20th Edition of Carnival of Irish Heritage and Culture 'I Speak From Experience'

 

The obvious search for our ancestors began with the name. 

On the Hero's and my mom's side of the family there were many Irish names to look for.

This is my entry in Smallest Leaf's 20th Edition of Carnival of Irish Heritage and Culture "I Speak From Experience" 
Smallest Leaf  has so much Irish information and books listed on her blog.  It is wonderful to stop by and browse. Click here to see her blog.
To continue with the subject of the carnival. I will show what I have been doing as I study the Irish in America.  
I started with making a note of all the names I was looking for variants of the names and places the names were found.   For example:  http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~fianna/surname/index.html
MacGiolla ancient of Magill,
Gill
McGill
O'Shaughnessy        
Sandys
FURLONG              Wexford
FURLONG              Wicklow
O'AHERN,               Cork
O'Echtighearn   
Ahern
O'DWYER               Tipperary
Dwyer                       Lemerick
Dyer                          Sligo
O'Breen   
O'Brien
I have toyed with learning Gaelic, but I really haven't gotten that far yet.
Besides knowing the surname, I discovered that the old Irish had a subtle naming pattern.  Most but not all used it.
I have posted on this before, if you will click here, then you can read that post and then click back to return.

Something new I have found, as I have wandered the Texas cemeteries, and looked at the death certificates of the Irish imigrants, is they kept a keen sense of pride in where they came from even though they were proud of their new country.  Usually the place of birth is stated, not only the country, but the county or state they were born in also.

 An excerpt from an Illinois Death Certificate

If there was money enough, their birth country was displayed on their gravestone.  Here is an example of this: 

My Irish quest is really just beginning as I am preparing to leap across the pond to Ireland, where wars have ravaged the records and people have lost their families who left for a far off land.  I have been visiting sites such as Smallest Leaf's  watching how they find records in Ireland, talking to people who have UK experience in searching, and taking the Free course on Irish Research on Family Search.  If you click on Irish Research in the previous sentence, it will take you to the course.
There is something so exciting in searching for families that have been apart for years and reuniting them.  I love genealogy research and have been excited to share how to research and source with the upcoming generation to get them involved in their history to know their ancestors.