Who do you think you are? With Rosy O’Donnell

Last Friday I watched the Ancestry.com’s “Who do you think you are” television program and while what they covered was interesting, especially since it was similar to my own family history they only explored the successful branches of the mother’s side. They never even mentioned her father’s side of her family maybe because they went into Ireland where records of Irish Catholics are very hard to come by, most civil records being destroyed in the fire at the Customs House in Dublin in 1921. To find your family in Ireland the main source is that of the local churches (there is some property records, but most Catholic families didn’t own property). I tried to hire a Genealogist in Ireland, but was told you have to know at least the county they came from in Ireland. The trouble with that as mentioned on the program most Records Census, Marriage or Death records only read place of birth as “Ireland” Rosy   was lucky to find a obituary with her Great-Grandmother birth place as “Kildare Ireland”     

My family just like Rosie’s family fled Ireland during the Great Famine of the 1840’s, my family fled to nearby Scotland, but many others fled to North America or Australia, I always wondered where they got the money for the passage and the program one way as Rosy ancestors were sponsored by their local Lord who took pity on them giving them passage to Canada.  After the famine destroyed their potato crop the lords want to turn their land into pastureland for sheep which were a lot more profitable, but they had to get rid of their tenant farmers. Most of the lords just bulldozed their Tenants houses leaving them homeless with many ending up in poor houses where more than a million died we are the descendants of the lucky ones.