Clients frequently ask me to collaborate with them on their family history. People have usually done a little bit themselves and then get stuck. I come in to help untangle and correct their homework! The proliferation of hint systems in online commercial genealogy sites means that it’s very easy for an error to be replicated, and it’s easier still to fall for these errors when you’re new to research.
With that in mind, it’s always good to revisit your previously completed research from time to time. It nearly always involves a light bulb moment of “why didn’t I think of X or Y before?” and the answer is because you get more experienced over the years. I don’t get a lot of time to work on my own ancestry these days but I took some time over Christmas and looked at my Waters ancestors. They’re a paternal branch at the great great great grandparent level. My ancestors Michael Waters and Eliza Cunningham were married in Dublin in 1842. There are no parents’ named on their marriage so I probably won’t be able to go further back on the line, but there’s still more I can expand in their descendants (aside from my direct line, their daughter Mary Teresa, which I think I’ve done pretty exhaustively). Only her brother Thomas has living descendants today, or at least that is what I thought…
Most of Michael and Eliza’s children appear in the Roman Catholic baptismal records on Irishgenealogy.ie. All were born before civil registration of births started in Ireland so they won’t have birth certificates. They were baptised in either St Nicholas de Myra on Francis St or in SS Michael & John (on Essex Quay, no longer a church). For one daughter, Georgina, I found from her marriage record in Harrington St church in 1881. Their parish register gives her parents’ full names. But no baptism has been located.
Georgina sadly died young but had 3 children. Two of them lived to adulthood and married but I haven’t identified any grandchildren. One of those daughters ended up marrying a French soldier in France & that’s definitely a story for another blog.
There’s also a bit of confusion surrounding a son called Thomas. There was a son called Joseph Thomas Waters baptised in 1846. No further evidence of him, but a son called Thomas married in 1868 and when he died, sadly, in 1878, he was recorded as being 32. So it’s probable but not certain that he’s the same son. He’s the only one I’ve got living descendants for and DNA matches too. Just one of his children, Joseph Patrick Waters, had children. However, Joseph was married twice and had 8 children in total. The DNA matches are small but all the people also match my brother and paternal first cousin similarly and are in the appropriate range for the relationship.
Hello: what’s this?
And so, until Christmas, that was it for the family, the other children were born early enough that if they had not lived to adulthood, we’d have no record of their deaths. I had previously searched for marriages, but I did it again anyway. This time, I found something new! Eliza Waters, born in 1850, did actually marry and have children. I found it by searching for a street name as a keyword on Findmypast (in their transcribed marriage registers from the National Library of Ireland’s RC collection). Crucially here, I think I’d only done my previous searching on Irishgenealogy’s Dublin church records, and this entry seems to be missing there.
You can see this parish didn’t record Eliza’s mother surname, but it does say her father was dead. To get more info, I also checked the civil copy, which told me her Dad was a brass finisher. This is the correct occupation for my ancestor and he died in 1870.
This is where I admit I overlooked something – Elizabeth Hayden features as a godmother to my great-grandmother in 1882. I never considered before (and to be fair, it was over 15 years ago that I first did this research) that she was a married aunt.
With a married name to search for, I soon found 5 children. One of them features in some trees on Ancestry but it looks like a conflation of two people in error (no, I won’t bother contacting the owners to advise!) but so far, I haven’t found any marriages for the 5 children, just one death and for Eliza’s husband too. They’re not on 1901 or 1911 censuses as far as I can see. They look like candidates for emigration. That’ll be the next step when times allows more personal research. I also want to review the shared DNA matches to the known Waters descendants across all family kits and databases.
One other item intrigued me. I’d long speculated that there was also a son called John in Eliza’s generation – that name appears as witness and godparent more than once. John witnesses Eliza’s marriage and his address is the same as hers – a strong indictor that he is a brother. However, John Waters is a very common name, so I don’t know how much luck I’ll have researching him. A quick check hasn’t found any helpful marriages with the right parents named.
Takeaways
- Always review your previous research & be ready to admit you made mistakes!
- Always investigate witnesses and godparents as potential siblings/cousins, even if they have different surnames.
- Repeat your research on different genealogical sites – even if it appears they have the same records, the algorithm might return different results in each location.