Erica bought a month’s subscription to Ancestry.com to search for her past. She can trace a huge amount of stuff and has connected with distant cousins also looking for information. It is slow going, though and tracing common names back to Ireland can be frustrating.

I am using it to document my family and I have made some interesting discoveries. I have basically three heritages in my DNA. I have the Dutch who settled in the Hudson valley. I have the Irish who came over in the middle of the 1800s, and have the English who came over in the Mayflower and the century following.

It is interesting that I can trace my Dutch ancestry back to 1470. I seems more interesting that I discovered the passenger list for the Steamship Great Western that carried Robert Fitzgerald of Armagh Ireland to the New World in 1862 along with his family.

You can see my great-great grandparents Robert Fitzgerald and Jane Totton (Totten, Taughton). Uncle Daniel, who served in the Civil war and spend time in Andersonville Prison is there and Sarah Fitzgerald, age 7, my great grandmother.

My current puzzle involves one Samuel Hunt who lived in Hunterdon, NJ around 1800. I think his father is Jesse Hunt, but I have to verify this with my mother. Jesse Hunt founded Cincinnati, Ohio and may be related to Jesse James.