Welcome to the New Members!

And you have it...{{{{{{{HUGGLES}}}}}}} smokin

Hope I didn't unwittingly fondle you or something. If I did, I apologize.

I know "unwittingly", I would be too modest to tell you or stop you.

Big hugs to you deni, thanks for being a friend. :wink:

Hugsles back. Smokin, it is difficult here to keep conversations in threads separate. You aren't the only one who has a tad of trouble with it. Oh, and that is me, from Mayo. (which I haven't been to...yet).

Deni Zen, I do enjoy the idea of a face mask as tantamount to a toe into quicksand.... and I say back, do you mean clay, cosmetic clay? well, if you do, I am the slow one. Expensive choice that would be. Perhaps then you would choose a nice plain old mud bath...

(Deni Zen, ne'er mind mudslings, welcome here...)

hmmmmm
one of Setanta's grans was an Antrim.

Hello, ossobuco, hugs to you too.

I'm having fun exploring the rooms along these hallways, and as soon as I spot projectiles coming in my direction out of any doorway, I'll get my handy duct tape waterproof coat on. Oh, and shades too, in case I get mud in my eye.

osso wrote


I have an Aunt from Ballina Co. Mayo. :wink:

Will keep that in mind ehBeth :wink:

My Irish ancestors came from County Cork. Guess that's just about as far south as it goes, right? The family name was McSweeney...they dropped the "Mc" due to persecution in New York City in the 1800s. Unfortunately, I have never been to Ireland. YET.

A rousing if belated welcome to the latest crop of newcomers ... glad to see you here, and just holler if you'd like help with anything. Those colored words down at the bottom of my posts are links to lots of helpful A2K info, if you care to explore.

Oh, and I'm mostly Irish. A little Scotch or Bourbon once in a while, maybe some Gin or Tequila, but mostly Irish.

Hmm, maybe one day we can meet at Yet.... for an a2k irish thing.

In the meantime, Kara is there now. (I think, she does move about..)

So once I was married to and am still friends with, a Powers.

We discovered. back in the seventies, a bottle of Powers Three Swallows.

Well, I gotta tell you, not the match of an older McCallan...

still, a sentimental drink.

Perhaps, one is even better off without it!!

But to the Powers', from me.

Can't go much further than Cork, Eva.
Did the "Mc" give their nationality away or do you know the reason why.

Listenin' to Johnny Cash here and he's singin' about his ancestors leavin'
Co.Cork Ireland during the potato famine.

Thanks timberlandko, so far enjoying the craic here, good site.

I think I know what you mean, possibly wrong. :wink:

I'm strictly a Guinness drinker, very rarely have a dark rum. :wink:

osso you know what is good for you. :wink:

Yep, my ancestors and Johnny's must've come from the same locale.

A lot of Irish immigrants to America dropped the "O"s and "Mc"s from their names once they settled here. My sister, who is a Celtic musician in Seattle, Washington, has an antique window sign from New York City that was quite common at the time: "No Irish Need Apply." The story that has come down through our family was that John McSweeney had trouble finding a job and said, "Sweeney is Irish enough without the damned 'Mc'." We don't know why he left Ireland around 1850 and worked his way across the Atlantic on a sailing ship. He later told his son (my grandfather) that there had been a storm at sea and they "almost ran out of water." That greatly confused the lad! Once here, he finally got a job as a stevedore on the docks in NYC. He met and married an Irish girl ten years younger named Ellen Connors, originally from Dublin. She had an uncle who was a colonel in the Irish Army. Her family background was better...she had her passage over paid by a wealthy American family so she could work as a ladies' maid. Neither of these great-grandparents knew their exact birthdays.

After they married, they worked the railroad westward across America as their family multiplied. They had 10 children. They worked as far as New Mexico, living in railroad camps along the way. Then in 1890 they doubled back to Oklahoma Territory for a land run and settled there on 80 acres of flat, rocky land. I have a picture of their run-down, dirt floor shack. It was a very hard life, but the only home they ever owned. They hit the bottle pretty hard, I hear. John died a year later, and Ellen only survived two years past that.

Eva, that is a very interesting story of your ancestors. They had a hard life moving camp continually and trying to stay alive. I'm sure you are glad you are not of their generation.

You say you do not know why he left Ireland in 1850. Just as Johnny Cash was singing about his ancestors leaving Cork, Ireland because of the Great Famine, that is probably why your ancestors left. Those people
left Ireland in their hundreds of thousands. The famine lasted 4 years 1846 to 1850. The potato crop failed year after year and that was the main part of their diet. There is also a lot of politics to it but it would be better to not get tied up in that here.

But you must be proud of your ancestors and because of them you are American and not Irish. You came out of it better. :wink:
Thanks for the story.
Do you follow your sister in her love of Irish music.

I always understood that Johnny Cash was of Scots, not Irish, descent and that the original family name was Caesche.

Merry Andrew, I don't know what his line of descent is, perhaps the words of the song aren't true to life. I did a quick Google there and just found out that he himself is USA born. I don't really know.

What I was pointing out was about the potato famine in Ireland at that time and how the people left it. Must do a deeper search just as a matter
of interest. Thanks for the query. :wink:

Certainly the potato famine was a tragedy for Ireland, but a blessing in disguise for the USA. It sparked the biggest wave of immigration up to that time and added some wonderful people to the population of this country, a number of whose descendants are right now posting to this thread.

Yep there are quite a few of Irish descent.