Wednesday, October 28, 2015

82. New Relative: Niall Green of Scotland

[One of the great things about blogging and the Internet is the opportunity to make long-distance connections with family members. Here's the latest O'Neill linkage.]




October 28, 2015
Hello Ron,
                Thank you for your recent email. I have only recently come across the O'Neill Carlow-Ohio Blogspot and as I have an interest in this family I thought I should make contact with you to see how and what I can contribute.
                I am a descendant of John and Esther (John>Luke>James>Charlotte who married my Great Grandfather Joshua Green in Dublin. (I was born in Dublin and am now retired and living in Scotland). I have been researching this family, on and off, for many years and have accumulated much family data from my great aunt Lillian Green (1885-1978), my father Leslie Green (1909-1997) and his second cousin Nora Madden nee O'Neill (1920-2010), with help from a local historian Dick Corrigan (1929-2015), Dermot James (1928-2010) and extensive broader historical information on the Carlow O'Neills from Sean O'Neill in Dublin. My contribution has been to digitise most of this family information - mainly on Luke and William's families, but adding others where the connections are relevant.
                I am currently writing up what I have on the Carlow O'Neills with various images and comments on the accuracy - I prefer not to share a computer dump of the data as some of the information is a guess/not verified.
                The most certain information is the birth dates of John and Esther's children recorded in the family bible that went with Hugh and Deborah ca 1805. With John and Esther's details, the tombstones in the cemetery of the Church of All Saints (Church of Ireland) in Fenagh, Co. Carlow provide the link to John's father Hugh and mother Catrine and Hugh's brother Morgan. The lack of clear information makes it impossible to go further back; there is no evidence for a link between the Ulster and Carlow O'Neills, though they could have been a connection, as  both were the only protestant O'Neill families in Ireland.
                We have patchy information about John and Esther's children, though for some children (Hugh, Luke and William) quite a lot of good information has been handed down through the families.  More recently, the availability of online church (including Quaker records) and civil registration records has helped to fill in some of the missing gaps.
                Substantiating the accuracy of this data with sources is paramount and this has been difficult with such a large family, but I am working through more recent BMD civil registration and church records to try and confirm the links. There are many gaps and no doubt inaccuracies and several family lines which I have not been able to connect to John and Esther's family. I have less information on more recent generations born after 1911 (the last available Irish Census).
                I was saddened to see the information about David Wymer O'Neill's death in 2014 on your website. David visited me in Linlithgow in 2000, and gave me information from the family bible which provided the link between Luke and his father John. Later that year we paid a brief visit to County Carlow, the Fenagh graveyard and various locations (Lorum, Garryhill/Clonmore etc). I have a photograph of David showing me where he found Catrine O'Neill's buried triangular gravestone  by prodding the ground between other O'Neill gravestones. Please see the attached - if you would like to use on the website go ahead.
                David also gave me a copy of O'Neill Family History by Rev. George O'Neill, which no doubt has provided much information on the American descendants from Hugh O'Neill and Deborah Joyce and I think this has been incorporated in the website.
                If there are questions on this O'Neill family who stayed in Carlow after 1806, I would be happy to attempt an answer

Niall Green                                                         niall_green@hotmail.com
Linlithgow, Scotland

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

81. Family Recipes Are Tie To Female Relatives

   Many of our female ancestors spent a lot of time in the kitchen, and that is often how we remember them the best. There is a saying that "Food Is Love," so many of our grandmothers expressed their love for their descendants through gatherings around the dinner table.
   Here is a favorite recipe of Lena O'Neill, which she prepared many times for her family. The handwriting is that of her daughter Lynette Bowen Rider, who sent it to me.