DNA update

 

In January, I wrote about my plan to figure out my connection with the DNA match who contacted me. During our initial email correspondence she indicated which grandfather on her tree we linked through. Narrowing by location back further in the line that contained that grandfather, at her 3 x great grandparent level the maternal side came from Dorset and the paternal half of the couple came from Ireland. Not knowing where the Irish part of my own family came from, we chose to concentrate on the possibilities in Dorset. There was a problem with Dorset, however. When it came down to the town and village level there were no location matches between our trees. Our people seem to have lived on opposite sides of the county. My plan was to expand my Dorset family tree to include collateral lines; a lot of work since both of my parents had links to the county. The task seemed daunting. It's a task I haven't begun yet.

I really wanted to narrow down the search before I began. Helpfully, Ancestry has tagged the shared DNA I have with my match and her mother to the paternal side of my tree. That means I only need to deal with half of my Dorset links but it adds another wrinkle. The paternal side of my tree is my Cavanagh side, the one that I know must link to Ireland. Apparently my match's 3 x great grandfather came from County Carlow, a finding that added extra interest to the Irish presentations I've seen lately. It seems likely that my Cavanaghs might also have come from that area of Ireland.

Still looking for a short cut, I saw that the match I was investigating had also recently joined my match list on FTDNA. Perhaps using the tools on this site would provide a break through. I knew there were various ways to look at matches on the FTDNA site but wasn't clear how to go about it. That's when I found a blog post about sorting tricks on FTDNA https://whoareyoumadeof.com/blog/ftdna-family-finder-matches-cool-sorting-tricks/  . I eventually found where the matches "in common with" button had been hidden when the FTDNA website was revamped and checked through the matches I had in common with my target match looking for those with family trees. I check out the ones that I was able to access but still found no familiar names but it's a cool tool to use. It would have been even cooler if it had worked for my problem. It seems there are no short cuts. It's time to get serious about sorting and labeling my DNA and family links. Also probably past time to start adding those collateral ancestors to my family tree. 

The search for my Irish connection, part 3

 

                                                         The green of Ireland - this was in the vicinity of Trim Castle

Last week, I wrote about how attending an Irish talk at my family history society's online seminar gave me visual proof that there were Cavanaghs in Carlow. That was a fact that agreed with my feeling that my Irish origins were in the south of Ireland. It was also a thrill to see the correct spelling of my family name of Cavanagh up there on my screen. I've since checked out the Down Survey of Ireland, a listing of land owners taken in the mid-1600s. My search found lots of Cavanaghs listed especially when I took it down to the parish level. Lots of possibilities are good in one way but they will also make it difficult to pinpoint a specific family.

It looks too, like it's more than County Carlow that was awash in potential Cavanagh ancestors. At another presentation, this one put on by BIHFSGO, Shirley Monkhouse gave a talk entitled There was a shot; after that everything's confusing. With a title like that, how could I not attend? Besides, at the beginning of the meeting she gave another talk, one about DNA. I'm always interested in information on that subject. Her second presentation, the one about the shot, turned out to be about an incident that happened in a village in Ireland. In present day, the place is called Bunclody. Back at the time of the incident it was known by the name of Newtownbarry. No matter what it was called, the place was right next door to County Carlow.

In fact, the name Bunclody was familiar to me. A few years ago, I signed up to attend a meeting of Clann Chaomhánach to be held there. Unfortunately, the meet up was cancelled as were so many in-person events at that time. While looking into the event, I wondered why on earth it would be held in a place called Bunclody. Well, in Ms. Monkhouse's presentation, I found out that the land around Bunclody was acknowledged to belong to the Clann Chaomhánach. Looks like my search area just got wider.

If you're wondering about the presentation with the intriguing name, the event that took place in Newtownbarry was called 'The Battle of the Pound'. It took place on June 18, 1831 and was one of the conflicts in the Tithe Wars which affected Ireland during the 1820's and '30s. That sounds interesting because, where there was a conflict, there were often records left behind.

Sources:

BIFHSGO – British Isles Family History Society of Ottawa –  https://www.bifhsgo.ca

Clann Chaomhánach https://www.clann-chaomhanach.com/

The Down Survey of Ireland https://downsurvey.tchpc.tcd.ie/

The search for my Irish connection, part 2

 

                                                         A view of Dublin taken from the other side of the River Liffy

Some Irish surnames are more likely to come from particular parts of the country than others. Surname maps can give pointers as to where Irish roots come from. There are other names that defy placement and one of them happens to be Cavanagh, the one I'm looking for.

Not that Cavanagh is the only spelling of the name. The original Gaelic name, Caomhánach, has been anglicised in many ways and can often be found starting with a "K" rather than a "C". In fact, once when my father was signing in at a hotel in Dublin he was taken to task for the spelling of his name. When signing in with the surname Cavanagh, he was informed that his spelling was wrong. That the name was correctly spelt with a "K" as in Kavanagh (or perhaps Kavanaugh, he didn't mention the "u" controversy as part of the tale.)

That story cast doubts on my hunch that my family roots came from the area around Dublin. The English records I'd found for the family consistently spelled the name with a "C". There were variations, of course, Cavanagh, Cavanaugh and sometimes even Cavanah. But if the common spelling in the vicinity of Dublin was Kavanagh, maybe I was on the wrong track. So I let the search stall.

Sometimes though, nuggets of information show up unexpectedly. I'm a member of the BCGS (British Columbia Genealogy Society) and they had seminars planned for the spring. (Around Vancouver, spring is usually considered to start in February.) I debated whether to attend the one about Ireland. The speakers were from the Ulster Historical Foundation and I wasn't really interested in Northern Ireland. What could they possibly tell me that would help my personal research? I signed up anyway.

The sessions were informative and covered all of Ireland. So that was good. But it became more than good when Fintan Mullan shared an example slide from The Down Survey on the screen. The landowner featured was a Cavanagh spelt the right way! Moreover, the survey itself was taken in the mid-1600s and the example shown was in Carlow, a county to the south of Dublin. This looked promising. Now to figure out how to track down any possible links to my family. 

Sources:

BCGS  https://www.bcgs.ca/

Clann Chaomhánach https://www.clann-chaomhanach.com/

The Down Survey of Ireland https://downsurvey.tchpc.tcd.ie/

The search for my Irish connection, part 1

 

In the 1891 census my Cavanagh family was enumerated at 82 Wentworth Street, Spitalfields, London. This photo was taken in 2019 and shows the building at that address in that year.

I probably have more than one Irish line in my ancestry but the main one is particularly problematic. Irish genealogical research has a reputation for being difficult as so many records were lost in the Four Courts fire in 1922. The main advice I've seen for doing Irish research, is to know the location your ancestors came from before you start researching in Ireland. The usual suggestion is to look for clues in records at the place to which the family immigrated. I saw that advice work out well when researching a Hickey family whose immigrant progenitor ended up in Halifax in the 1830s. Those Nova Scotia records showed his origins in Kilkenny. That information made taking the search back to Ireland easy. I don't think I'll have the same luck with my main Irish line.

The problem with my Irish family is that I caught the earliest glimpse of them in East London, a place where sheer numbers and endless mobility combine to create a huge morass of information almost impossible to wade through. At least, that's how it seemed when my search started way back in the pre-internet past. The hunt has become easier as records moved online. The advent of indexed databases made exploration of the records even better but, search as I might, there was still no joy.

Why do I think this vexing family line originated in Ireland? After all, I started this search before DNA evidence weighed in to show ethnicity. With a surname like Cavanagh, how could the family be anything but Irish?

Immigration history from Ireland leans heavily on the numbers of refugees from the great famine years in the 1840s. But the records I've uncovered predate that Irish exodus. I've traced the family back to the London birth of Benjamin Cavanagh in 1816. His parents' names were Benjamin and Matilda. Because of the early date that the first Cavanagh in this family line left Ireland the search becomes more difficult.

As the Cavanaghs ended up in London, rather than Liverpool, I surmised that they originated in the southern part of Ireland rather than Ulster; a case of sound reasoning or mere prejudice on my part? I've never been drawn to Northern Ireland. A county south of Dublin seemed more likely to me, perhaps Wexford? Silly really because they were Protestants. Still Google informs me that there are a minority of Protestants in Southern Ireland, mainly Presbyterians and Anglicans. My Cavanaghs were in the Anglican camp. Maybe I'm on the right track after all?