SEARCHING FOR MCFARLANDS ON RECORD SEARCH

Having had such luck extending my German Offinger line a little
at FamilySearch Search, I decided to try my luck again there on
my Irish McFarland ancestors. I have a letter my late cousin
John McFarland that included what he knew about their
grandparents. It included what he believed were the names of
John McFarland and Annie Kelley's parents. I used that
information as my starting point.

According to John, my greatgrandfather's parents were
Michael McFarland and his wife Nora. maiden name unknown,
and he'd been born on 28Nov 1852 in Leitrim Ireland. I
entered the names, year and place in Record Search and selected
"exact, close and partial" as search parameters. There were no
exact or close hit, only over 2,000 partials but none with the right set
of parents for John McFarland. I tried Kiltrustan and Roscommon
next as places of birth.Annie was supposed to have been born in
Kiltrustan. Maybe John had actually been born there as well. No luck.

Setting great grandad John aside for the moment, I turned to Annie
Kelley, born to Patrick Kelley and Anne Byrne on 1Oct 1859 in
Kiltrustan, Roscommon, Ireland. My search on her was much more
successful. I found several exact matches and many partials for Anne's
baptism. Her name was given in Latin as "Annam" and her parents as
"Patricii" and "Annae", but there was a discrepancy with the date
cousin John had given for her birth. The date of baptism is given as
22Oct 1858, a full year earlier. But where everything elses matches up,
I have to assume that cousin John's information was incorrect.

Next I tried finding a record of John and Annie's marriage in Edinburgh
Scotland between 1877  but while there were several partial hits none
of them inspired me with absolute confidence that they were my great
grandparents. Nor did I find any records of Patrick Kelly residing in
Edinburgh at the time of the wedding.

However, further searches on John and Annie McFarland turned up
records of some of their childrens' marriages in Boston, Massachusetts,
including the names of the brides' parents:

Michael E. McFarland married 29Jun 1908 to Mary L. Carroll,
daughter of John J. Carroll and Mary A. McCaffrey.

Francis J. McFarland married 11Oct 1914 to Mary J. Carroll,
daughter of John Carroll and Mary McKeon.

John P. McFarland married  28Oct 1910 to Catherine Curran,
daughter of Patrick Curran and Margaret  McEleney.

Robert McFarland married 24Sep 1913 to Anna Fay, daughter
of John J.Fay and Catherine Murphy.

As you can see, they all married Irish lasses. Perhaps the families
knew each other in Ireland?

It's another avenue of exploration, and if it pans out, I'll write about
it here!