Thinking About My Irish Ancestors On Saint Patrick's Day

Like many people in North America I have a lot of Irish ancestors. In fact if asked what my heritage is I would probably say Irish. But how much do I really know about Ireland or what it means to be Irish. Sure I have reached my ancestors names but I know little about Irish history or Irish life in the past. We all know a little about the potato famine and the coffin ships but beyond that most of us don't know much . So in honor of Saint Patrick's Day and all my Irish ancestors I am going to spend this afternoon reading about the history and culture of Ireland. I may even have a Guinness. 

The Search For My Irish Roots, Part 2

We're Irish???

Now don't get me wrong, there is no anti-Irish sentiment in my family that I am aware of but some how this little tidbit of information had gotten lost or perhaps hidden somewhere along the way. My grandfather had told me we were English. There was no talk of Ireland in the family stories, no Irish names, no tombstones in the local cemetery with the words, Native Of County Blah Blah Ireland, Nothing. Thus began my quest for my new found Irish roots.

Now what???

I quickly learned that to do any meaningful genealogy in Ireland you need to have some idea of what County your Irish ancestors came from. Without this you are just flailing around in the dark.

The 1861 census had told me my GGG Grandfather William Massey was a native of Ireland. Where in Ireland I had no idea. So I did what any new genealogist would do, I started flailing around. However in my case my flailing around would one day pay off. It would just take about 30 years.

Fortunately for me Massey is not a common name in Ireland (this makes hunting a little easer) so I began to collect even the smallest mention of the Massey name anywhere in Ireland. Sort of like a one name study of Irish Masseys. At the same time I continued to research my Masseys in North America in the more conventional organized way, working on my direct lines. It was these 2 styles of research that would one day give me some of the answers I was looking for.
My somewhat haphazard one name study of Irish Massey’s soon began to paint an interesting picture. It told me that almost all the Masseys in Ireland are descended from a few men, most likely just 3 of 4 who came to Ireland in the 1600s. It also told me that the descendants of these men tended to stay in the same locations as their original immigrant ancestor. This has the effect of producing little pockets of Masseys located at a few different places in Ireland. This info was interesting but of course it did not tell me what little pocket of Masseys I belonged to.

Then I got lucky......

The Search For My Irish Roots, Part 1

The Beginning

My personal search for my Irish ancestors has taken over 30 years of digging, scrounging, reading, learning, traveling, and taking wild leaps of faith. I have talked to dozens or relatives, hundreds of people, and traveled from one coast to the other. I have spent hundreds of hours in little dark rooms with my head buried in microfilm machines. I have seen more libraries than I can remember, and have looked through (and yes in some cases read) so many books that I could not begin to count them. I have spent hundreds of hours online and hundreds or perhaps thousands of dollars in my never-ending quest. And best of all, I even managed to find a wife along the way. But that is another story.

My search started as a young boy listening to stories about the family told by my grandparents. They were not stories of brave deeds or fantastic exploits. They were just what I call the stories of life. I will not bore you with the details of my family stories, suffice it to say that if you changed the names and dates they could be any family's stories.

Now the stories told by my grandparents may not have been worthy of a Hollywood Blockbuster but as a child I was hooked. I could not get enough. I always wanted more. So being the strange kid that I was, I set off for the local museum.

I was fortunate as a budding genealogist that my family had lived in the same small town of St Marys Ontario, since about 1859. This made the search a little easer for a beginner as the museum had lots of newspapers and cemetery records to keep me happy, at least for a while. It was at the local Museum that I received my first of what would be many genealogical surprises. There in the 1861 census was my GGG Grandfather William Massey, a native of Ireland. Ireland? My family was Irish?

To be continued.........