An Irish Jig

 When genealogists find some new amazing fact relating to a family member they often break into a "Genealogy Happy Dance".

This morning I had cause to perform, as my version of a Happy Dance, an Irish Jig.

While cataloguing the books for my local Family History Group and uploading them to the Group's Librarything account I came across this title : With hearts and hands and voices : the centenary history of the Sacred Heart Parish, Hamilton 1884-1984

I knew that my Irish 3x Great-Uncle Michael Harrington Ryan had been involved with that parish in Australia but not in the years mentioned in the book's title. I still had a browse and found that there was a section on the early history of the Catholic Church in Newcastle so I consulted the index and then found mentions of Michael in the text.

With hearts and hands and voices

I have been researching this chap for quite a number of years and built up a collection of data but the only image I had of him was a fuzzy one I found on Trove in a large group of reverend gentlemen.

When I reached page 67 I realised that I needed to grab my dancing shoes for there on the page was a  photo of Michael. While the photo is fuzzy it's a close up that gives me a good idea of Michael's appearance, I'm delighted to have this at last.

The author of this book that includes many photos, has acknowledged the collections from which he gathered the photos but he does not indicate to which collection the individual images belong. I'm now inspired to search for a clearer copy of the image.