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FYI - Pageviews since 

starting this blog:

United States

1712

Russia

200

United Kingdom

124

Ireland

120

Germany

78

Poland

65

Australia

31

China

28

France

27

Indonesia

25

I am totally surprised at where people are reading this - especially Russia, China, Indonesia!! How are they finding this!! And why?

I think I said before that my son Dan talked me into putting this Moriarty-Keohane family history "out there." I was reading an article today on  http://irishlowell.blogspot.com  about Jack Flood who had a "flood" of memories about growing up in the Acre section of Lowell. As happens to so many of us, when he died, many of those memories went with him. Every family historian can mourn this loss.

Lowell Irish also had an article about George Francis O'Dwyer - altho American born, he was obsessed with the Irish coming to Lowell. He made an index card for every Irish person he read about in the local newspapers and city documents. This was back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. As the article says, he made notes of every birth, marriage, death, and real estate transaction. He self published a book - The Irish Catholic Genesis of Lowell - and was sued by the publishers for non-payment. He was surprised that the book did not sell well.

Anyone who has attempted family history research and tried to share it will sympathize with Mr. O'Dwyer. I have collected dates and events for over 30 years - for both my family and my husband's family. I have written hundreds of letters, visited family members and family friends both here and in Ireland, photographed family homes, traipsed through family graveyards, bugged family members for information as well as tape recorded them, read local history and Irish history, spent hundreds of dollars - I dare not admit to spending thousands, and more recently, have spent endless hours on the computer. I have bored my family to death with my talk about our relatives. I have gone gung-ho with research at times and have also let it lapse for extended periods - especially when my kids were growing up. I have been amazed at the courage of relatives heading off to a new world and a new life. I have cried at the hardships relatives faced - deaths of children, deaths of young parents, financial burdens, other life changing events. I have learned about different places and world events. I have also learned about myself.

My ultimate goal would have been to write a book about my family's history - not just the cold hard facts, but my family in relation to what was happening in the local community and in the world at the time. Unfortunately, time is passing more and more quickly - and the research never seems to stop. I am finding more information even as I edit these posts! Plus I am not a creative person - I am more concrete - it will probably take me another lifetime to write the book - unless I can find a co-author or authors!

But, after reading those two  http://irishlowell.blogspot.com  articles, I want to thank Dan for making me write this blog. Those two stories made me stop - to think about this blog and what I am doing with it.  In the beginning, Dan helped design the blog, provided constructive criticism, pushed me forward, and encouraged me. I wasn't exactly kicking and screaming in resisting, but I was leery about the time it would take, would anyone read it, would anyone find it interesting. But at least this way, I have made the information available to anyone in my family who wants to take the time to read it - either now or in the future. It is not exactly the book I might have liked to write, but maybe it is the prelude to it. And unlike poor George Francis O'Dwyer who could not sell 200 books, my blog has received over 2500 hits! 

So, Dan, thanks for the push and the encouragement. I wouldn't and couldn't have done it without you! Your blog - http://mrmurphysays.blogspot.com - showed me what blogging is about.

And hopefully, I will get most of my information "out there" on this blog before I too croak!! And now on to the Learys!