"THE WAITING IS THE HARDEST PART...."

or so Tom Petty tells us.

It all started this afternoon with an a Tree Notification from Ancerstry.com.
You know the one:

Dear William, Great news. We’ve found historical records that could help you discover more about your ancestors and grow your family tree, West Family of New England. Be sure to view the following Ancestry.com Hints:

Name: Anne Byrne We’ve found potential matches in these collections: 1891 Scotland Census 1881 Scotland Census View

There may be even more hints for you to explore. See all the people in your tree with hints.

Now, Anne Byrne is my maternal great great grandmother and one of my brickwalls.
I wasn't sure if I could examine those records because I don't have the World Deluxe
Ancestry membership. I was right, I couldn't.

But there was also a Public Member Family Tree link, and I clicked on it.  From what
I saw there, I may have discovered cousins,  two descendants of Anne Byrne and
Patrick Kelley who live in the U.K. I wanted to double-check so I searched my
apartment for the manila file folder that holds some of the oldest research I've done.
Specifically I was looking for my notes from a phone interview I'd done back on 3Mar
1979 with my cousin Nancy. She and I are descended from Anne Kelley, daughter of
Patrick Kelley and Anne Byrne, and she had in her possession at that time the
marriage certificate of Anne Kelley and John McFarland. The information in the notes
I made 31 years ago doesn't match up exactly with what I found on those two trees,
but the differences in dates are only off by one day.

So....

I've sent messages to both tree owners on Ancestry and discovered one of them has
a Facebook account so I messaged that person there as well.

Now I'm waiting and hoping for a reply. There's been none so far, but there is the
time difference.  So I'm still waiting.

I'll let you know what happens.