Possible Surname for Thomas Doran's Father

I've been trying to track down the name of my great-grandfather's father. Looking at my Family Tree DNA matches, I'm seeing a pretty large number of matches with one particular surname as an ancestral surname. This surname is Gallagher. One person that matches some of these Gallagher matches of mine has his only Irish ancestral origins in the Ardara area of Donegal.

X-DNA Inheritance and What It Tells You

I felt I wasn't getting a lot of genealogical value from my DNA test. I was speaking with a distant cousin of mine and she reminded me to take a look at my xDNA matches. Taking a closer look at this does tell me quite a bit more about my matches and could help narrow down how some are related to me.

What is xDNA? xDNA is the other half of the chromosome pair that includes the yDNA that males receive from their father. Mothers always pass along half of their xDNA to all of their offspring. If their child is male, all of his xDNA came from his mother and all of his yDNA came from his father. If their child is female, the daughter will receive half of her xDNA from their mother and the other half from her father.

The Death of 17 Month Old T. Patrick Miller

In this article, I described my search for information regarding the death of T. Patrick Miller, son of Leo and Julia Doran Miller. I had tried searching through property records of their home to determine where and how he may have died. In the Bixenman family history book by Sister Catherine Seeman, it was said that he died at 2 years old by drowning in a pond on the property.

During my most recent trip to Fort Madison, Lee County, Iowa, I visited the genealogy department of the Fort Madison library. While there, I was able to track down his obituary. When I found the index card, I didn't know I had found it. This is because the obituary was for Thomas Patrick Miller. I had been looking for Anthony Patrick Miller. I figured it was worth a look at the obituary just to be sure.