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02 April, 2014

The Irish Problem

Today I'm working on my children's Dad's family so they will have that information too, as best as I can collect it. His family is harder than mine, because his mother's family is all from Ireland. Ireland didn't have comprehensive census taking as early as England and most of their records are still held by local parishes. Most of this information has not been offered online that I know of, at least not for free. I have found a few sites where you can pay to view parish records, but they are quite expensive and there's no guarantee that the document you pay to view is the right person until you see it!  So, I have hit a brick wall with his Mom's family after just a few generations. I did get most of the immigrants, but there is little indication as to where in Ireland they came from. Frustrating!

Montbéliard, France (where family originated) on the Swiss border
(from WikimediaCommons)

His Dad's family is partially from England and partly from France and Germany. After a few generations into Europe, the only indications of names and dates are offered from other ancestry.com users, so I have no way of knowing how accurate those are. 

I decided to put an asterisk next to the name of anyone on my tree whose accuracy I have not confirmed with at least one independent source. I wish I'd started doing that earlier, as I have many on my own family's tree that are not substantiated by documentation as well.

My husband's Dad's family has an intriguing mystery attached to it. One branch is the Peace family from Sheffield, England. There was a notorious serial killer named Charles Peace whose crime spree lasted from 1851 to 1878. According to family legend, he is related to my husband's family, but I have not found the link yet. Apparently he was not in the direct line. My guess is that he is the brother of someone in the line. He was born in Sheffield, so chances are that he was indeed related.

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