It is possible that a relative knew nothing about their grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. Depending upon how closely they lived to where those relatives lived and how emotionally connected their parent was to their own family, a person may have little knowledge of their relatives.
And no matter how often you ask, it won’t change that.
It doesn’t mean you don’t look for clues, but remember that sometimes people really do know nothing about their mother or father’s family. This is particularly true if their mother or father had some reason for not wanting them to know.
There may be little clues–so keep looking.
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Such is the case with the early deaths of parents — there is no one to pass on the family history. In some cases, several generations of early deaths in the family line lead to zero knowledge of the family.
I have that situation with my mother's side of the family. There was an adoption in her mother's lines and two early deaths of fathers in her father's line. My parents divorced when I was young, so I wasn't sure of my father's name when I started; nor did I know when and where he was born, the date he died, or his parents' names. It was tough getting started on his lines.
I had the same problem. My mother being 1 of 3 and asking all 3 I kept getting “I don't know” or little snips here and there that you had to piece together to figure out what records to use because all 3 had no interest in researching the family.
On my father's side, his grandfather, who was born in Ireland died before he was born. His father, my grandfather died when I was a year old so he was my only hope regarding Ireland info. The sad thing was my grandmother, who could be the nastiest “B” all the time “claimed” she didn't know anything thing because she acted like my grandfather never existed. Yet ask her something and she can remember something from when she was 5 and she was 85 at the time.
Being Irish they would not talk about their homeland but my father thought he heard County Kerry. To date, I'm unable to locate Emigration into Castle Garden, find Nationalization Paper etc. Since Patrick, Mary and Michael are commons names, 2 of their 12 were born there and I thought it would be easier to locate Nicholas. How wrong I was. The hardest I was told finding info on my line is Patrick Day who m Mary O'Dea, since Day comes from O'Dea.
My question is do you think their accent was heavy and hard to understand and I'm looking for the wrong surname? I only just started looking for DEA and DEE.