I’ve always known that my family was Irish descended in some way. We’re too prone to doughiness and large multi-generational households to be anything but that. What with Brexit looking to be an absolute shitshow and me wanting to, you know, make the effor to STILL BE EUROPEAN, I thought it’d be worth looking into my family history in detail.
Someone recommended ancestry.co.uk to me for this. I was skeptical at first, but my god it is actually incredibly useful. If you’re interested in this kind of thing then pay the money for it - it’s worth it. You can hook into existing searches done by others, you can easily look up births marriages and deaths. It’s so easy and amazing! (Ancestry.co.uk, please feel free to sponsor me at any point).
The long and short of it is that my family is definitely Irish, at least on my mother’s side. At least three of my great-great-grandparents came from Ireland. (Two of them from Roscommon, and one from Caven County - The McGarry, Riley, and Conlon families).
Sadly none of them are enough for me to claim Irish citizenship, as you need an Irish citizen great-grandparent (listed on the foreign births register if born abroad) to be eligible.
But that’s just on my mother’s side. Turns out my dad’s side is a complete and utter mystery. My dad is… not entirely there, and he can’t actually remember his parents names now. So I haven’t been able to even start on that. I need to get hold of his birth certificate and find his parents names to go further. (You can order any UK birth certificate online, btw, if you know enough details).
So you never know, maybe I do have an Irish passport lurking somewhere on the paternal line.
I’ve also found out that if I didn’t have to sell my labour as a tech person I think I’d probably spend my time doing quiet research of this nature. This is what getting old is, isn’t it?
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