Isn't everybody Irish?

Fáilte ar ais*

Welcome back!

They say that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day. ("THEY" say a lot of stuff and I don't believe most of it!) Well, we're going to be IN Ireland ON St. Paddy's day. That should be interesting, shouldn't it? Now... John talked about being 1/4 Irish. "Walsh" was a family name, but where it all fell in the great grand scheme of things, wasn't quite clear. So... what does one do in a situation like this?.... Of course, what one always does -- GOOGLE! I googled with this wild thought that I would find some incredibly valuable information and present it to him with great fanfare. Yeah, right! Like that was gonna happen!

Well.... I first found John's paternal grandfather, Charles Nicolas Kraft, which lead to his grandmother, Bertha E. Walsh. B-I-N-G-O! We have a winner! Well, now we knew where the last of this line of Walsh-es was. I joined ancestry.com (hey, they have full access to census data both here and in Ireland) and the hunt was on. I think we stayed up, on that Tuesday in January, until close to 2 a.m. In that great way of genealogical sleuthing, we had John, whose father was James Walsh Kraft, whose mother was Bertha Ednetta (?) Walsh, whose father was James T. Walsh, whose mother was Allice / Alice [maiden name unknown] Walsh, born in Ireland, about 1815. At that point... BAM... we hit a brick wall. We don't know Allice's maiden name or her husband's name which really sort of slows things down. We also can't find Allice anywhere except the 1860 census when she was in Pennsylvania, Alleghany County, Pittsburgh. And so, we've spent a lot of time wondering where Allice is. (Oh, Allice... where are you????)

We've spent time tracing back the Kraft side, found tons of info on Curlees and Hunts and Tidwells and the rest. On the Curlee side of my family, I have found two ancestors from Ireland. One is Mary Richardson, born in Ireland, 1739 (where in Ireland, we don't know) and one William Early, born in Donegal, Ireland, in 1622. Eureka... we have at least ONE Ireland destination where we can claim "family". It seems that most of the Walshes came from Tipperary, so, absent some true proof of where Allice and Mr. Walsh came from, we'll call Tipperary "home", as well. You know... it's a long way to Tipperary! (Are you humming yet?)

It's been great fun amidst this family search and heaven knows we're still not done. We'll keep looking and eventually, we'll find another clue. It's bound to come and then we'll have yet another evening of late night staring at the computer screen. What fun!

We'll keep you posted!

Dawn

*folye-teh air ash