You know how it is, you're hunting for someone in their homeland to no avail, dead or alive. So, the next logical step is to hunt for them overseas. Having Irish kin, I've found a fair few that have sailed the Atlantic in search of new lives, particularly in those hard years following the Famine. Often, I've found possible candidates in published family trees, complete with details of how their lives unfolded in the New World. However, I like to be sure that I've found good evidence myself and worked it through to a conclusion I'm happy to live with and not just copy someone else's tree (see a previous post in this blog for what I think of that practice!) One such mystery was Sarah Seabrook, ba 1840 in Ireland whom I'd found a match for in an online tree which claimed that she had emigrated to the USA in the mid 19th century.
Without boring you with all the details, I made a recent connection between one of her brothers, Nicholas, dying almost immediately he stepped off the ship in New York in 1872, in what turned out to be the marital home of another sister, Susanna. Researching Susanna and her family (which curiously included a man who was buried twice!) I traced her back to an 1860 US census ... and lo and behold, who was living with her but sister, Sarah Seabrook! I'd probably found the record before, but as she was lodging within a household with several surnames, I didn't think it was conclusive proof that I'd found my Sarah Seabrook.
However, the moral of the tale is that I should have been more tuned in to the wanderlust of this particular group of siblings and have realised that once one had gone to the US, there was always a likelihood that others would follow and join their family out there at least to begin with. In fact 4 out of the 6 siblings ended up in America. So, if you do find a candidate for your relative in an American census who appears to be lodging with a differently named family, work them back to see if you've stumbled upon a big sister.
Without boring you with all the details, I made a recent connection between one of her brothers, Nicholas, dying almost immediately he stepped off the ship in New York in 1872, in what turned out to be the marital home of another sister, Susanna. Researching Susanna and her family (which curiously included a man who was buried twice!) I traced her back to an 1860 US census ... and lo and behold, who was living with her but sister, Sarah Seabrook! I'd probably found the record before, but as she was lodging within a household with several surnames, I didn't think it was conclusive proof that I'd found my Sarah Seabrook.
However, the moral of the tale is that I should have been more tuned in to the wanderlust of this particular group of siblings and have realised that once one had gone to the US, there was always a likelihood that others would follow and join their family out there at least to begin with. In fact 4 out of the 6 siblings ended up in America. So, if you do find a candidate for your relative in an American census who appears to be lodging with a differently named family, work them back to see if you've stumbled upon a big sister.