New Obsession

I've been a little lax in posting lately, but it's just that I have a new obsession. My daughter-in-law emailed me a question about my grandfather's ancestry. I could only give her some general, hear-say information. I decided to try doing some research online. I kept running into no information for my family name.Then I found a website that gave names in English for names listed in Gaelic where I found a couple of different spellings of our name. Unfortunately, it was from a list of clans and families in around 400 a.d. Today I found a mention of the name in a history from 1699 b.c. ! Imagine that!

Most of my family came from the British Ilses. On my Mother's side were Scots, Welch,and English. On my Father's side were Irish, at least on the male side. I'm not positive on my Grandmother's side. She could have been scottish or Irish. My understanding, from family stories, there were several brothers in the family that immigrated from Ireland to Canada during the Great Famine. I've read a lot on that, Now I'm trying to get passenger lists or even names of ships and dates of travel. It is so interesting to read about the happenings and all that these people went through and to think that one of you ancestors was there. I'd like to get from me to them, working backwards as you mostly need to do. I'll tell you though, that info from 1699 b.c.has really whetted my appetite to go as far back as I can. It is just facinateing.

It seems that most of the Irish come from 3 brothers whose father was a Celt from Spain. They were Milesius, whatever that is. The three brothers went to Ireland with thier armies to conquer the island. Thier anglesied names were Heber, Hereman, and Amerigan. Heber's line was where my family name came from. It's also the line that King Brian Boru came from. He's played a huge part in Ireland's history and Myths. I didn't find any kings in my family line. Oh well, who wants a king in the family anyway.

It's quite difficult to find a lot of info in Ireland due to the famines and rebellons etc. There are archives in Ireland, but they aren't online, so far. I could just go over to county Donegal and see for myself, right. I think my Aunt and I will go to the LDS Church Family History Library. We should be able to get quite a bit from there. I also joined a geneology message and discussion board for the U.K. so, I may pick up some things there. Fortunately, I'm enjoying the research aspect of it all.