I've got an odd fascination with my ancestry. Under normal circumstances, I think that I'd be one of those people that goes out of their way to track down their family tree (for me, the interest is in social history - knowing about the economic circumstances of people you have a connection to would help me understand the economics a bit more).
But there's no point. I'm 75% Irish, 12.5% English and 12.5% Welsh. The Welsh bit (Evans, FFS) from Cardiff (that's almost all I have!) isn't going to be a picnic - and it seems that none of them were talking to each other before he left, so there's hardly going to be a rich seam of information there. He was a boozer who deserted his family before his kids grew up, so there's not even that contact.
The English bit (Gt Granma) was, I think, an only child and she kept herself to herself.
And the big prize - the Irish - their records were all destroyed in 1922. So I know that loads of them emigrated to America, and that there are some of my family's names in the records of Belmullet Workhouse, but I don't know if they were my family really.
I'd love to know about all of this, but I probably never will.
3 comments:
Not all records were destroyed.Four counties' records survived, Dublin, Kerry, Down and Antrim. You may get lucky.
Sadly, Barney, most of my lot were in Mayo (Achill and Erris). A smaller strand were from either Wicklow or Kildare (they moved around a bit).
It's a pain, isn't it ? Some of my mother's family came over from Cork in the 1700s. All I have is a name, no date of birth, place of birth or age, as wedding records didn't record them in old days. Alas there are rather a lot of O'Brien's in Cork
... so the trail seems to have stopped there.
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