Posting Member: Jenn 🙂
Topic: Updates on lots of fun things…
Location: Home in Barrie, Ontario
Mood: I’m good, but for my very broken toe… My bruises are healed up for the most part!
Music:
What’s going on here?! Blogger is spazzy, so if this doesn’t come up right, it soooooo isn’t my fault. Jake’s turned in early, leaving me and Markus to cause a ruckus! Or at least to post an update.
So! We’ve worked on the St. Vrains, who were married in with the Roy line, and we’ve gotten lost in Canada, confused as all get out with Eliza, Elise and their mother Elizabeth. More work required! A quick thanks to cousin Ron, who’d sent me the original corrections. I finally cleaned my desk enough to find the notes… There’s more to come, but hopefully this adds in a little of detail to some of the early St. Vrain and Roy connections.
We also finally posted a timeline for the life of Marcellin St. Vrain, of our direct line. We’d taken our sweet time with posting this. Why? Because sooner or later there’s bound to be e-mails telling us what’s right, wrong or otherwise.
I have to say, personally, I find a lot of what’s written about Marcellin to be pure conjecture. Even from his sons, grand children and historians, there’s a whole lot of opinion and very little fact. We posted as much fact as we could. We posted as much of the ‘stories’ as we reasonably could, but let’s face it, there are a LOT of stories. There are a lot of stories in our family now, and we’re generations down the line. No one but Marcellin knows the truth, and I’m not about to judge him any more than I would anyone else in these branches. We deal with recording events that are at times, horrific in nature, but history is horrific. Does that mean we should omit it? In our opinion, no. We have to learn from the past. Marcellin was a fascinating, charismatic individual that led a very full life. He was a Mountain Man, a tracker, a trader, a father, a husband, a lover… It is with all our hope that he rests in peace and that we honour his memory by recording what we know and searching out this bloodline. Hopefully we’re doing it well.
I’m behind in my e-mails, so if you’re waiting to hear from me, tomorrow morning is catch up time! I’ve had a solid week of being a klutz, including falling on the deck and having a crazed pram driver break my toe, so I promise there’s more to come so long as a house don’t fall on me before morning.
Interesting connection came up from cousin Marilyn, the sweety that she is… She’s been helping us sort documents on Emma Eliza Bentley and John Dallas’s family. It would seem we have some trees crossing in interesting ways, only time will tell how!
John Raymond Dallas, son of Emma and John, married a woman named Blanche Thelma Hume! Without a doubt, this will somehow lead us back to the US and the Hume family there – and eventually to Scotland. Blanche is the daughter of John Hume, born in 1853 in the US and married to a Catherine Smith or Stewart. The family is from Sillarsville, Quebec, so there’s lots to learn here and we’ve just brushed the surface. If there’s a Hume out there that’s missing John, by all means, let us know!
We’re hoping to get back into England this week and work on Young, Longster/Lancaster, Bentley and more… Pateley Bridge has been on my mind 🙂 I want that 1840 British Census with John and Ann on it, and I would like to start seeking out their children for further links, I hope, to their line.
And finally, we’ve been working on something since we figured out how to place who we believe is our James O’Neill with Griffith’s Valuation…. Basically, we’ve been looking to put Margaret Moynaugh with the Moynagh family and Thomas McKenna near Emyvale together, or manage some sort of proof we’re even looking in the right areas… Or disprove the whole lot.
If the Moyna research is on track, and I strongly believe that it is… Margaret is daughter of Mary Boylan and John Moyna(gh) of Tattinclave, Monaghan. Her grandfather would be Michael, and she would also have a brother named Michael born in 1811.
The page we found is based in a area called Clough, which encompasses both Monaghan and Tyrone (Which is good as our McKenna – O’Neill relationship was based in each County, and if they were across the country from each other, this theory would be pretty far fetched.) and it’s more specifically to Derrylea More and Derrylea Beg.
Jake wondered if Beg meant Bog, but I looked it up:
http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/geography/placenames.html
And to quote –
‘beg
This means ‘small’ in Gaelic. Usually used at the end of a name, this often means that this feature is the smaller of a pair of adjacent features. A similar name ending in ‘more’ is often found nearby. For example, Killybegs (county Donegal), Lambeg (county Antrim). North of Lough Neagh, Ireland’s largest lake, is a much smaller lake called Lough Beg.’
Which is exciting yet unfortunate, as bogs are highly exciting in my world! I have a bog cat on my board from Ireland 🙂 Anyways…
In Derrylea Beg we have proof of who could be Michael Moynagh, the sibling most close to Margaret’s own age. And in Derrylea More we have Thomas McKenna, of the right time and age and… I think we have a match. That’s all it comes down to, I think these are ours. Mark still has mapping work to do with me before I can post it all up the way we did for our O’Neills… But for now:
An original section of map from the Valuation at http://askaboutireland.ie/ that covers Derrylea Beg and More, and the lands that could have once been rented by our own. I’ll work on a highlighted edit, and gps coordinates… But, well, I had to share.
There’s lots more to come! I’ll try for another update later this week if Jake’s too busy. Hope you’re all doing well 🙂
