Our Growing Family Tree

A Spot on the Map: Four Brooklyn Neighborhoods

September 6, 2026

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We picture immigration as a single ocean crossing, but for my Plunkett and Dowling ancestors the real movement happened after they landed, inside a single borough. This post traces one Irish family across four Brooklyn neighborhoods, from the tenement streets of Vinegar Hill to the Red Hook waterfront, up to…

Coming Home to the Brooklyn That Made My Family

August 31, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

I fly to Brooklyn on September 8, and if I am honest, the research plan is not the real reason I keep going back. My paternal Irish families arrived in the 1850s, and their descendants are still here. Five generations later, I am the one booking the flight. This post…

Brooklyn Parish Records and the Promise of a Breakthrough

August 30, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

Five letters are already waiting in Brooklyn. Two Irish families, the Dowlings and the Plunketts, and two marriages I still can’t locate: William Dowling and Ellen McAuliffe, and Peter Plunkett and Julia Smith. Somewhere in the parish records of five Brooklyn Catholic institutions, one of those entries might finally name…

When Neighbors Become Family: A Duplex Love Story

August 23, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

In 1940, the Dowling family lived upstairs in a Brooklyn duplex while the Panchak family lived downstairs. Two young people, Gwendolyn Dowling and William Panchak, grew up one staircase apart. By 1950, they were married with three daughters, still living in the same house. This post traces their story through…

You Ache for One Ordinary Day of Theirs. Take Mine.

August 21, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

I spend my days reconstructing the lives of people who left me almost nothing. A name, a date, if I am lucky a single line in a parish register. So this week I flipped it around and wrote down one ordinary day of my own, on purpose, while I still…

My Growth Opportunity – An Advanced Genealogy Course

August 17, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

Week 30 of the 52 Ancestors challenge is Free Space, so I am writing about a work still in progress: me. I am 39 percent into an advanced genealogy course, the National Genealogical Society’s Advanced Skills in Genealogy, and it is reshaping how I research, analyze, and write. In this…

An OMPF Mini Reconstruction File – A Source I Want to Understand Better

August 10, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

When most of your grandfather’s military file burned in the 1973 NPRC fire, what you get back is not a personnel file at all. It is an OMPF reconstruction file: a mix of imaged original records, statistical extracts, and later derivatives, each created for a different purpose and each deserving…

Leisure Time: Twelve Strikes and a Lifetime of Memories

July 18, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

When I think about leisure time in my family, I think of bowling. This is the story of my dad’s love of the game: Friday night leagues, a junior bowling ball engraved with my nickname, Peanut, and the perfect 300 game he bowled in April 1985. It’s about the trophies…

Our Growing Family Tree

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A Spot on the Map: Four Brooklyn Neighborhoods

Coming Home to the Brooklyn That Made My Family

Brooklyn Parish Records and the Promise of a Breakthrough

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