Our Mckelvey Ancestors: County Donegal, Ireland, and North America

In Our McKelvey Ancestors, family historian Joyce V. Kelly, Ph.D. documents her search for the townland (the Irish term for "town") in County Donegal where the ancestors of her maternal grandfather, John M. McKelvey (1885-1935), lived before emigrating. The author shows how to analyze civil and church records and DNA match results, communicate with DNA cousins, and work with professional and volunteer genealogists, to identify ancestors' Irish townlands. But if those analyses do not succeed, this family history shows how to use the locations of geographic clusters of ancestors' friends, associates, and neighbors (FAN analyses) to identify ancestors' possible original Irish townlands. The author's search suggests that John McKelvey's grandparents originated in southeastern County Donegal, in the city of Ballyshannon, or north of Donegal Town, or north of the Finn River Valley. In addition to identifying possible origins of difficult-to-find ancestors, Our McKelvey Ancestors shows how to use records, maps, images, and stories to develop social histories, describing our ancestors' lives and the cultural, economic, and social environment in which they lived in Ireland and after they emigrated.