Researching the family of my husband's great-grandmother, Julia Ryan, has been a frustrating challenge. By some modern measures, "Ryan"  is the seventh most common Irish surname. This makes tracking Ryan family history difficult, to say the least.

All we know for sure about Julia Ryan is that she was living in Rock County, Wisconsin in 1856 when she married Bill's great-grandfather, Patrick Hickey. According to her gravestone, Julia was born in 1827. The death certificate of one of her children says Julia was born in County Limerick. Another source states her parents were William and Annie Ryan. Patrick and Julia seemed to surround themselves with Ryans throughout their lives, but no familial connection to Julia has been confirmed. 

Last weekend I received an email message from another Ryan researcher with what she thought might be a valuable lead: "X" Ryan married "Y" Ryan. She concluded "X" and "Y" must be cousins and perhaps one was the link to Julia. I know she intended to be helpful, but her tip has led me nowhere. It seems Ryans came from every county in Ireland and just found each other in the United States, whether they were related or not.

I smiled when I read John Grenham's December 22nd column in the Irish Times. He writes about the complexity of researching common names:

For Byrnes in Wicklow, Sullivans in south Kerry, Dohertys in Donegal, or Bradys in Cavan, the problem is not finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. It's finding the right needle in a haystack of needles... I was recently hoist with my own petard, trying to find one particular Ryan family in south Tipperary with only children's names as a guide: John, Michael, Mary, Margaret, James and Catherine, God help me. From the National Library microfilm, I identified all 53 Ryan families in the parish of Caher baptising a child with at least one of these names between 1828 and 1838 and then used rootsireland to retrieve all other children baptised outside those years to the same couple. It was a long and painful process. And there was not a trace of the family I wanted. Ah, if John Grenham has such trouble researching the Ryans, I'm in good company.