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Permanent link to archive for 01/02/02. Friday, February 2, 2001
 

Genealogy in the UK and Ireland. (02/02/2001 08:24 EST) Well, it finally happened. My mother has been researching our family history for over 25 years, and has been somewhat disappointed that my brother and I haven't been all that interested.

For me, that changed about two weeks ago. One of our relatives loaned her a copy of a book that made the connection back to Ireland on the Sullivan/O'Sullivan line. Mom was happy to document her findings back to John Sullivan, who first came to the U.S. in the mid 1650s. Then she was ready to move on.

On a whim, I asked to read what the book had to say about the O'Sullivan part of the family. I was astounded to read that our lineage went back to the Fitzgeralds, de Burghs, and the Capetian kings of France, back to Charlemagne and beyond.

Being interested in the SCA, heraldry, and such things, this finally piqued my interest, and I've been doing lots of research into our family history. As a result, I've agreed to help Mom document her research on the web. To do that, I've created a new site for the Godfrey-Dilbeck family. (Mom's a Godfrey, Dad was a Dilbeck). I started this using a free site at MyFamily.com. It has been easy to set up and there's already a dozen or so members of the family getting involved. I've been scanning and posting dozens of photos and I'll be uploading many of the articles Mom's written over the last 25 years in her research.

Suddenly, my world has expanded from the mountains of Western North Carolina and Northern Georgia, to France, England, Ireland, Scandinavia, Belgium, Russia, and who knows where as we continue to look into this. It's given a new richness to reading history, and I'm finding that to be exciting.

It won't change anything, and probably most people can trace their family history back to some royalty or other, but it was the key that unlocked my interest. Now, I'm looking forward to continuing to update the new site as I have time.

The title links to Genuki ( http://www.genuki.org.uk ), a great site for researching genealogy in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Once you know some of the people and places, it's easy to 'flesh out' their history by using resources like the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and great search engines like Google.

** JD **   8:43:19 AM


© Copyright 2001 John L. Dilbeck, jd@johndilbeck.com.