Brooklyn 2026, Day 2. Wednesday, September 9, 2026
The first full day in Brooklyn, and the Master Trip Plan had stacked the morning on purpose. DNA samples for my aunt before coffee, because both kits want thirty minutes with nothing to eat or drink. A short first oral history session at the kitchen table, the Dowling side and the house itself. Then at 9:45 we leave for Immaculate Heart of Mary, five minutes away, where the parish administrator has four baptismal records waiting, sponsors listed and all: Marie 1905, Julia 1907, Margretta 1909, Gwendolyn 1915. My grandmother and three of her sisters. In the church where I was baptized in 1969.
I told you Monday about the call script (See: “Twelve Hours Out: Thirty-Six Revisions to the Master Trip Plan.”) What I did not tell you is the order it put the calls in. Appendix G said to make the easiest call first, Immaculate Heart of Mary, “where you were baptized,” to warm up. Then St. James, the Co-Cathedral, Visitation. So the first parish office I ever cold-called was the one that has had my name in its register since 1969.
The opening line was written to be read off the page. Three questions, in that order: is there anything else you need from me, may I stop by between the 9th and the 17th, and who do I ask for when I come. And the line above all of it: “Stand up. It genuinely steadies your voice.”
I stood up. Read the opening pretty much word for word, the way Appendix G told me to. The parish administrator did not hand me anything the script had not already covered. She just told me she would have everything ready for me at ten on the 9th, and that was that.
The letter that went out July 30 asked for a photocopy or photograph of the original register entry, not a typed certificate. The margins are where sponsors and places of origin live. For four Brooklyn baptisms between 1905 and 1915 there is no Irish townland hiding in there. But the habit has to hold for next Wednesday at St. James, so it starts today.
What I got instead was four handwritten, signed certificates. Not photocopies of the register, which is what I had asked for. I was a little disappointed, honestly. I had my heart set on seeing the actual page. But these are baptisms from after 1900, nothing that needs a magnifying glass or a translator, so I let it go faster than I expected to.
Marie’s certificate, 1905, had the one detail worth thinking about more. Her sponsors were James Plunkett, her mother’s brother, and Ann Plunkett, her step-grandmother. Ann was the second wife of Peter Plunkett, Marie’s grandfather, and the woman who had largely raised my great-grandmother Mary Plunkett Dowling after Mary’s own mother, Julia, died in 1875, when Mary was only five.
Ann’s presence still surprised me. From what I have pieced together out of the probate file, there was real friction between Peter’s children by his first wife and Ann and her children. Whatever that friction was, it had not kept Ann out of the church that day, standing up for Marie at the font.
The other three certificates named sponsors too. Julia, 1907, had John Ward and Elizabeth Sullivan. Margretta, 1909, had Stephen G. Plunkett, another of the mother’s brothers, and Grace Freeman. Gwendolyn, 1915, had Arthur J. Riley and Caraman O’Toole. None of those names mean anything to me yet, other than the second Plunkett brother showing up again. That is what the file is for.
The rest of the morning did not hold to the plan. The DNA samples had to wait until Saturday, when my aunt says she wants to do both an AncestryDNA test and a MyHeritage test. The oral history session happened, but not at the kitchen table. We ended up in the attic instead.
It was hot up there and packed floor to ceiling, difficult to move without bumping into something, so we did not stay as long as I thought we would. But that was where I learned Bridget Plunkett had lived, in a small back room in the attic. I got to stand in that room and think about the woman who I believe had purchased this house (we’ll find out for sure on Monday), on her own, in 1905.
The church appointment held. Ten o’clock, the parish administrator, four certificates instead of the photocopies I had asked for, and one detail on Marie’s that I will be thinking about for a while. The rest of the day got smaller: no samples before coffee, less time in the attic, less accomplished than the Master Trip Plan called for. But everything was worth every minute we could give it.
Scaled down is the honest word for the day. The day got smaller. The family did not.
Tonight’s decision log entry
Sept 9, 2026: DNA sample collection moved to Saturday. My aunt has agreed to take both an AncestryDNA test and a MyHeritage test. No other changes to the plan; today ran close to as written, just lighter than scheduled.
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