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Irish family history

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Dan McFeeley

Lifetime Patron
Lifetime GotMead Patron
Oct 10, 2003
1,899
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Illinois
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!
 

OCurrans

NewBee
Registered Member
Nov 18, 2004
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Oviedo, FL
www.cfhb.org
Dan,
Congratulations on your discoveries. I have been working on my Irish and Scottish roots since the '70s. It is another great hobby. :icon_thumright:

Howard
 

Cargirl

Got Mead? Patron
GotMead Patron
Genealogy is SO KEWL isn't it!

Congratulations! Those sorts of gems are priceless finds indeed.

We've got Irish on my mother's side through the Reynolds. Several of us have a rather odd eye color--deep greenish blue, sort of a teal color--and brunette hair with reddish undertones that I've always attributed to the Irish in us. :toothy9:
 

mike911

NewBee
Registered Member
May 21, 2006
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53
Congrats on the research!
I've tinkered around with my family history some, and I was able to find (benefitting from someone else's work on the internet) mine going back several hundred years. I can pretty well say with certainty that it's my family seeing that there is a Zacquill and an Evan T. in the same family (see how many Zacquills you can find that aren't named Morgan!) It's really rewarding to be able to see where you came from and possibly see a little of what makes you tick.
Anyway, good luck on finding more.
mike911
 

Tylor!!

NewBee
Registered Member
Oct 2, 2005
53
0
0
Congrats! Finding out family heritage is all ways a fun thing to do. My last name is Flaherty and we originated from Donegal as well, but I couldn't tell you what county. There is also good evidence that before the Flahertys came to America they were in the Aran Islands since so many people from Donegal went there first. I had a teacher in Boston who was from Donegal and he is an Irish historian so he would probably know. Ty
 
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