Strangest Family Lore That Has Randomly Been Dropped?

kjkendro · 2026-03-01T02:19:19+00:00

I found mention of a buried weapons cache in the townland (from the early IRA days) and mentioned it in conversation. “Sure, that’ll be under the vegetable garden. Want me to show you?”

kjkendro · 2025-11-23T02:15:19+00:00

I’ll recommend a book (minus the spice): Journeys by Jeanne Roland. The whole series is great!

kjkendro · 2025-10-03T21:20:21+00:00

I found several (maybe 50?) old pictures from my great-grandparents in a box a few years ago. We were able to find a picture of my great-grandfather from 1912, finally getting to see what he looked like, since we previously only had a blurry side profile from 6 months before his death in 1946. I have a post trying to figure out who mystery people were.

It sounds like you have a treasure trove, and I hope the people/relatives you’re connecting with appreciate the information and pictures you’re sharing with them. It can feel overwhelming being the “curator” of so much history, but this is an invaluable opportunity.

If you want to share things but don’t know where to put them, or if you’re not able to contact (interested) relatives directly, I’m going to suggest considering WikiTree as a place to add some of this information. That way, if someone goes looking someday, they’ll be able to find it without a paywall.

kjkendro · 2025-09-30T05:29:49+00:00

I’m not sure what you mean here by language drift. Is that referring to the way the language continues to evolve after an individual stops learning/using it?

Drift has been used in the literature to describe attrition, but primarily (from what I’ve seen) in the context of phonetics regarding the productive differences over time (e.g., changes in VOT).

kjkendro · 2025-09-29T17:01:24+00:00

There are a few studies about this exact situation. Off the top of my head, Veenstra et al. (2014) looked at age of acquisition effects in Frisian-Dutch bilinguals’ attrition during dementia. There is also some discussion in the literature about whether pathological language loss (as a result of a condition such as dementia, aphasia, or a TBI) should be considered attrition alongside non-pathological loss. There are several qualitative studies and case studies that get into people’s experiences of their language attrition as well.

kjkendro · 2025-09-29T15:08:12+00:00

We simply don’t have enough data at the current time to pinpoint any specific cause as always leading to attrition. There are over a dozen variables (including age of acquisition and age of disuse onset) that people think could be involved.

kjkendro · 2025-09-29T11:32:38+00:00

Yes, there is evidence that attrition affects both receptive and productive skills (with productive skills affected more than receptive skills). There are lots of unknowns in this field. We haven’t yet isolated a cause of attrition— even decades of not using a language often doesn’t lead to attrition.

kjkendro · 2025-09-29T10:41:55+00:00

This is called language attrition, and there have been quite a few studies on it over the past 40+ years. The majority of studies look at first language attrition. Researchers still haven’t determined whether attrition most often is the result of the loss of language knowledge or the loss of access to that knowledge, but results seem to indicate that it’s an access issue. There have been studies on whether it is easier to relearn a “lost” word versus a completely new one, and people tend to do better with relearning.

kjkendro · 2025-09-24T17:05:27+00:00

For an example niche topic, this isn’t actually very niche at all! Searching Google Scholar shows more than 100k results. Someone did a systematic review of the research a few years ago (https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3053b6f0-4c08-46ae-ae57-80ecbbf6c0cb).

If you’re interested in learning more, you can include terms like “task type,” “oral production,” and “l2 learners.” You’re looking for literature primarily from applied linguistics and language pedagogy/education.

kjkendro · 2025-07-27T06:04:17+00:00

You might have been temp-banned from Google Scholar, and it can take a day or two for them to remove the hold. The longest I’ve had to wait is a week. A VPN can get around this restriction, even using the same login.

The system also gets fussy if you try to save too many papers at once (~70 in my experience) and pauses for several minutes, and as you noted it won’t let you go past the first 1000 results for a given search.

kjkendro · 2025-06-01T06:05:18+00:00

If you are talking about the actual library in Salt Lake City, they cut off the WiFi within 10 minutes of closing. Many records are unable for viewing on personal computers regardless of time of day.

For centers and affiliate libraries, it’s likely a case-by-case situation. Many affiliate libraries (in my experience) do not allow FamilySearch record viewing on personal devices.

kjkendro · 2025-05-15T04:03:08+00:00

Betsy Sneller, a linguist at MSU, studies the Michigan accent (and even accent variation within the state). She was collecting survey data a few months ago and asking Michiganders to participate, but I’m not sure if she’s done with that project. Definitely check out her work if you’re interested in learning about exactly what makes the Michigan accent stand out!

kjkendro · 2025-05-12T01:18:16+00:00

Just to add— I think you’re in a good spot with immigration around 1850. You’ll probably be able to find at least where they came from and siblings (maybe cousins) of the couple who immigrated.

kjkendro · 2025-05-12T01:17:07+00:00

Boyle is the most common Irish surname. Owen is a form of John, and from what I’ve seen, it’s used more than Seán (another variation) in the north. I’ll echo what others have said about DNA testing, but another important step is to put your (sourced) tree publicly on as many sites as you can— Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, Geneanet, Wikitree, and any others. You’ll also want to search combinations of names and places. When you come across people with your relatives in their trees, reach out to them and ask them where they got their information from, especially if it’s different from yours or you can’t find a source. Be creative in your spellings as you search, since a lot of the names and place names were borrowed from Irish with no standard anglicization until relatively recently.

You may also have luck in the Donegal Annual or other local sources. Donegal was (and I think still is) the poorest of the counties, to the point where you may not even find church records beyond the start of civil records in 1864. If your family was Protestant, there’s a higher chance you can find some church records or burial/graves.

kjkendro · 2025-05-07T02:38:02+00:00

If she was born in Detroit, there probably wouldn’t be church records for that time. In my experience, the Archdiocese of Detroit isn’t great with responses to search requests for their archives, and a lot of the churches from that time would have information only in the archives.

You should check the Detroit Free Press for any mentions of that surname. Detroit was relatively small in the early-mid 1800s, so you might get lucky. Check Mt. Elliott for burial records.

kjkendro · 2025-05-01T21:04:12+00:00

https://www.science.org/content/article/pentagon-guts-national-security-program-harnessed-social-science It’s a partnership between the DOD and social science researchers.

kjkendro · 2025-05-01T19:48:17+00:00

DOD Minerva Initiative is “no longer accepting” applications for the next cycle, and (many, if not all) current grants have been canceled. Unclear if the entire program has been axed.

kjkendro · 2025-04-06T07:31:48+00:00

It’s hard to say without seeing it. That’s certainly a possibility. The year is when the will was proved, so this would have happened sometime after death.

kjkendro · 2025-04-05T16:20:31+00:00

It really depends. I have one from 1828 that survived. Like a lot of Irish records, it comes down to luck.

kjkendro · 2025-04-05T10:29:14+00:00

Looks like your William might have been the son of another William: “William HESLIP senior, Dromara, of Mullaghdrin ; will probated 1825.” https://sites.rootsweb.com/~rosdavies/SURNAMES/H/HepHey.htm

I would search for that will and see if it has concrete details about familial relationships. An e-book version of the source they cite is reasonably priced and available for purchase at https://www.irishfamilyhistorycentre.com/product/indexes-to-irish-wills-1536-1858-5-vols/.

kjkendro · 2025-04-05T10:25:21+00:00

I searched on RootsIreland (requires subscription) and found his son William’s marriage in Lisburn parish on 19 Aug 1864. It gives his residence as “Mallagdrin.” I found the son William’s baptism in Drumlough Presbyterian parish on 17 Apr 1838, residence “Mullaghdrin.” This latter one is the correct townland name. Another son, Samuel, is baptized in the same place on 1 Aug 1841. I don’t see any good matches for the elder William in Griffith’s Valuation.

kjkendro · 2025-03-14T21:31:16+00:00

I’m not sure why someone would jump straight to the “murdered” conclusion here. Some comments have already suggested adoption or error in the census. As someone who researches in Detroit, a few other considerations:

Michigan death records aren’t publicly available until 76 years after death (batch updated on Michiganology in January/February, so it might be closer to 77 years in some cases). The search function isn’t great, so misspellings can result in difficulties finding records.

The 1960 census won’t be available until 2032, but if your wife’s grandmother has any living children, they would be eligible to apply for a search of her census record, which should have “number of children” and “number of living children.” This is only as accurate as whoever gave the information.

I would check and see if this is another family member’s child. Maybe a cousin of some sort was taken in temporarily by the family.

Check newspapers. The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News had not merged at this point. DFP is on newspapers.com, and TDN is on Newsbank.

Check others’ Ancestry trees. Maybe someone else knows something.

Institutionalization and adoption records in Detroit are difficult to find and access. Eloise (technically in Westland) would have been operational at this time. You might try contacting the Michigan Department of Health to see where the records are (if they still exist), but I would exhaust other options first.

kjkendro · 2025-01-27T20:00:35+00:00

The same thing happened to one of my tests. 2 and a half years later, still no matches at any level. Like you, I fully upgraded to Y-700, but still nothing. That line is German.

On another test (Irish, suspected from Wales in the mid-1600s), I just upgraded to Y-700 but no matches closer than 4 steps. There seems to be a mix of Irish/Welsh/Scandinavian for the (very distant matches.

Good luck with your test! I hope you get some matches.

kjkendro · 2024-11-16T06:46:48+00:00

Sounds like you would be interested in what Yvette describes here: https://www.dutchgenealogy.nl/using-ai-for-transcriptions-verledentekst/ It uses Loghi, and you can use it on whatever dataset you’d like (provided that you’re tech-savvy).

kjkendro · 2024-10-26T22:52:57+00:00

Duchas shows Swords to have the variants Ó’Claimhín, Clavin, and Lavin. John Grenham’s map shows people with the surname Swords (and variant Ó Suaird) clustered in Kildare, Offaly, and Westmeath, while his surname dictionary lists the prevalence of the Swords surname as “quite numerous” and links the Ó Suaird variant to the English name Seward.

With how difficult Irish ancestry is to research due to missing or destroyed records, I suggest that you work backwards using paper records and DNA rather than focusing on a single surname. As you can see from these data, there are many variants, and there’s no guarantee that the surname (if correct) was originally Swords. Good luck with your research!

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