The Rewards of Genealogical Research...

In late February of this year, I posted an article called "Interesting Genealogical Findings..."  In that entry, it was clear that I had learned a fair amount about my great-grandmother, Mary Jane Duffy, who married James L. McLaughlin, my mother's paternal grandfather.  I expressed my frustration at the constantly-changing names that Ms. Duffy used over a period of years as evidenced in this list of references I had compiled:

The main problem I had in February was that I hadn't established her parentage.  My grandmother McLaughlin had informed that her mother-in-law had "come from Malone, N.Y."  Several years ago I had written to the Catholic Church in Malone hoping to locate a baptismal record for Mary Jane Duffy, who probably would have been born around 1850.  That search turned up nothing.

Last weekend I decided to continue looking for some original source material regarding Ms. Duffy.  I turned to a Website called Fulton History, where you can "Search over 47,059,000 Old Newspaper pages from US  & Canada."  I don't recall the exact combination of search criteria I entered but I discovered an article in the social column of a Malone, New York, newspaper from 1922, the year Mary Jane Duffy died.  The text gave me shivers: "Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Duffy, of Elm Street, and Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Duffy, of West Street, and Daughter Gertrude, returned home from Schenectady last night, after attending the funeral of their sister, Mrs James McLaughlin, who died in that city last Saturday.  Mrs. McLaughlin was formerly Miss Jennie Duffy of Malone,  The funeral was held at Whitehall on Monday morning."

The reason I was so excited was that I now had other family members for whom I might search to determine Mary Jane's parents.  I need not go into the gory details, but I'll let this picture tell the story:

By the way, those little green leaves you see on certain boxes are indicators that Ancestry.com has located some possible source material that might help find even more connections.  What fun this is when you break through a brick wall!

And with this breakthrough, I have now identified all my ancestors back 4 generations.  I now know all my great-grandparents and great-great grandparents.  It's interesting that I have an English surname while the majority of my ancestors appear to be Irish and French.