Latest / Stories That Live In Us / A Life Changing Adventure (with Diana O'Connor) | Episode 67

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A Life Changing Adventure (with Diana O'Connor) | Episode 67 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Diana O'Connor: It's like you look at these records, you know you finally get the records and you stare at the records and you imagine where they would be.
• 0:06
  Diana O'Connor: And then all of a sudden, poof, you're standing in front of the grave and you just cannot even believe that you're there and you're witnessing it firsthand.
• 0:19
  Crista Cowan: Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future.
• 0:27
  Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:31
  Crista Cowan: I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything.
• 0:39
  Crista Cowan: I grew up in Southern California with my cousins Two on my mom's side, seven on my dad's side that's it just nine first cousins, but I knew them all.
• 0:52
  Crista Cowan: But we also went to family reunions every summer and Thanksgiving dinner at my grandma's house with all of my dad's cousins and reunions with my mom's cousins and my grandmother's cousins.
• 1:05
  Crista Cowan: So I grew up surrounded by this really rich family history.
• 1:09
  Crista Cowan: So whenever I meet someone who doesn't know anything about their family history, I'm always so intrigued about how that happens in families.
• 1:22
  Crista Cowan: My guest today is Diana O'Connor, and she grew up not knowing much about her family stories.
• 1:28
  Crista Cowan: She didn't know much about her family history and she didn't really know any cousins or extended family members.
• 1:35
  Crista Cowan: It was just their immediate family.
• 1:37
  Crista Cowan: And that's so foreign to me that I was fascinated by her story and to hear her go from knowing nothing to uncovering riches of family history, deep relationships with new cousins and a connection with Ireland.
• 1:56
  Crista Cowan: It's quite the journey.
• 1:57
  Crista Cowan: I hope you'll enjoy my conversation with Diana O'Connor.
• 2:01
  Crista Cowan: Well, diana, thank you so much for being here.
• 2:04
  Crista Cowan: I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.
• 2:06
  Crista Cowan: Oh, I'm just thrilled Good.
• 2:09
  Crista Cowan: So I would love to just start right off by hearing a little bit about your family history Genesis story what was it that got you into genealogy?
• 2:20
  Diana O'Connor: Well, it actually had a spiritual beginning when I was 17.
• 2:25
  Diana O'Connor: My father had already passed away earlier that year.
• 2:29
  Diana O'Connor: So that really piqued my interest, having to do with, you know, family history and the fact that you know my father had died so young and my mother died just eight years later.
• 2:40
  Diana O'Connor: My father was 38.
• 2:41
  Diana O'Connor: My mother was 44.
• 2:42
  Diana O'Connor: So they both died very, very young.
• 2:44
  Diana O'Connor: My father was 38.
• 2:47
  Diana O'Connor: My mother was 44.
• 2:48
  Diana O'Connor: So they both died very, very young.
• 2:49
  Diana O'Connor: I was full of questions once.
• 2:49
  Diana O'Connor: I kind of got the bug about looking into ancestors and so forth.
• 2:52
  Diana O'Connor: And my father, actually his mother, died when he was two and him and his brothers were put into an orphanage for a while and then they were in foster homes.
• 3:03
  Diana O'Connor: He really never knew his parents and so he didn't have much information and because the brothers, you know, it was just a very difficult growing up for them because they didn't have their parents with them and so they didn't really like talking about it, and so I just had lots of questions.
• 3:24
  Diana O'Connor: So that's really kind of where it began.
• 3:27
  Diana O'Connor: And after my father died I uh discovered this, um, this onion skin uh document I'll show you right here.
• 3:36
  Diana O'Connor: Everybody you know from the olden days, yes, my son would say um, it's a letters of administration, it's not technically a will, it's called the letters of administration and it listed my grandmother, my father's, say.
• 3:47
  Diana O'Connor: It's a letters of administration, it's not technically a will, it's called the letters of administration and it listed my grandmother, my father's father, on there and because she was already deceased by the time he received this, you know, because she died when he was two.
• 3:56
  Diana O'Connor: It was for her brother, who died in 1963.
• 4:02
  Diana O'Connor: And it listed all the surviving siblings and if any of the siblings were already deceased, it listed their children, and so it was like her whole family was listed on these pages.
• 4:14
  Diana O'Connor: And so that was my very initial resource for reaching out to people, to start asking questions, and I mean this was way before the internet.
• 4:24
  Diana O'Connor: This was, you know, calling up, you know, 555-1212, saying do you have a number for this person in this town, and you know I did have the address at least.
• 4:34
  Diana O'Connor: So at least it made it a little more specific, especially for Irish names that are very common.
• 4:39
  Diana O'Connor: But I just had a lot of fun just talking to people out on the East Coast, um, just kind of getting initial information about about the family.
• 4:49
  Diana O'Connor: The other thing is, is that, uh, I guess my first semester, my first or second semester at BYU, I signed up for a genealogy class.
• 4:56
  Diana O'Connor: I don't know if you knew, uh, dr Al Price, but he was my genealogy teacher and he was fabulous, fabulous.
• 5:03
  Diana O'Connor: So he, you know, just started the whole.
• 5:07
  Diana O'Connor: You know, this is how we do it type of thing.
• 5:13
  Diana O'Connor: I remember him asked it.
• 5:14
  Diana O'Connor: One of the assignments that we had was to write our life story.
• 5:16
  Diana O'Connor: And here I was, I was 18 years old and you know, I don't know, they must've given us a couple of weeks or something to do this.
• 5:21
  Diana O'Connor: Most people came back with two or three pages.
• 5:24
  Diana O'Connor: I came back with a hundred pages handwritten.
• 5:28
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 5:28
  Diana O'Connor: Handwritten just because, you know, my dad was in the Air Force.
• 5:30
  Diana O'Connor: We had traveled around a lot Even by that time.
• 5:33
  Diana O'Connor: I had already been to 13 schools by the time I got to BYU.
• 5:37
  Diana O'Connor: So I have this very long and I still have it, trying to digitize it now.
• 5:41
  Diana O'Connor: But anyway, so those, those were the initial pieces that you know got me interested in finding out more, just because there was so little information to start with.
• 5:53
  Diana O'Connor: It was all my exploration to get things going.
• 5:58
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, wow, that's amazing.
• 5:59
  Crista Cowan: So you were how.
• 6:01
  Crista Cowan: You were 17 when your dad passed.
• 6:03
  Crista Cowan: I was 16.
• 6:05
  Crista Cowan: 16.
• 6:05
  Crista Cowan: Okay, and then mom died, when your life and my mother's life kind of parallel each other a little bit.
• 6:11
  Crista Cowan: She was 17 when her father passed.
• 6:14
  Crista Cowan: He was three when his mother passed.
• 6:16
  Crista Cowan: So I think the primary difference in your stories is that my grandfather and his older brothers all stayed together, which may not actually be a good thing, because they were raised then by some very abusive stepmothers in some really difficult circumstances.
• 6:33
  Crista Cowan: But your father's siblings did they stay in touch growing up or were they separated as soon as they were put in foster care?
• 6:41
  Diana O'Connor: Well, this is what was very interesting.
• 6:43
  Diana O'Connor: They were put into an orphanage originally.
• 6:45
  Diana O'Connor: I don't know exactly the number of years that they were there, but I know at a very young age that my dad and one of his brothers went to one foster family.
• 6:54
  Diana O'Connor: The other two boys went to a different foster family but they were right down the street from each other.
• 6:59
  Diana O'Connor: But then at some point my dad the youngest got separated from his older three brothers and they didn't see each other again until 1963 when we had our first O'Connor family reunion in, you know, westchester County in New York, and they totally thought my dad was going to be really tall with blonde hair, and he was 5'8 and blonde hair.
• 7:27
  Diana O'Connor: You know, another reason for the gap of information is just he was growing up with other foster families and it wasn't until this LOA, you know, the letters of administration got distributed to them all when the uncle died, that they even knew where each other was to the mall when the uncle died, that they even knew where each other was.
• 7:48
  Diana O'Connor: And so that's why, you know, when the uncle died in 1963, a few months later, we all went to New York to visit them and got to meet our cousins and our aunts and uncles for the very first time.
• 7:56
  Diana O'Connor: That was the first time I'd met any relative at all.
• 8:00
  Diana O'Connor: I was like seven years old Well, actually, no, I was in kindergarten.
• 8:03
  Diana O'Connor: I don't remember any conversations going on about the uncle's death.
• 8:08
  Diana O'Connor: In fact, what you know, later on, after my father died and I was trying to find his father, anthony O'Connor, I was trying to find his father.
• 8:18
  Diana O'Connor: That, and here you know, kind of goes back to one of your previous podcasts about why you aren't finding your ancestor, because you're relying too much on family stories.
• 8:29
  Diana O'Connor: I think a lot of people, because they didn't really know a lot of the story, they kind of forgot that this document about this uncle that died in 1963, they said, oh well, grandpa died in 1963.
• 8:44
  Diana O'Connor: And so my whole life I assumed that my grandpa was dead, and so when I started looking for records for him, I was looking for death records in Westchester County in New York and I never found any.
• 8:58
  Crista Cowan: So I'm curious though, like you said after the uncle died, was why the family went out to New York to meet all the cousins.
• 9:06
  Crista Cowan: So nobody told you that that was why you were going there.
• 9:10
  Diana O'Connor: I just knew we were going out to meet our cousins and our aunts and uncles.
• 9:15
  Crista Cowan: And how does this contrast to your mom's side of the family?
• 9:18
  Crista Cowan: Like were you raised with grandparents and cousins on that side?
• 9:23
  Diana O'Connor: Well, again, I grew up as an Air Force brat, so we were on the road all the time moving, moving, moving.
• 9:29
  Diana O'Connor: So I didn't meet any of my cousins on my mother's side until I was in high school Okay, high school, so my mom.
• 9:40
  Diana O'Connor: There were 13 kids in my mom's family.
• 9:42
  Diana O'Connor: Her father died when she was 10.
• 9:45
  Diana O'Connor: She was in the middle, wow.
• 9:47
  Diana O'Connor: But she was born and raised in Newfoundland and I've still not been up there.
• 9:52
  Diana O'Connor: But her father died when she was little and my grandmother lived in Newfoundland for a long time but then, after a bunch of the kids got married, my grandmother moved with some of her children to California and so that's where, when we were living in Missouri, that she came out to visit us and that was the first time I'd met my one grandmother that I understood was still alive and I was like about seven years old.
• 10:23
  Diana O'Connor: So I think it was before we went to New York that grandma came to visit her, and that was like about seven years old.
• 10:25
  Diana O'Connor: So I think it was before we went to New York that grandma came to visit her and that was the very first time I'd met her my whole life.
• 10:30
  Diana O'Connor: I could probably count on one hand the number of times I saw her.
• 10:35
  Crista Cowan: Was your mom still at home when her mother moved to California?
• 10:38
  Crista Cowan: Had she already left home?
• 10:39
  Crista Cowan: No, she'd already gotten married.
• 10:41
  Crista Cowan: Okay, how did your parents meet?
• 10:44
  Diana O'Connor: Oh, my dad was in the Air Force.
• 10:45
  Diana O'Connor: My dad was in the Air Force and he got stationed up in Torbay, Newfoundland, and they must have met at a dance or something there in town in St John's and they got married.
• 10:56
  Diana O'Connor: And you know, he got reassigned and went to Idaho, which was where I was born.
• 11:02
  Crista Cowan: Okay, I was just in St John's last fall.
• 11:05
  Diana O'Connor: Oh yeah, I'm dying to go there.
• 11:08
  Crista Cowan: Well, okay, so your mom's from Canada, your dad is from New York State.
• 11:13
  Crista Cowan: They meet while he's in the Air Force.
• 11:15
  Crista Cowan: You're born in Idaho.
• 11:17
  Crista Cowan: What number are you in your family?
• 11:19
  Crista Cowan: I'm first of three girls, okay, so you're their oldest child and you're raised for the first seven years of your life essentially thinking you know, dad's parents are dead, mom's dad is dead.
• 11:31
  Crista Cowan: You have one living grandparent.
• 11:32
  Crista Cowan: You've never met her until you're seven years old.
• 11:35
  Crista Cowan: And then you know, kind of in that same time period, you realize that on your dad's side you have aunts and uncles and cousins, and cousins too, because you guys take this trip to New York and did you maintain connection with, like, did he maintain that connection with his family for the rest of his life after that?
• 11:54
  Diana O'Connor: Uh, yes, yes, we stayed in touch with our cousins quite a bit.
• 11:58
  Diana O'Connor: I mean, I'm, I'm, we're still in touch with some of the cousins, at least the ones that are still living.
• 12:03
  Diana O'Connor: I've got several of my O'Connor cousins that have already passed away.
• 12:14
  Crista Cowan: But you know, I was raised with three of my four grandparents and three of my eight great grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles and my parents' cousins and their kids.
• 12:24
  Crista Cowan: Like I was just raised going to family reunions every summer and hearing those stories.
• 12:28
  Crista Cowan: And so you know, by the time you're 18, 19 years old, you're attending college, you're taking a family history class, you're interested in genealogy, you're kind of feeling of void a little bit of, because you weren't raised with all those stories, even though you had some touch points with some of those relatives.
• 12:46
  Crista Cowan: So, as you're developing this relationship with these aunts and uncles and cousins, are you getting any family stories through that, or are you just developing a relationship with them kind of in the present moment through that, or are you just developing a relationship with them, kind of in the present moment, nothing well, like I said, the four boys, because it was so traumatic for them.
• 13:04
  Diana O'Connor: You know, my dad losing both of his parents when he was two, uh, you know, not having connection with them and, uh, just being sent off to other families.
• 13:13
  Diana O'Connor: I mean they didn't have really anything to go off of.
• 13:16
  Diana O'Connor: I know there were some aunts and uncles that tried to get in touch with them and stuff, but I have one picture of a couple of their aunts in a picture with them together when my dad was about eight years old.
• 13:28
  Diana O'Connor: But other than that there just wasn't anything.
• 13:32
  Diana O'Connor: So there really wasn't a lot of conversation about families.
• 13:35
  Diana O'Connor: My mom was really close to one of her sisters and she kept in touch with her mom.
• 13:41
  Diana O'Connor: So there was always letters coming back on my mom's side, but on my dad's side there was absolutely nothing.
• 13:47
  Diana O'Connor: So after my father died and I started calling people on this LOA list, that was really the beginning of me having any clue or understanding about who these people were, where they came from, anything about them.
• 14:02
  Diana O'Connor: There was a lot of music in the family.
• 14:03
  Diana O'Connor: I heard that my grandma played the violin.
• 14:06
  Diana O'Connor: She was part of a little band over there in County Tyrone Ireland.
• 14:11
  Diana O'Connor: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait wait.
• 14:13
  Crista Cowan: Your dad's mom was from Ireland.
• 14:15
  Diana O'Connor: Yes, yes, so my dad, my dad was first generation American and I'm first generation American on my mom's side.
• 14:23
  Diana O'Connor: Okay, so yeah, his parents were both immigrants from Ireland, one from County Mayo, the other from County Tyrone.
• 14:32
  Crista Cowan: And did the cousins tell you that when you were growing up, or is that something you discovered later on your own?
• 14:37
  Diana O'Connor: no, I, I didn't know that until I started doing research.
• 14:40
  Diana O'Connor: Wow, yeah, a explosion of information that happened once I started really doing this was like wow, I never dreamed of any of this, so yeah, and the excitement that goes with it.
• 14:52
  Crista Cowan: So for sure.
• 14:53
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, the curiosity, though I think that's such a necessary skill or a necessary quality for a genealogist to have as you start exploring family history being curious enough to ask questions, to think of the questions, to ask is what leads to answers.
• 15:11
  Crista Cowan: So, as you embarked on this family history journey in college, like, do you remember, like one of your first discoveries, was it those letters of administration or was it something else?
• 15:22
  Diana O'Connor: So when I was going to BYU, I had a boyfriend while I was there and I remember one time we went up to Salt Lake to the genealogy library and it was after I'd had it was either during or after I'd had the class with Brother Price.
• 15:35
  Diana O'Connor: But I went over there and I was going off of Anthony O'Connor and that's what I was researching.
• 15:41
  Diana O'Connor: I was told he was from Dublin.
• 15:43
  Diana O'Connor: So I was looking for Anthony O'Connor in Dublin and I did finally find somebody.
• 15:49
  Diana O'Connor: That was Anthony Leo O'Connor.
• 15:51
  Diana O'Connor: But this was way back before I understood a lot of things and I was jumping to conclusions and I remember getting so excited oh my goodness, I found Anthony Leo O'Connor and he's my grandpa.
• 16:05
  Diana O'Connor: Oh my goodness, that was so far off of what reality turned out to be.
• 16:10
  Diana O'Connor: Uh, years later, but it was years before I discovered this.
• 16:14
  Diana O'Connor: So I was kind of owning this person that had nothing to do with me, nothing to do with me so, and I didn't have any information around him, it was just him.
• 16:23
  Diana O'Connor: I don't even remember any other information about him.
• 16:26
  Diana O'Connor: It was.
• 16:27
  Diana O'Connor: So that was sort of my first, one of my first memories other than, you know, reaching out and making phone calls and trying to.
• 16:35
  Diana O'Connor: You know, put family names together and this person was in the war and this person had an amputated leg and you know different miscellaneous things like that.
• 16:43
  Diana O'Connor: But in terms of going up the tree, there wasn't a lot of information initially.
• 16:49
  Diana O'Connor: It really took, you know, more serious research.
• 16:53
  Diana O'Connor: That really didn't happen until I started working at FamilySearch.
• 16:59
  Crista Cowan: I'd love for you just to tell us ultimately, like the story of him, what you learned about him.
• 17:05
  Diana O'Connor: I'm going to get emotional thinking about this, because keep in mind that by the time I found him, it had literally been 40 years.
• 17:13
  Diana O'Connor: I had been searching for him.
• 17:15
  Diana O'Connor: 40 years I had been searching for him and at this time I was.
• 17:20
  Diana O'Connor: I remember, you know, I was living in Kaysville working for FamilySearch and you know my boss is the CEO of FamilySearch.
• 17:27
  Diana O'Connor: I'm working at FamilySearch and I don't even know who my grandfather is.
• 17:32
  Diana O'Connor: I just thought I've got to get past this.
• 17:35
  Diana O'Connor: I just, you know, it just felt pathetic sort of.
• 17:37
  Diana O'Connor: And I remember I was home from work one day and I had, I had a home office, and I remember, just sitting in front of my, sitting in front of my computer one day, literally I just said a vocal prayer.
• 17:50
  Diana O'Connor: I said, heavenly Father, it was like I was praying to him and my grandpa at the same time.
• 17:55
  Diana O'Connor: Please help me find you.
• 17:58
  Diana O'Connor: I just I was just crying and whatever.
• 18:01
  Diana O'Connor: And all of a sudden I remembered something that, uh, dave, we met that I don't know if you worked with him at at Anselm.
• 18:08
  Diana O'Connor: You know him Well, he was one of my coworkers, obviously you know a very good uh, irish, uh research specialist, and I had been going to him.
• 18:17
  Diana O'Connor: His mother was an O'Connor and I remember him telling me okay, just remember that there are O'Connors and there were Connors, and sometimes they use both names.
• 18:27
  Diana O'Connor: I had been always searching for O apostrophe, connor, right, I didn't even try thinking about that.
• 18:33
  Diana O'Connor: So that was one thing that helped me.
• 18:35
  Diana O'Connor: But he also had said well, if you're having problems, try going to the county archives of where he lived when he first immigrated.
• 18:44
  Diana O'Connor: To at least that you thought that he immigrated where he was living in New York.
• 18:48
  Diana O'Connor: And as I'm sitting in front of this desk after you know, crying and saying this little prayer, I pulled up the Westchester County archives page and it said fill in this little form tell us everything you know about your ancestor and send $27.
• 19:03
  Diana O'Connor: And I thought, okay, I can do this.
• 19:06
  Diana O'Connor: And I did that.
• 19:07
  Diana O'Connor: And within a couple of weeks it was maybe three or four weeks I get this big manila envelope in the mail and it's thick, it's got all of his records in it and, lo and behold, there is a picture of him.
• 19:21
  Diana O'Connor: I had this picture of my dad's mom, rebecca.
• 19:24
  Diana O'Connor: I had no idea what this grandfather looked like, no idea whatsoever.
• 19:29
  Diana O'Connor: And when I saw that picture again, tears just started flowing and what was so interesting was in his face.
• 19:37
  Diana O'Connor: I saw my dad and his three brothers in that and I thought this is him.
• 19:42
  Diana O'Connor: I know it is, I can see it in his face.
• 19:45
  Diana O'Connor: And I immediately got on the phone with one of my sisters.
• 19:48
  Diana O'Connor: I called one of my sisters and said you will not believe what I'm looking at.
• 19:52
  Diana O'Connor: I'm looking at a picture of Grandpa O'Connor.
• 19:54
  Diana O'Connor: You just won't believe it.
• 19:55
  Diana O'Connor: And I mean that was just.
• 20:00
  Diana O'Connor: I mean, if your interest doesn't get piqued then, but those records were his immigration records and it showed the town where he was born, who his parents were, his age, his marriage.
• 20:10
  Diana O'Connor: You know the marriage information with my grandmother and it listed, you know, my dad and his brothers on there, and so this was just explosion of information.
• 20:20
  Diana O'Connor: So that's a very, very tender story for me.
• 20:25
  Diana O'Connor: You know, later on, you know, as years went by and stuff, I did find orphanage records after my grandma died.
• 20:36
  Diana O'Connor: This was all in the depths of the Depression.
• 20:38
  Diana O'Connor: After my grandma died, this was all in the depths of the depression.
• 20:40
  Diana O'Connor: I just have a lot of compassion, even though he wasn't able to raise my dad and his brothers.
• 20:45
  Diana O'Connor: Just, you know, coming across this information, he might not have been a perfect person.
• 20:55
  Diana O'Connor: I know he was a bit of an alcoholic, but I just had a lot of compassion for him.
• 20:58
  Diana O'Connor: And then but I just had a lot of compassion for him.
• 21:01
  Diana O'Connor: And then, you know, years later my sister finds his death certificate and it turns out he died just a couple of weeks before my mother did the year my son was born.
• 21:08
  Diana O'Connor: So my grandfather had been alive all these years and it just broke my heart to think that he died alone in New York.
• 21:17
  Diana O'Connor: And at least me, I would have hopped on a plane.
• 21:21
  Diana O'Connor: If I knew he was alive, I wouldn't have gone in and visited him for sure.
• 21:24
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing, thank you.
• 21:25
  Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing your grandpa O'Connor with us.
• 21:28
  Crista Cowan: Yes, so you've made some other discoveries.
• 21:32
  Crista Cowan: The story of the discovery from the 1800s.
• 21:35
  Diana O'Connor: This is more.
• 21:35
  Diana O'Connor: This is his wife, rebecca McDermott, and so on.
• 21:40
  Diana O'Connor: The LOA of her brother, frank, was listed.
• 21:44
  Diana O'Connor: All these people I had reached out, you know, got some information or whatever, but on the LOA it listed three of her siblings that stayed in County Tyrone.
• 21:54
  Diana O'Connor: All the rest of them had immigrated to the United States like she did in the early, you know, maybe late 1890s, early 1920s and so forth, and so I had put out, I had gone to a I think it was just a genealogycom and they had a forum in there and I had written, you know, just posted, you know, do you know these three people?
• 22:16
  Diana O'Connor: These are three siblings of my grandmother that didn't come to the United States.
• 22:20
  Diana O'Connor: Does anybody in County Tyrone know anything about them?
• 22:24
  Diana O'Connor: That went off into, you know, the ozone and literally out of the blue, two and a half years later I get this random email from a Moira Craig saying Kate McDermott, she's my grandmother and we have lots of information and my other cousin is the family historian, we've got pictures, we've got stories and everything.
• 22:46
  Diana O'Connor: And, oh my goodness.
• 22:48
  Diana O'Connor: So that happened on one day and we started exchanging, you know, some pictures, some information and, you know, kind of getting to know each other, whatever.
• 22:55
  Diana O'Connor: And it got me so excited.
• 22:57
  Diana O'Connor: I thought where are some other forums?
• 23:00
  Diana O'Connor: Where else can I start holding information and asking for people?
• 23:03
  Diana O'Connor: And I went into Ancestry and I can't remember exactly the tool, but I went in and I searched for, you know, each of the other siblings that had come to United States.
• 23:16
  Diana O'Connor: And, lo and behold, this cousin of mine turns out Carolyn Thompson.
• 23:21
  Diana O'Connor: She had started a tree in Ancestry, but it was stopped at her grandfather, who was my grandmother's brother Right.
• 23:29
  Diana O'Connor: So, and I found her and I immediately wrote off to her and she immediately, like within hours, responded to me and said oh, my goodness, your grandmother and my grandfather were siblings and you've got all this information.
• 23:46
  Diana O'Connor: She was so thrilled, she was so information.
• 23:47
  Diana O'Connor: She was so thrilled, she was so excited.
• 23:49
  Diana O'Connor: She was already retired, she wasn't married, didn't have children, and her favorite thing was doing family history research, and so once she, I was able to share all this information.
• 24:00
  Diana O'Connor: That was what she was practically doing full time for the rest of her life, until she passed away just a couple years ago, in 2022 and um anyway.
• 24:10
  Diana O'Connor: So that was so.
• 24:11
  Diana O'Connor: That was the second cousin.
• 24:13
  Diana O'Connor: Then I found another website that had um O'Connor information.
• 24:20
  Diana O'Connor: So there was a whole pedigree chart that was there and that was a cousin, christina Golden.
• 24:25
  Diana O'Connor: So she had that whole website.
• 24:27
  Diana O'Connor: So there was the two cousins, the Maura and Myra, there was Carolyn and then there was Christina, all within 48 hours again.
• 24:35
  Diana O'Connor: You know, when I say I'm coming from a whole world of having nothing to all of a sudden, in that short a period of time, having so much and so much to go for, I mean it was just endless, endless.
• 24:48
  Diana O'Connor: And these records were going all the way back to 1800.
• 24:51
  Diana O'Connor: So that was tons, tons tons for me, did.
• 24:55
  Crista Cowan: All four of these cousins live in Ireland.
• 24:59
  Diana O'Connor: No, christina is in UK, so she's in England.
• 25:03
  Diana O'Connor: Carolyn lived in New Jersey, so I had New Jersey, northern Ireland and England.
• 25:13
  Crista Cowan: And did any of them know each other, like, were you the person coming into the family that they didn't know about or nobody had contact?
• 25:20
  Diana O'Connor: No, well, the Christina Golden, she was on the O'Connor side, the other three were on the McDermott side Got it.
• 25:27
  Diana O'Connor: So they, you know Christina wouldn't have known the others, but, yeah, carolyn didn't know anything about them.
• 25:32
  Diana O'Connor: So what happened after this information explosion?
• 25:36
  Diana O'Connor: Oh, carolyn, you know, she was retired, she was ready to hop on a hop and she was off to Ireland.
• 25:42
  Diana O'Connor: I set up a blog for her so she could do a little travel thing and she got over there.
• 25:47
  Diana O'Connor: She met Moira and Marion in person, got more pictures, more information.
• 25:54
  Diana O'Connor: And then there was another cousin that somehow she got in touch with Anne McDermott, who lives in Manhattan, and she, once she got a hold of this information, she had been to Ireland before, she knew she had relatives in Tyrone, but she had no idea where they were there.
• 26:12
  Diana O'Connor: Once she got in connect with Carolyn, she was flying off to Ireland and met a whole bunch of other people that in turn, one of them actually wound up living next door to my grandmother's property what?
• 26:28
  Diana O'Connor: In County Tyrone, yeah, so that was very, very cool.
• 26:32
  Diana O'Connor: It took me a few more years to put things together where I could make my trip and they kept telling me this is going to change your life.
• 26:41
  Diana O'Connor: It's going to change your life.
• 26:44
  Crista Cowan: You were the connection that brought them all together and also connected them with Ireland.
• 26:50
  Crista Cowan: And now Caroline's taking these trips and you're seeing, like for those few years, like did you always know you were going to also take a trip?
• 26:57
  Diana O'Connor: Oh, yes, I knew I wanted to go.
• 26:59
  Diana O'Connor: That was just kind of one of those things where you just want to go and feel your roots and that sort of a thing, especially again given my background, where I didn't feel like I had any roots.
• 27:10
  Diana O'Connor: I didn't know where they came from.
• 27:12
  Diana O'Connor: You know, I wanted to.
• 27:13
  Diana O'Connor: Oh my goodness.
• 27:14
  Diana O'Connor: You know, when I finally landed on Ireland I landed, you know, my daughter and I arrived on Mother's Day and I literally I wanted to kiss the ground.
• 27:24
  Crista Cowan: I'm finally here, so tell me about how you and your daughter planned this trip.
• 27:30
  Diana O'Connor: Well, I kind of, you know, went across England and Ireland and because of the cousins that I had met, carolyn had actually put together a cousin connection luncheon in Manhattan.
• 27:42
  Diana O'Connor: We all met at an Irish pub in Manhattan.
• 27:47
  Diana O'Connor: She made name tags for all of us so we all knew whose cousin.
• 27:50
  Diana O'Connor: You know, the first cousin, the second, you know, whatever and we all met and it was just it was so exciting, but there were cousins from England that were part of our family, as well as cousins from New Jersey, from Manhattan, from Long Island.
• 28:04
  Diana O'Connor: There was 22 of us.
• 28:05
  Diana O'Connor: So by the time we were planning, I'd already met a bunch of these cousins.
• 28:10
  Diana O'Connor: So when we, when we went over to, we flew into Heathrow, then we hopped on a train.
• 28:14
  Diana O'Connor: We, you know, went around London, then we went up north to Middlesbrough in York and met with the other cousins that we met at this luncheon.
• 28:22
  Diana O'Connor: So we stayed with them for like a whole week or whatever.
• 28:26
  Diana O'Connor: And then they met us in Ireland when we went to go stay at Alice's cottage.
• 28:33
  Diana O'Connor: That was owned Now it's an Airbnb, but it was a cottage that was owned by, you know, one of my great aunts and so I got to stay in a house.
• 28:44
  Diana O'Connor: We all got to stay.
• 28:45
  Diana O'Connor: We all stayed in this thing together.
• 28:47
  Diana O'Connor: That was all previously owned by one of our ancestors, so that was really really cool, I mean.
• 28:53
  Diana O'Connor: And this was in the town where my grandmother was born and raised, and yeah.
• 28:58
  Diana O'Connor: So we got to go visit the cemetery.
• 29:02
  Diana O'Connor: We got to go see her house where she was born.
• 29:05
  Diana O'Connor: That was, we got to go see her house where she was born.
• 29:10
  Diana O'Connor: That was, that was unreal.
• 29:11
  Diana O'Connor: Going inside that house, that was that was unreal.
• 29:12
  Diana O'Connor: It was just unbelievable to.
• 29:13
  Diana O'Connor: You know, go to the cemetery.
• 29:14
  Diana O'Connor: I mean, these are.
• 29:15
  Diana O'Connor: You know, it's like you look at these records, you know, you finally get the records and you stare at the records and you imagine where they would be and then all of a sudden, poof, you're standing in front of the grave and you just cannot even believe that you're there and you're witnessing it firsthand.
• 29:33
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, wow Did you.
• 29:36
  Crista Cowan: Were there, cousins that were still living in that same town?
• 29:41
  Diana O'Connor: Yes, the Marion, one of the original cousins that I met, you know from that, from that forum, she lived there.
• 29:50
  Diana O'Connor: So we went to her house and her cousin came over.
• 29:55
  Diana O'Connor: So we all got together and she, her table was covered with pictures.
• 30:00
  Diana O'Connor: She had pictures of my family that I didn't even know she had and I thought where did you get these?
• 30:06
  Diana O'Connor: She had original pictures of my family that I didn't even know she had and I thought where did you get these?
• 30:08
  Diana O'Connor: She had original pictures of my grandmother.
• 30:10
  Diana O'Connor: I mean it was just, it was unreal, see.
• 30:13
  Diana O'Connor: I mean just holding them in my hands for the very first time, my daughter was just taking pictures of all of them sitting there.
• 30:20
  Crista Cowan: So the whole idea of having nothing, virtually right, like it was just you and your parents and your siblings and very little outside you know extended family, and now you've gone through this experience over so many decades to find yourself standing in the town in Ireland where your grandmother's from, with an abundance of riches spread out on the table in front of you.
• 30:45
  Crista Cowan: I just can't imagine from, with an abundance of riches spread out on the table in front of you.
• 30:48
  Diana O'Connor: I just can't imagine so then.
• 30:49
  Diana O'Connor: So the other really cool story is going back to the O'Connor side of the family.
• 30:52
  Diana O'Connor: Then we drove down to County Mayo, which is where the O'Connor family all originated.
• 31:00
  Diana O'Connor: So we came there and you know, my son-in-law just did a fabulous job putting together the Airbnbs, the hotels and so forth.
• 31:13
  Diana O'Connor: And you know, sometimes he'd give me options and I'd say, okay, I like that one or whatever.
• 31:24
  Diana O'Connor: And so we came into this little village basically called Valley Castle, in County Mayo, and it's right on the ocean.
• 31:27
  Diana O'Connor: I mean literally it right on the ocean, I mean literally it's on the ocean.
• 31:28
  Diana O'Connor: And I had looked at maps I had looked at maps for so many years of these little towns and just only imagined what it would be like to be there and to drive into this little town.
• 31:49
  Diana O'Connor: And you know, we set ourselves up in the Airbnb that was facing the ocean, facing down Patrick Head, which is, you know, it's a remarkable place to take pictures and so forth.
• 32:00
  Diana O'Connor: And you know, we we'd gotten there sort of in the evening and my daughter, who's a professional photographer and videographer, she said, oh, we've got to get sunrise.
• 32:10
  Diana O'Connor: You know, or excuse me sunset pictures out by Downpatrick Head, because it's very picturesque.
• 32:15
  Diana O'Connor: And so we hopped in the car and we were driving down these little roads.
• 32:19
  Diana O'Connor: And as we're driving out to Downpatrick Head, knowing that the sun is going to be coming down, we were driving this little road and I noticed this cemetery that was right there.
• 32:29
  Diana O'Connor: You know, you have the little brick wall or whatever.
• 32:31
  Diana O'Connor: And something just said to me you need to stop here.
• 32:37
  Diana O'Connor: And I had no idea, like when we were planning the trip I had I don't know why, but I had not planned for visiting cemeteries, at least not there.
• 32:45
  Diana O'Connor: Um, and so something just said, and you know, my daughter says we got to go get our pictures first.
• 32:51
  Diana O'Connor: And so we went over and got our pictures and whatever.
• 32:54
  Diana O'Connor: And I said we've got to get back there before the actual sun goes down.
• 32:58
  Diana O'Connor: So we went back there and I walked, I literally I walked into the cemetery.
• 33:03
  Diana O'Connor: I walked into the cemetery.
• 33:04
  Diana O'Connor: I walked into the cemetery and I started.
• 33:06
  Diana O'Connor: It wasn't a very big one there.
• 33:08
  Diana O'Connor: I don't know, maybe there was not even a hundred, not even a hundred graves there.
• 33:14
  Diana O'Connor: I started going up and down the rows and I saw Connor, after Connor, after Connor Collins you know all the different names that were, all of these relatives going clear back to 1800.
• 33:28
  Diana O'Connor: And I just, you know, and I thought of all the time that I had spent researching these people and all of the work that I had done, adding them to my tree, documenting you know all of this and just walking there, I mean just tears were just flowing and I absolutely felt they knew I was there, I was acknowledging them, they were acknowledging me and I.
• 33:55
  Diana O'Connor: It's just a feeling that I, I, I it's like it's hard to even describe, but I kept thinking back about what my cousin had told me.
• 34:03
  Diana O'Connor: It's a life-changing experience and when I saw that, that all of those names were all so common, I mean you could probably say maybe 10 families at the most were in that whole cemetery.
• 34:17
  Diana O'Connor: Then we got back to the, we got back to the Airbnb and they had a.
• 34:21
  Diana O'Connor: They had a big, huge window, a bay window with the dining room, and as the sun was still just barely going down and the light started showing up, you know there was like 10 acres in the house, 10 acres in the house, 10 acres in the house, little white houses just all around the little hills and stuff looking out the window.
• 34:38
  Diana O'Connor: I just had this immense feeling.
• 34:41
  Diana O'Connor: I'm looking out and I'm thinking I must be related to all of these people in one way or another, because it was so small.
• 34:50
  Diana O'Connor: And looking at that cemetery and again, with you know, with the context of my background, it was just like I finally had this feeling like these are my roots, these are my people.
• 35:02
  Diana O'Connor: I haven't met them all yet or whatever, but it was just this sense of these are my people and I'd never, ever had that before, never, ever had that before.
• 35:12
  Diana O'Connor: Then the next day we went to another little cemetery and I, you know, I specifically found one, my direct Anthony O'Connor or Anthony Connor headstone there, beautiful picture that we got of it and stuff, but it was just, you know, this cute little cemetery with, you know, weeds and pretty white flowers.
• 35:31
  Diana O'Connor: My daughter did a magnificent job of getting beautiful pictures.
• 35:35
  Diana O'Connor: They're hanging in my house.
• 35:36
  Diana O'Connor: So I have daily reminders of these cemeteries, my house, nice frames and everything, yeah that.
• 35:43
  Diana O'Connor: That was just a really heartwarming experience.
• 35:47
  Diana O'Connor: And and you know, just thinking about all the time and the effort and the you know $10 checks and the $5 checks that I sent in the mail asking for this record or that record or whatever.
• 35:58
  Diana O'Connor: It's just it all made it so worth it.
• 36:00
  Diana O'Connor: It all made it so worth it and Little Clues, you know, came turned into big results and that sort of a thing.
• 36:08
  Diana O'Connor: And then when you factor Carolyn in there and she's just sitting there going to family history centers and guess what I found, or when I worked at FamilySearch, she would just call me up on the phone and says, diana, can you run across the street to the library and look up this?
• 36:21
  Diana O'Connor: I had all kinds of cousins doing this to me.
• 36:24
  Diana O'Connor: Can you look up this, can you look up that?
• 36:25
  Diana O'Connor: And I thought, oh my goodness, I love this.
• 36:27
  Diana O'Connor: I just absolutely love it.
• 36:29
  Crista Cowan: You know, as you picture that moment.
• 36:31
  Crista Cowan: You were standing in the cemetery that night and then you think back to yourself as a young college student sitting in Dr Price's you know, beginning family history class.
• 36:41
  Crista Cowan: Did you ever think that that's where your journey would take?
• 36:45
  Diana O'Connor: you Not even a fathom, hadn't fathomed it at all.
• 36:49
  Diana O'Connor: You know this story isn't just about me.
• 36:51
  Diana O'Connor: They are my experiences.
• 36:52
  Diana O'Connor: But don't be afraid or don't be intimidated or don't run out of patience.
• 36:57
  Diana O'Connor: You know, putting something out on a forum, putting something out on a blog, writing this, asking questions, joining a Facebook group or whatever for the county, even small efforts that you make, it might take a little bit of time, but it's so worth the effort when you see how things you know can turn out and the places that you can go and having the context, once you get there, to really appreciate what it is you're experiencing.
• 37:24
  Diana O'Connor: Like my cousin said, it's just, it's a life-changing.
• 37:28
  Diana O'Connor: It's a life-changing adventure and I you know, and it continues.
• 37:36
  Crista Cowan: As you think about it, like your story is not just a story about the ancestors, it's also about a story of your path of discovery, and you've shared so beautifully what's possible if you exercise curiosity and patience and persistence, and I just think that is such a lovely example for everyone that's listening.
• 37:57
  Crista Cowan: So, as you think about the future, like what is it that you hope for the future as you continue your family history journey?
• 38:04
  Diana O'Connor: Well, I want to go to Newfoundland.
• 38:06
  Diana O'Connor: I want to go visit where my mom grew up, was born and grew up where my parents got married.
• 38:12
  Diana O'Connor: I want to go there.
• 38:14
  Diana O'Connor: I want to go back to England and Ireland.
• 38:16
  Diana O'Connor: I want to expand on the cousins that I've met, but I think one of the other things that I'm hoping for the future is that my children and grandchildren will show additional interest in our stories.
• 38:28
  Diana O'Connor: And, you know, continue the path.
• 38:32
  Diana O'Connor: You know, when you have the chance and you can go, go, have the experience.
• 38:38
  Crista Cowan: It'll change you, diana.
• 38:41
  Crista Cowan: Thank you so much.
• 38:42
  Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing your story with us.
• 38:45
  Crista Cowan: I love it.
• 38:45
  Crista Cowan: You are such an example of a desire to connect with your ancestors and with those places, but also this desire to make sure that the next generation and the one after that are also connected to you and to those who came before them, and that they don't have to grow up with that void that you had to grow up with.
• 39:08
  Diana O'Connor: Exactly.
• 39:08
  Diana O'Connor: Yeah, that's a really good point.
• 39:10
  Diana O'Connor: Without the void yes, we have lots of information to share and hopefully more to come.
• 39:16
  Diana O'Connor: Hopefully more to come.
• 39:18
  Diana O'Connor: Yes, so too.
• 39:22
  Crista Cowan: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.