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.

I'm dancing!

My waltz around the kitchen this morning is not the result of knocking down some genealogical brick wall but due to a comment on a Google+ post of mine.

This is why I'm dancing

I have blogged ad nauseam about my move to  Family Historian  software to manage my family database and my blog posts have resulted in some comments. This Google+ comment, however, was one that alerted me to something I really need at the moment. John Owen, one of my Aussie G+ genealogy contacts, mentioned that he is a Family Historian user and that the family history society at Wyong to which he belongs has a Family Historian User Group. John also directed me to a video he has produced about some functions in  Family Historian .

The good news is that I only live one hour's drive from Wyong. I have already marked the date of the next meeting in my calendar and look forward to pointing the Bambino in the direction of Wyong. Family Historian has excellent online support through its website, mailing lists and forums however the opportunity to meet face-to-face with fellow users is an unexpected bonus. 


The lesson to be learnt from this is that one needs to use multiple social media platforms to let others know of one's interests. If I had just relied on my blog post I probably would not have heard from John and would not know about the existence of this local user group