Happy St Pats To All My Irish Ancestors

In honor of St Patricks day I thought I would talk about all my Irish ancestors. I have many Irish ancestors. So many in fact that if asked about my ethnic background I always say Irish first. Truth be told I probably have more English DNA than any thing else but it is my Irish heritage that speaks to me. I think that's perhaps the reason for my love of Irish music. So in honor of all my Irish ancestors who came to North America in search of a better life.............

* William Massey from Delgany, Wicklow Ireland arrived Quebec before 1843. 3rd g grandpa.

* William Montgomery (4th g grpa) from Co Fermanagh left Ireland during War of 1812 with his parents Thomas Montgomery and Mary Johnson (5th g grandparents). They were captured by British off coast of Newfoundland and held prisoners until 1816 then sent to Quebec. Later Thomas and Mary left for Oneida Co. New York but William remained in Quebec and married Jane Graham from Ireland.

* Jane Graham 4th g grandma.

* Cornelius Kennedy born Killarney and his wife Elizabeth Clifford (4th greats) born Co. Derry came to Ontario circa 1847 during Irish Famine. Their daughter Catherine Kennedy (3rd great) also born Ireland.

* Mary Jackson nee McKanor (4th g gramma) and son William Jackson (3rd g grandpa) from Tipperary sailed on Sir Robert Peel to New York in Oct. 1857. Came on to Ontario a few years later.

* James Hogan and wife Ann Hayden came to Ontario from Ireland ca 1843 4th g grandparents.

* James Holden, wife Frances Hamilton (4th g grandparents), son Sinclair Holden (3rd g grandpa) came from Co. Tyrone, Ireland between 1822 and 1826 to Whitby Ontario.

The Search For My Irish Roots, Part 5

The kindness of strangers.

The quest to find my Masseys would not have been possible without the kindness of strangers. Jenny had done all the work of getting me the records from Delgany and it should be remembered that this info was of no value to her, she is not a Massey, she did it for no return. And now Annie would do something equally nice. She got her fathers D.N.A. tested for me. I say she got it tested for me because there was little she could learn from the test. You have to rember that Annie already new her lines were from Delgany. If her father and I were a match it would only tell her she had a few more distant cousins out there, that’s it. But for me it had the potential to finally prove once and for all the question that I had been working on for so many years.

I am a Delgany Massey

So as you may have guessed Annie and I are a D.N.A. match. Not a perfect match as I had hoped but close enough to prove what I had suspected all these years - that Annie and I are related and that my William Massey was almost certainly born in the Parish of Delgany. As you can imagine I was ecstatic. To finally have the answer to a question that had plagued me for so long was a great feeling. I was so happy. For about 10 minutes. Then like a true genealogist I started to think about what I still did not know, and I realized my search will never be over. Because for me it is not just about the answer, it’s about the search itself.

The Search For My Irish Roots, Part 4

Sometimes you don’t find the next clue, it finds you.

I was contacted by a man who was researching the family of William Massey’s wife Ellen. I had never been able to find anything on Ellen, I did not even know her last name. As it turns out I probably would never have found her as I was looking in the wrong country. Anyway he had found a letter that Ellen’s father William had written to his brother Thomas in Etobicoke about 1860. The letter is now in a museum. The letter states among other things that William Massey was from a place just a few miles south of Dublin Ireland. And what is just a few miles south of Dublin. You guessed it, Delgany.

So I was now convinced that my Masseys were from Delgany but I of course had no real proof of this and I had run out of places that I could think of to look. Then again out of the blue another piece of the very circumstantial puzzle fell from the sky and landed in my lap. I made contact with a man by the name of Ron Mahone who was researching a Massey family that lived just a few miles from my Massey family in St. Marys Ontario back in the 1860s. The story handed down in Ron's family was that they were from a place called Redford or Redfoord. So I did a little diging and was able to confirm that they were indeed from Redfoord. And where is Redfoord? You guessed right again, Delgany. Now I had no proof that this new Massey family was connected in any way to mine but there were not a lot of Irish Massey’s in Ontario in the 1860s and knowing that the Irish would often settle in family groups I felt this was yet another small arrow pointing me to Delgany.

Then last year Jenny Selfe came to my aid again, albeit in a round about kind of way. She had received a letter from an Annie Massey about the Massey family. Jenny had put all the Delgany Massey data that she had on her website. Not having any more info than what was on her website she put Annie in touch with me. Now for Annie their was no question that she was a Delgany Massey. She had her lines well documented, for her there was no doubt about it. And with a little digging she was able to prove that she was related to the Massey family that had lived just a few miles from my Massey family in St. Marys Ontario. So everything kept pointing me to Delgany, it was like the place was calling me but I could not get that last little piece of the puzzle. The proof was always just out of reach. What to do?

The kindness of strangers.

To be continued.......

The Search For My Irish Roots, Part 3

Then I got lucky

Meanwhile back in Canada I had searched for many years with out finding that magic little record that would tell me what Irish County my William Massey was from. Then one day in a most unexpected place, I found it. In a Cemetery record of all places. I had seen my William's tombstone many times and had searched for an obit to no avail, but then at the Archives of Ontario I found the interment records of the cemetery on microfilm and there it was. Wicklow Ireland. The strangest part was that my William was not even originally buried in that cemetery. His body had been moved after the original cemetery he was buried in was closed. So it was just blind luck that someone had recorded his place of birth.

Now you would think I would be happy with this new found info, lots of people never find this much, and I was happy, for about 10 minutes. Then like most genealogists I started thinking about what I still did not know. Where in County Wicklow was he from? Did they mean the town of Wicklow? How will I know where to start looking? So it was at this point that my one name study of Irish Masseys started to pay off. For one of those little pockets of Masseys was located in County Wicklow. In a little place called Delgany Parish.

Now I know what you are thinking, that it is hardly proof that my William Massey was from Delgany. And you are right, it was totally circumstantial. But I just had a feeling that I was on the right track. So I made a big leap of faith and started to concentrate my efforts on Delgany.
So I started to learn everything I could on Delgany. What records were available, the history of the parish, the geography. I read everything. I even spent hours looking at the place on Google Earth. It was during this search to learn everything I could about Delgany that I came across a lady by the name of Jenny Self. Jenny was an Australian living in England, who had done some research on her own lines in Delgany. Now Jenny and I are not related so she had no Massey info, but I found her work so interesting that I dropped her a quick email just to thank her for taking the time to put all her hard work online. Well to make a long story short this led to a correspondence and Jenny offered to do some looking in the Delgany Parish records on her next trip to Ireland.

I was very excited at the prospect of Jenny taking a look in the Parish Records as these records are only available in Ireland. But you can imagine how happy I was when a few months later Jenny sent me all the Massey Births, Marriages, Deaths and Burials for over 200 years. It was a fantastic windfall and I am still grateful for the hours of work that she put in to help someone who was basically a stranger. But to my disappointment William was not there. Of course at this point some people would have moved on but I still felt that Delgany was the place. And I would soon find more evidence to keep me looking in Delgany.

Sometimes you don’t find the next clue, it finds you.

To be continued.......