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Maria Jane Darragh's Illness: Researching Acute Mania in 19th Century Ontario

Image by rawpixel.com.     Back in January, I focused on discovering more about my great-great-grandmother Maria Jane Darragh's identity. In the next few weeks, my focus will be on discovering more about her cause of death: acute mania. Jane—as she was known—was not my only ancestress to be diagnosed with a mental illness. Another great-great-grandmother, Catherine Ryan Gilbride, suffered from puerperal mania and was institutionalized in 1881 in Danville, Pennsylvania. 1 Both Jane and Catherine are in my paternal lineage: Jane was my grandmother's grandmother, while Catherine was my grandfather's grandmother. Let's start with an objective and what we already know. Objective The objective of this project is to learn more about Maria Jane Darragh’s cause of death: acute mania. Jane was born about 1852 in Grey County, Canada West. She married Charles Cassidy on 20 June 1883 in St. Catharines, Lincoln County, Ontario. She died on 23 October 1903 in St. Catharines, Ontario,...

Behind the Stories: A Peek Behind the Research Curtain

Do you want to peek behind the genealogical curtain? 1

Have you ever wondered how I come up with information for my blog posts? It should come as no surprise that the stories all flow from research discoveries.

Genealogical research can be as simple as ordering a vital record, like a birth or death record. Or, it can be as complicated as researching multiple generations of a family line for a lineage society, or looking deeply at a person or event—and take several months to complete.

The constant in all my research? I invariably find many interesting stories along the way to answering a specific research question, and these stories beg to be told.

I recently focused on my Croatian great grandmother for a two-part blog series. The information I uncovered was the product of the "Research Like a Pro," research process I use, created by genealogists/podcasters Diana Shults Elder and Nicole Dyer. They kindly asked me to write about my project for their FamilyLocket blog.

So, if you'd like to peek behind my "genealogical curtain," dive into the blog post, "Identifying Reasons for Emigration Using the Research Like a Pro Process."2

Until next time...

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NOTES

1 Sir John Tenniel, Alice in Wonderland illustration, Project Gutenberg (https://bit.ly/2JNrG8s: accessed 6 April 2020). This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net.

2 Diana Elder and Nancy Gilbride Casey, "Identifying Reasons for Emigration Using the Research Like a Pro Process." FamilyLocket, 11 March 2020 (https://bit.ly/2JIvbx7 : accessed 6 April 2020).









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