Jean wore many hats over the years.  She was a registered medical record administrator and graduate of San Jose State University.  Early in her career, she worked at San Jose Hospital Medical Center, in medical records, as well as the surgery and pathology departments.  She also helped her brother, Dr. A.J. Monty, start the Santa Clara County Heart Association.  At the request of the Santa Clara County Medical Society, she started the first medical personnel agency and medical secretarial service in San Jose. This led to her meeting her future husband David when she visited to enquire if he needed office help.  

She later started a hospital transcription service and medical office consulting business, including establishing and managing a billing office for a group of physicians.  New physicians contacted her and asked for help in starting their practices, including some of the first Vietnamese physicians in San Jose.

As part of her transcription service, she also wrote several handbooks which were published and used nationally. Her handbooks include “The Complete Handbook for Medical Secretaries and Assistants”, co-authored with Dr. Robert Lee Dennis, which got this rave review from Annals of Internal Medicine: “Retrieving this compendium from my secretarial-nurse staff evoked the response one might expect from Mama Bear when caught stealing one of her cubs.”

She was always extremely organized, and managed to have a successful career, run a busy household, and have an active social life.  Her favorite pastimes were golf, ballroom dancing, and reading.  She and her husband David traveled to many countries, and spent many happy hours dancing in each country that they visited, as well as at home.

Jean and David were very active volunteers with their daughter Christine’s Catholic schools.  Jean organized student medical records for the schools to ensure everyone had gotten their childhood immunizations, in addition to providing help wherever needed.  She and her husband became good and long-lasting friends with many of the high school band parents, who were ultimately dubbed “The Green Spaghetti Gang” after the fundraising spaghetti dinners.  They chaperoned many of the high school band trips and had many a reunion dinner after all of their children had graduated.

In her retirement, she was a HICAP counselor for 16 years, helping seniors with their Medicare insurance questions and problems.  She enjoyed sharing her medical insurance knowledge with seniors seeking advice.

She is predeceased by her loving husband David B. Doyle, MD, and her brothers, sisters, and parents.  She is survived by her daughter Christine A. Doyle, MD, son-in-law Stephen Nelson, and several nieces and nephews.

PRONI is in Belfast, in the Titanic Quarter.  They house original documents as well as microfilms and other copies, taken from churches, businesses, and individuals, along with government records.

I’ve traced all of my lines back to the people who came over to North America, so now have to start searching elsewhere.  When we were in Ireland (technically, the Republic of Ireland) in 2014, we went down to Muine Bheag (Bagenalstown), where my Doyle ancestors were from, and were able to get a little more information from the County Carlow library and the parish.  But those records only really go back to about 1800.

PRONI has records from earlier, although only for Northern Ireland.  The Ferriers are from Belfast according to the records I already have, and the McFarlands were Ulster-Scots from County Tyrone.  And despite options for on-line research, if you don’t know where to start, it doesn’t help.

Once you get registered for access, and get your ID card, you can go upstairs to look at the self-service microfilms, or request specific items to be pulled from the archives.  I was able to look at their electronic index in advance, so knew more or less what microfilm reels I wanted to search.

Despite fairly specific details, I had no luck finding the Ferriers, within 10 years on either side of the info I had.  The McFarlands were harder although there was info to be found.  The specific years that I was searching for had not been microfilmed, but I hoped that I would find related information about the family that might help me hone in on my family.  The specific records from the mid 1700s were microfilmed in no particular order, jumping 10 years from page to page.  Most of the records were christenings, with some marriages, and a few burials.  The handwriting was alternately easy and impossible to read.  The city names in particular were sometimes difficult to decipher.   It took me nearly 3 hours to go through the Cappagh Parish records on microfilm.  Then I had to read my handwritten notes and create a spreadsheet.

The only way to get images is to have the librarian do prints from the microfilms. They are somewhat emphatic that you are not to take “personal photos” within the restricted rooms.

Searching for ancestors on ships manifests is difficult, as until fairly recently, there was no requirement for a captain to submit one upon arrival.  A relatively new database is DIPPAM (Documenting Ireland: Parliament, People, and Migration), which includes many items about ships and transportation.  Using this, I was able to verify that the ship North Star did indeed exist, and departed from Londonderry on 1 June 1812 bound for New York.  I was also able to search Filby’s index*, which showed two McFarland families, apparently on the same ship, who landed in New London, Connecticut in 1811, as well as one who landed in New York City in 1812.  Now to tease out the inconsistencies in my information.  And figure out where the North Star actually landed.

*
Filby, P. William, ed. Passenger and Immigration Lists Index: A Guide to Published Arrival Records of … Passengers who Came to the United States and Canada in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries. 3 volumes plus annual supplements. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1981-__. This series is a finding aid to published passenger lists. Be sure to read the “front material” to understand how to use the information you find.

Filby, P. William, ed. Passenger and Immigration Lists Bibliography, 1538-1900. 2d ed. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Co., 1988.