A True Irish Jig

I know I committed to NaBloPoMo and should be writing some awe-inspiring post answering one of the Daily Prompts, but my sister and I have possibly come across a sledgehammer that will knock one of our family history’s walls down in Eastern County Galway, Ireland.  Do you know how hard it is to do genealogy research in Ireland??? Well, if you do, I’m sorry.  If you don’t, there’s little I can say to explain the frustrations.  It’s what we’ve lovingly deemed the “True Irish Jig.”

We’ve been searching for a town/village according to what was documented on our great-great-grandfather’s death certificate and it doesn’t exist!  Well, of course not! Do you know why?  Probably, because when the coroner’s office was filling it out, our great-great-grandmother couldn’t read or write, and thus it was spelled phonetically, rather than properly.  Ugh!  This is the same issue we’ve run across in the census reports.  Where whomever was taking the report spelled our family’s surname how it sounded – with an Irish accent! – rather than how it was actually spelled.  Nothing sounds the same with an Irish accent!

Now, after a few years of searching, we may have found the very town we’ve been looking for all this time!  I’m so excited, but trying not to get my hopes up too much.  Genealogy is mostly a frustrating endeavor, making those little itty-bitty steps forward (or backward?) feel like giant feats!  Hey, there it is, Daily Post!  The spice of success.  I wasn’t even trying, but let me tell you, there is NO success more doused in the spice of failure than Family History Research!

Keep your fingers crossed for me, peeps… still waiting to hear back from the Tynagh (not Tinough) Parish Administrator!