I had had pretty good luck researching my grandmother's family because she had mentioned the name of the town in Ireland where she was born, Innishannon in County Cork. With this information, and her estimated date of birth from her marriage record to my grandfather, Dennis Ahern, I was able to go to Ireland in 1991 and get a copy of her birth record from the Registrar's Office in Dublin, and later her baptismal record from St. Mary's in Innishannon.The origins of my Ahern ancestors proved more difficult to locate. Census records showed that my grandfather, Dennis Ahern, was born in America, but that his parents and two older brothers came from Ireland. I managed to find them arriving as a family on the Western Empire in September of 1857.
It seems that when they arrived they moved in with the wife's brother in Arlington, [then known as West Cambridge] as that is where they showed up in the 1860 census. Ellen Ahern was a Fitzpatrick and it turns out that several of her family settled in Arlington. Her brother Patrick was killed in 1864 when he was run over by a carriage in Boston.
The only indication I had of where the Aherns were from was a possible naturalization that said County Cork, but I was not sure it was the right Ahern because the date of arrival was off by 12 months and the date of birth seemed too young to be the father of the two boys who came in 1857. I could have thrown darts at a map of County Cork for the rest of my life and not hit on the right place. There was not much else I could do as the births of my grandfather's two older brothers in Ireland occurred before the start of civil records for Catholics in 1864. Unless I could find what parish they were from I would never get any further.
My grandmother's family, the Lanes from Innishannon, proved easier to find. On my grandmother's birth record it said "Place of Residence of Father—America" and I assumed he had come over ahead of his wife and family to earn money for their passage. Much later, after I located long-lost cousins who were still in Arlington, I learned from one of Michael Lane's daughters-in-law that he had indeed came to America before his wife, but he did not tell her he was going. He simply went off to the pub one night and never came home, leaving my great- grandmother at home with one baby at her knee and my grandmother on the way. But as was the case with many immigrants, when Michael arrived he moved in with one of his two brothers in Somerville, Mass. This made it easy to track him down and when my grandmother was six weeks old her mother took her and her sister on a boat to Boston.
In the process of fleshing out the family tree I spent a lot of time at the Somerville City Clerk's office looking up birth, death, and marriage records on the Lane family. Several death records listed Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge as the place of interment and so I wrote to them asking for the plot locations only to be told that "none of these people are buried at Mount Auburn".
A dead end, pardon the pun, until I mentioned the puzzle to someone at a meeting of The Irish Ancestral Research Association and Marie Daly, of the New England Historic & Genealogical Society and TIARA, interjected that there was another cemetery, over the back wall, at the end of a dead end street¹ in Watertown that was commonly referred to as "Catholic Mount Auburn" though there was no connection to the prestigious resting place of Mary Baker Eddy and other prominent people. Officially named Sand Banks Cemetery, the records were held at Calvary Cemetery in Waltham and a phone call quickly elicited the location of the Lane graves, way in the back near the end on the right hand side.
I decided to visit the cemetery one Saturday morning when I was on my way to the state archives for a day of cranking microfilm. After stopping at the Dunkin Donuts at Fresh Pond to pick up some coffee and donuts to prepare me for the day, I found where the cemetery was located, but was unable to park on the street anywhere nearby. The wrought iron gate was ajar so I pushed it open and drove in on the gravel path far enough to be out of the way and turned off the engine while I finished my coffee. It was an extra large and I had a couple of crullers as well so it was several minutes before I was prepared to go looking for my Lane cousins.
While I sat sipping my coffee and listening to the early morning birds, I glanced around at the tombstones lined up in neat rows on either side of the path. One that caught my attention was a marble obelisk with the name FITZPATRICK in large letters. Out of idle curiosity, I stopped to look at it before heading off down to the end where the Lanes were buried. The names on the stone were familiar and when I checked my book I realized this was the burial place of my great-grandmother's brother who had been run over by a wagon. Most importantly, the inscription on the stone said these Fitzpatricks were "from the Parish of Mallow in County Cork". If this were the case, I reasoned the Aherns must also be from Mallow, or at least someplace nearby as they did not go courting further than they could walk in those days.
With a specific parish to search in, I went again to Ireland and began reading the Mallow Parish records on microfilm at the National Library in Dublin. It was not long before I began to find the baptisms of my grandfather's two brothers, the marriage of his parents, the baptism of my great-grandfather, and others born to what I now knew were my great-great-grandparents John Ahern and Catherine Ahern, of Mallow. It was especially interesting to learn that my great-great-grandmother's maiden name was also Ahern as I had previously assumed that was an error when it was reported in death records of her children who emigrated and settled in Arlington.
Since establishing that my Aherns were from Mallow I have had great success finding additional information on the family, thanks, in part, to the annual journals of the Mallow Archaeological and Historical Society. Having become interested in the local history of Mallow I have written some articles for the journal and used my website skills to create a home page for the society with links to information about Mallow². I have also been working on a home page for Aherns ³ around the world to share information.
All of this is due to chance. I was not looking for the Aherns when I went to that cemetery. If I hadn't had that cup of coffee to finish I would have gone right to where the Lane plot was and continue on my way. If I had been able to park on the street I would have finished my coffee outside the gate and then walked past the Fitzpatrick tombstone. If I had accepted the Somerville City Clerk's data at face value, and not tried to the verify information I had been given on this other branch of the family, I would still have no clue where to look for my ancestors. It makes me think that they are up there someplace pointing us in the right direction. Or maybe it is just the luck of the Irish.