Thursday, February 28, 2019

52 Ancestors 52 Weeks – In the Courthouse


Blogger Amy Johnson Crow has challenged us with writing about an Ancestor once a week for the year 2019.  She will give us prompts to get us started.  This week's prompt is In the Courthouse.



My father-in-law, Thomas N. Murphy had a cousin named Ellen (Nellie) McDonald Fitzgerald. Ellen married Michael Fitzgerald and they had a son Gerald. When my husband and I were first married we took a ride with his mother, Mary Glessoff Murphy out to Port Jefferson, New York.  It was and still is a very cute town with many shops and places to eat.  While there my mother-in-law said that Aunt Nellie had a house right up the street and she pointed it out.

Many years later when I was working on the genealogies of the Murphy and McDonald families I wondered if I could find out anything about that house in Port Jefferson and Aunt Nellie living there.

I went to the Suffolk County Courthouse and looked for the deeds of the houses on the street in Port Jefferson.  By this time, I wasn’t exactly sure which of the houses on that street was the one Aunt Nellie lived in.  I had to look through several different reels of film, first to find the lot number for each address, then the actual deed itself.  I think I checked every house on the street and the neighboring streets but didn’t find her name on any of the deeds.

I think she probably rented the house each summer. She did live in Brooklyn her whole life and probably wanted a cooler place for the summer.

That was my experience in the Courthouse.

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