I Enjoyed Researching My Family History

It had always been clear to me that my family history had its roots firmly planted in Ireland, traceable on both my mother and father's sides. St. Patrick's Day was nearly as big a celebration as Christmas in our house. I still know all the words to dozens of the Irish songs we ritually sang around the piano every year.

Since my childhood was rich with tradition and stories, I decided as a young adult to start creating a family tree. That was at a time well before the Internet and software programs to help your research. I started interviewing the older relatives and made lots of notes. But I always seemed to run into roadblocks of one kind or another when one aunt would have to consult another about some detail. Or relatives disagreed about who had married and when, etc.

Some years later I took up the challenge again. Now there were more resources available to assist one in researching the family history. I am only the third generation, on both sides of my family, to be born in the United States. So all of my great-grandparents were immigrants from Ireland. With that known, I thought the rest of the search would be easy. 'Twas not so.

While Irish names were not usually truncated like many European names upon arrival in the United States, I did find one change on my father's side. An uncle sent me a copy of my great-grandfather's Confirmation Certificate. The name on it was O'Kallaher. I found out that Thomas O'Kallaher had landed in New York and apparently due to fear of discrimination, changed the family name to Kelliher.

The uncle that sent me the certificate believed it was Thomas himself that made the change, not the New York authorities. That is why I said "apparently". I found that in my search, because exact records were not kept in many cases, the best we can do is make an educated guess as to why something happened. And, in fact, even though a relative may not have been a "horse thief", they may have had other reasons to make a name change for a fresh start in a new country.

One of the most colorful stories I encountered was that on my mother's side, my great-grandfather nearly drowned getting to America. Patrick Dowdell, so the story goes, was on a ship that ran aground near the banks of Nova Scotia. The ship took on water and was sinking. Not all the passengers made it ashore. Patrick escaped by throwing an anchor toward the shore. He jumped over and went hand over hand on the rope until he was close to shore and could make it through shallow waters.

However, in the research done both by myself and one of my sisters, we discovered that Patrick Dowdell was not listed on that ship's manifest, nor was he listed among the survivors in the story that was written in the local newspaper after the wreck. Why? No one seems to know.

However, the story goes on to say that Patrick knew he had actually landed in Canada but didn't want that to be known. So he trekked through the woods until he found his way over the border into the United States, and then made himself known as a newly arrived immigrant.

The records for my family here in the United States are relatively short, but interesting. There's a notation that one of my grandfathers was listed, on a hand-written census, as a "boiler maker". He made boilers for the local shipyard, not drinks.

In Ireland now, all census records have become centralized. That is a less romantic, but more efficient way to research records. The most specific information we have is that Sullivan, which was traced to County Cork, preceded the name Dowdell. In addition, the Kelliher or O'Kallaher name was traced to the same area.

In one of those strange twists of fate, about two years ago I was at a dinner in honor of some overseas filmmakers. They were in town for an International Film Festival. We randomly took seats. As one of the hosts, I chatted up the man sitting beside me. He was from Ireland, so it didn't take long to get into histories. "We came from County Cork", I said. "So did I", he replied. Then for a moment I was stunned. I hadn't asked his name. I grabbed his nametag (which all the filmmakers wore) and flipped it around. The name on the tag was O'Kallaher.