Fearless Females Blog Post: March 1 - Favorite Female Ancestor

Note : Lisa Alzo from The Accidental Genealogist has a blogging prompt series dedicated to Women History in the month of March. I decided to use these prompts to train me to get back into the habit of blogging while researching a brick wall ancestor . More about Lisa's series here :
http://www.theaccidentalgenealogist.com/2013/02/back-for-fourth-year-fearless-females.html.



 My 1st of March prompt for favorite female ancestor will be on my Grandmother's mother, Anna Loretta Jones. I dedicated this months' research to working on my Jones family so it will be all about Annie. The reasons why :

1) She was a fearless female ancestor who was brave enough to have 12 children. She died with her 13th pregnancy.

2) She has been my brick wall ever since my Grandmother died. Her death certificate, according to the records, is lost in a courthouse fire. Her place of birth in earlier records says "Ireland"; the latter records say ' USA".

3) I did not think to ask my Grandmother about her but my great-Aunt May thought the Jones were from Listowel.

4) Her death date is March 6th so every time I see that death date, I reinvigorate that search for her family roots in Ireland.

5) Megan Smolenyak has a great research story for the true identity of Ellis Island's Annie Moore It always inspire me look under some more stones for my Annie mystery.

6) I have a sister named Annie, after this Great-Grandmother, so I feel a need to complete this namesake ancestor for her !

The link to Megan Smolenyak's story about her hunt for Annie Moore is here : http://www.honoringourancestors.com/annie-moore-resources.html.

Sligo

"...Each age is a dream that is dying or one that is coming to birth..." Arthur O'Shaughnessy

           My husband's side is almost 100 percent Irish. His little mother passed away at the grand age of almost 94 and thought genealogy was a bit silly. However, she did like the fact that she could be a member of the DAR for all practical purposes.

         I decided to conquer the impossible in the known dearth of access to the church records of Ireland. Doing my own Grandmother's Kerry folks took almost centuries - or felt like centuries - and still hitting fort walls in my O'Mahonys and Jones. So I was pleasantly surprised when church records showed up for Sligo at FamilySearch and Ancestry website. Unfortunately, they are only indexes but confirmation will be solid when I can order the microfilms to connect the families.

        The Cleveland, Ohio family of Downs was found in a courthouse search of US records in the Cleveland courthouse before I investigated the church records online. They hailed from Ballinfada. I was lucky she had (at least) three sisters that immigrated to Cleveland. The records had their parents' full names and full townland names on their death records.

        Then I came upon the passenger record for " Ma Butler " who was the Grandmother that immigrated to Cleveland. She is even traveling with the cousin named Riley who lived with the family in Cleveland so that cinched it. For Irish genealogy , I feel very lucky indeed .

Some things I learned about Mary Jane Down's Sligo : (Sligeach in Gaelic) sligeach means "full of shells".

• According to the Census returns, a staggering 75,660 emigrated from Sligo in the half-century from 1851-1901.
• Her village named Ballinafad in Irish: Béal an Átha Fada, means "Mouth of the long ford"
• Aghanagh is the Downs' actual town land situated in the civil parish of Tirerrill
• Family Search wiki has a great page about working genealogy in tiny, tough Sligo
   https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/County_Sligo
• And lastly, that William Butler Yeats wrote ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ there in 1888.

Image below of Mary Jane Downs immigration to Ohio , August 25 1862 on the Ship Cultwater . 3rd line down from the top .
 

Source: NY Passenger's List  at Family Search