Mago Bill Sheehan

My sister, Gerry Hook, is gathering a lot of genealogical information about our family. She insists on a high quality of documentation. Unfortunately, for me, documents like tax rolls and death certificates don't tell me much of a story. However, from a newspaper obituary for Mago's wife which Gerry found and copied I understand that....

Mago was well liked by "the river men."

Of course, to be sure of that, you'd have to believe a newspaper man writing at the beginning of the century before this one.

Family Pedigree One

My interest in my family background has grown a bit. I know a bit of it from having lived it. I learned a bit more by attending to stories told by parents and other relatives. Those stories were usually interesting, but not always reliable. Just a very few years ago I began to realize that my sister's interest in our family background was practical, active, and quite well developed. She had, through practice and study, gained a high level technical knowledge of genealogical research. She is the expert on our family pedigree.
A bit or her enthusiasm rubbed-off on me. Then she told me that my neice, Gloria, had had some DNA testing done. Sounded like something easy enough for me to do. I could sit back and let others do the work. I contacted Gloria about the testing. I was easily convinced that if I were tested, my results would complinment the results of her testing and visa versa.
I sent an inner cheek sample (just like on TV) to Genealogy by Genetics at http://www.familytreedna.com and had myself tested for 67 markers.
No compliments yet, but I have begun to learn a bit about genealogy; genealogy by paper-trail research and genealogy by genetics. Learn the most by looking at the results of my sister's research. "Paper-trail" research does seem to be the most fruiful.
Still, when a paper trail is lost, genetics, it appears, has a chance of finding it again.
My sister now tell me that her other daughter, Debra, has developed her family tree so far as to have over 8000 individuals in it!

7950 or thos individuals must be from her husbans family. The development of my family tree seems to be barred my a number of 'bars sinistre' as well as by the results of political disturbances in Prussia and Ireland.

Mago Bill

I have mentioned one of my great grandfathers, M. William Sheehan in two previous posts.
My sister Gerry, the family genealogist, says that her research shows that the "M" in M. William Sheehan stands for Mago, and she is a woman who stands behind her research. So, the name is Mago William Sheehan, Mago Sheehan.

My great grandfather is Mago Bill.
Cool!

Pedigree, My Foot!

Cranes Foot is more like it. Some centuries ago someone looked at the lines of a genealogical chart and thought it looked like the mark left by a cranes foot.

Genealogy and pedigree are not exactly the same. Going back to its Greek roots genealogy would seem to mean family studies. Like a pedigree a genealogy is a record of familial decent, but it may also refer to race study.

Looking at the genealogy of 'genealogy I find it belongs to one of the biggest most important word families. It goes back to pre-historic Indo-European bases like gen-, gon-, gn-, all denoting 'produce.' German offshoots include kin, kind, and king. Its Latin descendants seem to go on forever. I won't quote the Latin words here. I will mention a few of the related phrases and words in English: race, people, beget, be born, nature, nurture, gender, general, generate, generic, gentile, indigenous, genesis, genetic, gene, and a lot more!