Into the Past: My Road Trip to Scranton

January 15, 2025

Using a Timeline & Relationships to Narrow a Research Focus

This past week, I worked on my first project of the year focused on a female ancestor. Mary Jane Sheridan (abt. 1843-1919) is a paternal 3x great-grandmother. She began her life in New York, eventually moved to Ontario, Canada, and later Cleveland, Cuyahoga Co., Ohio. While I have a good deal of information on her, the one crucial piece of information missing is the record of her marriage to Philip Cassidy. A first step no matter what the research question is to create a timeline of known events in the person's life. I spent some time looking at several existing sources to discover what is currently known about Mary Jane: Mary Jane's profile on my family tree on Ancestry Mary Jane's profile on the FamilySearch Family Tree Other Ancestry-user trees where Mary Jane appears WikiTree and Geneanet trees Information I already have in files from past research (including paper and digital files) Past blog posts written which included Mary Jane. Mary Jane's starting timeline...

I am participating in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, a writing challenge encouraging genealogy researchers to write about their ancestors. The challenge is hosted by genealogist, blogger and podcaster Amy Johnson Crow.

Here's my post for Amy's Week Eighteen prompt: Road Trip

By Nancy Gilbride Casey

Part preparation, part dumb luck, part generosity of others, part serendipity. These things equal success on a genealogy road trip, in my recent experience. Scranton and Wayne County, Pennsylvania were my road trip destinations in March 2019—the places my Gilbride ancestors first called home in the United States.

Facebook was the perfect medium to share my discoveries while on the road in Pennsylvania, and I reported back each night to my family and friends in a series of posts I'll share here. They create a neat road trip timeline, while capturing the thrill of the find, somber closure, and other emotions which may only come by actually walking where our ancestors trod.