1900–Today: Photographs, Memories & Research

The modern family archive contains far more than names and dates.

1900–Today

The twentieth and twenty-first centuries provide photographs, certificates, military files, newspapers, family stories and DNA evidence that allow descendants to reconstruct family lives in much greater detail.

The modern record

Sources may include:

• census records,
• birth, marriage and death certificates,
• military records,
• city directories,
• Social Security records,
• newspapers and obituaries,
• cemetery records,
• photographs,
• letters and family papers,
• home movies,
• and oral history.

Photographs and memories

A family photograph becomes much more valuable when the people, place, date and occasion can be identified.

Preserving the story that accompanies an image is therefore part of the archive itself.

DNA and documentary research

DNA adds another form of evidence.

Autosomal DNA can identify clusters of relatives and geographic connections. Y-DNA can examine the direct paternal line across a much longer period.

DNA evidence is most useful when combined with traditional genealogy rather than treated as a replacement for documentary records.

Continuing the search in Ireland

Current research continues to investigate possible connections in and around Roscommon, Leitrim, Cavan and Fermanagh.

These locations are research leads. The purpose of the archive is to document both discoveries and uncertainties so that later evidence can strengthen, revise or reject earlier theories.

An archive across generations

Family history does not end with the most recent census. Photographs, recollections and records being created today will become the primary sources of future generations.