While the rain outside this morning feels and even smells great, it does alter my morning outing just a wee bit. I hate making deliveries in the rain so I decided to work on my Irish immigrants. The rain - we'll blame it on the rain - has fogged up my thought process evidently. Here I've been searching the records online at Ellis Island for my immigrant Martha Durkin. I could not find her anywhere so I found a helpful site that tells me common nicknames and such (since Irish people rarely seem to go by their given names). It tells me that Martha is also commonly found as (nicknames): Polly, Patsy, Marnie, Mart, Marty, Mat, Mattie. The Irish also like Marta. I searched for females beginning with M and then females beginning with P then all Durkin females. Then ... Then I realized that Martha - who came over as a child - was born in 1839. Ellis Island did not open its doors until 1892. My Martha would have been 53. Obviously Martha did not come through Ellis Island. ...
by Jeanne Ruczhak-Eckman