Over that weekend, I plunged deep into my research of the 3 viable Reilly lines. Between Jessie’s family tree information, google searches for obituaries (leading to names of surviving family members) and white pages (for current and past addresses, the names of others who have lived at those addresses since they are usually also family members, etc.), and countless other avenues provided by the good ole internet, I was up to my eyeballs in possible leads. Unfortunately, I was also up ALL night, all weekend, barely eating and probably slightly crazed due to my lack of sleep.
A lot of the information and leads I turned up were helpful, in terms of identifying names/ages/relatedness of different family members and such. However, I also followed a lead that, in hindsight, just didn’t make very much sense.
I had noticed that on one of “Jacob” Reilly’s records (without looking at it now, I’d guess it may have been a death record), his last name was spelled differently–harkening to my previous find on the Y-DNA match list of “Reilly” being spelled several other ways.
From what my Mom had told me, according to her doctor, our donor had been a med student in Philadelphia. So, I decided to search “Jacob” Reilly’s full name, but with “Dr.” in front, along with “Philadelphia”. A result came up for a Dr. “Jacob” Reilly at a practice nearby, for a doctor who had gone to medical school or did his residency starting around the same time that my mother had gotten pregnant. This doctor had moved here just that year from Ireland, which excited me because I noticed that quite a few of my matches, including Y-DNA matches, were either Irish-American or were still living in Ireland. I think I just totally lost my logical mind and thought that, somehow, this Dr. was still a Reilly sibling or relative that was also my birth father. In looking at pictures of him, I was SURE that I saw a resemblance, particularly to me and James. I also knew that the parents of the Reilly siblings had immigrated to America from England and Ireland, and that Robert Reily and Ethel Mary Kelly were 39 and 28 upon their marriage…I guess I figured anything was possible, including the possibility that one of them (or even them as a couple) had a child before marriage…who may have been given to another family member or up for adoption.
It was too big of a leap, and honestly, just didn’t make any sense.
I wrote an email to Jessie on May 13th explaining what I had found so far:
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Hey [Jessie],
Since I’m related to both you and Nicole, I would pretty much have to be related to you through the Reilly side. The sperm donor would have to be a first cousin to you, so a male son of one of [Sally’s] siblings.
I researched each one of her siblings through a variety of searches (white pages online, googling, ancestry’s regular searches which sometimes link to the burial and obituary info, which lists their spouses and children, which allows me to do further of the searches I mentioned before plus LinkedIn/Facebook, etc.) Straight away, [“Tim”] Reilly was out due to being stillborn (or dying the same year he was born), [“Peter”] Reilly was out due to passing away as a child, and Virginia was out due to not having any children (or at least none publicly reported or mentioned in her obituary…she was buried sharing a tombstone with her mother, Ethel).
So that left [“Jacob”] Robert Reilly (referred to elsewhere as Reilly), [“Ana”] Reilly (married to [____] G. Logan), [“Ryan”] David Reilly (who through the same mechanisms I found was married to [“Emily”] Michele Reilly), or [“Rachel”] E. Reilly (who I found was married to [“Joshua”] E. Boyd).
I first extensively researched [“Ana”] and [“Tom”]’s male children, especially since [“Ana”] died in NJ, and some of their children even went to college in PA (I was looking at [name removed] Reilly in particular, who has a striking resemblance and went to Drexel). I was also pretty interested in [“Rachel”] & [“Joshua”] Boyd’s children, who also bore striking resemblances and grew up in south jersey right outside of Philadelphia, some of whom still live there. That said, none of them were ever med students, at least based upon their schooling history, etc. I looked into [“Ryan”] David Reilly’s children, although the males overall seemed to be unlikely matches. Of all of these, I also pretty much ruled out males who were likely too young to have been the donor and/or who were not in the Philadelphia area at the time the donation would have occurred. There were several possibilities left, although, like I said, seemingly no med students.
I had originally mostly ruled out [“Jacob”] Robert Reilly since there wasn’t a TON of information about him and it wasn’t immediately clear that he was married based upon your tree–also because he was listed as being born in Canada, so I decided to search those closer to home first. However, after looking through all the rest, I decided I might as well leave no stone unturned. There was little information on him in his profile, although I noticed that his last name was listed slightly differently in different places (O’Reilly on his death certificate, for example…plus he died in south jersey). I also noticed that when you click on his burial information, and are taken to the page about “find a grave…”, on the right hand side (it’s still an ancestry page) is a button that says “make a connection”, then a link with “Find others who are researching [“Jacob”] R. OReilly in Public Member Trees” I noticed that several other families that claimed a link to him had slightly different information for him. I also knew that many of my genetic hits had parents who were first generation Irish, so I was wondering how that came into play–after researching Ethel and Robert Reilly more, I noticed that Ethel was from Ireland, and that Robert spent time there as well–he was born in Canada, but married Ethel in Ireland, and at various times after coming to America stopped back in Canada and Ireland as well.
Still, not much definitive, and I didn’t have a ton of information on [“Jacob”] from ancestry.com.
So, I googled his name, each of several ways. One of the first returns I got under “[“Jacob”] Robert O’Reilly” was for “[“Jacob”] O’Reilly, MD”, a psychiatrist in New Jersey. I clicked the link, and saw he had trained at the University of Pennsylvania during the time of the sperm donation. I also saw that he had gone to school in Ireland prior to that (the Irish connection!), had the very striking resemblance, and quite a few other things. I forget exactly where all else that I looked, but it does appear that this is very likely the match. I haven’t done any outreach at this point, and I’m not 100% on what I’ll do next, but I’d like to try to get a definitive confirmation somehow if possible.
Let me know when you’re free to chat more!
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Later that day, after a looooong nap, I returned to my research and realized that I was probably wrong. Having my brain restored by sleep really does wonders. I emailed Jessie back and told her that I wasn’t sure anymore about my previous line of logic, and that I was doing more research.
On the 16th, Jessie wrote back. She explained her rationale for why certain lines were probably out, and who was also less likely. She also tried to compare her research with surnames in my family tree and wasn’t seeing anything obvious, just like I wasn’t either. From there, she mentioned how her Mother had passed away when she was young, and when her immediate family moved to California, they largely lost touch with the remaining Reilly branches. Jessie thought it would be a good idea for me to reach out to more shared matches, and to keep her posted.
I spoke with Jessie on the phone a few days later–she had called while I was at work, so we didn’t get to talk for very long. It was so nice to hear her voice and to have her support as we (briefly) compared notes.
We followed up via email once or twice about a month later (June, 2016), but I didn’t hear back from her after that. Maybe she didn’t see my message or life got in the way. I was a bit hurt, but also wasn’t sure if maybe life had just gotten busy for her, and she hadn’t had the time to log in again.
At this point, I pretty much knew I was wrong about this “Jacob” Reilly that I had found, so I doubled down some more on the remaining lines.