INTRODUCTION

Written by George McGowan

In recent years my interest in Genealogy has caused me to spend long hours researching documents, looking through cemeteries and often travelling long distances for the purpose of tracing family roots. For those who have done it, I have no need to describe the frustrations encountered with error filled data or the amount of time that can be spent to clarify a simple piece of information. On the other hand, discoveries made on rare occasions, the satisfaction of verifying an old piece of data and the acquaintances I have made during these times have been rewarding.

As a learning experience, my intentions were aimed at family history only. Pleasantly, my expectations have been exceeded. Learning how to work with census records, micro-films, numerous types of library documents and indexes, church records and any number of other data bases has been interesting.

Resolving issues or drawing conclusions through investigation and analysis is a process I am accustomed to. Uncovering ancestor lines led to a number of scenarios I found to be enlightening. For example, much concern is often put into the spelling of family Names. In tracing family lines back to the Irish who immigrated to North America in the early 1800's, it is highly likely the majority were illiterate. Until the late 1800's it would be safe to say most of their descendants were also illiterate.

The few times spelling of a name was required, involved purchase of land, baptism of a child, recording passage on a ship or some other event where others were doing the recording. Since most did not know how to spell their own name, they were at the mercy of the Scribe and how he interpreted a sometimes strongly accented voice as they told their name and it was recorded. This is an example of the type of learning experience frequently encountered when working on genealogy matters.

Within mid 1800 census records, it is not uncommon to find the ages of people to have been recorded in error by as much as 5 to 10 years. In one case the 1851 census shows a person as living and being 35 years old. This would have been true had she not in fact passed away some 5 years earlier.

Because of errors recorded at the time, it was important to verify information as much as possible. Within this writing, I have tried hard to verify facts where possible, otherwise I have tried to qualify the information. For this reason, comments such as "it seems" or "it appears" or "it is believed that" are important qualifying words allowing me to use information even if I am sceptical at times. Obviously some of the stories of the time and comments on people's habits have been passed on by word-of-mouth and they are impressions of those who told me. Certainly I have used these, otherwise the story would be sterile, short and dull (assuming it is not already).

Since much information is collected from others, I am at their mercy when it comes to accuracy. If you see any errors in this write-up, I would be happy to receive a note advising me so. I can then correct the information and future documents will be correct.

To help organize and file all information, I have used a shareware program called "brothers keeper". Each time a new name is typed into the system, the computer program assigns a number to the person's name. These numbers appear beside all names shown on the "family tree chart" and are frequently referred to throughout the write-up. Within Irish family descendant lines (and probably other nationalities) it is common for new born to be named after elders, consequently similar names appear again and again. I have intentionally used the numbers in order to avoid any confusion on who I am referring to. For the same reason, I have also referred to women by their maiden names in most cases.

If you obtain a copy of this report, please feel free to re-copy it and further distribute to other interested relatives or parties. Wide distribution would serve my purpose of creating future potential contacts. I would be very interested in contact from anyone with information that would further my knowledge on family tree matters. If I can be of any help to those who have a mutual interest in genealogy relating to any of my ancestry lines (McGowan, McCann, McConnell, or others), please feel free to contact me. In this regard, my present address in this year of 2004 is as follows: