I don't know for sure, but I think I just had a breakthrough in researching my Irish ancestors. I've been frustrated with my maternal grandmother's family (surname Hartford) because I haven't been able to get anywhere with it. Richard Hartford, one of my maternal third great-grandfathers, immigrated to Canada from Dublin, Ireland with his wife (Ann Kelly or Nancy Ann Kelly) and their three sons (Dennis, Thomas, and James) sometime between 1830 and 1832. I have all sorts of info on the three sons after they came to the US, but next to nothing on the parents except for their names on all three of their son's death certificates.
So, I was playing around on Ancestry.com this morning - specifically I was looking at the Drouin Collection containing vital records from Quebec 1621-1967. I have a number of family branches with connections to Canada so I started plugging those surnames into the search box. I entered my third great-grandfather's name and after scrolling through the results I found three that looked interesting and two in particular got me excited. Unfortunately the first record (dated 1832) is in French, and it's really faded, but from what I can make out it appears to say something like " ...Richard, born to a legitimate marriage between Richard Hartford and Ann Kelly..." Since I don't read French (at all), I'm only guessing, but it sure looks like this is what it says. I'm not at home so I'm not able to use Ancestry's advanced viewer and zoom in close to check out the other words in the short paragraph, but I will do that tonight.
One of the other records I found is a burial record in 1838 (in English, but also very faded) saying "On the second day of December [1838] Richard son of the late Richard Hartford [and] Ann his wife died aged four years and four months..." I can't make out the rest of the entry right now. Even though the names in both the birth and death record appear consistent, the dates are a problem. If this younger Richard in both records is the same person his age at death would have been six instead of four.
If these people are my ancestors I will have learned three things I didn't know before. I will have the first recorded evidence of the existence of Richard Hartford and Ann Kelly - not in Ireland, but I'll take Canada for now. The second fact I may have learned is this couple had a forth son who was born in Canada - up until now I only knew of three and they were all born in Ireland. Lastly, I may have learned that Richard (my third great-grandfather) died sometime between 1832 and 1838.
Of course I may also learn these people are not my ancestors and all of this was for nothing, but hey...at least I got a blog post out of it.
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