Month: August 2025
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Forged by Mystery: How Childhood Playtime Shaped My Genealogy Obsession
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I blame Nancy Drew. And Encyclopedia Brown. And every cryptic puzzle in Martin Gardner’s Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing. Growing up in the mid-1970s, I devoured mystery books like other kids consumed Saturday morning cartoons. When I finally graduated to adult mysteries, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot taught me that the…
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When Shakespeare Couldn’t Save My Family’s Money
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When I discovered newspaper clippings about my Irish ancestors’ encounters with Brooklyn’s legal system in the 1860s and 1870s, I uncovered stories that reveal the harsh realities of immigrant life. My 2x great-grandparents William and Ellen Dowling became victims of a robbery when someone they trusted stole $55 hidden in…
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From Wide Open Spaces to New American Lives
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The story of American immigration is fundamentally a story about sky—trading the endless horizons of rural homelands for narrow urban canyons and industrial smoke. Between the 1840s and 1920s, five families made profound journeys from Europe’s most open landscapes to America’s most crowded neighborhoods and industrial centers. From County Kerry’s…
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William Dowling: A Young Listowel Lad in New York
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When I think about my earliest documented ancestor, my mind travels across an ocean and back in time to a young man making his way from the hills of County Kerry to the bustling port of Liverpool, England, in 1857. William Dowling, born around 1838, presumably in Listowel, County Kerry,…