From New York to North Tipp on ancestral trail
When last Ryan Emge featured in these pages, he was speaking from his home in New York on one of those freezing mid-February mornings where the wind swirls around the corners of the skyscrapers and funnels down the avenues of the Empire City. He came across as a man on a mission. Five years deep into a family history project that reversed back through the centuries and absorbed multiple generations of his own ancestral clan, he explained how he had enlisted the help of genealogists, historians and even DNA specialists in an attempt to unlock his family’s past and trace the origins of his great-grandfather, Mr. Thomas B. Brown, who emigrated from Ireland and settled in Waltham, Massachusetts, around the year 1880.
Ultimately, it was discovered – through DNA analysis – that Thomas B Brown hailed from somewhere in the vicinity of Knocknacree, Modreeny, Co Tipperary. In addition to that revelation, links were identified which connected the family to other Brown(e)’s, as well as Dagg, Hodgins, Guest and possibly Fennell families across the county and region. And so last week, Ryan made the journey across the Atlantic on what is best described as a fact-finding mission, an intensive seven-day excursion to Ireland in search of living relatives and others who might be able to shed more light on his family history.
On the Thursday we meet, Ryan is in good form, striding down the footpath from Nenagh Library and sporting a cap with a Tipperary crest on it. He says he has spent the past six months preparing rigorously for the visit to Ireland and admits that the trip has “a lot riding on it.” To corroborate his point, Ryan unveils an intricate four page agenda featuring a packed daily schedule along with various targets and locations. He has already uncovered a wealth of new information, he says, but the deeper one digs the greater the desire to find more. This is his first trip to Ireland. He now knows it won’t be his last.
“I know that in this immediate region, I’ll need to spend even more time and come back. But the few days I’ve spent here have provided such value,” he remarks.
First impressions
His first impressions of Ireland are generally positive. He cites people’s overwhelming friendliness and authenticity as the main qualities he has picked up on, and says he is eternally grateful for the welcome rolled out to him in his ancestral homeland. He disembarked the plane at Dublin Airport and then more or less jumped straight into archival research, paying visits to various institutions like the National Library, Trinity College and the Representative Church Body Library, which he praises as “wonderful resources”. Through countless hours spent scanning old documents and manuscripts, he gradually began to fill in the gaps in his family tree and refine it further.
As helpful as those research centres were, Ryan explains that there is another, more human element to this project which involves meeting and interacting with new people, some of them distant relatives, and developing new friendships. He tells your correspondent that new technologies such as AI are transforming ancestral and historical research, but that nothing can replace human connection.
“That opportunity to have those relationships and make those connections is going to be the most important and valuable aspect of this whole project,” he emphasises. “Because with a project like this, it’s easy to get lost in the details, or lost in the process, but the best part of all this is building relationships and connecting with people, because that’s ultimately what we’re doing, and I can’t lose sight of that.”
Special new addition
Somewhat fittingly, Ryan is sitting in the archive room of The Nenagh Guardian, surrounded by old records of a newspaper that dates back to 1838. His family tree now extends well beyond that, but it has also a special new addition.
“My significant other, she’s from Co. Kerry, and we just had a newborn – a lovely little boy, born on St. Paddy’s Day in New York, and his name is Conor,” Ryan says proudly. If anything, he adds, Conor’s birth further motivated him to pursue and complete his family history venture. He says that giving up is “not language in his dictionary” and that he wants to provide clarity for his son and all future generations in terms of their ancestral roots. Incidentally, he has also done extensive work in terms of tracing his paternal roots, which lie in Germany.
His whistle-stop tour of Tipperary also included visits to Thurles and Clonmel, before he headed on to Cork, his departure point. Ryan is not the first American to travel to these shores in search of long, lost family, nor will he be the last, but even in the space of just a couple of days, you sense that he has made an imprint. They say Irish-America is slowly fading, but in Ryan’s home in New York, it is alive and well.