Contagious Genealogy: A Pandemic

This final blog entry will round out my Dublin research trip studying my KEEFFE and MEADE ancestors in my maternal family tree. If you've somehow landed here first without reading about days 1-7, go ahead and flip back to those articles for the full picture! I warn you, it's very genealogy-focused, but I bet if you're at this website at all, that's what you came for. So read on! Most importantly, I want to give a shoutout and wholeheartedly thank Donna Moughty for organizing the excursion and lending her expertise during our family history hunt in Ireland. This was my first time traveling internationally solely for the purpose of genealogy, and I'm so glad I did. I found so many pieces of history to add to my family tree that I would never be able to discover online! It was a very different vacation from ones I've taken in the past. Aer Lingus Terminal, Dublin Airport, Ireland DAY 8 Saturday, October 14th, 2023 was a sad day, because it meant the vacation was ov...

Although I haven't yet had the chance of visiting our own National Archives in the States, on Donna Moughty's Dublin adventure in October 2023, I made it to the National Archives of Ireland (NAI)! National Archives of Ireland, Dublin DAY 4 While this was my fourth day in Dublin, it was only my second day of research and second repository of the trip, so needless to say, I still had some nerves about me when it came to visiting the archives. Luckily, we were walking over there as a group (a healthy 17 minute excursion, as Google Maps would claim -- probably a more realistic 20 minutes, especially with crosswalks and traffic lights). However, we only discovered later that one participant in our group had set off on their own before us, hoping to get a head start and not slow us down. We all got worried when they hadn't beat us to the punch, and instead, were missing! Somewhat terrifyingly, they had been given repeated misdirection from locals, pointing them toward the Registr...