Sort of a Blah Update...

Not too exciting, but an update on my email spree from last week.

St. Agnes High School Academy, where my great-grandmother attended (about 90% sure on that) responded to my request for information.  It sounded positive, they mentioned yearbooks and transcripts.  Only bad thing is that I'll have to wait 'till term starts up again in the fall, when they have more staff around.  Oh well, I can be patient (pff, yeah right, but I'll work on it).

Fordham University responded about my request for information about Edward Gorman's expulsion.  I guess the  Alumni office bounced it over to the Archive office, and she sent me a link to their digitalized yearbooks (go all the way up to 1941, pretty cool).  She said that, according to her records, FXR Sr. graduated in 1930, and Edward Gorman graduated in 1940.  The plot thickens.

So, I took a quick look at the 1940 yearbook.  Edwards' definitely listed in the Senior Directory, but I'm not sure if that just means that he was expelled during his senior year?  I'll have to take a closer look at the yearbook - unfortunately, my computer estimates that it will take about 9 hours to download the whole thing.  -____-

Well, there you have it.  A pretty optimistic start to my first attempts at gathering information outside my family /Ancestry.com comfort zone.

Going Through the Motions

Couldn't really make myself work much today - feeling that pre-holiday-weekend blah, I guess.  So, instead of being truly productive, I just re-organized my notes, making sure to highlight all possible leads for me to jump on next week.

Not much to do until I talk to my grandma again, which won't happen until Tuesday at the earliest.  To be honest, I need to talk to a couple of relatives...  again, nothing until Tuesday.

I was a little bit productive, at least.  I emailed (or snail mailed, depending) a few churches where I know relatives were baptized, married, etc.  I even emailed what I think is the high school my great-grandmother Marion Gorman attended.

One of the churches (St. Vincent de Paul in Brooklyn, where my great-great grandparents Peter Reilly and Anna Doonan were married) even changed names, closed, and was then sold, so that took a bit of tracking down.  Eventually I just emailed the diocese, asking them where the heck I'm supposed to find the old records from St. Vincent's.  Hopefully they'll be able to help.

So, now I have a nice excuse to sit around and not work until Tuesday.  Could be worse.  I could have found something brilliant today that would have kept me so obsessively distracted that I wouldn't have enjoyed the 4th at all...

Better to Ask than to Not, Right?

So, as mentioned before, great-great Uncle Edward Gorman was mysteriously expelled from Fordham University sometime between 1935 and 1942.  While Fordham-grad FXR Sr. was never able to find out why, I figured maybe in the last 69-76 years Fordham's loosened up it's privacy codes...

It's just that, I'm SO CURIOUS.  So, I checked out Fordham's website, found the contact email for the alumni office, and asked them if there was anything they could do to help me out.

Not sure if it's possible, legal, etc, but at least I've asked, right?

Fingers crossed!

Welcome to the family - and my summer project

So, summer is here yet again, and I've managed to barely escape getting a summer job.  However, to make myself feel less useless, I've adopted a summer research project - exploring my family history (with the substantial help of Ancestry.com).

Genealogy's always interested me, but I was still surprised by how quickly I became addicted to it.  So, now I have this lovely blog to vent about researching frustrations and gloat about new discoveries.

Since, by nature, a family tree begins at the end, my family history "begins" in San Diego, California.  The majority of the story, however, takes place in other parts of the US, especially Detroit, Michigan, Buffalo, New York, and New York City itself.  Eventually, if things go well, I'll hop over the pond and spend some time in Ireland, England, Poland, and Germany.

My family's 50% cliche and 50% black sheep, so when you take into account the old photographs, family rumors, and old stories, it should make for a pretty interesting summer.  Based on how obsessed I am with this project, I'm sure I'll be posting something once a day, or at least every other day - wish me luck!