Irish Roots

My current hypomanic state has shifted gears.  Last week we had our spring junk pickup by the county and I spent a lot of time with the chainsaw and clippers, filling up a bin.  My right shoulder did not really enjoy it, especially the last day when I dragged some hefty wood down the street.  I guess I am going to have to call a shoulder surgeon.

My sister-in-law, Phoebe, is in western Ireland at the moment.  You can follow her on the Kickinitpostsixty blog below.  And my sister is reading about Queen Isabella (of England, married to Edward II, a Plantagenet, in 1308).  I went to look up Isabella on ny ancestry.com geneology tree and she is there, which got me inspired to inquire and find out that I still have an account (automatically paid by credit card) and so spent hours yesterday fooling around.  And ended up ordering a Deluxe World account for a year.

The original Harpers came over in 1720 (I have a link to the Harper website below).  His son's name was John and he was married to Abigail Montgomery in the U.S. in 1728.  He is from the Londonderry area.  Abigail was from Killallo, in the county of Mayo, which I believe is also spelled Killala and is a small fishing village 6.5 miles northeast of Ballina.  This is where her mother, Mary Aken (or Aiken) was from, who was married to William Montgomery from Adhadowey, which is east of Londonderry in northern Ireland.  I am very interested in why these people emmigrated.

Reading lots of fascinating history and if this keeps up we will probably go to Ireland and Scotland next summer.  We think the Harpers came from Scotland, but the geneology stuff also shows a strong connection with Normans.  If you believe the OneWorldTree at ancestry.com, we are descended from William the Conqueror (1024-1087)(so is Tita--good thing we don't have kids), Hugh Capet (939-996), first king of France, Henry II of England (1133-1189) and Eleanor of Acquitane (1122-1204), whose grave I visited in Chinon, France, a beautiful place.  Not to mention Fulk the Black (967-1040) and Fulk the Rude (1043-1109), Counts of Anjou.

According to the tree, the Montgomeries came over from Scotland in about 1600.  Scots meet the Plantagenet descendants with the marriage of James I Stewart (1394-1437) born in Duferline, Scotland, with Joan Beaufort (1406-1445), from Westminster, Middlesex, England, producing daughter Joan Stewart (1428-1493), born in Perth, Scotland.  That line is all Scots up through the Montgomeries.  Probably nasty hill people.

By the way, Ireland is the only country in the world to have a musical instrument as its national emblem.  It is the harp.

Addendum:  Just read a short piece about Isabella and Edward II, who was not a likeable guy.  For particularly my sister, we are supposedly related through Edward III (1312-1377), John of Gaunt (1340-1399), John Beaufort (1371-1410), to his daughter Joan.

Addendum 2:  I e-mailed our family historian, Rick Harper, who has spent years trying to find original documents in Northern Ireland, collaborating with a Harper who lives there, with little success.  It seems doubtful that Montgomeries lived in Mayo County.  There is an area around Londonderry which is called "Killaloo."  I will bet they were from there as other Montgomeries were from Aghadowey.  Consequently, Rick says that he has "not really gone beyond general history finding out that rent-racking on 20 year land leases and difficulty in ever purchasing your own land was the root cause for relatively fast migration through Ulster from Scotland to North America. Usually the 'Scots-Irish' spent no more than one land lease of time in Northern Ireland before moving on to America. Before that, the Harper's were lowland Scots, primarly on the west coast and just above the English border. The border wars of the 16th and 17th Century were enough for many a lowland scot family to look for a better area to live."

So apparently, this line of "Irish" were Scots passing through on their way to America.