It has begun.
Month: February 2016
Stories
Aughagower; County of Mayo; Archdiocese of Tuam. Baptisms, Sep. 1855 to Jan. 1856, Microfilm 04210 / 05, page 8.
“30th [December 1855] Ruchane, Thos illegitimate of Thomas Heraghty a married man & Sally Gannon spon[sor] Bridget Gannon.”
It’s easy to forget, as you’re trawling through the remnants of others’ lives, that these were people with their own complicated stories. Little Thomas was born illegitimate in a country that was deeply Catholic, and at a time when people all around him were dying of starvation. I wonder what became of him and Sally?
Walter Basquil
Baptism of Walter Basquil 29 June 1846
Aughagower; County of Mayo; Archdiocese of Tuam. Baptisms, May 1846 to June 1846, page 56
This is kind of like my holy grail. I’m a little stunned that I finally located it. Walter was my great-great grandfather. He was born well before the start of compulsory civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths, so I really didn’t think I’d find any documentation that would pin down his birth date. True, this is just an entry in the baptismal register, but it means that my previous best guess for his birth (1845) was slightly off. He would have been baptized soon after birth, so this puts his birth date firmly in 1846.
The funny thing is that, as I was going through the register for 1845, the year I thought he was born, I encountered pages with such faded writing that at first I thought they were blank. No amount of adjusting contrast or even inverting the values could have made them legible. When I got to the end of 1845 without finding Walter I almost cried, for real, because I thought for sure his entry was lost in those pages.
So frustrating! But now I’m floating on a happy little cloud.
The Churching of Mrs. Duffy
Baptism of Michael Baskwell 15 February 1844
Aughagower; County of Mayo; Archdiocese of Tuam. Baptisms, Jan. 1844 to Feb. 1844, page [27]
Two things are going on here. First, there’s the baptism of Michael Baskwell (Basquill), son of Michael Basquill and Margaret Kelly, on 15 February 1844. This is my great-great grandfather Walter’s older brother, and I believe the first child in the family to be baptized in Aughagower Parish, so I am on the right track. The sponsors are Thomas Flinn (I think?) and Julia Baskwell. I don’t know which Julia this is, yet, but both sponsors would be close to the family.
Second, check out Mrs. Duffy on the last line. One advantage of slogging through thousands of pages of un-indexed images is that you get to see stuff that wouldn’t normally interest most folks. I doubt, when Ancestry releases its own set of indexed parish records for Ireland, that entries for churching will make the cut. I think that’s unfortunate, though.
Churching is a blessing given to women after they’ve given birth. The child does not have to be live born or even baptized, but hopefully if you look further back in the register, you’ll find a baptismal entry for the woman in question. If there isn’t one, that would indicate that the child likely was stillborn or died before it could be baptized. Either way, it’s potentially helpful information.
Watching Paint Peel
Four years ago, the paint in my bathroom started falling off the walls in sheets. Good times! I assumed at the time, because of the way it peeled, that a former tenant had used oil-based paint on the walls, then maintenance folks slapped a coat of builder beige latex over it all before I moved in, not realizing they were painting over oil paint.
I called the management office, they sent painters, I told the painters my theory, painters said they would scrape and sand everything down, then skim coat the whole thing with mud, then paint, and it would all be fine. I was dubious that the mud would stick to whatever was on the walls any better than the latex paint had. But what to I know? I only have a college degree that says I know stuff about paint, right? But it was not my circus, and it was not my monkeys.
The painters scraped, sanded, skimmed, and painted.
And guess what? Within a couple of months, the paint was peeling again. Not as badly as the first time, but bad enough. I decided to ignore it, though, because my faith in the painters was non-existent.
Then, a few months ago, the city rental inspector did their every-five-years inspection of my apartment complex. She did not like the peeling paint, oh no, she didn’t. So we had another round with the painters (a new crew this time). I explained what had happened the first time, and that I thought the walls needed to be primed before painting. Head painter guy said yes, they would prime them.
Did they prime the walls? Oh no, they did not. So guess what started to happen, just a few weeks after they were painted?
I’ve called the office twice now, to tell them that the paint is peeling AGAIN. I thought they might want to know before the city inspector comes back to do a re-check. Eventually the re-check will happen, but I doubt the bathroom walls will be fixed.
(Oh, and don’t even get me started on the godawful mudding job they did. Look at those lumps!)
Piglet in the Window
Neighborhood watch is on the job.
More Ancestry Shenanigans
1841 Census of England and Wales limited by birthplace Ireland (Ancestry)
1841 Census of England and Wales limited by birthplace Ireland (FamilySearch)
If you use Ancestry, beware that whatever problems are causing searching to be slow as molasses, they are also making search results unreliable. Just for fun, I looked at the 1841 England and Wales census for all people born in Ireland. Ancestry returned 208 hits. That cannot be right. Sure, it was pre-famine, but there had to have been more Irish folks living in England at that time.
I did the same search at FamilySearch, with much more believable results.
You would expect some variation in total numbers, because of human error. Ancestry and FamilySearch have their own transcriptions, and those are full of fun mistakes. The numbers should be in the same ballpark, though. The results from both searches for the 1851 England census are generally in line.
1851 Census of England and Wales limited by birthplace Ireland (Ancestry)
1851 Census of England and Wales limited by birthplace Ireland (FamilySearch)
So clearly the problem is affecting random searches and is not consistent across the board.
That Look
The look on your face when staff is eating Samoas in front of you and isn’t sharing. –Frances
(Yes, she said staff. Old dog is getting in touch with her inner dowager duchess.)
Snow
It’s finally sticking a little bit, but it doesn’t look like much.
Chives
There’s one lone seed head from last fall, but the silly things are sprouting new shoots, too.
red paper boat 