Friday, August 19, 2022

Irish Genealogy Page: Hennigans and Walls in County Cork

Leabhar Mór Leacain / The Great Book of Lecan, written in 1397-1418 AD

This page is a tribute to my parents Michael and Johanna Wall Hennigan, who were both natives of County Cork and were both born in 1914.

Donnchadh O Corrain, 'Ireland before the Normans' (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1972) noted that in the 10th century the Irish population was less than 500,000 people and Ireland had over 150 kings. These were petty kingdoms, or clans (tuatha), which typically elected the king. Also in the 10th century AD, a high king of Ireland (árd rí Éireann) emerged. In history, Brian Boru was apparently the most consequential high king, who reigned from 1005-1014 AD but the idea that Brian Boru saved Ireland from a Viking conquest is said to be “completely false.”

With respect to earlier times, even though the Gaelic language is Celtic in origin, the late Prof Barry Rafferty of University College Dublin said that from his research "there is no archaeological evidence for a Celtic invasion of Ireland."

While the term is useful, Raimund Karl, a professor of Celtic archaeology at the University of Vienna said, the “popular conception, that all Celts are the same, and that they are part of one big nation and people and race and so on, that is nonsense.”

The hereditary surname system evolved slowly replacing the patronymic tradition of a name typically derived from the name of a father or an ancestor. In Ireland Mac was 'son of' or Ó 'grandson of'.' Icelandic surnames today follow the Nordic tradition of patronymic and/or matronymic names.

Pronunciation, rather than spelling, guided scribes and church officials when recording names during the Middle Ages. This practice often resulted in one person's name being recorded under several different spellings.


Hennigan and Wall births 1864-1913

All variants: Hennigan + variants 2,667 and Wall + variants 4,624

Ó Cleary (Gaelic: Ó Cléirigh) is claimed to be the oldest recorded surname in Europe — dating back to 916 AD. The Ó Clearys were a sept (branch) of the Uí Fiachrach dynasty, who ruled the Kingdom of Connachta for nearly two millennia.

The surname Hennigan is among about 30 variants of the name and Hennigan births in the period 1864-1913 were 10.5% of the total. However, the main variant concentrations are in northwest Ireland in the areas of Mayo, Sligo and neighbouring counties.

The surname Wall in Ireland is of Norman origin as de Valle (Gaelic de Bhál), is "of the valley." However, the name in Europe also has other origins.

There are only 3 Irish Wall variants and the concentration is in Dublin, South Leinster and Waterford.

With four letters in the word, misspelling Wall was of course low over the centuries compared with other surnames.

There are a lot of businesses serving Irish Americans in particular who are seeking information on their Irish ancestors.

The Irish Governmemt has an office called the Chief Herald of Ireland and a family Coat of Arms can be issued for €4,400 (US$4,480).

A Coat of Arms/ Family Crest is likely to be as fake as a leprechaun with his pot of gold!

Heraldry is a Norman/ English tradition and today for example a Hennigan Coat of Arms/ Family Crest would have no consistency as there was never an original one. See here and here.

HENNIGAN - Ó hÉANACHÁIN/Ó hÉANAGÁIN

Michael Joseph Hennigan (1844-1920) in
St Louis, Missouri, US, in 1870. I got a copy
of this photo in St Louis in 1974

When I attended the St Fintan's Infants School on Gallow's Hill, Bandon, County Cork, in the early 1960s we were tasked with writing our names in Gaelic (Irish), with the teacher's help. We were then given homework to write our names 3 times.

My name was Míceál Ó hÉanagáin (the 'h' in Mícheál was not a rule then) and when Tommy, an elder brother, saw the lines on my copybook he put ink lines through my work.

The teacher was wrong and our surname should have been Ó hÉanacháin.

However, the teacher was right as both versions could be used.

Ó hEidhneacháin 'descendant of Eidhneachán' is apparently based on the Gaelic word eidheannivy in English. A bird has also been associated with the name and it may well have been derived from ‘eanach’ or ‘aunach’ meaning a ‘fair.’ ‘Eanach’ also refers to ‘a watery place.’

Hennigan or Hennigan is an anglicisation of the Gaelic Ó h-Éanacháin, Ó h-Éineacháin or Ó h-Éanagáin. Spelling variations include Heneghan, Henaghan, Heenan, Henehan, Henaghan, Heenon, Hanegan, Hannegan, Hanigan, Hannigan, and about 30 in total.

Leabhar Mór Leacain / The Great Book of Lecan, was written in the late 14th century — early 15th century (1397-1418 AD) in Lecan (Lacken), in the territory of Tír Fhíacrach, close to modern Enniscrone, County Sligo in northwest Ireland. In its early days, the area of Sligo was ruled by the Ó Dowds (Gaelic: Ó Dubhda) – a powerful sea-faring clan.

The manuscript is now the possession of the Royal Irish Academy.

The family of Eidhneachán and its territory are mentioned in the manuscript: duthaid hI Eidhneachán and tuath ...hI Eidnechan.

The book was written by Giolla Íosa Mac Firbisigh, assisted by Adam Ó Cuirnín and Murchad Riabach Ó Cuindlis, at Lecan.

The Mac Fhirbhisigh family had a history of scholarship into the 17th century and the anglicised version of the name was Forbes. A castle was built in Lecken in 1560 but it was lost before 1625.

In the period 1864-1913, there were 280 births on the island of Ireland with a Hennigan name and about 69% were mainly in counties Mayo, Sligo, Roscommon and Leitrim. Detail here.

The Dunmanway, West Cork area had 24 births, which was the highest area total outside of Western Ireland. It had 22 Hennigan deaths from 1864-1922.

The main variant totals were Heneghan 592; Henaghan 548; Henehan 471; Henigan 194; Henegan 180 and Hennegan 61.

Thomas Albert Hennigan (1882-1951), a son of Michael Joseph Hennigan of St. Louis, Missouri, on a visit to Gortnamucklagh, Dunmanway, in 1928. To his right are cousins: Maurice Hennigan, Maurice's wife Katie (née McCarthy from Drimoleague) and Maurice's sisters Kate Hennigan -Farrell, Elli Hennigan-McCarthy and Minnie Hennigan. Relations Maggie McCarthy and May Farrell are in the front row on the right. Katie Hennigan's mother was a Hourihane and one of her brothers was the maternal great-grandfather of the former Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern.

Tracing back to the 1700s

The names Thomas, Maurice and Michael are common intergenerational names of the West Cork Hennigans. The traditional practice was to name the firstborn son after the paternal grandfather. The second-born son was named after the mother's father and the third-born son was named after the father. For example, my eldest brother was named Maurice after his grandfather. My second eldest brother was named Thomas after my mother's father Thomas Wall and I'm named Michael after my father as I'm the third son.

The Hennigan family in focus here comes from Gortnamucklagh (from the Gaelic — the fields of the pigs), in the parish of Fanlobbus, about 3 km east of the town of Dunmanway, County Cork. There is another Hennigan family in the adjacent townland of Acres. Fanlobbus parish had a church as far back as 1199 and the area of the Hennigan homestead was also known as Carrigenia.

In 'Irish Pedigrees or the Origin and Stem of the Irish Nation' which was first published in 1876, John O'Hart provides a detailed genealogy of the great Cork Mac Carthy family. The Mac Carthys had moved south from Tipperary. The O'Briens became the dominant family in the region following a long struggle with the Mac Carthys. The Mac Carthys moved south to West Cork anddefeated the O'Mahony Clan, occupying the River Bandon valley from Enniskeane to Drimoleague.

The Mac Carthy Glas was a branch of the Mac Carthy Riabhach and ruled the Dunmanway area (named after the castle of the yellow river). They had two castles, one by a bank of the river where the town developed and the other at Togher, on the banks of the River Bandon. O'Hart recounts how Felim Mac Carthy had fought with King James II following the deposed English king's arrival in Ireland in 1689. Felim had later joined the Wild Geese in France and was murdered on his return some years later. In the 1700s, one of Felim's great-granddaughters Mary Mac Carthy married a Maurice Hennigan from West Cork. The Hennigan daughters married as follows: Ellen to her first cousin Charles McCarthy and the other two to Timothy O'Leary of Glasheens and Daniel Callanan, of Caheragh.

Maurice Hennigan was likely the grandfather of Maurice Hennigan who lived in Gortnamucklagh during the Famine of the mid-1840s and its aftermath.

There was a total of 8 households in County Cork: 5 Hennigan farms + 3 misspelt as Hinegan

In the Griffith Property Valuation (Richard Griffith, Commissioner of the Valuation Office) 1847-1864, Maurice Hennigan of Gortnamucklagh is listed as 'Maurice Hinegan' and 'Thomas Hineigan' of Dunmanway South Green West, also in the parish of Fanlobbus. Thomas and Maurice were likely brothers. John Hennigan of Acres is also listed as 'John Hinegan,' The entry in respect of Maurice Hennigan was made on Saturday, May 1, 1852. It was in respect of 67 acres of land shared with a Mary Grace and Ellen Murray. The land was leased from a landlord Mary Gillman. The adjacent land was in the names of Patrick Grace, Mary Grace and George Webb. A century later, the Graces were still neighbours when my parents lived on the Hennigan land.

Thomas Hennigan (c. 1840-1920 on the 1911 British Census in Ireland should have been 70 years, not 76* years) succeeded his father Maurice and two first cousins, Michael and Maurice who were sons of Thomas Hennigan of Dunmanway South Green West emigrated to the United States in 1870. Michael Joseph Hennigan who was born in 1844, married Johanna Hyland and settled in St. Louis, Missouri while Maurice stayed in New York. In the 1880s, Thomas (son of Maurice) purchased a farm in the nearby townland of Nedineagh East from a Crowley family which was planning to emigrate to the United States. Nedineagh East was located across the main road from the homestead and extended south to the Bandon River. In 1909 another Maurice Hennigan (1881-1956: son of Thomas Hennigan, took over the farm. Two years before in 1907, Maurice's sister Minnie emigrated to the United States at the age of 36 years and stayed at her Uncle Michael's St. Louis home for some years and later returned to Fanlobbus. Minnie is listed on the New York Ellis Island records on the web.

Maurice had five sisters - three are in the photograph above: Minnie unmarried and the others married an O'Leary, McCarthy, Buttimer and Farrell.

The Census enumerators in both 1901 and 1911 were members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Thomas Hennigan died in 1920 and is listed on the 1911 Census form as a widower. He and his wife Ellen were in fact living separately.

Maurice Hennigan's wife Katie's age seems to be understated by 4 years.* It is interesting that the only individuals on the 1901 census who are identified as being able to speak both Irish and English, are the parents Thomas and Ellen Hennigan. In 1901, Gortnamucklagh had 20 households; Nedineagh East had 15 households and Nedineagh West had 17 households.

Irish Census 1901 Irish Census 1911
Gortnamucklagh Thomas Hennigan 60 yrs Thomas Hennigan *76 yrs
Ellen Hennigan 60 yrs Julia Hennigan 33 yrs
Kate Hennigan 27 yrs*
Annie McCarthy 21 yrs
Nedineagh East Ellie Hennigan 25 yrs Maurice Hennigan 30 yrs
Julia Hennigan /td> Kate Hennigan (wife)
Maurice Hennigan 21 yrs Harry Maybury 18 yrs
Mollie Russell 8 yrs

Maurice married Katie McCarthy of Drimoleague in 1909 and their first child Thomas was born in 1912, followed by Eileen (Babbell), Michael, Maurice, Sheila and John (Bob). Maurice died in December 1955 at the age of 75 years and Catherine died in March 1963 at the age of 82 years.

On Michael Hennigan's birth certificate dated September 10, 1914, Ellen Hennigan is named as a sponsor. Ellen was Michael's paternal grandmother and was originally Ellen Murray.

Maurice and Katie Hennigan's Family

Thomas married Eileen O'Donovan and moved to Dublin after World War II. They had 5 children.

Eileen (Babbell) married farmer Patrick O'Neill of Ardkitt, Enniskeane, Co. Cork. They had 3 children.

Michael married Johanna Wall of Mountmusic, Toames, Macroom and inherited the farm in Gortnamucklagh when he married in 1948. Michael sold the ancestral farm in 1955 and eventually became a publican in Bandon, County Cork. His father Maurice understandably wasn't impressed with the decision but much of the land was rocky and unproductive. They had 7 children.

Maurice married Eileen O'Driscoll of Coppeen, County Cork and inherited the farm and public house at Bengour, Newcestown from his Aunt Julia (Hennigan -Buttimer). They had 8 children.

Sheila married Diarmuid O'Brien and took over the family farm in Nedineagh. They had 4 children.

John (Bob) married Julianne Callanan and emigrated to London. They had 4 children.

Maurice and Katie Hennigan's family all died in the period 1970-1995.

Michael and Johanna had 7 children. Maurice, the eldest, died in May 2016 and Brendan the fourth, died in November 2018.

This is a copy of an original colour photograph that was taken in 1954 in Gortnamucklagh, Dunmanway, West Cork, by visiting American cousin Father John Smith, grandson of Michael Joseph Hennigan who had emigrated to the US in 1870. Maurice, Mary and Thomas - first three children of Michael and Johanna Hennigan.

The family initially grew up in Gortnamucklagh but the land was rocky and my father bought a pub in Bandon in 1959.

The history of the region of West Cork shows how the English colonial enterprise developed.

Prince John (1166-1216), the future king, was made Lord of Ireland by his father King Henry II of England and Normandy. John visited Ireland in 1185 and he issued a charter for the city of Cork. Also on the southern coast, Youghal was incorporated in 1209 by King John. King Edward III (1312-1377) issued a charter for the port of Kinsale 25 km west of Cork City, in 1334.

The death of Gaelic Ireland occurred in Kinsale in 1601/1602 when Irish-Spanish forces were defeated by the English. Bad weather had forced the Spanish to anchor their more than 20 ships in Kinsale while giving the English the opportunity to blockade the harbour. At the same time, the Irish commanders, Hugh O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell were based in the north of the island and they had to begin a long trek Hell or Some Worse Place: Kinsale 1601: Google Books and An Englishman's siege and battle diary.

Michael Hennigan with American actor John Wayne
in 1973, at the Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado Springs.

Before the Kinsale debacle, English planters were already in the area that would become the town of Bandon Bridge. Queen Elizabeth I in 1588 gave grants of the land of about 14,000 acres each, on the southside and northside of the River Bandon. Also in 1588 Richard Boyle, a native of Canterbury, arrived in Dublin to take up the job of a clerk of the English Council of Munster.

Boyle (1566-1643), who would become the 1st Earl of Cork, Lord Justice of Ireland and Lord High Treasurer of England, bought Sir Walter Ralegh's 40,000 Irish estates including Lismore Castle, for £1,000. In 1613 a charter was granted to Bandon Bridge by King James the First and it appointed Sir Richard Boyle — and, after him, his heirs and successors as owners of the town. The ownership of Bandon Bridge passed to the Fourth Duke of Devonshire in 1754 as Lady Charlotte Boyle, wife of the duke, died as the sole direct surviving heir of Richard Boyle.

It has been estimated that Boyle had a rent-roll of £20,000 a year. According to the Bank of England, £20,000 in 1630 would have been worth £3.092mn in 2021.

Cork, Youghal, Kinsale and Bandon were walled towns.

Boyle got a walled English Protestant town. The former Christchurch on North Main Street is reputed to be the oldest of the post-Reformation churches in Ireland.

It was said Bandon was the Londonderry of the South and "in Bandon, even the pigs are Protestant." This was related to when local leaders forbade "papists" in the town to have pigs while Protestant dwellers were allowed to keep pigs.

It was not until 1807 that a Catholic dared set up a business in the centre of Bandon. George Bennett in his 1862 'History of Bandon' wrote "It was about this time that the first Roman Catholic shopkeeper ventured to reside in any of our principal streets. For several years previously some Roman Catholics had crept into the town, but they were content with the humblest habitations within the walls and in the most out-of-the-way places."

The Orange Order had a big presence in the town.

Even into the 1960s most of the businesses on South Main Street were owned by people with an Anglo-Irish background.

In the period 1801-1885 Bandon had a constituency in the Westminister Parliament. In the last election before the abolition of the constituency, Richard Allman of the distillery family, won by only 217 to 172 votes in a by-election. There was no space for the common people whether they were Protestant or Catholic.

Michael 'Rubio' Hennigan, Katie and myself in 2007

Michael, Jane Brownlee, Katie and myself in O'Donoghue's Bar in central Dublin, May 2022

WALL - de Valle, de Bhál

An Irishman invited the Norman-English to Ireland.

Diarmait Mac Murchada (Modern Irish: Diarmaid Mac Murchadha), anglicised as Dermot MacMurrough, was ousted as King of Leinster in 1167 by Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair (Rory O'Connor) — the High King of Ireland. Mac Murchada apparently had in 1152 abducted Derbforgaill, the wife of the King of Breifne, (now Roscommon), Tighearnán Ua Ruairc (Tiernan O'Rourke).

On May 1st, 1169 Diarmait Mac Murchada landed at Bannow Bay in County Wexford with a group of mercenary soldiers. In 1170, Richard de Clare, nicknamed Strongbow, came to Ireland from Wales. Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke, brought archers, knights and horsemen with him.

Diarmait died in 1171 and Strongbow married one of Diarmait's daughters. Later in 1171 Norman-English King Henry II who was also king of Normandy and a great-grandson of William the Conqueror, arrived in Ireland with at least 500 mounted knights and 4,000 men-at-arms and archers.

Pope Alexander III issued letters to Irish bishops telling them to accept Henry as their lord. This was a diplomatic move as the pope's main concern was Frederick Barbarossa, in office as German king and Holy Roman emperor (1152–90). He challenged papal authority and had the ambition to establish German predominance in Western Europe.

Johnnie Regan, Johanna Wall's maternal
grand-father, at 70 in c. 1905 in a studio
in Bandon

According to MacLysaght’s 'Surnames of Ireland' which was first published in 1957, the name Wall and its variant Wale derive from the Norman de Valle, Gaelicsed as de Bhál.

The ethnic name for a Walloon, in Middle Dutch, was Wale from a Germanic word meaning ‘foreign’) + the definite article de.

It has also been claimed that de Valle is the Latinised form of Dale, from which place in Pembrokeshire, Wales, the family took its name.

Hubert Gallwey's 'The Wall Family in Ireland, 1170-1970,' traces the Wall family history, originally Anglo-Norman, from Normandy, Northern France, through England and South Wales to Ireland, and through the succeeding centuries after the Norman invasions to the present. It reflects land tenure systems, the effects of rebellions and confiscations, and the narrow margin often separating settler and native.

About the year 1200, three de Valle brothers were granted land charters in County Kilkenny in southeast Ireland.

The Forebears website for surnames in many countries across the globe ranks Ireland No. 1 for density in respect of the Wall surname.

The top 10 have the United States at No. 1 with 76,011 Wall names and Ireland is at 6th rank with 4,345 Wall names. Data are from 2014.

In total 141,357 people bear this surname compared, with Hennigan at 5,607; the United States is on top at 4,056 and Ireland second at 762.

Forbears and Name-distribution-and-demographics

This is a work in progress and data have inevitably gaps.

Johanna (1914-1996) and Michael (1914-1990) in their pension years

In 1827, Thomas Wall of Toames East, Macroom appears on the Tithes List of payees, who were obliged to give material support to the Anglican Church, although he was a Roman Catholic.

In 1844, the year before the catastrophic failure of the potato crop, Thomas Wall appears on the Earl of Bandon's list of tenants paying an annual rent of £34.11.1 (pounds, shillings and pence).

In the same period, another Thomas Wall is in practice as a medical doctor at 41 South Mall, Cork and has purchased the old family seat at Wallstown in North Cork.

In the 1840's William Wall (who was known as Bill Mór) was the tenant of two farms in the Toames area, one in the townland of Mountmusic, southwest of the town of Macroom. He was reasonably well off and in 1846 contributed 7 shillings and 6 pence to a famine relief appeal. Local landlord Benjamin Swete gave £20 to the same appeal.

William Wall's son Edmund took charge of a 33-acre farm in Cnoc Amhráin (Mountmusic) and in the 1901 Census, Edmund's son Thomas Wall is listed as being 28 years old. Another son Peter was 26 years of age. Listed also is a son Edmund aged 24 and a daughter Hannah aged 22. Another brother William had emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts some years earlier.

Thomas and Catherine Wall in the early 1940s.

Thomas married Catherine Regan of Conagh, near Ballineen in West Cork.

Johanna Wall was born in 1914 and her siblings were Peggy, Edmund, John and Julia. Only Johanna and Julia survived to advanced age. Johanna died in 1996.

Peggy married John Kelliher and had two children Eileen and Kathleen. Julia married Timothy Brennan and had four children: Michael, Catherine, Mary and Gerard.

Johanna's uncle Peter lived on an adjacent farm in Mountmusic and two of his children — Mary and John — died in recent years and they were the only surviving Walls in the Toames area.

Epilogue

Irish genealogy is intrinsically linked with emigration — mainly to English-speaking countries — and as Ireland was England's first colony, the brutal rule including state-sponsored discrimination against the Gaelic majority in the 18th century/ early 19th century, is also relevant. That doesn't mean that there should be enmity today

In 1907 James Joyce gave a lecture in Trieste, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and he said "to exclude from the present nation all who are descended from foreign families would be impossible, and to deny the name of patriot to all those who are not of Irish stock would be to deny it to almost all the heroes of the modern movement."

"Most countries send out oil or iron, steel or gold, or some other crop, but Ireland has had only one export and that is its people," John Fitzgerald Kennedy said at Cork City Hall, on his presidential visit to Ireland in June 1963.

President Kennedy in St Patrick's Street Cork on his June 1963 trip to Ireland. His great-grandfather Patrick left County Wexford in 1848 and he sailed from Liverpool, England to Boston. He died on November 22, 1858, from tuberculosis at the age 35. The 35th president of the United State was assassinated on November 22 1963.

In Europe, no other country has been so affected by emigration over the last two centuries as Ireland. About 10mn people have emigrated from the island of Ireland since 1800. The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland today have a combined population of 7mn.

It's ironic that since President Kennedy's visit, Irish exports are dominated by American-owned firms. Ireland today has a net per capita income ranking of 19 among advanced countries in the Organisation for Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Economic historian Kevin O'Rourke has said that the Irish economy remained underdeveloped for extended periods of time after political partition in 1920 due to its continuing excessive dependence on an underperforming British economy.

Population data from the 1600s should be treated with caution. It has been speculated that 250,000 English, Welsh, and Scottish Protestants settled in Ireland in the century while about 50,000 Catholic soldiers and others left the island, primarily for Europe, and maybe as many again emigrated to the Americas.

In July 1653, the Commonwealth regime issued an order for the transplantation the following year of Catholic landowners across the Shannon to Connacht: Trinity College Dublin

Oliver Cromwell, the English leader following the beheading of King Charles I, arrived in Ireland in 1649 on a punitive mission to kill English royalists, old English settlers that were mainly Catholic, and Gaelic Irish. He authorised massacres, the transportation of Irish slaves to the Caribbean and a massive confiscation of land. He may not have said "To Hell or to Connacht" but there was a massive transfer of land and the western province was the least desirable.

The Irish mainly emigrated to English-speaking countries: the United States; Great Britain (my mother worked in England from 1937-1948); Canada; Australia and New Zealand.

The Irish had one important attribute: we were white and over time we would climb wealth and social ladders.

On the centenary of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King said in a famous speech "One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land." Slavery and myth of American exceptionalism

In 1970 Dee Brown's book 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West' documented the state-sponsored crimes to wipe out the lives of Native Americans, together with their culture, religion, and way of life.

Red Cloud (Lakota: Maȟpíya Lúta) (1822–1909) was one of the most important leaders of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) and in his long life, he was lied to repeatedly by representatives of the federal and state governments.

"They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it."

The Wounded Knee Massacre of December 29, 1890, involved the slaughter of approximately 150–300 Lakota Native Americans by United States Army troops in the area of Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota. The massacre was the climax of the US Army's late 19th-century efforts to repress the "Plains Indians."

“We had better, in order to protect our civilization …wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the earth ...The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? wrote South Dakota newspaperman L. Frank Baum, the future author of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,' in response to the news.

Important chroniclers of Irish surnames have been Rev Patrick Woulfe (1923), Edward MacLysaght (1957) and John Grenham.

My mother and I before celebrating her 80th birthday in 1994