Every Family Tells a Story Follow your ancestors’ journeys with the help of genealogy services and tours. BY IRENE RAWLINGS Heritage Help: Lord Mayor's Lounge at The Shelbourne Hotel (left), and the Genealogy Butler, Helen Kelly PHOTOS: © THE SHELBOURNE HOTEL
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y husband’s search for his ancestors started with a virtual consultation with Helen Kelly, one of Ireland’s leading genealogists and the Genealogy Butler at Dublin’s nearly 200-year-old Shelbourne Hotel … and the only one in the world to hold that title. She helped set up a personalized research program and coached him on how to use publicly available online records. With Kelly’s assistance, my husband traced his
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Irish lineage back to the Great Potato Famine of the mid-1800s when his great-great-great-grandfather emigrated to the United States, where he fought in the Civil War before settling down to farm on the plains of eastern Colorado. When it comes to beginning a journey into your ancestral past, Kelly suggests starting with the most recent known event and systematically working back in time. In my husband’s case, Ellis Island provided a good start, and Civil War records from the National Archives were enlightening. However, at some point it was time to fly to Ireland for some feet-on-the-ground research. We decided our pre-teen grandchildren would benefit from this lesson in history and geography, so we brought them along. We met Kelly for afternoon tea in the elegant surroundings of the Lord Mayor’s Lounge in The Shelbourne Hotel (a warm and inviting jewel of a hotel built in 1824) overlooking St. Stephen’s Green. The grandkids and I sank into deep plush chairs, sipped tea with milk and consumed scones and smoked-salmon sandwiches from a four-tiered dessert stand while my husband chatted with Kelly, who tapped away at her laptop searching for birth, marriage and death certificates online. “We are not only descended from our ancestors,” she said, “but greatly influenced by the landscape that cradled and nourished them.”
