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The mystery of a 1920s photo of Rose Decker’s visit from the USA to her Irish relatives was solved with input from researchers in diverse locations including Dublin, Brooklyn and Cork, and her ancestor Tom is now planning to visit the house depicted and chat to the new occupants.

The following photo was posted on the Ireland section of forum Reddit by Hudson (lludson) on Wednesday 19th February, and asked if anyone could find the location on behalf of friend Tom, a Policeman from Michigan, who was on his way to visit Ireland, on his first trip ever outside the USA.

The photo shows Tom’s ancestor on a trip from Michigan to visit relatives in Ireland, however the location has always been a mystery. Stories seemed to indicate that this was somewhere in Dublin so this seemed the place for Tom to start his search.

The Reddit post was mentioned on the online newspaper ‘The Daily Edge’, and numerous suggestions were put forward of houses as people scoured around Google maps and looked at streets near to their location. Whilst a number of these looked very similar none was a good match and it turns out that this type of house is quite common not only in and around Dublin, but also in other parts of Ireland.

Various searches in Census returns and directories of Dublin addresses for possible Carson households showed nothing promising. The crucial starting clues were posted to Reddit by posters Scamallnaoi and ptegen, and the first of these was a Michigan marriage record for Rose Carson, her maiden surname, to Horace Decker. This showed Rose’s parents as Charles Carson and Mary Mullen.
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