How I got started

Kathryn G. Corbett

For over 40 years I have been working on researching my family history but the inspiration for my interest was the influence of my grandmother “Nana” Kate Grace Corbett Leary (1873-1962) who shared with me many family tidbits. She knew her maternal grandparents: Mike Shea (1812-1881) and Mary Agnes Farrell (1815-1888) both born in county Limerick Ireland. She did not remember her father, Dominick Corbett (1837-1877) born in Turkstown, county Kilkenny, who died when she was around 4 nor his mother, Anastasia Grace (1798-1873) who died when Kate was 3 and who probably never saw her granddaughter.

When I was older and studying history I realized that her memory connected me back to the beginning of the 19th century. Although I did not know her husband, as my grandfather died when I was an infant, I did know his sister my aunt Annie, who shared some of that side’s stories with me. A serendipitous discovery of a newspaper clipping from the early 20th century led to more information from his side. Both my mother Mary Margaret Leary and her sister Julia passed down other oral traditions to me.

On my father Elphege Chicoine’s side I did not know his parents, Paul Marcel Chicoine (1870-1921) and Ida Emma Desrosiers (1873-1924) who died before I was born, but from aunts, great aunts and other relatives and from my Dad I collected family memories and histories dating back into the 18th century. I began to understand, especially as I grow older, how many oral cultures consider the story teller an important source of tribal memory and history. From my vantage point here in 2013 I can reach back through the stories and memories to people who lived around the time of the American Revolution.

I do not know how often I will post this blog but I will use some of the research I have collected to highlight the stories of the ordinary people who lived through the larger events of history. Immigration, war, famine swept them up and influenced not only their lives, but those of their descendants. I plan to attach pages for many of the ancestors, the first being one for Nana. I also hope to attach pages for the different locations I have researched where these families lived.

Some of my “brick walls” in research occur in this generation and I do have hope that someone else’s research may shed some light to help me break through them. If in the process I can help another family historian in their search (as others have already helped me) I will be very happy.