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September 17, 2014

Crowdsourcing for Genealogy - What Does the Record Say?

Today I am crowdsourcing from other genealogists. An 1805 record for my ancestor John Greenlees has me stumped. There is one word I cannot figure out. My husband and I have spent hours going over it and comparing it to other words on the record page in hopes of understanding the clerk's letter formations.

Now it's time to ask for help. Here is the cropped image. My ancestor is John Greenlees from Fermangh Ireland. The word I cannot read is the top line. It is the word after Fermangh and it is in the column heading "Where Born: Parish"

Crowdsourcing for Genealogy - What Does the Record Say?
I have looked at the parishes and townlands in Fermanagh - and there are a lot! I still cannot figure out what that word says.  We think, after much deliberation, that the first letter might be "A".

To compare the letter formations, here is the complete record page. I hope someone more familiar with the places in Fermanagh or with a better eye than I have, will be able to help. You can also view  a larger image here. You can enlarge it with the magnifier when it loads. Thank you for any ideas!


at

9 comments:

  1. Sandra4:42 PM

    Hi

    The last letter is definetly a y. Also there is a L and I think the letter before the L is an a . If u have a list of all the places put them into a spreadsheet and keep everything that ends with a y and also has an L. That shld narrow down the possibilities.

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  2. Unknown5:08 PM

    I forwarded this to my Irish, in Ireland relative. Maybe they can use their Irishpenmanship eyes on it. They do tend to curlicue more than we do.

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  3. Olive Tree Genealogy5:41 PM

    Thanks Sandra - we already did that :-) We thought the ending was "vey" but we went with what we were positive about - the "l" and the "y"

    There were no matches that worked.

    We tried other combos too - with just the "l" near the end, and various upper case letters (P, R, K, A for example) as the first letter.

    Again, no matches that we could spot

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  4. Olive Tree Genealogy5:42 PM

    Thanks Sara! HOping that someone more familiar with Fermanagh might recognize the word!

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  5. BDM7:04 PM

    The magnifier will not work for me, but Lorine look at the entry for (I think it's) Francis Graham. Could that be the same or similar parish?

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  6. Judy Webster7:32 PM

    If you haven't already done so, try the gazetteer function at CuriousFox - a useful site that is described on http://worldwidegenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/08/curiousfox-gazetteer-and-message-system.html.

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  7. Dana Leeds5:50 PM

    I love your idea of posting this online for help! I've had a document where I haven't been able to read a direct ancestor's middle name and think I'll give it a try. It looks really unusual, so I'm wondering if it was actually his mom's or a grandparent's original surname.

    Anyway, my only thought would be to look through more pages and see if you can find others in Armagh that might have the same unidentified word. Maybe there you'll be able to read it better?

    Best wishes!

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  8. GeniAus3:59 AM

    FWIW. the last few letters look to me like calevy.
    I have no Fermanagh knowledge whatsoever

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  9. Ed11:30 PM

    Sorry, I didn't give you my guess

    Preverlevy

    my wife says Rieverlevy

    Ed

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