Hi, MK.

Just wanted to welcome you here to The Wild Geese.  Good to have a Cornhusker here among us!

Have a look around the site if you haven't already -- loads of great articles, discussions, resources, etc., and more being added all the time.  Hope to hear about your own Irish interests and passions here over time.

Welcome aboard, MK!

~ Ryan

MK, nice to have you aboard. What's going on with the Irish in Nebraska?

hi MK.   Delighted to have the tentative connection.  My mother was Halfpenny and her mother was Quinn.  My father was Loughran and one of 13 children who grew up in the Old Lodge Road/Carrick Hill area of Belfast.  Granda Loughran was Patrick and had quite a respectable barber's shop on the edge of the commercial centre of Belfast next to St. Patrick's Cathedral.  My parents are buried in Co. Down near Dromara where the family kept a house.

There are lots of Loughran's in Tyrone and Cookstown.  I went with my father (also Patrick and also a barber who was born in 1910 and died in 1999) - to the parish Church at Straw in Co. Derry which my father believed had a connection with the family.  Alas, no records were found to help us.  

If my predecessors were peasants working on the land and living in or around the time of the potato famine then the chance of there being any records of meaningful quality before the 1901 Census of Ireland are almost nil unless they were in an affluent parish where there are surviving baptismal records in a diocesan archive.  One of these days I will explore further.  

We have a wonderful Public Records Office in Belfast (the Titanic Quarter) - PRONI - and I do intend to explore further.

Best wishes,

Brigid