The prompt for this week is Start at the Beginning. According to The Sound of Music, "the beginning is a very good place to start." Who was the first person you wanted to find when you began your genealogy journey? Was there a family member who sparked your interest, perhaps by giving you a treasure trove of genealogy "stuff"?
It's been a while since I've posted about my initial genealogy quest. The first person I wanted to find out about was my Irish great-great-grandfather Timothy Creeden. My dad was the one that sparked my interest with stories passed down from his grandfather. He had a treasure trove of family pictures, but none of Timothy. He had done some research in the 70s and 80s, but we didn't make much progress until more things became available online in the 90s and early 2000s. He put together a tentative family tree with the names he remembered and that was enough to get me started.
Eventually I was able to find that Timothy was born in 1846 in Clondrohid, County Cork to Patrick Creedan and Mary Coakley. He had two sisters and several half siblings from Patrick's family in Ohio. In addition to the children my dad knew of, Timothy had Patrick, James, Mary Elizabeth, Dennis and Edward.
At about the same time, one of my uncles was researching my mom's families and put together a set of family trees for us. They were a great starting point for my research on that side of the family. His trees contain living people, so I'll just post this intriguing snippet from a letter he sent along with the trees.
So far, I haven't been able to verify the Wales origins of my Godwin family or that my Sparks ancestors came over on a ship called the Dove. This is probably referring to the pair of ships called the Ark and the Dove that sailed from the Isle of Wight off of the coast of Hampshire, England to Maryland in 1633. I think my Sparks may have come over a few years after that, but it's possible some of their relatives were on the Dove. From DNA testing, I know that my mom and I do have some Welsh ancestry, so that's a possibility to keep in mind for my Godwin ancestors.
While I've learned a tremendous amount about my ancestors since my initial quest, there are still a lot of mysteries to solve. I'll address some of those in future posts this year.
#52Ancestors is a series of weekly family history prompts developed by Amy Johnson Crow.