Newsletter : Hidden Bonds Released in Memory of Barbara Ann O'Brien Hamall
December 2025
Hidden Bonds: The O'Brien Family of Jamaica, Queens
A Documentary Biography Series — Published in Memory of Barbara Ann O'Brien Hamall
A version of this announcement was sent to Storyline Genealogy newsletter subscribers on December 23, 2025
December 23, 2025 would have been my mother's 90th birthday.
Barbara Ann O'Brien Hamall (1935–2022) never got to see this project completed. But she's the reason it exists.
She loved every discovery we made together. I can still see her face when I found another newspaper clipping about Terrence O'Brien—his hotel excursions, his run-ins with the law, his colorful life in Jamaica, Queens. She delighted in each one. And when I discovered the 1872 map of the Village of Jamaica with "T. O'Brien Union Hotel" clearly marked at Fulton and Church Streets—proof that our ancestor's name was literally on the map—she was over the moon.
What she didn't live to see was the biggest discovery of all: her twin brothers' Big Y DNA test that connected the O'Brien family to the Royal House of Thomond. The genetic signature of Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, running through her family all along.
She would have loved that.
The Series
With love and gratitude,
Mary Hamall Morales Storyline GenealogyFrom Research to Story
Barbara Ann O'Brien Hamall
December 23, 1935 – February 17, 2022