I - Ireland

We all have some Irish in our families don’t we ? It certainly seems that way. The Famine was certainly a catalyst, but not the only reason. They left their native country in droves and went to every corner of the world.

My great-great-grandfather Edward Vose and at least two of his siblings were born in Ireland. His father was with the Royal Sappers and Miners and posted to Ireland to carry out the Ordinance Survey of Ireland. As was often the way then, the entire family travelled with the Army – even the families of Privates. Apparently though the topic of being born in Ireland was a touchy one, his grand-daughter in a letter to my parents said that although it was true that he was born there – he made sure everyone knew that he wasn’t actually Irish.

But there are Irish in my family on my Dad’s side.

Dad’s grandmother Sarah Hall came to New Zealand with her parents and siblings in 1877. They were from near Cootehill in Cavan. One of Sarah’s aunts, a sister of her mother Anne, also emigrated to New Zealand in the 1880s. Another of her mother’s sisters emigrated to New York in the 1850’s and a brother and some their cousins followed in the 1870’s and 1880’s. One of Sarah’s cousins founded the Californian Perfume Company which would later become Avon.

Sarah’s mother was a Hall too – coincidence ? I used to think so. Then along came DNA.

Some years ago, I had made contact with a cousin in New York and he sent me a lot of research from a fellow cousin in New Zealand. None of which I had seen before, but when a DNA match appeared in our lists of matches for the mother of the author of the research, I reasoned I could attribute our match (and shared matches) to Sarah’s mother’s family.

There were many other matches though who appeared to be in Ireland, or to have roots there. None of the names in their trees were familiar to me, but I did notice commonalities across some of their trees. I put it in the too hard basket for quite a while.

Then one day, I decided that I need to make a start to try to unravel it all and so I messaged a few of the larger matches. Some replied and were as baffled as me, but one was the key to it all. It seemed most of these people were connected through Sarah’s father William. My new DNA matched cousins had the names of a couple who turned out to be the likely great-grandparents of Sarah. They had had a large family and as with Sarah’s mother’s family, many of her father’s had also emigrated to the US and even New Zealand.

A lot of information was shared across the interweb. They had some children in their tree who they didn’t know too much about, so it seemed that Sarah’s paternal grandfather fitted in there. What a surprise to learn that Sarah had relatives on her father’s side who had also emigrated to New Zealand, this time settling in Canterbury, rather than Auckland and the Waikato. All of the common names I had seen in the trees for the mystery DNA matches fell into place amongst the descendants of siblings of Sarah’s grandfather.

Solved, I thought.

But then, my original DNA match, the one I had been using as a control for Sarah’s mother’s side of the family appeared to have shared matches to Sarah’s father’s side of the tree too.  As I see it the only way that can be, is if Sarah’s parents were related… I went back and looked at the new tree from those new Irish relatives and what did I see ? Another son in the family they had pieced together where they didn’t have information going forward – and his name ? David…the same as Sarah’s grandfather.

From email discussions with a couple of others it seems that it is highly likely that Anne and William Hall were first cousins. The community they came from was a close one, they were Presbyterian and there seems to have been a lot of intermarriage between local families through the generations.

Being Presbyterian as well seems to point back to Scotland; perhaps it is true that these families were part of the Ulster Plantation settlement in Ireland in the 17^th century. They all do seem to have more Anglo sounding surnames than what are normally thought of as being typically Irish. (Bailey, Hall, Pritchard, Reilly, Moncrieff, Livingstone, Montgomery et. al.,)

There is still a lot of unravelling to do, and it still seems quite overwhelming. But I will get there in the end.