MKA LyreacrompaneThis is my first Kerry Ancestors post.   I think I need to explain where I am coming from and WHY the website and blog!    I am a Kerry native and completed a most interesting training in Genealogy and Family History at the University of Limerick in 2011/2012.    As part of this training, I completed assignments on my own family history – of the Moloneys and discovered I could go right back to the first baptismal  record in 1785.   It opened up a new vista for me on how the Moloneys arrived in Kerry, how they initially eeked out a living and eventually reclaimed bogland  and settled at the back of the Stack’s Mountains in Lyreacrompane.  As I went down through the generations, it also threw up some questions.      Why did none of the Moloneys emigrate, despite having large families over three generations?    How did they survive during the Famine?   In the late 1800’s why did they wait until their forties to marry?   Between 1785 and 1960 none of the Moloneys married outside of their three neighbouring parishes – Duagh, Listowel and Castleisland?     Were they just unadventuresome or were there other more basic reasons?     By not just listing down dates of baptisms/births/deaths/marriages, but by building alongside the actual  local history of North Kerry as it evolved, when the roads were built, which Landlord ruled the roost, the education available (or not available), the folklore and customs applicable to each area, opened an answer to the WHYs?