It's a long way from here to there

Garlinge wrote: »

I live in Dublin and oldest forebear on my mother's Irish lines are Hazelhatch 1760, Lusk 1761. These both ended up in England 1842 and 1825 but my English father came here for work 1947 and so I am back here.

A bit similar, my dad's paternal family lived (live) in rural Limerick, his great great granddad was living in liscannor in the 1890s or so before that,
My dad grew up in England and came to Cork in the late 60s, and then we recently discovered his great great grandfather's family farmed about 6 miles from where my mam and dad now live.....

Nothing too exciting on my part. The furthest I've gone back is 4x great grandparents on some lines. I'm currently living in Co. Roscommon. The furthest away an ancestor lived was a 3x great grandmother who was supposed to have lived about 30 km away in Boyle but I don't have any records for her existence except a gravestone and family notes.

spurious wrote: »

From most of them, not so far, Southwest Laois/Dungannon area/East Clare to Dublin.

Peculiarly enough though, one of my brothers emigrated to NYC in the early 90s, eventually settling in NY state and I found out that our great great grandmother went to the US in 1906 with her youngest daughter following the death of her husband, lived the last years of her life there and died in the same town as my brother lives in. She is buried about 2 miles from his house.

I have something similar in my family but the ancestors who went to the US both returned to Ireland. A great grandmother on my mum's side and a great grandfather on my dad's side both went to America.

Pretty much all of my great grandfather's siblings seem to have gone to America except for a sister. My great grandfather was the youngest and returned to Ireland as his father's health started to decline to help look after the farm. He actually met his future wife's sister in America and gave him a pair of red shoes to bring to Ireland to give to her sister and that was supposed to be how they met.

A lot of my great grandmother's siblings went to America as well. I think that she just wanted to return home. She had emigrated in 1908 and had returned to Ireland by 1911. Her father died in 1909 so that may have been what made her want to return to Ireland. I think she lost contact with her siblings in America after that. I think they weren't happy that she returned home.

Just noticed you were looking for oldest ancestor. Through paper research, my 3x great grandfather born in 1788 lived about 10 km from where I'm living. I can't be certain of where he was actually born or if his parents were from the same townland. Through Y-DNA, about 40 km away.

My fourth g grandfather lived worked only 7km from where I live now

Im living in the house where my 3rd great grandfather lived, only 15 mins from all other great great great grandparents who were all around the same town 😄

kanadams123 wrote: »

Im living in the house where my 3rd great grandfather lived, only 15 mins from all other great great great grandparents who were all around the same town 😄

Wow, that's impressive! Especially the old house. Unfortunately very few of my ancestral homes still stand.

Not very well traveled here !!

Living in the same house my great great grandfather (1801-1873) died in.
My grandfather is buried in our local cemetery,about 1km from my house,and all four of his grandparents are buried in the same graveyard.Thats on my fathers side whilst on my mothers side she was born c.50km from here and both her parents,4 grandparents and 8 great grandparents are all buried in the local cemetery about 3 km from where she was born.

In other words a typical rural Irish farming background of being born,living and dying within your"own"Parish and in many cases the same townland.

To get back to c.1800 or so which is about the extent of what's available I have had to look at just 4 different Parish Registers (2 adjoining Parish's in 2 different but adjoining counties )to cover all baptism's and marriages in my immediate family.

My grandmother lived for a few years in Hong Kong as a child. That's as exotic as my tree gets based on what we know. Only one unconfirmed possible non Irish ancestor identified so far is French (from Brittany) in the early 19th Century. Aside from that it's mainly Kildare and Meath with a bit of Donegal and Roscommon.