So the story all these years is that I am Irish – “me da was Irish” – you know, the whole Irish Catholic background thingy. But I’ve never been able to go very far back into “me da’s” family ethnicity and lineage – mostly due to an unfortunate need for a name change upon arrival in America – or so the story goes. “We were running from the� . . . .” you fill in the blanks.
And, now most of the family is gone. Only one aunt lives on Dad’s side. And, worse yet – NONE of the family kept good records as far as I know. That’s the way of life for laborers and their families growing up in the lower west side (aka the Bottoms) of Columbus, Ohio.
So, it was kind of fun to find a link to a reliable census information page while I was looking through our local library’s website. I’ve found links to so called census links before and they were all “you pay us and then maybe we’ll share information” type places.
This one, however, had census pages photographed and names linked to the proper pages! Woot! Here was something I could play with.
And, sure enough, in the Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920 Population, I found me da’s da. And, indeed discovered that my grandfather (who was gone before I was born) had been born in Ohio, but HIS father had been born in Ireland. My grandmother – known to all of us as Mom-Mom – was born in Ohio and her mother’s mother (my great great-grandmother)�was born in Ireland as was her mother’s father (my great great grandfather).