The History of The Irish...Worldwide
Maher / Meagher and others
I have a net friend, Janet Maher and we've known one another a long time and a couple of years ago (2012) I said to one friend I am NEVER going back to the US again and the very next day I get an email from Janet saying 'book published, launch on such a date" and I said to myself 'That's it Lyons, you're going back to America"
Off I went for about 2.5 weeks.
I'd been in the U.S. a number of times but this time, it was so different. This time I did not have to pay to stay in any hotel, this time I was 'kept'/put up in people's homes. People I had never met took me , kept me, arranged meetings for me. I had the most incredible holiday of my life. I stayed with Janet, Cassie, Sue & Joanne. People came from all over to meet me, one man even drove 800 miles, I was amazed. It was incredible. I met *very* important people in the genealogical world but then, that doesn't really matter cos the ordinary people are more important to me. I have a different friend, 'Edna'. I've never met Edna, but I have telephoned her. She's an older lady and I think I'm going to take the parish records for counties that her most unusual surname was found in and go through them, and maybe, we'll keep our fingers crossed, just maybe I might be able to point her to a possible place that her ancestors came from. The Edna's of this world are more important to me than the 'important' people.
Outside of that - my friend Janet, she did incredible research and she wrote a book. She didn't just research her own surnames she has a ton of information on other surnames as well, because she worked with a graveyard.
I couldn't possibly begin to explain to you all the work she did except to say I was always extremely impressed.
The 'laugh' about it is that I got to the airport that Janet and her husband Paul picked me up at - and for me, it was the middle of the night my time, I just had to go to bed. Then, next day, I woke up real early and sat there with the book reading it so's I'd have some idea of what Janet had done and there it was, she had named me in her book.
I cried....... I'm good at crying - and I'm smiling as I say that, but I shouldn't be.
Back then I said to Janet, "If we could put your stuff and my stuff together, God knows, we could probably bring an awful lot of people home"
and Janet is coming over exactly for that reason, to go through graveyards and find people - and yes, she is lucky that she has me who has worked many of the graveyards she is interested in as a friend - but then, I'm lucky I have her as a friend
Her book is called "From the Old Sod to the Naugatuck Valley" and I'm posting an extract of the Amazon words re her book below.
Maher and Meagher - these last few days I've been trying to put together collections from my own data, Mahers and Meaghers to give to Janet
That's my spiel for tonight - the sun is shining, I think I'll go sit out for a while
Jane
Amazon Extract: Beginning from an interest in her own family's history, with From the Old Sod to the Naugatuck Valley Janet Maher shares a deeply textured journey through a fascinating corner of the Irish Catholic diaspora. She explores the history of Ireland through the perspective of Catholicism, bridging it to the origins of Catholicism in Connecticut generally, then to several Irish families whose personal stories extend to the present. Mapping and thoroughly transcribing the oldest Catholic cemetery in Naugatuck, Saint Francis, Maher has made connections between generations of families and friends. The book includes selected marriage, baptism and death records throughout the nineteenth century and excerpts from rare letters between Irish immigrants and individuals still in Ireland. It is replete with photographs from Ireland and Connecticut, and restored personal images selected from families' collections, including her own, from materials safeguarded in scrapbooks and albums for years. In many ways Maher has made the people whose graves she encountered in cemeteries come alive again.
-
Comment by Dr. Jane Lyons on May 24, 2014 at 2:59pm
-
lol......I did sound like a Yankee didn't I Jim, thing is though I had the most incredible holiday that year and the people I met were so fantastic......How long is it now since you and I first met? All those years - isn't life just so wonderful really :)
Janet was supposed to be staying with me tonight, but I though she had asked me how to get here from Kilkenny - so today I tidied my house and then took off to Kilkenny - with my OS map in hand. I wanted to photograph Castles cos I am a member of a Castle page on FB - and hen about 7 I decided 'Go home Jane, she'll phone you' BUT when I got home there was a note on the door, she'd been calling my landline and no reply and was now booked into a B&B in Abbeyleix. I called her and we've set it up so that she will be over here straight after breakfast..I have the OS maps and the torch I bought yesterday when I went to Dub and we're going to have fun
-
Admin Comment by Fran Reddy on May 24, 2014 at 4:07pm -
I know of and have used Griffiths Valuation but maybe never for John Menton, my Gr-gr-grandfather.. who in my records it says was associated with Banagher in Offaly - that would mean the one I see here from Roscrea, Tipperary may be the one. The thing about Griffiths is that it doesn't tell you anything about the rest of the family. One other name associated with his family would tell me what I need! Thanks Jane : D
-
Comment by James McNamara on May 24, 2014 at 11:41pm
-
Jane, I think it was 1999 so 15 years ago. Where does the time go? Work takes a bit more out of me these days so everything I do takes longer than normal.
Hope you enjoy the day with Janet and castles? You know the Macs made lots, more castles than are recorded. I have seen the counts somewhere between 60+ and 80+ just in Co Clare.
Take care,
Jim
-
-
Fran,
The thing about the Griffiths is not just about it only giving you surnames in places, it gives you
- the names of civil parishes that people with the surname was found
- Whether or not the people had land with a house or just land
- The size of the land, the taxable value of the land
- Maps!!
Most importantly though, it gives you the names of the civil parishes. From these, you can then go and see if there are parish records for those parishes. The unfortunate thing about parish records is that if you are looking for Catholics then the name of the religious parish is more likely NOT going to be the same as that of the Civil parish. Church of Ireland parishes are normally the same as the civil parish. I know I began typing up lists of Roman Catholic Parishes for my county pages, and with those lists I give the ref no. for microfilms in the National Library of Ireland in Dublin and if…if the LDS have a copy of the film then I give their ref as well when I had it - (I don’t think I finished all counties). . You’d have to go to from-ireland to see if I have Offaly or Mayo done. I have a tendency to forget things I’ve done, it’s like me not being able to say I worked on gravestones in this or that place if you asked me, but, if I drive past the graveyard I’ll look at it and say to myself ‘I did that”
I’ve just taken a quick look at my Offaly (King's Co.) page and it seems that I have a link to Offaly RC parish records. As I've looked at it though I'm seeing I've really got very little on the page in the form of transcripts of parish records, I'll have to check my files to see if I have more than that. It's very hard to imagine that I have so little for Offaly
-
-
Fran,
Look for men of the same first name as your Gr=gr-grandfathers first son. If he gave the boy the same name as himself then it means that most likely he was his fathers first son, if he called the boy Michael, then that means his father was probably a Michael and he will have had a brother called Michael. That's how it goes. The first son was generally called after his father or his fathers father
-
-
Did the Macs really have that many castles Jim? Wow :)
I actually had fun yesterday. The day before, I'd gotten up, driven over to June with the dogs 'cos I don't want them jumping up nd down all over Janet so their gone to the kennels. Then, off I went to Dublin cos my OS maps are falling to pieces and I wanted to be able to show Janet all the graveyards between Ballyroan and Abbeyleix and over to Freshford. ALSO, I HAD to get (deliberate capitalisation there) a torch....not just any old torch, this one is actually a P14, I only needed a P7 but they hadn't any of them so I went for the stronger one. The difference this torch makes when you shine it on the difficul to read script on a gravestone is incredible.
You can't get torches like that down this part of the country and it's also difficult to get OS maps down here too, so Dublin and the one campins shop I knew in the city centre was where I had to go
-
-
Hi Jane,
Here is one reference from the re-Publisher (Martin Breen) of the NC McNamara book (first published in 1897) The Story of an Irish Sept, The Origins and History of the McNamaras.http://homepage.eircom.net/~asdfgh/macs/macs.html
"The MacNamaras are credited with building at least 80 castles in the County of Clare. (A book detailing the history of the castles in Co. Clare, 220 in total, is at present in hand.)"
I love the one reference I have in the Clare Ordnance Survey letter for Feakle Parish which talks about the castle that was above the townland of my Macs and McGraths (Lecarrow Lower). "I find no record of the existence of a castle in this Parish and still it would appear from the name of a hill in the Townland of Lecarrow Lowerm situated about three-quarters of a mile to the east of the Village of Feakle, that there was one there at some period. This hill is called Cnoc a Chaisleáin, and tradition says that there was a Castle to be seen on it in the memory of old men not long dead, but no trace of it remains at present. The name of the hill should appear on the Ordnance Map."
Somewhere, I thought the Clare Library, I had found the builder of this castle as Sioda Cam MacNamara, who was also the builder or re-builder of the Quin Abbey castle. I cannot find that reference now though. That would put this castle at around late 1300s to early 1400s as Quin Abbey was build by Sioda at 1402 for the Franciscans and originally built by Richard de Clare in 1280 (as part of his effort to subdue the McNamaras).
PS - Not sure what a P7 of P14 torch is but sounds like a great thing to have on hand in the cemetery. Is that just the rating of the light intensity?
-
Comment by Neil F. Cosgrove on May 26, 2014 at 7:25am
-
Just to clarify the naming tradition mentioned by a previous poster: the tradition was a first son was named after his paternal Grandfarher, a Second Son was named after his maternal Grandfather and a third son after the Father (provided in the last two instances the name was not already given).
-
-
Neil, I am the 'previous poster' and I hope you won't think I am being cheeky here.
I would love to see the statistics behind this naming tradition pattern - seriously.
I have indexed a large number of gravestones from a number of counties spreading from Cork up to Dublin. I have transcribed numerous years of baptisms and marriages from parish records and I can honest to God say that I have never actually 'seen' / 'observed' anything that would lead me to believe in this naming pattern.
I can say that I don't actually disbelieve it but I can also say that of a family with at least two sons, one of them was named after his father and the other after his Grandfather AND that the first son was always named after his paternal Grandfather.
I honestly can't say that a second son was definitely named after his maternal Grandfather.
There was only a small selection of first names in use - if someone had a Fintan, I'd tell them to go to Laois (Queen's Co.)) first.......if they had a Moses, I'd say try Wexford.
What I will tell everyone is I don't care when their family left Ireland, what they should do is go to the Griffiths Primary Valuation and look for men of the same name as the first son born to their first ancestor and follow that lead. The other names, they generally don't matter in the long run - the people searching want to know where their ancestor came from, they want to find (hopefully) some living relative
-
-
Jim, yes, the P7 and 14 are rating of a light intensity. The P14 torch I bought has a light intensity 350 times that of the moon.
What this means is that I can stand in front of a gravestones and be squinting my eyes trying to read it BUT, if I have a torch of the kindof capacity that a P7 (the weaker one) has, I can just shine it on the side of each line of letters and Hey Presto - the words just stand out.
You would need to have two people working on this, one to shine the torch and one to write the words.
The words are the most important bit
Comment
- ‹ Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Next ›
The Wild Geese Shop
Get your Wild Geese merch here ... shirts, hats, sweatshirts, mugs, and more at The Wild Geese Shop.
Irish Heritage Partnership
Adverts
Extend your reach with The Wild Geese Irish Heritage Partnership.
Congrats to Our Winners
Top Content
Videos
© 2024 Created by Gerry Regan.
Powered by
Badges | Report an Issue | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service
You need to be a member of The Wild Geese to add comments!
Join The Wild Geese