Do you know anything about your family tree?

Rufeo · 07-02-2020 9:49pm #1

Or your ancestors? I don't know much about mine. One thing I learned the other day was that my Granddad fought in the War of Independence, but I don't know anything beyond four or five generations of our family. So boards, has anyone on here got an interesting ancestry?

Upforthematch · 07-02-2020 9:53pm

I loved that Jackie Healy Rea genealogy test which showed his ancestors were 100pc Cork

Feisar · 07-02-2020 10:01pm

BeerFarts · 07-02-2020 10:04pm

Managed to trace my ancestry back to find mostly farmers from Tipperary who did f^ck all. Disappointing but I suppose at least they weren't total bastards.

spurious · 07-02-2020 10:06pm

If you can find your lot in either the 1901 or 1911 census, you can use the many free online resources to get further back.

irishgenealogy.ie (births marriages and deaths)
and registers.nli.ie (RC parish records)
Hours of fun.

Come visit us in the genealogy forum.

Feisar · 07-02-2020 10:06pm

Dev didn't do us any favours burning the Customs House the clown.

corner of hells · 07-02-2020 10:11pm

Yes ,its a hobby of mine.

corner of hells · 07-02-2020 10:12pm

spurious wrote: »

If you can find your lot in either the 1901 or 1911 census, you can use the many free online resources to get further back.

irishgenealogy.ie (births marriages and deaths)
and registers.nli.ie (RC parish records)
Hours of fun.

Come visit us in the genealogy forum.

I'm on my way over for a look.

Your Face · 07-02-2020 10:16pm

Feisar wrote: »

Dev didn't do us any favours burning the Customs House the clown.

Probably got rid of a great many inconvenient truths for a lot of people.

Gloomtastic! · 07-02-2020 10:19pm

Managed to trace mine back to 1680 so far. There’s relatives all over the world - UK, NZ, Aus, USA and India!

One of my forebears built the first steam engine in Ireland, another ‘had the pleasure’ of throwing Pearse and Connolly into a pit after they were executed and covering them in lime (He may have been bull****ting).

Fascinating stuff, passing forenames on to generation after generation can be confusing but when you find a new link it’s such a buzz.

L1011 · 07-02-2020 10:20pm

Back to the late 1700s on a few arms; famine era on nearly all the rest.

At the other end of the scale I'm dead ended in the 1920s (well, I know someone was alive and was ~40 then but nothing else, so could argue 1880s) on one.

Rather worried about the data safety of the DNA firms which would possibly get me past that 20s hump.

NickNickleby · 07-02-2020 10:27pm

THe research for this wasn't done by me (well, I looked at the 1911 census which bore out what I later found out), a distant cousin discovered that following my mother's line, a few generations ago we were German, and our great-great-grandmother was a German Jew married to a German 'non-Jew'.

On my father's side, we can got back to Co Cork, via inner city Dublin - Trim Co Meath and Waterford.

You should hear my accent :pac::pac::pac:

Water John · 07-02-2020 10:31pm

Yeah one side we have traced back to early 1800s. French Hugenot but became Catholic around that time. One was transported for action with the White Boys, also evicted around that time. Farming on both sides.
Our house would have been a safe house in the Civil War. My mother remembered a machine gun on the landing of the stairs.

BTW was it the shelling of the Four Courts in the Civil War destroyed a lot of the records?

Immortal Starlight · 07-02-2020 10:42pm

Two of my mothers gran aunts were on the titanic. They survived and lived in America for the rest of their lives. We are also related to an old Irish actor who was in some films and my mother remembers him visiting.

spurious · 07-02-2020 10:46pm

Water John wrote: »

BTW was it the shelling of the Four Courts in the Civil War destroyed a lot of the records?

Yes. I think the story was they had stored ammunition/explosives beside the Record treasury? Maybe someone else knows for sure, but all the census records, Church of Ireland parish records going back centuries, centuries of wills and deeds and all manner of documents, up in smoke. I believe bits of burnt pages were flittering around for days in the air.

L1011 · 07-02-2020 10:50pm

Water John wrote: »

BTW was it the shelling of the Four Courts in the Civil War destroyed a lot of the records?

Yes, but all birth/marriage/death survived and the missus mid Victorian censuses were already mostly missing. '41/'51 I think were lost but '21/'31 and '61-'91 were already gone. I probably have at least one of those years wrong.

[Deleted User] · 07-02-2020 10:53pm

Mine goes back to the 15th century.

Im descended from a French knight.

Puts me under pressure to have a couple of kids because otherwise it dies out with me.

0lddog · 07-02-2020 10:56pm

spurious wrote: »

Yes. I think the story was they had stored ammunition/explosives beside the Record treasury? Maybe someone else knows for sure, but all the census records, Church of Ireland parish records going back centuries, centuries of wills and deeds and all manner of documents, up in smoke. I believe bits of burnt pages were flittering around for days in the air.

My understanding is that the main exception is the 1841 census for the parish if Killeshandra / Killashandra. My Great Great Great grandfather is listed in that census ... born before the french revolution:) ....

I really hope this thread is moved to Genealogy before its poisoned by chatbots.

Thepillowman · 07-02-2020 11:17pm

It needs a good bit of surgery.

[Deleted User] · 07-02-2020 11:21pm

I always wanted to research my family tree, but I'm from leitrim & my family name were kings of breffni back in the day, so I'm guessing there's not really much to see here!

Ipso · 08-02-2020 12:00am

Unfortunately I have some Scottish ancestry, distant but not distant enough.

josip · 08-02-2020 12:42am

Descended from one of Cromwell's Ironsides.

alchemist33 · 08-02-2020 12:46am

According to my cousin, we're distantly related to the current Monaco royal family, by way of Princess Grace. It's not too implausible as I believe her forebears were from Mayo and we're from a county next door, but I keep swearing to look into it some day.

cannotlogin · 08-02-2020 12:58am

My cousin did. Supposedly great great grandfather was absolutely loaded but had a fondness for wives, mistresses, procreation, drinking, fighting and gambling.

Life would be so different if he had any sort of self control at all!!

js35 · 08-02-2020 1:06am

My great great uncle was a carpenter who worked on the titanic

[Deleted User] · 08-02-2020 3:06am

I've only ever managed to get as far back as one pair of great-great-grandparents. Most of my ancestors are from "up the road somewhere". I'm from Cork and the most exotic place my family tree goes to is Kerry.

Raconteuse · 08-02-2020 4:33am

Mother's side goes back to the Normans - she has a French maiden name.

Witchie · 08-02-2020 8:02am

My mum is descended from the ancient Donnelly clan of Tyrone and my favourite character we found in the family tree was Shane Bernagh Donnelly.

The Donnelly land was given to a Caulfield chap during the Ulster plantation and he built a castle (Castlecaulfield) on the Donnelly Fort. Shane's dad burnt the castle.

Share went off to live in the woods nearby and became a Robin Hood figure stealing from the British soldiers and wealthy coaches that passed through on the Dublin/ Derry route.

Legend has it he gave the money to the poor in the area.

I love that my family were bards and my granddad's uncle was a writer and poet in America. Another uncle was an editor of an American newspaper and my grandad wrote articles for the local historical society in his time.

I now make my living writing and editing, one of my cousin's has written a book and my youngest son is considering a career in writing. The genes continue.

Another story from my mum's family is about her grandmother during the famine. They didn't have much but a small farm that they owned so she had grown other vegetables on the land. Daily she made big pots of soup and brought it to the end of her lane.

People travelling from Monaghan would pass by on their way to Derry to emigrate and she would feed them so they didn't have to take the Protestant soup. Apparently when they buried my grandad in the early 80's her right hand, the soup giving one, hadn't decomposed.

My dad's side, my grandad was an IRA driver coz he owned a car and my grandmother's uncles, apparently started a big fish market in New York.

Gynoid · 08-02-2020 8:27am

Being facetious for a moment, and no disrespect intended, but it is noticeable in reincarnation stories how everyone is King David or Queen Nefertiti or some such and never the cleaner of said Kings royal chamber pot, and similarly geneology always unearths notables. Especially so in the case of Americans.
I would say my geneology traces back to nameless fumbling peasantry, a good scatter of whom had twisted eyes and gammy legs, lost all their teeth by the time they were 30, but were admirably fertile, and grunted things like Uuh feckn argh when noticing fantastic celestial phenomenon.

But to be serious one of my siblings has traced us back some ways and we come from a solid line of prodigious drunks.

D3V!L · 08-02-2020 9:09am

My great grandfather fought in the war of independence as well, his name is on the wall in Glasnevin Cemetery to commemorate it.

gozunda · 08-02-2020 9:19am

Our lot seem on both sides seem to have been involved in shipping. One branch apparently helped organised boats for the Flight of the Earls - whilst another lot shipped King James out of Waterford after his defeat at the Battle of the Boyne. Every now and then another interesting maritime story shows up - not all which would pass censorship :pac:

Do you know anything about your family tree?

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