25. From Baby Book to County Cavan, Ireland: Is it Hart or Harte?

Speakers: WJB — William J. Bowe; JH — Joseph Hart. Transcribed from the recording; punctuation added and obvious mis-hearings corrected.

JH: Okay, let me back up once and also mention the other document that I received that had been helpful, which was some notes from a baby book.

WJB: Uh-huh.

JH: I have a half first cousin once removed, would’ve been my father’s half first cousin. And this cousin’s father, when his son was born, had a baby book and wrote some notes in it about his Irish ancestors. And this was Joe Defley. And so when I was growing up, I heard a lot about Joe Defley, but I never knew exactly what the connection was. But anyway, it was his notes from a baby book that identified a certain branch, would’ve been Joe Defley’s grandmother’s side, was the Meehan McGloin branch from County Leitrim. So when I finally get to Ireland and get settled, I start trying to see what I can find out. Some of the early information that I used to start my research was church records. Each county in Ireland has a genealogy center. Sometimes it’s called the Family History Center, but each county has at least one of these centers where people can go, they can fill out some information on a form, and the staff at the genealogy center will sift through the records and come up with a report for you. So, since the information I was starting out with kind of defined the Canavan branch, these other notes from the baby book identified this Meehan McGloin branch. My main interest was, can I find where James Hart came from in Ireland? Because these notes from your mother’s information, from Uncle Jim’s information, from the baby book, told me where to go in Ireland to see where my ancestors in these other branches came from, but I didn’t have any information on where James Hart came from, other than on his gravestone, it says he was from County Cavan. So one of the first inquiries I made was by going to the genealogy center in Cavan town, in County Cavan. So at some point, I’m sure I was talking to people I met in Killybegs, and it was pretty interesting to be in Ireland with Irish heritage and go to somebody and explain that you were trying to trace your Irish roots. And they’d get this big smile on their face and they’d try to tell you everything they ever knew about anyone with the name of Hart, which was really not going to help me at all usually, or never has. But they were so willing to help. One of the first things I found out was that you go to these genealogy centers, and they’re the people to ask. So I went to Cavan town, to the genealogy center, and I asked about James Hart, and from the information on his gravestone and the information that I got about him during his time in the United States, I could come up with a general idea of when he was probably born. So I went there and they gave me two names, two James Harts. And the other thing that I learned early on just by looking in the phone book, looking up the surname Hart in the Irish phone book, was that there were a whole lot more Harts spelled with an E than spelled without an E on the end. And I thought, “Well, that’s significant, I think.” Turns out that it has no significance at all whether your name has an E on the end or not. But I didn’t know that until a little later on. So when I got these two names, one of them was James Harte with an E, and the other one was James Hart without an E. And so I thought, “Well, it’s got to be the one without the E.” But there was really no good reason for making a distinction like that, and I found that out probably years later. So the one that I picked that didn’t have an E came from a parish in County Cavan called Kilbride. So that was always kind of a focus for my research on my great-grandfather during that early period when he was kind of the focus of what I was hoping to find, I guess.