POND-HOPPING

What did it feel like to go from a little city like Limerick to the dynamic melting pot of New York in the 1850s? That, I will never know, but I’m hoping the US records can at least tell me what became of the Riboldi children – Joseph, Rosanna, Dominick and Francis – who crossed the Atlantic for a new life.

For whatever reason, my 2x great-grandfather John Antonio decided to take a different path, so I’m going to park him back in Ireland for now and concentrate on the other four. (Or five, if I count John’s possible estranged wife Johanna, who also rocked up in New York…). In the past, I’ve researched a line of siblings one by one,