Using Townland Maps to Plan My Trip To Galway

I'm leaving in a week for a trip to the ancestral homeland of Ireland. I will begin my trip in Dublin, then  head south and west, doing some sightseeing, and then ending my trip by staying a few days in Tuam, Ireland (before heading back to Dublin for one more day before my flight). From Tuam it's an easy drive to Milltown, where my family attended church, and Pollaturick the ancestral townland (I'm not sure whether I will make it to Kilvine and Irishtown in Mayo on this trip?).

Since I know the townland and the section number of the property on the Griffith's Valuation Map I can visit my family's land and home in Pollaturick. I thank my cousin Darryl Kapple a million times for finding a listing for our Mullen family's home in this townland.

Here is the listing he found:

Patrick Mullen Sr. can be found on Griffith's Valuation in the mid- 19th Century renting the land which is section 1 on the map for the valuation. He was renting all of the land outlined in the bottom left corner. After land reform the family was allowed to purchase the land, which they did. My great-great grandfather Patrick Mullen Jr. divided this land with his brother Michael. You can see a line dividing this land in two. Later they divided this land between their heirs. 

A problem I had to resolve for this trip was I didn't have an address for this land and house. I used Google maps to find Pollaturick. A map for the area did come up but the area is marked as Bohalas, not Pollaturick. A red tack for Pollaturick shows up on the far left side of the townland. I will have to ask if there was a name change or this is an error on Google's part? 

With the map possibly being wrong I had to figure out where the boundary lines were. I started by looking for another map with the townland borders. The Ask About Ireland site, which has a Griffith's Valuation database, has the best townland maps. Flipping between those maps and the satellite map I was able to see that the outline of the townland can still be seen from above. The outline of my ancestors' property can still be seen also. The lines are still visible but are fading. 

From the air you can see the house that is now for sale (on the right below). Street view doesn't show a view from that smaller road. There are views from the main road however. 

From the air you can see another ruined building (⇫ above far left highlighted) on the property which I might examine if it isn't too difficult to get to? From what I've heard there is a lot of barbed wire fencing in the area. There is a garden center not far from there so I may be able to buy wire cutters? 

Here is a street view of the other ruined building, which was likely another house, on the property. It does look like there were two houses on the property, one belonging to Michael and the other Patrick. There was also a building called an office. 

Street view does show one building, and possibly more on our Mullen land. This building below is on Mullen property. The house for sale can be seen in the distance. 

According to the 1911 building and house returns Patrick Mullen owned a house with 3 windows in front, which matches the house for sale, and 5 out buildings or farmsteadings.

It's possible that these buildings from Google street view belonged to the Mullens? I will knock on the door of the house near them and ask. 

I want to take a look at the old train station and signal house in Pollaturick. Believe it or not a Pierce Brosnan was station master there back in 1911. If anyone knows if he is related to the actor please let me know? This Brosnan appears to have relocated to Pollaturick to work for the railroad.

Railroad station and signal house

Oddly the railroad station house is said to be in section 15 according to the Valuation Revision Books. I can't find a map with a section 15? I did find a map with a crossed out 12 changed to 14. 

Cross outs often signified changes in ownership in the cancelled books, so that may be the case on the maps also? Below you can see Patrick Mullen 1A crossed out. New sections A and B, C and D, are created to divide the land between the brothers. 

All of this information will make my trip to Pollaturick fruitful. I worried about getting lost but now I know the area very well and don't think I will get lost. 

I might travel a little farther afield and check out some ruins close by, such as Dunmore Castle. I found a ruined monastery not far away which is in the parking lot of a Superstore. With all the empty land why build a Superstore on top of a nice ruin? As my Irish family would say Jesus, Christ, Mary, and Joseph why? Maybe this is a Protestant business? There were Irish Protestants on my mother's side of the family, my father's side is this Pollaturick Catholic Mullen/Huvane family. On the Catholic side we blame everything on Protestants lol. 

I'm more than ready to be heading to Pollaturick. I'm hoping the first week doesn't fill my head to over flowing with information that I forget where everything is in the townland. I'll have to make a copy of everything so I don't forget. I'm also making some copies of family pictures to share, and hopefully stir up some local interest in helping me to rediscover my Irish ancestors history (below is a picture of Helen Mullen-Mason my great-grandmother with her son and granddaughter. She was born in Pollaturick and came to America, Chicago, in 1898. She was the daughter of Patrick Mullen Jr.. Both of her parents remained in Ireland until they died in the 1930's). 

Puzzling Over Living DNA and 23andMe Results

A few weeks ago I checked my Living DNA results again and noticed I finally have one DNA match. I've been checking for matches since matching became available at Living DNA and I kept getting the message to keep fishing. I finally caught one match. Not that good at fishing here. 

I was so excited about catching one match I decided to upload the raw DNA data of an Aunt. That was a couple weeks ago, but her Family Networks' page still says keep fishing. My Aunt and I don't match yet.  

In order to get matches and participate in Family Networks you must opt in. When you do opt in there are a number of terms you must agree to. You have to keep clicking accept until you've agreed to all of their terms of use. That confused me at first because I didn't know I needed to keep clicking. 

I'm now able to see what the chromosome browser will be like when Living DNA makes it available. 

I checked my ethnicity results again at Living DNA just to see if they were any more accurate (they are supposed to roll out changes). They are still the same. They have extremely overestimated my British Isles ancestry because their database is made up of a majority of testers from the UK. You can see how comparing with a population which isn't very diverse skews the results. I couldn't be 68% British Isles because one of my grandparents was Nicaraguan and another grandparent was from Austria. That would give me around 50% non British Isles ancestry, plus I also have German and French Canadian ancestry. 

I checked my 23andMe ethnicity results to see how much British Isles they estimated? 23andMe is most accurate for me because my mother also tested and my ethnicity results have been phased, making them more accurate. They now have me at around 26% British Isles. That could be a little low but closer than Living DNA. Most likely the rest of my British Isles can be located in my 18% Broadly Northwestern European prediction. I'm 61.5% Northwest European according to 23andMe. 

What really blew me away is now they are also predicting I have ancestors from the Greater London area of England. I know for a fact I have Irish and Scottish ancestry, but I've not been able to trace any ancestors to England (by the way one of my great-grandmothers was born in Co. Galway, Ireland so that prediction is right). When I last checked this result I only had a prediction for Ireland. Both of these predictions apparently relate to my father since my mother doesn't share them. 

Here are examples of how the predictions are broken down at 23andMe. A heat map shows areas with a stronger association as dark, and weak association with my family as light. 

. 

Here are my UK predicted areas of possible ancestry. 

I've been to the Merseyside area. I've been to Liverpool, and really loved that city. I also love London and Edinburgh, which are also on my list. I would rank Yorkshire as one of my favorite places to visit, and I may have some ancestry there too? It's nearly impossible to say where all my pre-Revolutionary War ancestors came from. They left no hints as to where they came from, because they left no immigration records. DNA is the only way to get some idea as to where they may have been from.

I'm headed to the ancestral homeland of Ireland in a couple weeks. Thankfully I know the exact townlands where my family lived for the past several hundred years, at least. I will spend a week in Spain after my trip to Ireland. I wish DNA could confirm approximately where in Spain my family came from? I believe most Central Americans have southern Spanish roots because Latin America was largely populated by people from that region of Spain. Hopefully we can get the Spanish interested in testing? The more diversity in the pool of testers the better. The more matches the better too. 

Looking At the New DNA Tools At Ancestry.com/ including Thrulines

New DNA tools were introduced at RootsTech 2019. A few of the tools are opt in. I've opted into those tools.

Here are my impressions of the new tools:

Starting with the opt in tools. One allows you to color code your DNA matches, which may work for some people but I'm finding that too time consuming, and you have to remember the color code you're using for each family. 

There are also new ways to filter matches as you can see in the snip below. 

I did color code my brick wall Campbell family as you can see. You can create a custom group to filter by, or use filters that are already created. 

Here are some additional filters:

I love the layout of the new match page. You can quickly see how many cm's a match shares, and there is a quick link to a page with your match's information. Another nice feature of the new match page is you can scroll down and see all of your matches without having to click to another page. This is a faster way to review more matches. Before I only checked the first couple of pages looking for new quality matches. Now I quickly see the number of cm's we share and scroll down to the point where I'm less confident about the matches. Knowing how many people are on a tree is great too. If there are only 2 people on a tree why bother. 

One of my absolute favorite features is the ability to see notes for a match without clicking. This is a quick way to review matches. I have a standard way I note matches when I can identify the common ancestor. I note the father's surname/mother's maiden name and the child's name if I know it. 

The ability to see notes is especially helpful when reviewing the all important shared matches. Below we see a network of shared ancestors. Not seeing any other lines this match could be related through I'm confident enough to include the match in the Forgey/Roller line (the preceding generation is Roller/Zirkle). Sometimes you find you share more than one line, and can't say which line your shared DNA comes from? 

Another new favorite tool of mine at Ancestry is Thrulines which is designed to replace Ancestry's DNA Circles and Shared Ancestor Hints. I barely looked at the DNA Circles. I found them too time consuming to sort through. I enjoy working with the DNA results; but, I actually make more progress doing research in old documents so I need to be able to quickly review the DNA results. The new tools do make the process of reviewing matches faster.

If you watched Diahan Southard's excellent RootsTech presentation on "Connecting Your DNA Matches" you learned how to use the new Thrulines at Ancestry to find networks of matches. She recommended using your best matches to create DNA networks. As she said the Circles and Thrulines are an automated way to do that, but you can create your own networks by looking at matches you share with your best identified cousin matches. 

Thrulines uses trees and DNA to show possible lines of descent from a match. It's just a suggested line of descent that you need to verify. Suggested ancestors not on your tree are called potential ancestors. Potential ancestors are like the old Shared Ancestor Hints. Here we see a potential line of descent which is incorrect. It suggests I'm a descendant of Richard Browning's first wife's, Mary's, father William Winkler (Richard Browning had a thing for Marys because his 2nd wife was also Mary maiden name Callahan). William had a daughter named Mary Winkler who was the first wife of Richard, when she died he married a neighbor named Mary Ann Callahan. This wrong connection created a number of wrong potential ancestors. The positive aspect of this is Thrulines allowed me to find this wrong connection quickly so I could move on. 

My primary goal right now is to find the parents of Sarah Campbell who was born about 1810, likely in Tennessee. There are 8 Thrulines matches for Sarah Campbell's daughter Charlotte. Elizabeth is my ancestor and there are 9 matches who descend from her. I need to look at these matches and see if any shared matches might relate to the Campbell line of this family? Since my matches through Elizabeth share more common ancestors, and more recent ones, than through Charlotte, my matches through Charlotte are likely to be more helpful in creating a network of shared matches that might lead me to a solution to my Campbell brick wall. 

Some potential ancestors are called private because they are linked to private trees. It's important to click on those because there are generally named ancestors linked to them. My mother has 106 private matches through private trees.

The only thing I would change about the new features would be to make it easier to get from the filtered matches back to all matches. 

AncestryDNA would be the best DNA test without a doubt if they allowed opt in sharing of DNA segment data. They are adding some great features, but without segment data they fall short of being the absolute best. They are a good and important place to test, but don't have all of the best tools. 

Some Problems with Online Research

I've been doing new research, and redoing old research, for my book about John Owens, Indian Trader, and his family using online sources. When I began my research in the late 1990's I used mostly microfilm from the Family History Library ordered from my local Family History Center. Using the indexes on those films or ordering separate microfilmed indexes, and sometimes just paging through every page of a microfilm, I was able to find the information I needed for my research. Now my research is nearly exclusively online.

Here are some of the problems I've encountered in my research online recently:

Ancestry.com's index of a family death certificate contained errors. When I first saw this information at Ancestry I wasn't sure this was the correct person? When I saw the death certificate it was the correct person. Josephine Owens' father's name was indexed as Janus Owens, which actually should be James Owens. Her husband's name was Benjamin Durham, but it's indexed at Ancestry.com as Guy Darrow. You can't count on indexed names being correct.

The person who filled out the form had handwriting that was difficult to read. I however wouldn't index the name of her husband as Guy. It does look like Benj.. When I saw his name recorded as Guy Darrow I thought she remarried, but actually she was still a widow when she died and she didn't remarry.

The actual death certificate contains multiple mistakes. The informant was the son of Josephine. He seems to have given his grandfather James Owens name as his mother's father, instead of  her father William F. Owens' name. The document also states Josephine died on 9 February 1926, but the doctor last saw her alive on 10 February 1926. Anything written down can be in error. That's why using multiple sources is important.

Another problem searching for census records involved the 1850 Census. Again the handwriting of the enumerator is difficult to read. I looked for Robert S. Owens online using the search fields for census records at all of the sites with census images. I could not find him, but I knew he was living in Bracken County, Kentucky in 1850. I finally stumbled upon the reason I could not find him. His name was indexed as Owand, instead of Owens. If you already know this man's name is Owens you can decipher this difficult to read handwriting. I'll be adding the name Owand as a variant spelling of Owens to my list.

Another problem I've encountered is poor quality unreadable online images. This is the 1860 Census for Effingham County, Illinois for my Owens family. As you can see it's tough to read the names, but if you already know the names you can make them out. I could not find this record by searching for it. I had to use my microfilm copy to find it.

This is the same 1850 Census image for the Owens family. I made this copy from a microfilm. The names are more legible.

Here is another record that is even worse.

It appears Ancestry.com solved the problem of the difficult to read pages by leaving them off their site all together? I can't find page 1125 for Effingham County, Illinois?

I love the online records but now know to be extra cautious if records fail to surface when searching on genealogy websites. I did make a major find for the Owens family tree by searching FamilySearch deeds online. I found a new member of the Owens family named Julia Ann Owens born about 1810 in Kentucky. I also found a deed that confirmed what we suspected about Josiah Owens being the son of James D. Owens and Francis Watkins. The deed states Josiah was the son of Francis; leaving no doubt about his parentage. I could never afford to order all the films for every deed book necessary for research so the free online records have been so helpful.

Sometimes the locked records at FamilySearch are a little puzzling as in why are some of these indexes searchable while others aren't? The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania A-H Grantors indexes are searchable, while the I- Z are only searchable at the Family History Library or a Family History Center?

Sometimes you find the documents are badly damaged. I'm happy, however, that even the damaged records are searchable because who knows, someone may be able to decipher something from them?

Every site with census images has some that are illegible. I wouldn't assume that someone isn't on the census unless you've done a page by page search of a complete set of records. It's also possible a page of an online record could have been missed when the records were filmed. The fact you don't find something in online records doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Looking for other copies of records at more than one website, or offline, could help you find what you're looking for.

2018 In Review: My Accomplishments and Looking forward to 2019

Austrian National Holiday Celebration Gussing, Burgenland, Austria 2018

2018 was another interesting year researching and traveling! With more and more information being uploaded to the internet I've been able to make even more progress.

I had a chance this year to trace my Austrian family because Catholic Church records are now online for that country. The records are searchable at  http://matriken.graz-seckau.at/  Paying a researcher in that country to research the records costs 50 euros, and more an hours, which I could not afford.

From this website I found the birth record for my great-great grandmother Maria Bierbauer born 27 Nov 1849 in those records. I was able to trace lines of her family back to the 1600's. Her family migrated to Burgenland, Austria where the records don't extend that far back so my other lines in that area only go back to the late 18th Century. I also learned to read some basic German script writing as I was going through these records.

All of the records for my grandfather Rudolph Kapple stated that he was born in Hort, Austria and not Burgenland like his parents. I couldn't find a placed called Hort in Austria. I assumed it was a misspelling if it was in Austria. I also thought maybe Hort actually meant Ort, which could just be a word for town? For years I tried to find my grandfather's birth record in Burgenland. I looked at the local civil registration birth records, but nothing for him surfaced? This year I searched the records online again and discovered some of the birth records were recorded as much as a couple of years after the birth. I began searching beyond his year of birth. Didn't find anything this way either. I then went back to the register after realizing the names were written in Hungarian. Even though the Hungarian name for Rudolph appeared to be much different than the English and German spellings his parents names looked more similar. This year I finally solved that mystery and have my grandfather's birth record.

Rudolph's full name was Rudolph Christian Kapple or Koppel. Here his name was written in Hungarian

This record stated he was born in Hart, and not Hort, in Styria, Austria. I presented that information to the Burgenland Bunch group at Facebook. Someone at the group found my grandfather's birth record in the parish where Hart is located. 2018 has also been a great years for collaboration in the Facebook genealogy groups.

Rudolph's baptismal record from Styria Church book

I often check Ancestry.com for photos of my family. I've found a couple interesting ones this year. One picture I've been hoping to find has surfaced on Ancestry. I figured that since my great-great grandmother Mary Ann Browning nee Callahan lived until 1919 chances were good there were photos of her. One photo of her has been uploaded to Ancestry.com.

Ancestry shines when it comes to finding photos and documents attached to trees. Familysearch shines when it comes to the number or original records searchable online. I've spent many hours this year looking through original records now available online at Familysearch. Remember any records with a camera icon are searchable online either at home or at an LDS Family History Center.

2018 I also completed my goal of visiting all of the places my grandparents where born. In 2015 and 2016 I visited Granada, Nicaragua where my grandmother Graciela Forgey nee Del Castillo was born. In 2017 I visited Chicago where my grandmother Dorothy Kapple nee Mason was born. In 2018 I visited Jackson County Indiana where my grandfather Charles Lynn Forgey was born. I also visited Styria, Austria in 2018 where my grandfather Rudolph Christian Kapple was born. I paid a visit to Burgenland, Austria where many generations of my were born, and family lived. I started my journey to Austria in Germany where I also have roots.

2018 marked the first time this California native did courthouse research. I did some research at the courthouse in Brownstown, Indiana. I learned some new facts about my family and really enjoyed the seeing the original documents. I also learned the records can blacken your hands.

What do we have to look forward to in 2019? Record DNA sales should boost our number of cousins in the DNA databases. Expect to see 300 million more records which will be available at Familysearch. You can find out what's new at Familysearch by clicking on help then clicking what's new in the drop down menu. Familysearch is the site I will be spending most of my time on this year.

This year I will be packing my bags again and heading to my great-grandmother Helen Mullen's birthplace Ireland. I also plan on visiting the ancestral homeland of Spain, and Quebec, Canada where my great-great grandfather Peter Mason was born. I'm writing a book about my John Owens Indian Trader family I hope to finish in the next couple of months. The amount of information now online, especially at Familysearch.org., is helping me with this task.



I wish hope everyone has a productive 2019! Happy New Year!

Comparing 2nd Cousin DNA Matches at AncestryDNA

My Father Robert Kapple with two of his sisters

I just got a new 2nd cousin match at AncestryDNA. Now that I have a few results to compare it's interesting to see the variation in the number of cm's shared. My new 2nd cousin is actually a predicted 3rd cousin at Ancestry. However he is a predicted 2nd cousin of my 1st cousin Darryl, which is correct. My first cousin Judy, like myself, is a predicted 3rd cousin of his, which isn't correct. This has to do with the number of cm's shared which is how Ancestry decided what the predicted relationship should be. Other 2nd cousins of mine are also predicted 3rd cousins at Ancestry. When looking at 3rd cousin matches it's important to consider that they may be closer cousins.

Below you can see that several of my 2nd cousins share much less DNA with me as compared to my 1st cousin Darryl, hence the different cousin prediction. The largest difference is 132 cms. The differences have to do with differences in the amount of DNA we get from shared ancestors. I believe if I compare with the same cousins at GEDmatch amounts of shared DNA would increase. Ancestry cm numbers are often lower than the other companies because of the way they process the kits.

A record number of kits were sold as gifts for the holidays. We may see several more 2nd cousin matches in the New Year. I have about 7 2nd cousin matches so far on both sides of my family. Since my Kappel/Kapple great-grandparents had 11 children there are definitely more 2nd cousins out there. These cousins can be useful if they upload elsewhere, at a site where you can collect shared segments and construct a segment map. A map with 2nd cousin segments helps to confirm more distant cousin matches; matches that share small segments. Hoping to improve my segment map in the New Year!

Making an Ancestral Scrapbook Style Photo Book/ Living DNA

I finally have the Living DNA family networks. I've been waiting to see possible DNA matches for months. This feature was first offered to a few testers who were beta testing it. Disappointingly I have no matches yet. Living DNA is based in the Britain. Most of their testers live in the UK. I'm American with a mixed heritage and would not have any close matches in the UK. I'll keep fishing and checking as they've stated. I haven't gotten anywhere with my other kits lately either. Few matches are choosing to upload to GEDmatch, and few matches have good family trees. I'm relying more on documents now. Hoping Christmas gift kits produce some better results!

Scrapbook Style Photo Book

Photo books are a good way to share your family history. It's especially good when you don't have enough information for a full size family history book. With the holidays coming a photo book is a great gift option. 

You can make a book with as few as 20 pages, and up to a little over 100 pages, and sometimes more. The sizes of the books range from 8x8 inches (which is too small for multiple pictures on a page) 12x12, 8x11 is the best seller size, or the size closest to the old style scrap books 11x14. Most companies offer a landscaped print book. Some are now offering portrait style for books like the 8x11 size. Most offer a variety of cover options also, such as leather. You can have the books printed as a standard book. This type of book can cause pictures printed near the middle seam between the pages to be difficult to see. A lay-flat book solves this problem because it doesn't have a middle seam; the books pages open flat. This is the best option when printing a book, but it's more expensive. 

There are often sales on photo books. Watch out for sales in the 50% to 70% range with coupons, because these books can quickly add up in price as you add pages and other custom features. 

I've been using Snapfish, and their affiliated Walgreens Drugstore sites to create my books. If you order your book from a drug store site, or a big box store, you can often pick up your finished book from the store in as little as one hour. The quickly printed books are not as high quality as the books you order by mail, but it's a convenient quick way to create a book. 

I use Snapfish and Walgreens mainly based on price and the ease of using their book creation features. I found that the other sites took more time to learn to use. 

Snapfish doesn't have the nice designs Mixbook and Shutterfly have for a family history book. 

Shutterfly and Mixbook have some nice book designs relating to family history. You can start out with a basic book and build the pages yourself. 

Here are some nice vintage backgrounds for an ancestral family history photo book. 

If you go with the blank book you can add custom themed pages. Here is a family history theme page you can add. 

You can choose a theme book instead of a basic book which would contain custom themed pages. Here are some pages from the Remembrance and Modern Memories books at Mixbook. 

To make the book look more like a scrapbook you can add stickers/embellishments as seen in the photo at them top of the page. 

Shutterfly has a family history themed book. 

You can add text boxes to your photo books too.

Most of the photo book sites have books with family theme pages. Search sites for family, memories, remembrance etc. for themed pages, and books that would be suitable for family history. 

I wondered if my document images would be clear enough to read in these photo books. In the example below you can see that the print is legible. Sometimes I had to use the program Paint to enlarge an image so it would look clearer. Increasing the pixels will make the image acceptable.  

Caution: Be sure to choose the correct size book before creating your book. The standard size at Mixbook, for instance, is 8x8, which is too small for most projects. 

Also I would not have these sites automatically place pictures for a family history photo book. If you are making a travel book with hundreds of pictures it is economical and fast to have them place the photos for you. When it comes to a family history books automatic placement wouldn't work because the chronological order wouldn't be correct, and the family groups wouldn't either. 

There are many ways to customize these books. You can move things around, and add as many photos as you'd like to a page by dragging them over. You can overlay pictures to use a photo as a background. It takes a little time to learn about all the different themes, embellishments, frames, and fonts etc., but it's worth it when you see the finished product. 

Here is a video of my lay-flat Snapfish family history book. I didn't use embellishments, but as I said before you can do so in order to create a book that looks like a scrapbook. I included my trip pictures along with documents I've collected and a picture of my grandfather Rudolph Kapple.