Finding My Great-Great Grandmother: My Ancestry Research Journey

In March 2024, my mother and I took a week-long trip across Ireland, traveling through Dublin, Galway, Limerick, and Cork. In Dublin, we visited the Irish Emigration Museum at the beginning of our trip, which sparked a research journey that would take over a year to complete.

Like many White Americans, I am a mix of various European ethnicities, mainly English, Irish, and German, but the Irish ancestry is one that my mother and I connect with the most. After visiting the museum in Dublin, we wanted to pinpoint where our Irish ancestors immigrated to the United States. We suspected our most recent Irish ancestor was the birth parent to my great-grandfather (father of my maternal grandmother) as his surname was Cassidy, and there were family stories that his birth father was born in Ireland. But, my great-grandfather was informally adopted by an Italian family in the 1920s/1930s, and all we knew was his birth father's surname and his mother's first name in addition to my great-grandfather's birth date and city. My great-grandfather was born in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1920s, so I searched through the Maryland State Archive's vital records to see if I could find my great-grandfather's birth certificate, but unfortunately because of Maryland state laws birth certificates weren't public records until 100 years after the birth of the individual. I ended up finding a birth index from the year and state, and was able to find a baby born on the same date with parents listed as Leo & Sidney Cassidy. This gave me very important information that my family didn't know: the father's first name and the spelling of the mother's first name. Fortunately, Sidney seemed to be an uncommon first name for girls, so I was able to find a couple of records for a woman named Sidney that I suspected was my great-great grandmother.

I initially found a census record from 1940 for a woman named Sidney Cassidy with an estimate birth year of 1900/1901 and birthplace of Maryland. This census record told a story that lined up with what we knew of the situation. In 1940, a Sidney Cassidy, divorced, lived in Baltimore, Maryland, but briefly lived in California (county code 7: Contra Costa) in 1935. My great-grandfather, although born in Maryland, moved to a county near the Bay Area in California in the 1930s with his adopted family after his birth mother gave him up, but the birth mother came to the family in California saying she wanted her son back. The adopted family told her that if she took her son, the adopted family would not take him back, so Sidney decided that to have the adopted family keep caring for him. After this, I tried to find records with her maiden name and matching birthplace and birth year. After a while I found someone who could be the person I was looking for, but without the birth certificate I couldn't confirm.

Over a year went by, and I eventually got my hands on my great-grandfather's birth certificate. I scrolled through over a thousand records as the Maryland State Archives vital records are all put in a massive file with no way of searching through them. It was around 3 am when I finally found the record I was looking for. I immediately texted my mom (who for some reason was also awake). The missing piece was found, and now we had first name and last name, age, and birth place of both birth parents. My hypothesis of his birth mother was correct (Sidney Parkinson), but we had been wrong that the birth father was born in Ireland. Turns out he's from Minnesota....but this was very useful information. I search for Minnesota's state archive (Gale Family Library) where I could search for vital records, and I was met with a much nicer interface than the Maryland State Archive's. I searched for any Leo Cassidy (or similar sounding names) and I found two that could possibly match him: a Leo P Cassidy (born 1904) and a Leo B Cassidy born much later. Leo P Cassidy was who I was searching for as the birth certificate listed a Leo P Cassidy as the birth father. I did have to pay for the record, but after a small payment I now had the birth certificate for the birth father with his birth parents. I also eventually found Sidney's birth certificate.

After getting so more information on this part of my ancestry, it was now time to research their family histories, which unearthed some interesting things. Sidney's parents had quite a large age gap (10 years) and married when her mother (Mary) was 15 years old and her father (George) was 25 years old. I suspect Mary married quite young to a much older man due to the fact that her father died when she was only 12 years old (her father was found dead in the water at the pier when he was in his 50s). It probably put a lot of pressure on her mother to get her daughter married as soon as possible due to the financial burden. Although I can never truly know about the lives my ancestors led, it is very interesting how much you can glean from records from what is written and what is not written.

I am lucky to be able to do the research I am able to do on my ancestry. Many families in the United States are unable to learn about their ancestors due to immigration, slavery, indentured servitude, adoption, etc. It is also interesting to unlearn family stories of your ancestry. For the longest time, my family thought my great-great grandfather was born in Ireland, but in reality the most recent Irish ancestry that I am currently able to find is through my maternal grandmother's mother's ancestry, who got lost in the history due to her maiden name being lost due to marriage and history. In reality, I think my most recent immigration in my ancestry is from Germany (1800s), but majority immigrated to the country in before that. I am still unearthing secrets of my ancestry, and I am pretty much the only one do so except for one distant relative who has done extensive research on part of my ancestry (thanks Dick). But my interest is in researching the women in my ancestry. Their stories are often lost in these records, often subfields in records for their husbands and fathers, so it can often be difficult but I am gradually unearthing their histories.