home, it’s unlikely to have made the papers in a large city like Hartford. We also have a date to search obituaries. And, finally, again because it was an accidental death, there may have been a coroner’s report done to explain his death. Any of these records may contain his wife’s name, and possibly others.
On an even better note, I have been teaching a beginner’s genealogy class at the local YMCA, where I work in “real life”. And I was showing my participant how to use the LDS website and Google to expand her searching, and lo and behold! We made a great discovery. We found a book which details her Lawrence family history from her great-grandmother all the way back to a Robert Lawrence who went to the Crusades with Richard the Lion Heart! Talk about a Genealogical Happy Dance!
Editor’s note: This regular column is sponsored by the Aroostook County Genealogical Society. The group meets the fourth Monday of the month except in July and December at the Cary Medical Center’s Chan Education Center, 163 Van Buren Road, Caribou, at 6:30 p.m. Guests and prospective members are always welcome. FMI contact Edwin “J” Bullard at 492-5501. Columnist Nina Brawn of Dover-Foxcroft, who has been doing genealogy for over 30 years, is a freelance genealogy researcher, speaker and teacher. Reader e-mails are welcome at ninabrawn@gmail.com.
