The enumeration of emigrants from Irish Ports did not start until 1st May 1851. From that time onward to 1906, we have a list of the numbers leaving the country, unfortunately neither their names, the ports they left from nor their destinations have been included. The figures below show that 113,237 males and 113,827 females, […]
One of the most infamous evictions to take place in Kerry was that from Glenbeigh in January 1887. One of my readers – John O’Connor has alerted me to the published sources which give us a rounded view of what took place in that part of the county. John’s own Great GrandUncle is the […]
Evictions occurred in Ireland when tenants could not pay the rent? While this might be the simplistic view it is not the full story. Inability to pay the rent was usually the reason, but there were also a number of other explanations. Unreasonable and unjust rent increases or landlords consolidating land from smallholdings that had […]
I get a large number of queries and consultations on Sullivan/O’Sullivan families both in Kerry and in the Kerry Catholic Diocese of the Beara Peninsula, so I thought they needed a blog of their own. For the very few of you who don’t know the importance of the O’Sullivans to this part of Ireland, I […]
Landed Estates Court Rentals 1850-1885 on FindMyPast.ie are records that I have found very useful. If your ancestor leased or rented land from any of the Landlords who had financial problems in the late 1860s – after the Famine, this land may have gone into the ‘Encumbered Estates’ and in the sales pitch to sell off […]
Marie Oxx, a reader of my blog Quakers during the Great Famine in Kerry – reminded me also of the Prendergast letters, for another contemporary insight into the Famine in Kerry and the area around Milltown, The original letters The Prendergast Letters: Correspondence from Famine-Era Ireland, 1840-1850, edited by Shelley Barber (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006) […]
I think it might be better to keep my opinion of Donald Trump to myself but I have to say that he seems to have awoken something in the Irish diaspora in the United States when he targeted ’emigrants’/ ‘immigrants’ . These words seem to have resonated with Irish descendants who had long ago half forgotten […]
This first-hand account – letters written from Kerry on a daily basis in April/May 1847 – is one of the few contemporary records of what was happening in Kerry during the Great Famine (1847-1852). Transcribed by myself (Kay Caball) from the handwritten letters in Quaker archives, October 2016. At a meeting of the Religious Society […]
I read this lovely story in Listowel Connection last week and I thought that you my readers might think it equally captivating. I remember the ‘Big Fair’ myself. Being a ‘townie’ I was terrified of the ‘cows’ and we had to wend our way to and from school through the mayhem, cattle sliding and skittering […]
We all know the importance of Kerry funerals but surely Lady Arabella Denny’s instructions and arrangements about her funeral are unusual to say the least. Wikipedia tells us that ‘Lady Arabella Fitzmaurice Denny (1707–1792) was an Irish philanthropist, and founder of the Magdalen Asylum for Protestant Girls in Dublin in 1765’. Arabella was born in Lixnaw, the daughter of Thomas […]
Kay Caball is a qualified Genealogist certified by the University of Limerick. A native of Kerry, Kay specialises in Kerry based local family history and genealogy. She studied History of the Family & Genealogical Methods at the University of Limerick with her research conducted in primary and secondary sources for the County of Kerry.
Kay is also a member of the Eneclann & Ancestor Network panel of genealogy advisers at the National Library of Ireland.
