Irish Place Names

Okay, so for those who were a bit confused by the various descriptions of Irish land boundaries, here is my brief write up and referrals for extending information on the topic, should you have an interest to learn more.

Provinces
Ireland has four provincial boundaries: Ulster to the north, Leinster to the east, Munster to the southwest and Connaught to the west.  The provinces date back to before the 11th century, before the Normans invaded Ireland, when the land was governed by kingship, clans and wars (Duffy 1999; Ouimette 2005).  The four major clans that correspond to the provinces are O'Niell (Ulster), MacMurrough (Leinster), O'Brien (Munster) and O'Connor (Connaught) (Ouimette 2005: 23).

Counties
Irish counties can be thought of as equivalent to a state in the United States (Ouimette 2005: 23), though they took nearly twice as long to create them all and are based upon prominent family lines.  The counties within each province are as follows:
Ulster - Donegal, Derry (Londonderry), Antrim, Down, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Monaghan, Armagh, Cavan.
Leinster - Longford, Westmeath, Meath, Louth, Dublin, Kildare, Offaly (Kings), Leix (Queens), Wicklow, Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny.
Munster - Clare, Tipperary, Limerick, Kerry, Cork, Waterford.
Connaught - Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon, Galway.

For a better view of Irish maps and more, check out this website.
Note: Northern Ireland consists of Ulster province minus county Donegal.

Ireland is also divided up into Dioceses, Parishes (civil, Church of Ireland, Catholic), Baronies, Poor Law Union areas, Electoral Division and Townland (Ouilette 2005).  These will become more important when the research can continue in Ireland.  Rather than bore you (and to get back to my other projects), I shall leave these further descriptions until I encounter them in the records.

References

Duffy, Sean. Part I: Origins in Atlas of Irish History, ed. Sean Duffy. 1999. Gill and Macmillan, Dublin.

Gardener, David; Harland, Derek and Frank Smith. Genealogical Atlas of Ireland. 1964. Desert Book Company, Salt Lake City, Utah. Ouimette, David S. Finding Your Irish Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide. 2005. Ancestry, Provo, Utah.

What's In a Name? ...McCue Tree Edition

Surnames
McCue
Variations found in the records: None at present but could include McHugh
As one might suspect, Mc is a diminutive of Mac, Gaelic for "son of" with Hugh being derived from Aodha or Aoidhe, from the very popular personal name Aodh, meaning 'fire'. Both variations of the name can be seen in Irish and Scottish genealogies, with the Irish side believed to have originated in Ulster province.  Since the McCue family tree of the deceased only extend back three generations and has yet to cross the pond, it is not possible to comment on variations of the spelling but let's see what we can find out about the distribution.  According to Ancestry.com surname statistics, the majority of McCues came from Ireland, settled in New York and Pennsylvania and were laborers.   According to the Irish Times, McCues were primarily found in counties Leitrim, Galway and Donegal based on Primary Valuation property survey of 1847-1864.
McEvoy
Variations found in the records: None at present but could include MacAvoy
"MacEvoy (or MacAvoy) is the phonetic anglicisation of Mac Fhiodhbhuidhe, possibly from the Irish fiodhbhadhach, 'man of the woods'.  In the north of the country, MacEvoy was used as an erroneous equivalent of MacGiolla Bhuidhe, 'son of the fair-haired youth'." (Site reference) Unfortunately this researcher is unsure if the McEvoys in this line were Irish, Scots-Irish or Scots.  It has been suggested that the McEvoys settled in county Kerry, located on the southwest coast of Ireland just north of county Cork. 
Holahan
Variations found in the records: Hollowan, Hollihan, Hollahan
According to the Dictionary of American Family Names (Oxford University Press, 2003), Houlihan is the "anglicized form of Gaelic Ó hUallacháin ‘descendant of Uallachán’, a personal name from a diminutive of úallach ‘proud’, ‘arrogant’."  The Houlihan name originates from the Munster province, just west of Leinster province, the latter of which contains county Kilkenny.  The Holahans (or Hoolahans) of Kilkenny have been traced "back to James Holahan, who was born in 1694, and died in 1759" (O'Hart 1892: 486).  Sadly, I have yet to link the American Holahans to the individuals listed in this pedigree; need more US documentation before crossing the pond.  The Irish Times notes that the spelling of Holahan as such is quite rare and is primarily seen in counties Dublin and Cavan; the most common spellings are Holohan and Hoolahan.

O'Donnell

Variations found in the records: None at present

"O'Donnell comes from the Irish O Domhnaill, 'descendant of Domhnall', the name Donald meaning 'world-mighty', who came to reside in county Donegal in the northwest and counties Clare and Galway on the west coast, south of county Mayo. (Site reference)  Like the McEvoys, the specific origin of the O'Donnells in this line is unknown at this time.  As of 1847-1864 Primary Valuation property survey (Irish Times), the name O'Donnell was quite numerous in the counties Donegal, Limerick, Mayo and Tipperary.

Osterndorff

Variations found in the records: Osterndorm, Osborn, Ostendorf

If you have not guessed already, Osterndorff is the combination of two German words, ostern meaning Easter and dorf meaning village, whilst osten would be 'east'.  So the surname is either 'Easter village' or 'east village', and if some of the family history notes are to be believed, the surname had a "von" in front of it, thereby making the meaning "from the Easter village" or "from the east village."  Osterndorf is also a city in the district of Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony, Germany.  Lower Saxony is a state in the northwest of Germany, with its northern border the North Sea and whose capital is Hanover, a location associated with this line of the Osterndorffs.  It should be noted that this is the Germany of the early and mid-1800s and not the Germany of the 20th Century.

Blohm

Variations found in the records: Bluhm, Bloom

The Dictionary of American Family Names (Oxford University Press, 2003) notes that the German meaning for Blohm (also Blöhm) comes from Middle Low German blome ‘flower’ but that there is also a Swedish variant Blom and a Jewish (Ashkenazic/Yiddish) version Blum, both with the same meaning as the German.  At the current moment of this research, the Blohms can be traced back to Hanover, Germany of the early 1800s and are of the Lutheran faith. No link has been found (yet?) to either the Swedish or Jewish versions.

The two surnames not described here are Schmults and Tonns; this is due to the lack of information confirming these matrilineal surnames.  When more information becomes available, the names will be included.

References

Dictionary of American Family Names. 2003. Oxford University Press.

Gardener, David; Harland, Derek and Frank Smith. Genealogical Atlas of Ireland. 1964. Desert Book Company, Salt Lake City, Utah. 

O'Hart, John. Irish Pedigrees. 1892. Vol 1

O Se, Diarmuid and Joseph Shelis. Teach Yourself Irish. 2003. Contemporary Books, Chicago.

Robertson, Boyd and Iain Taylor. Teach Yourself Gaelic. 1993. NTC Publishing Group, Chicago.

If you haven't noticed, the McCues have take up nearly all the posts. This is due to the fact that there are 159 people I can report on, compared to the 1055 people in the Campbell tree.  But for those of you who cannot wait and don't have the money to pay for a subscription, I have added the gedcom for both family trees to FamilySearch.org.  These trees have the resources I added on Ancestry but you cannot access those records without a subscription.  One of the great parts about FamilySearch is the fact that this website has more local/state level records that are not available on Ancestry.  With any luck, I should have some interesting tidbits to share soon.

Want to know something specific?  Wish I would get to a particular person already?  Shoot me an email or leave a comment, and I will try to address it as soon as possible.

Until next time...happy hunting!

New Thoughts on Teaghlagh Holahan Part II Photos

In organizing my ancestry notebooks, I noticed that John Aloysius McCue's WWI draft registration was dated for 1918.  Looking into MapQuest indicated that the address listed for John -  301 Central Ave, Leonia, Bergen, New Jersey - no longer exists.  Perhaps the street has been renamed if the city is correct or the boundaries of the city have been redrawn within the last 95 years, either way, finding a modern location for this house is difficult.

Another interesting point about these pictures is the fact that only Marguerite Holahan is pictured with her McCue cousins and yet she had two older sisters close in age, amongst seven living siblings at the time.  If more of the Holahan children visited with the McCue children, why were they not all photographed together?  It could be the lack of financial resources, health of the children, connection between eldest and youngest sibling, or any other number of reasons.

If you look closely, it would appear that
Helen's toy is a plush toy dog.

Also, where was Eleanor Holahan McCue, who took the photos and what kind of camera was used since these are not portrait studio photos?

...Some of these questions may never be answerable.

These images will be contrasted in the next post on the paternal McCue cousins, the Hayes.

In this photograph, is the middle individual really Marguerite Holahan or is it Estelle Holahan? Their age difference is only two years, making Marguerite two years older and Estelle four years older than William McCue, seen on the right.  So the question then becomes, how much older does the tallest female in this photograph appear in comparison to the male?

I leave it to the viewer. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below!