Happy St. Patrick's Day 2016

For the past few St. Patrick's Day I have made Reuben sandwiches and green beer, and while that may still happen today, I thought I would write about something more Irish. All my life I've been told I'm from Irish descendant on my mother's side. If someone asked me how I told them my great, great, great, great grandfather came over on the orphan train. "Ah," everyone would say knowingly, but the truth of the matter is I was ignorant on the subject. I thought he came from Ireland on a train during the potato famine. This is what happens when you don't pay attention, and I didn't. Because I didn't particularly care. As a kid I wasn't thirsty for knowledge.

Now that I'm an adult and an orphan so to speak I care. Now that I'm going through my mother's papers I care. Now that I'm at the latter part of life I care. A month or so ago my mother's sister forwarded an email she received from a cousin she knew nothing about. That coupled with papers and pictures from my mother's belongings sent me into genealogy. Where did I come from? Now I was curious. Now I cared.

It isn't easy this genealogy stuff. I thought with the addition of computers it would be, but I was mistaken. I started first with my father's side of the family because before he died my father researched his family and made a nice little tree. I remembered that I was a member of genealogy site, and after searching various papers and files, I found my password and username. The site had been dissolved into Ancestry.com, and while it was still free to make a tree, delving into anything else cost money. A lot of money. Because once you find your history you don't care?

I made a tree starting with my paternal side. The problem with that is you can go crazy. I kept adding people and adding people and before long the entire day was gone. "Great!" I thought. "A project to keep me busy." Next up was my mother's side of the family. I had some information, but not birth and death dates. I turned to the Internet. The Ancestry site helps some with that, but the best site I found was here. This is a site where people who have tons of time on their hands who are very interested in genealogy, take photos of grave sites and post it along with information linking to other grave photos in the same family. I'm grateful to those people because that site got me TONS of information.

It turns out that my Irish relative was my great great grandfather, closer to me than I thought. He did come over on the orphan train, but not from Ireland during the potato famine. I have read and studied now all about orphan trains. The orphan train movement was started in New York and involved children of immigrant parents who had died, who had left their children to fend for themselves, who had placed them in asylums, etc. Some of these children lived on the streets. The founder of the Children's Aid Society got the bright idea of gathering up these children, putting them on trains, and sending them to live and work with farm families, mostly in the Midwest. It was the beginning of the foster care system.

I spent a good part of St. Patrick's Day researching my great, great grandfather's history, but unfortunately, while Indiana was the largest state to foster these children I couldn't find a site that named the children. I have a newspaper article, his grave site, and dates, but I think I shall have to have a librarian assist me or travel to New York to research the archives. The archives from the Children's Aid Society, which is still running today, has names and information because representatives would visit these children in their foster homes and make notes. I would love to find out more about my great, great grandfather's family who were from Ireland. Especially since I have been to Ireland now.

While I didn't have any green to wear on St. Paddy's Day I feel like I celebrated it by working hard on finding the truth. It was like a little tribute to that side of my family and my Irish descendants whom I don't know.....yet.