Hello Judith
Thanks for your message and your interest in Ireland Reaching Out
Considering you know Anna’s father’s name and you have her date of birth; you could try obtaining a copy of the civil registration of her birth. Civil registration records are available from the General Register Office (GRO). These start from 1864. You can access the website here: http://www.groireland.ie/research.htm
You can search the indexes online at https://familysearch.org/search/collection/1408347
Have you looked for a record of Anna’s or her sibling’s arrival in the U.S? Generally more information was given at the port of arrival rather than the port of departure. If you knew which city they arrived at (e.g. Liverpool, New York, etc.), this could be a good place to find more information. -And perhaps even find out an exact place of origin.
Ellis Island: http://www.ellisisland.org/search/passSearch.asp
Castlegarden: http://www.castlegarden.org/
US National Archives/Immigration info: http://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/
The Boston Pilot; From October 1831 through October 1921, the Boston Pilot newspaper printed a “Missing Friends” column with advertisements from people looking for “lost” friends and relatives who had emigrated from Ireland to the United States. This extraordinary collection of 40,743 records is available here as a searchable online database, which contains a text record for each ad that appeared in the Pilot. http://infowanted.bc.edu/
When you do establish Anna’s birthplace you should try finding her father Thomas on the 1901/ 1911 Irish Census. There is lots of useful information to be found in the 1901 and 1911 census records. You can find this here: http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/
Best regards Michael
Genealogy Support
