Revisiting my Roots

I've started back into the genealogy research again after several months of not doing a lot with it. I've started with my great grandfather's sister's family, Margaret Kelly Quinlisk. Seems like she would have been a very interesting woman to have known. From what I've found so far, she was a widow early in life after having 10 children, including two sets of twins! A few of them dying very young, one in his early 20's and from what I've seen, taking in several cousins, neices and/or nephews throughout the years into her home.

I find it also interesting that I've always considered Gardner (MA) to be the home of my mother's family, when in fact, her father only settled there after marrying her mother. True, the Rice's have been in Worcester County for centuries, but only in Gardner after 1930 or thereabout. In truth, my father's Kelly family had been in Gardner for decades longer than the Rice family.

John Burke Kelly was settled and had a growing business in Gardner by the turn of the century and had brought over most of his family from Ireland by that time as well. So in researching the Kelly family, I am revising my thinking on who has the deeper roots in Gardner! Even my mother's grandfather, who immigrated from England in 1887, did so after the Kelly family was already established in Gardner. Sometimes the greatest surprises come from having to re-evaluate your own thinking!

I asked my Dad about the Quinlisk family and he only vaguely remembers them. Apparently, other than furnishing jobs for the family, John B. Kelly didn't have a lot of social interaction with his siblings or their families from what I understand from Dad. I've heard from a couple of Quinlisk researchers, so I'm hoping at some point I'll be able to find some real live cousins in this line.

And so the family saga continues...