Hello all -- hope you don't my sharing this with you.
I've been very preoccupied over the last five weeks or so, digging deep into our family history and working to find our place of origin in Ireland. Today I was able to confirm our research with certainty, a cause for celebration!
I'd done some research in the past and thought I'd located our Irish family origin in county Derry, but more recently looking over my notes, there were too many glitches. It wasn't adding up.
I started from scratch again, managed to get in contact with a cousin whom I haven't seen in decades but who turned out to be the family historian. She had spend a lot of time with our Grandma McFeeley, asking her about our Irish relatives and wrote it all down in a notebook.
Bernadette, my cousin, and I formed a partnership and amazingly, after about a month of research, we were able to verify our family history in Ireland. All of this was done online, accessing available Irish census records, talking with helpful people, and matching what we could with Bernadette's research.
To make a long story as short as possible, it seems that we're originally from Carrowmenagh, county Donegal. There was a series of evictions in Carrowmenagh in 1881, part of the Irish Land Wars during that time period. Here's an online extract from the book "Carrowmenagh: A Donegal Village and Townland" by John McLaughlin:
http://movilleinishowen.com/history/genealogy/Carrowmenagh_Evictions.htm
At the bottom of the page is a list of the 13 families who were evicted. Charles McFeeley is our great great grandfather.
The evictions seems to have spurred a series of emigrations for Charles' children, one of whom was Michael McFeeley, our great grandfather.
We've had contact with John McLaughlin, author of the book on Carrowmenagh and it turns out his neighbor is Dan McFeeley. Spooky! We're very likely related since Carrowmenagh is a small village, and our Donegal McFeeley's are a small clan. We seem to have been located mostly in the Inishowen penisula in county Donegal.
So, my cousin and I are celebrating today :cheers: -- still more work to do but now I think we can start racheting back a bit. We've been going at this full stop now for a month. I've been quiet on the forums for awhile, ducking in and out, chipping in a post when I can, but I need to get back into it again.
I've talked with Oskaar and Vickie about family heritage and lineage, which they've both done. It's nice to join the ranks! Also nice to be able to give our daughter an extended family heritage.
Slan!
I've been very preoccupied over the last five weeks or so, digging deep into our family history and working to find our place of origin in Ireland. Today I was able to confirm our research with certainty, a cause for celebration!
I'd done some research in the past and thought I'd located our Irish family origin in county Derry, but more recently looking over my notes, there were too many glitches. It wasn't adding up.
I started from scratch again, managed to get in contact with a cousin whom I haven't seen in decades but who turned out to be the family historian. She had spend a lot of time with our Grandma McFeeley, asking her about our Irish relatives and wrote it all down in a notebook.
Bernadette, my cousin, and I formed a partnership and amazingly, after about a month of research, we were able to verify our family history in Ireland. All of this was done online, accessing available Irish census records, talking with helpful people, and matching what we could with Bernadette's research.
To make a long story as short as possible, it seems that we're originally from Carrowmenagh, county Donegal. There was a series of evictions in Carrowmenagh in 1881, part of the Irish Land Wars during that time period. Here's an online extract from the book "Carrowmenagh: A Donegal Village and Townland" by John McLaughlin:
http://movilleinishowen.com/history/genealogy/Carrowmenagh_Evictions.htm
At the bottom of the page is a list of the 13 families who were evicted. Charles McFeeley is our great great grandfather.
The evictions seems to have spurred a series of emigrations for Charles' children, one of whom was Michael McFeeley, our great grandfather.
We've had contact with John McLaughlin, author of the book on Carrowmenagh and it turns out his neighbor is Dan McFeeley. Spooky! We're very likely related since Carrowmenagh is a small village, and our Donegal McFeeley's are a small clan. We seem to have been located mostly in the Inishowen penisula in county Donegal.
So, my cousin and I are celebrating today :cheers: -- still more work to do but now I think we can start racheting back a bit. We've been going at this full stop now for a month. I've been quiet on the forums for awhile, ducking in and out, chipping in a post when I can, but I need to get back into it again.
I've talked with Oskaar and Vickie about family heritage and lineage, which they've both done. It's nice to join the ranks! Also nice to be able to give our daughter an extended family heritage.
Slan!