Tracing your family's history is incredibly hard to do when your family isn't a tight-knit one to begin with and the only stories you can remember about people older than you are is that time your Grandpa got so drunk on Thanksgiving that he had to go to bed early, only to re-emerge hours later wearing nothing but his boxer shorts while your mom and your aunt talked about how much they loved U2 and he stumbled out saying, "I love you too girls!"
Rumor has it that back in the day my great uncle Monsignor Lawrence Donelley of the Los Angeles Diocese traced our full family tree in Ireland. What ever became of that is hard to tell as no one seems to have a record of the information, and those that might are pretty much strangers to our side of the family. We saw the cousins at holidays when I was a child but then not so much over the years. You see, they were well-to-do, and we were not. I last saw my other great uncle and his wife back when h ewas dying of Alzheimers - I think I was about 22 or 23. Then, his wife and their daughter were at my Grandpa's funeral in 2007 but that was the extent of any sort of familial reconcilliation. I don't even think they made it to the gathering at my uncle's house afterwards.
Don't get me wrong ... I'm not bitter - I'm just being matter of fact. I don't know my extended family and they don't know me and that's kind of a shitter because right now I'd really like to know our history since I''ll be traveling to the place where my ancestors hail from and the only thing I know is they either come from Donegal or Cork and that's not a whole lot to go on. I've tried LinkedIn and Facebook and a ton of other sites to track down these second cousins but I've come up empty handed time and time again.
I really don't know how the people who trace geneaology rapidly do it because in the 5-6 hours I've done research over the course of the last few months I've found nothing but frustration and dead ends. Maybe they start out with more info to begin with.
