Interest in Genealogy Spiked Upon Retirement in 2003
Editor’s Note: I asked Joe when he began his own serious research into the Canavan branches, and where one starts. Joe says it begins with interest, and his was piqued as a schoolboy when classmates talked about their ancestry. His parents told him his father, Joseph Thomas Hart, was all Irish, making Joe about half Irish, while his mother’s side was less clear-cut — perhaps Italian, perhaps French. That satisfied his curiosity for years. He did not pursue it seriously until 2003, when, at about 56, he retired after five years in the fire service in Kodiak, Alaska, and was planning a move to Ireland — the right time, he decided, to trace his Irish roots.
Transcript
Speakers: WJB — William J. Bowe; JH — Joseph Hart. Transcribed from the recording; punctuation added and obvious mis-hearings corrected.
WJB: All right. So, kind of starting there, what year did you get started with your own serious research into the Canavan branches, and where do you start?
JH: Yeah. You don’t start unless you have an interest, and of course, my interest was piqued about my ancestors as a young boy, probably when I went to school, and some of my classmates were talking about their ancestry. And so I wanted to find out about mine. So I asked my parents, and so I thought it was interesting that on my father’s side, he was all Irish, so that meant I was half Irish, probably, pretty close. And —
WJB: So this is James Francis Hart.
JH: No, this is Joseph Thomas Hart, my father.
WJB: Oh, okay. Your father’s level. All right.
JH: At that time, yes. Well, I’ll get around to describing the situation at that time. But so I found out I was Irish on my father’s side, and on my mother’s side, it wasn’t as clear-cut. I was getting some information that maybe it was Italian, maybe it was French. And so at the time, that satisfied my curiosity, and I found it quite fascinating, but I never pursued it in any way until I was retired from the fire service and was planning to move to Ireland. So I thought, well, it’s probably about time that I got serious about tracing some of my Irish roots, and so that was in 2003. I was about 56 years old at that time. So I basically —
WJB: So you were retiring from the fire service in Oregon.
JH: Well, actually, that was when I retired from my service in Kodiak, Alaska.
WJB: Oh.
JH: I worked up there for five years at the very end, and came home — my first grandchild had been born earlier that summer. And so anyway —
