Two years ago, I found a baptism that seemed to match my great3 grandmother, Abigail (Cody) Stack 1821-1888. I was using the Irish Family History Foundation Database. This entry gave her baptism as 22 January 1821, daughter of David and Catherine (---) Cody, sponsors were Michael Cody and Bridget Daly. The proof reasoning for her being the same as the woman who married Thomas Stack is mostly based on her name, the age works, location in Cork, and the fact she named a son David. In any case, the marriage record of David Cody was not in this database in Cork, nor in the entire database for all of Ireland. This seemed to indicate that the family was originally from either South Cork or Waterford, neither of which place is in the database yet.
I sort of left the matter there. Last night I did some random google searches including "David Cody" Lisgoold. This brought up several old queries from 1998 about an Andrew and David Cody who emigrated to Middletown, Connecticut. This sounded promising, so I did some research on them and chronologically they could be siblings of my Abigail. So I decided to spend some money today and did some fishing in the IFHF Database. Unfortunately to even look at a record costs five euros. Also, the database is genealogically defective (IMHO) because you cannot search in a parish under a surname without a given name. So if you want all the children baptized to a given couple you have to guess their names! Not helpful.
I soon found out that the Middletown Codys were not sons of David and Catherine. So I decided to use the rest of my bought searches to guess the other children's names. You can search by father's name and parish, so I was always limiting the search to Lisgoold and David Cody. I found five other children: Mary (1816), Catherine (1819), David (1824), Andrew (1831), and James (1834). I searched for common names and names of baptismal sponsors, but found no more (no John, Joseph, William, Timothy, Richard, Helen, Ellen, Nora, Honora). I'm sure there's at least two more children born between 1824 and 1831.
However, the really good news for the money spent (40 Euros, about $60.00, which is cheaper than a plane ticket to Cork) is that three of the other children had their mother's maiden name on their baptismal records. Mary, Andrew and James all say it's Catherine Daley/Daly, which certainly agrees with my Abigail's baptismal sponsor. So, now I have her maiden name. Time to brag: I now have all my maternal fourth great-grandparents with full names but one! All in the total number in that generation of 64 I know full names of 59 of them.
Congratulations!
I am penciling in your information in our charts and citing your blog as reference.
I still lack two names on my 32 list and about 23 on the 64 list.
Why did Thomas and Abigail leave Ireland?
Posted by: Nancy Hoar | 11/18/2009 at 05:17 PM
Hello,
I am one of those Codys from Middletown - descendant of both David and Andrew J Cody. If you've interest in trading notes/thoughts, etc, let me know.
Jim Cody
capepuck@charter.net
Posted by: jim cody | 02/10/2010 at 10:34 PM