Biggest Genealogy Accomplishment - 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy

Week 42: Biggest Genealogy Accomplishment. What do you feel is your biggest genealogy accomplishment? What were the steps you took to get there, and what was the end result?

I fell hopelessly behind on these prompts, but wanted to get this one in before the end of the year!

My biggest accomplishment so far has to be finally finding some information on my elusive Irish great-great-grandfather Timothy Creeden. Finding information for Timothy took a lot of persistence, some help from researchers in Ohio where Timothy lived, researching nearby Creeden families and some incredible luck. I had searched and gathered what records I could find for several years as I described in one of my first posts about my Irish Brick Wall.

Over the years I made some wonderful contacts and one of them asked about possible records for Timothy when she was researching another family in Mercer County, Ohio. Another researcher there mentioned that there were two probate records for Timothy: one for his will which I already had and another for his guardianship of Roseanna Creeden. This was the first I had heard about the guardian's records.

I knew that Patrick Creeden of Clinton County had a daughter Roseanna and a son Timothy, but I hadn't been able to find anything about them. Patrick's will proved to be key and I was very fortunate that many of the Ohio probate records I was searching for were available on FamilySearch. The will gave me enough clues to pursue other information, including Guardian's Bonds naming Timothy as guardian of Roseanna in Clinton and Mercer counties. Information on Patrick's daughter Julia from the Sisters of Charity gave me enough information to find her death certificate. The certificate named her parents as Patrick Creeden and Mary Coakley. Having both parents' names and a date of birth led to Julia's baptismal certificate which showed that she was baptized in Clondrohid Parish in County Cork, Ireland.

There is still much to investigate, but the end result is that I now have a probable family and place of origin for Timothy!

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2012) that invite genealogists and others to discuss resources in the genealogy community including websites, applications, libraries, archives, genealogical societies and more.