|
Scope and current status of the Clan Project |
|
Background of
principal organizer |
|
Background of Richard Foy, principal organizer of the project. When I was in my twenties, I enjoyed stories of my family related by elders, especially my Aunt Mary Mullin, who seemed to know the most about the Foy family. She died in 1956, but her two daughters, Josephine Mullin White and Peg Mullin Kabriski continued their exceptional love of Ireland, visiting County Mayo often and maintaining contacts with relatives who remained back in Ireland. Besides my circle of relatives in the New York City area, I knew that others went to Georgia and Kansas. This was reinforced when in 1953 my brother Peter drove with my Aunt Cecelia Foy to live in California and en route visited several of the relatives in Kansas. Meanwhile I taught school in New York City and at Marist College in Poughkeepsie NY. My brother Peter and my cousin Joseph Foy attempted to jot down notes about the family, with Joseph keeping the best records. My academic training was in mathematics at Marist College (BA), St. John's University (MS) and Courant Institute of NYU (PhD). In 1954-1957, while at NYU I took several courses which used computers to work on mathematics and science problems. I was not the first of our family to get involved with computing. After leaving MIT my brother Peter joined Hughes Aircraft and later NCR and spent his entire working life in working on computer applications to business. My cousin Thomas O'Grady also got involved in the 1950s, first in Rochester NY and eventually in Florida where he ran his own firm in data processing. By the time I completed my doctorate (1962) I was President of Marist College in Poughkeepsie NY. I introduced IBM computers to the college and personally wrote several of the systems for record keeping and accounting. My teaching emphasized computers in several of the advanced mathematics courses. When I left the college in 1979, I was hired by one of the five largest executive search firms to introduce computing to their firm, which had offices world wide. I became chief administrative officer of Boyden World Corporation with computing taking a less and less component of my duties until I retired at the end of 1999. After retiring from Boyden, I returned to Marist College to learn new aspects in the ever changing computer world, and joined several research groups working on ecommerce projects. I also taught several courses in elementary computing. Two of the projects used websites; I worked with several graduate students from India who were well versed in this field. One project was to detail the history of Marist College and its relationship to the Marist Brothers teaching order. Another was to trace the history of a property in Esopus New York once owned by Oliver Hazard Payne, one of the four major founders of Standard Oil, tracing its history back to Revolutionary War times. My cousin Joseph Foy died in August 1999, and his sister Eileen Foy Zysk offered me his notes on the family history. I decided to continue his research, but change it from handwritten notes to a computerized version, using modern computing tools. My first thrust was to collect anecdotes about the family from my remaining elders and store them in a form which would make them available to other family members, especially one or two generations below me who would not have had the experience of listening to original immigrants. I was prompted to start this way because by this time my cousin Josephine White and Peg Kabriski, who knew the most of the Foy family history had developed Alzheimer's, and I had the frustration of visiting with them, knowing what was stored inside their heads, and being unable to access that information. |
|
Evolution from family tree to clan project I decided to use an internet format to collect and store the information because then I could expand the sections if need by, and I could work on different sections without interrupting the other sections. My first approach was to be strictly prose. The starting point would be my parents, their parents and grandparents and great grandparents. Problems arose when I discovered that each of my parents were from families of double digit siblings, and my decision to include information about all these siblings complicated matters. The complications exploded exponentially when the grandparents also were from large families. Soon I had lists of names jotted down on scraps of paper. I decided to organize these names using standard databases, and chose Microsoft Excel to store the names and their relationships. Taking the advice of other relatives better versed in genealogical research, I later began to include information about place and date of birth, marriage and death. (I ought to have also included place of burial, but this is an evolving story... ) I gathered information from many sources, and now have over 3500 names associated with my father's side of my family (I refer to them as the Foy side) and about 1000 names associated with my mother's family (I refer to them as the McKeon side). Some of the information about individuals is not intended to be public but ought to be recorded somewhere for reference by members of succeeding generations who decide to extend their portion of the clan.. To do this, I created a more extensive database in Microsoft Access, and wrote several programs in Visual Basic linked to this Access database to scan the data in different ways, such as surnames, relationships of a person back two generations and down three generations, etc. This database I keep private, but would share the information with any serious student of the family history. The organization is now about several families, many more numerous than the Foy group, which is why I call it a clan history. For each group I have a section of names only, then a section for stories about that group, and later on, a section for photos of individuals connected to that group — photos were not originally envisioned, but the rapid improvement of amateurs to process photos made it imperative that photos be included. Now there are hundreds of photos on the site. It is likely that others perusing the information will be more interested in the photos than the narrative. |
|
Scope of the project. Excluded items The Renaissance masters painted large murals by sketching the outline and then delegating the painting to student artists, whose names are not recorded. The clan project is similar, in that I have created a large mosaic with information supplied by others. The principal difference is that the others have done substantial research on their part of the clan, often employing more sophisticated genealogical methods than the creator of the mosaic. I relied on the authenticity of the materials sent to me, and have avoided adding legends or suspected data. I thought of adding family crests and coats of arms, but as far as I can tell our clan were dirt farmers or tradesmen, who gave not a whit for such paraphernalia. In the few places where I list opinions rather than facts, I clearly identify them as such. My mother's side of the family include the families Barry, McKeon, Sherry and Casey. I have be able to track these ancestors down to New York City in the early 1850s and perhaps the 1840s. But I have no idea where they came from in Ireland. Mary Reidy Barry definitely came from County Clare, and the legend is that William Barry came from Cork. But to 'come from Cork' has two interpretations: 1) the person grew up and lived in County Cork or 2) the person came to the States through Queenstown/Cobh, which is true for over half of those who came to the States. In 2005 I was able to visit New York City several times, and supplemented census records with records found in the NYC Municipal Archives as well as the records of St. Brigid's Church. I received valuable material from Steve Kennevan of Iowa who visits NYC regularly and ferrets out records about the Sherrys and McKeons from a variety of sources. My father's family groups all came from a small triangle in County Mayo whose vertices are Claremorris, Ballyhaunis and Knock. I received considerable research from Irish sources which traced the families back to around 1800, but most of my information is much later. It is likely that most of the US immigrants came through New York City and located in the New York City area, Kansas, or Savannah Georgia. I tracked the Kansas and Savannah groups back to the middle 1880s, and the New York area immigrants to the early 20th century. Recently I was able to enter a group of Morleys centered around Chicago who went there in the early 20th century. I suspect that many members of our family settled for a time in the farmland southwest of Chicago, near Peru and Peoria Illinois. That seemed to be a stopover point for those who later migrated to Kansas, Kentucky and Tennessee. I had hoped to visit Savannah and Kansas, but recent illness of my wife and myself have confined me to short trips, and the bulk of my research now comes through the Internet: census records, immigration records, Social Security Death Index, and various directories available through Ancestry.com. For the remainder of the information, I am indebted, to paraphrase Blanche Dubois, to the kindness of others. Visits would be interesting, but the majority of the descendants of the original immigrants no longer live in New York area, Kansas or Savannah. In large measure, our clan follows the mobility patterns current in America — they move where the work is... Early on I realized that the clan is not isolated from the culture and history of the areas where they settled. It became important for me to study the history of Georgia, Kansas, Ireland, and not to transpose my current ideas of how we live onto the history of a century ago. I included some essays to give background, but a serious student can find a wealth of material. Excluded areas Several important areas are simply ignored. It is estimated that over 250,000 souls emigrated from County Mayo during the period of the Great Hunger (1840s). Certainly this would have included many of our clan ancestors, but it is almost impossible to identify them in census records as the surnames are so common. Besides emigration to the United States, the Irish went to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada — all English territories in the 19th century. Even more important, the bulk of Irish immigrants went to England itself, especially Manchester and Liverpool areas. So it is likely that the clan includes descendants in these countries. If I ever receive information about these, I will include it to the project, but will not actively pursue this direction. Several contributors have expressed concern about identity theft. At some point the website will be discontinued, as I am living on the forbearance of Marist College ecommerce division to mount the site. At that point, I will load the public information onto CDs and distribute them to interested family members. The Access database will only be given to serious family researchers. My paper records which now fill several file cabinets, would be distributed component by component to interested family members of that specific component. Meanwhile, as I review the site, I delete reference to current contributors, such as addresses and telephone numbers. I do not retain social security numbers for anyone (although recently deceased family members listed in the SSDI have those numbers listed there). I also am concentrating on family members before 1956, assuming that researchers of family components will have access to later information. |
|
Current status As we will be moving to Poughkeepsie NY, I do not expect to be able to do any substantial work on the clan project until at least January 2007. But I have not abandoned the project. During 2006 I attempted to write the essays for each branch of the clan. (This was the only part of the project initially envisioned!) There remain the essays for two families which are important, even dominant, in the history of the clan: Berry and Morley. These are on my to-do list for 2007. I have several file drawers of unprocessed materials which have built up during 2006. After I move back to Poughkeepsie NY I hope to go through these materials and add any appropriate information to the project. I still accept new material, particularly photos, as the photo section, one of the last additions to the project, seems to be the most popular. Lastly, my heartfelt thanks to those who help out on this project. They are too numerous to mention. |
|
most recent revision: 7 November 2006 |
|
====>> home page essays photo gallery |