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Chapter Five - Getting in the Correct Prendergast Family Line
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When Sue and I were both retired in 2006, we planned the first of five holidays in Ireland. Each holiday was about a month long. As mentioned previously, we got some good leads on where to find our Prendergast, Fleming and Flynn Irish cousins from our Fleming cousins, Jean Fleming Miller and Kathleen Fleming Griffin. Sister Josephe Marie Flynn gave us some leads for finding "Flynn" origins as well.
Those Prendergast leads got us to "the West" of Ireland to Roonagh, just beyond Accony, and to the door of Tommy Scott, the youngest of Dick and Margaret Scott's family. The Scott's were the family that James Marquette Fleming had visited back in the 1970's, along with visiting Richie Prendergast and others in the area. By 2006, Richie Prendergast and Dick Scott had died (in 1993 and 1995, respectively), and Tommy told us that his mother Margaret was in Dublin, recovering from heart surgery and probably not likely to be able to come back home again. Tommy was as helpful as he could be, but he had little knowledge of the family history. Days later, we did get to look through the Kilgeever Parish church records at St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Louisburgh, but the earliest records from the 1850's were difficult-to-impossible to read, plus there were no records earlier than the 1850's.
We visited both the main ("Old") Kilgeever cemetery near Louisburgh and the newer cemetery at the half-parish in the Killeen community. There were a good number of Prendergast headstones and a few Keane headstones as well. We talked with a few people at the church and cemeteries, but they only had limited ideas on where to look for living Prendergast's.
Kilgeever cemetery information can be viewed online at https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2301334 .
The Killeen cemetery information can be viewed online at https://www.findagrave.com/cemtery/2287687 .
Kilgeever cemetery information can be viewed online at https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2301334 .
The Killeen cemetery information can be viewed online at https://www.findagrave.com/cemtery/2287687 .
So, in addition to enjoying the usual tourist sites, we went on to look for the rural church of St. Brendan's in Myna, north of the city of Westport in the Kilmeena community. Kilmeena is the community where one of our "Kean-Cain-Kane" DNA cousins had said some of his ancestors had come from.
After driving all around on the back roads along the east edge of Clew Bay with no luck in finding the church, we stopped where a man was working in his garage and asked about the church's location. When we told him that we were looking for church records for our ancestors, he went right to his home and brought out his wife, Patsy.
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This was our first encounter with Joe and Patsy who have been so good in helping us find our way around the area, as well as helping us with our research. When we told Patsy about the Accony area and our Prendergast and Keane ancestors she was amazed because it turns out her parents were married by one of the Prendergast priests, plus one of her ancestors was a McHale from the Pulgloss area, just east of Accony. This meeting was in 2007, and then in 2018 we discovered through the autosomal DNA testing that we are cousins through that McHale family line. Patsy Kelly Gibbons
When we returned to Ireland in 2008 and checked in with Tommy, we were happy to meet his mother, Margaret, who was home from Dublin and in relatively good health after her heart surgery. She and Tommy continued their work as postmasters for the area that Margaret's husband, Dick (R.I.P.), was the postmaster in earlier years until his death in 1995. Margaret said her Dick would have known all the family histories, but she thought the connection we had with each other was likely because Dick's mother was Sarah Leeny Prendergast, the sister of James Prendergast, Junior, who was the son of James "Seamus Mor" Prendergast.
Patsy giving a tour of St. Brendan Church Cemetery
Traveling back to Accony the next day, we took another photo of the old, thatched-roof home of the Prendergast's and noticed a small sign on one of the walls that gave a Prendergast owner's name and also gave the future plans for restoration that had been approved by the Mayo County Council. When we visited Patsy again we told her of this notice on the building, plus another interesting connection we had made when we went on a tour of Clare Island. On the tour we met two young ladies from the US on the same ferry boat going out to the island and, surprisingly, one of them looked a lot like our niece Katie. When we returned on the ferry boat because of the chilly weather, the two girls asked for a ride back to Westport if we were going that way since they didn't want to wait for their ride from a relative who wasn't coming until much later in the day. In talking on the car ride back to Westport, we mentioned our search for Prendergast's in the area and the young lady that looked like our niece said that they would be visiting one of her Prendergast relatives that evening to learn about her Prendergast family history. We thought it was an interesting coincidence until we thought about it and the similar appearances of the young lady and our niece, Katie. The ladies said they were staying with their relatives and we dropped them off at these relatives' home. Telling Patsy this story got her thinking about the possible relationship and she figured out who the family was likely to be.
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By the time we returned for our 2009 holiday in Ireland, Patsy had made the connection with the family. And so, this couple, Michael and Bridie, met us for lunch that year and gave us a tour of the Greater Louisburgh Area. It turned out that both Michael and Bridie had Prendergast ancestors---Michael's from the Louisburgh area and Bridie's from the Claremorris area. They shared copies of historical records from the Prendergast's in the Accony area which added to our research.
In addition, Patsy got in touch with a lady in Westport who knew the person on the sign on the wall of the old Prendergast homestead. This lady whose name was on the sign, Deirdre, lives in Switzerland. She emailed to tell us about her father's work on Prendergast family history that she and her uncle, Jon---the same Jon discussed previously---were working on to use at the "Accony School Reunion." Deirdre emailed us the records they were working on and compared my research with theirs. So, more and more information came from Patsy's help that all started with our lucky, accidental meeting when we had become lost in Kilmeena in 2007.
We were eager to "crash" the Accony School Reunion in 2009 and had been emailed more of the Prendergast family history put together by Jon. Jon thought we might be descendants of an unnamed Prendergast daughter who was in the Padraig "Paddy" Prendergast and Peggy (Lyons) Prendergast family line since this person had limited records available which is often an indication that the person probably emigrated. That connection is mentioned in a "guest entry" I had posted on the www.acconyschool.com website which was included in the commemorative book along with our photo. I posted it in advance of the reunion hoping that someone would be able to connect the Prendergast details more completely. Here is my email that became a book entry:
"Even though I am not an alumnus of Accony National School"---A guest entry from acconyschool.com by Robert O'Keane
I am the proud great-grandson of a 'Katherine Prendergast' who was born and raised in Accony in the 1820's and 30's. Katherine is likely to be listed as an 'unnamed daughter' in a Prendergast family tree currently being developed by others. Katherine Prendergast married my great-grandfather, Mathew O'Keane (Keane), a teacher who came to the Accony area in the late 1830's or early 1840's (hedge teacher?).
Then they immigrated to America in 1848 and settled in rural Wisconsin about 100 miles north of Chicago where I still live on a little corner of the family farm and where one of Katherine and Mathew's sons and then one of their grandsons farmed. I, the great-grandson, went back to Mathew's profession and became a teacher.
Then they immigrated to America in 1848 and settled in rural Wisconsin about 100 miles north of Chicago where I still live on a little corner of the family farm and where one of Katherine and Mathew's sons and then one of their grandsons farmed. I, the great-grandson, went back to Mathew's profession and became a teacher.
A cousin of Katherine's came from Accony sometime after 1848 to visit in America but became so ill that he had to return to Ireland on a stretcher to die and was given the sad nickname, 'Sick Geoffrey.' But upon returning to Accony, he was restored and went on to lead a long and happy life. Later, another cousin, James Prendergast, born 1847, the son of James Prendergast and Mary McKay [probably "McHale"], came from Accony to America in 1875 to marry my Great-aunt Mary Jane, a widowed daughter of Katherine and Mathew, in what was probably an arranged marriage.
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Other Prendergast relatives, identified on the back of old photographs---Ann, Sadie, Mayme, Agnes, and Nellie---lived in the Chicago area in the late 1800's, but contact with them has been lost since the early 1900's.
Even though your school records would probably not have many details from the first half of the 1800's, your Accony National School Reunion is still of great interest since it takes place in my Great-grandmother Katherine's home region and in an area where my Great-grandfather Mathew might have been a teacher in Ireland, as well as the place where the two probably met and married.
My wife and I, both retired teachers, have taken special interest in the earlier, one-room schools of our rural America where Mathew taught after coming to America. Those schools have similar descriptions to the early descriptions of your Accony School in the "Stories" section of your website. I attended a two-room school in rural America in the 1950's that also appears similar to your school's descriptions.
Please excuse a pesky American for rambling on about family history on your website. It would be a pleasure to be able to purchase a commemorative booklet of your Accony National School Reunion if it could be put on sale on your website or just made available later at the shop next to the Derrylahan in Louisburgh. We hope to take a fourth holiday in Ireland this autumn and can look for your booklet then. Until then, we will follow your Accony School Reunion website closely.
Good luck in all your efforts and thank you for sharing this reunion experience."
Instead of an autumn holiday, we decided to attend the reunion and had a wonderful time because of the overall hospitality. We ended up feeling a much closer relationship with the people and the area. Patsy and her cousin Aluine joined us as well because the two of them had McHale ancestors coming from the same area. There was an open house in the afternoon of the reunion day at the school that included a Mass and a reception. This was followed in the evening by another reception, a dinner and a dance at the Derrylahan Pub and Restaurant in nearby Louisburgh. (On page 96 of this family history, the URL address for our travel blogspot will take you to photos of this 2009 holiday.)
The reunion committee put together a commemorative booklet that they sold that day. They also maintained a website for the reunion and the local history for several years before and after the event. a lot of the photos that Sue took of the day's events were posted on the reunion website. Later on, as mentioned previously, they also put the Kilgeever Parish baptismal records on the website that I had transposed from the Mormon library microfilms. We still did not have a direct link to our Prendergast family line, but we had a good many additional records and great experiences.
The more I went over the records I did have, the more Great-grandmother Catherine's place in Jon's family history of the Prendergast's as "the unnamed daughter of Padraig Prendergast and Peggy Lyons" did not quite match up with family stories and the overall timeline of events in the lives of Mathew and Catherine. So, I started putting together a position paper on the details, both the ones that did not match up and also an alternative connection that made a better match.
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I sent the following alternative argument to Jon, John (the webmaster for the Accony School Reunion), and Charmaine in 2012 after getting support for the rationale from the genealogist Nancy in Chicago:
1- There is no "Patrick, Paddy or Padraig in my family line which should have shown up in "naming procedures" that would ordinarily have Catherine and Mathew's second son being named after Catherine's father, but their second son is named "Richard." Richard is the other Prendergast brother who came to Accony. Catherine as the daughter of Richard "Dick" and Bridget (Lyons) Prendergast would make more sense.
2- Family stories have Catherine and Mathew's first daughter as an "unnamed infant who died at sea on the voyage to America." So, based on the typical Irish naming procedures, her name would most likely have been "Bridget." And due to this death at sea, the name would probably not be used again (which is the case). [Not included in this rationale but discovered in 2017 after the National Library of Ireland posted church baptismal records online are the baptismal records for a "Bridget Keane, born to Mathew Keane and Catherine Prendergast in the Castlebar area," which makes Catherine a better fit to the Richard "Dick" Prendergast and Bridget Lyons Prendergast family line, since they appear to have had their first daughter named after her mother's mother, who would be Bridget Lyons.]
3- Our family stories have James Prendergast coming from Ireland to marry my widowed Great-aunt Mary Jane. James was said to be a first cousin, which would again put the two of them both in the same line of descendants of Richard "Dick" and Bridget---James being the son of Catherine's brother, James "Seamus Mor" Prendergast. [This relationship was supported when our Flynn cousin, Sue Boelk, talked online in 2016 with a Patrick McGinley of County Galway who is related to the Prendergast's and who emailed about his family story noting: "James having an aunt Catherine Prendergast, born about 1822, and, I wonder, is that Matthew's wife? It is fairly certain that James went out to relatives!"
4- In the 1970's, our cousin, James Marquette Fleming had enough family stories to get him to Louisburgh and Accony to meet up with Richie Prendergast, Dick Scott and others in the area. His letters mentioned talking to them about "Sick Geoffrey" and James Prendergast coming to marry our widowed Great-aunt Mary Jane. Dick Scott knew the same story since his mother was Sarah Leeny Prendergast, the sister of the James Prendergast who came to marry our Great-aunt Mary Jane. (Sara and James are both children of James "Seamus Mor" Prendergast and grandchildren of Richard "Dick" and Bridget, as well as niece and nephew of Great-grandmother Catherine.) [Not included in the rationale but discovered in 2019 is the death certificate for James Prendergast that lists his father as "James Prendergast" which would be accurate to his father, James "Seamus Mor" Prendergast.]
5- The "Catherine Prendergast" who is identified as the daughter of Richard "Dick" and Bridget in Jon Gibbons' family tree research is said to have married a Richard Heraty/Hegarty in Carrowkennedy. But, when I searched for public family trees on Ancestry.com, I came across three family trees that pointed in a different direction. The Catherine Prendergast in these three online family trees had this Catherine as a child of Patrick Prendergast and Mary Gibbons, and this Patrick Prendergast was a son of James "Old Jimmy" Prendergast, the third brother in the original family. This was a Catherine Prendergast from one generation younger. The 1846 date of birth for this Catherine would be two years before our Mathew and Catherine emigrate to America with their infant daughter in 1848. Jon Gibbons' "Catherine Prendergast" does not match up---age-wise, time-wise and ancestor-wise---to these three other family records.
Now most inter-related family trees have Catherine Prendergast as the daughter of Richard "Dick" Prendergast and Bridget (Lyons) Prendergast.
3- Our family stories have James Prendergast coming from Ireland to marry my widowed Great-aunt Mary Jane. James was said to be a first cousin, which would again put the two of them both in the same line of descendants of Richard "Dick" and Bridget---James being the son of Catherine's brother, James "Seamus Mor" Prendergast. [This relationship was supported when our Flynn cousin, Sue Boelk, talked online in 2016 with a Patrick McGinley of County Galway who is related to the Prendergast's and who emailed about his family story noting: "James having an aunt Catherine Prendergast, born about 1822, and, I wonder, is that Matthew's wife? It is fairly certain that James went out to relatives!"
4- In the 1970's, our cousin, James Marquette Fleming had enough family stories to get him to Louisburgh and Accony to meet up with Richie Prendergast, Dick Scott and others in the area. His letters mentioned talking to them about "Sick Geoffrey" and James Prendergast coming to marry our widowed Great-aunt Mary Jane. Dick Scott knew the same story since his mother was Sarah Leeny Prendergast, the sister of the James Prendergast who came to marry our Great-aunt Mary Jane. (Sara and James are both children of James "Seamus Mor" Prendergast and grandchildren of Richard "Dick" and Bridget, as well as niece and nephew of Great-grandmother Catherine.) [Not included in the rationale but discovered in 2019 is the death certificate for James Prendergast that lists his father as "James Prendergast" which would be accurate to his father, James "Seamus Mor" Prendergast.]
5- The "Catherine Prendergast" who is identified as the daughter of Richard "Dick" and Bridget in Jon Gibbons' family tree research is said to have married a Richard Heraty/Hegarty in Carrowkennedy. But, when I searched for public family trees on Ancestry.com, I came across three family trees that pointed in a different direction. The Catherine Prendergast in these three online family trees had this Catherine as a child of Patrick Prendergast and Mary Gibbons, and this Patrick Prendergast was a son of James "Old Jimmy" Prendergast, the third brother in the original family. This was a Catherine Prendergast from one generation younger. The 1846 date of birth for this Catherine would be two years before our Mathew and Catherine emigrate to America with their infant daughter in 1848. Jon Gibbons' "Catherine Prendergast" does not match up---age-wise, time-wise and ancestor-wise---to these three other family records.
Now most inter-related family trees have Catherine Prendergast as the daughter of Richard "Dick" Prendergast and Bridget (Lyons) Prendergast.
The Prendergast headstone at Murrisk Abbey
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Chapter Six - Research Methods and DNA Connections
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Obtaining records directly from Kilgeever Parish, either at Killeen's half-parish "Church of the Holy Family" or at the larger "St. Patrick's Church" in Louisburgh is not very functional since they do not have records available for the 1820's, 30's and 40's or earlier. As mentioned previously, we actually had a chance to look in the old parish records book for Kilgeever but it was mostly illegible in its first pages that appeared to start in the 1850's.
Besides looking for Prendergast and O'Keane/Keane records in County Mayo, we also looked for O'Keane/Keane records in Counties Galway, Clare, Kerry and Waterford. We also looked for Flynn ancestors in County Leitrim, Fleming ancestors in County Westmeath and Kiley ancestors in County Cork. Checking online for the best sites to go to when we reached Ireland usually led us to parish records at a specific church or parochial house (priest's residence). There were also local libraries and heritage/historical centers. (Many Irish public libraries are closed on Monday's, by the way.)
Ireland's General Register Office (GRO)---that can be contacted online---does not have listings of births, marriages and deaths until those starting in 1864. The earliest online national censuses for Ireland are for the years 1901 and 1911. There are specialty directories available, such as the Griffiths Valuation, the Flax Growers Directory and the Tithe Applotment Book, that will have limited data.
As noted previously, a good source of records recently became available from the online Irish church records from the National Library of Ireland website at www.nli.ie . The National Archives of Ireland at www.nationalarchives.ie also has records available. The previously mentioned online search available through The Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) library at www.familysearch.org is also a good place to start. Don't forget that local libraries my have valuable material, including online resources like Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest that you can also view/use for free. Most counties in Ireland have "Heritage Centres" that can be contacted online at www.historic-ireland.com/ . They will prepare a research paper for a fee on whatever is available in their records for an ancestor. Individual genealogists in Ireland can also be contacted in Ireland or through Ancestry.com for them to do the entire research for a fee as well.
Researching both online and in person have been equally valuable. Remember that you may already have one of the best resources available by contacting your relatives, especially your elders in the hope that they have a memory or an old letter/document to direct you to more information. Researching online will probably be a good way to obtain a few leads on where to go in person.
As noted previously, a good source of records recently became available from the online Irish church records from the National Library of Ireland website at www.nli.ie . The National Archives of Ireland at www.nationalarchives.ie also has records available. The previously mentioned online search available through The Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) library at www.familysearch.org is also a good place to start. Don't forget that local libraries my have valuable material, including online resources like Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest that you can also view/use for free. Most counties in Ireland have "Heritage Centres" that can be contacted online at www.historic-ireland.com/ . They will prepare a research paper for a fee on whatever is available in their records for an ancestor. Individual genealogists in Ireland can also be contacted in Ireland or through Ancestry.com for them to do the entire research for a fee as well.
Researching both online and in person have been equally valuable. Remember that you may already have one of the best resources available by contacting your relatives, especially your elders in the hope that they have a memory or an old letter/document to direct you to more information. Researching online will probably be a good way to obtain a few leads on where to go in person.
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A good example for our research process was the information available on a website like "Louisburgh & Killeen Heritage" at www.louisburgh-killeenheritage.org .
Another good place to begin research was through DNA testing. I started with the male, Y-DNA test in 2005, a year before our first holiday in Ireland.
Most Keane-Cain-Kane's of Irish ancestry are in the "R1b" haplogroup. (Note: a haplogroup is just a division of DNA like the "A," "B," "O" used for blood types.) That would ordinarily make it difficult to use DNA to narrow down our place of origin in Ireland. But, our "Keane" Y-DNA is in a different haplogroup. This unusual haplogroup of Irish Kean-Cain-Kane surnames probably originated in the Mediterranean or Eastern European regions and arrived in Ireland by migration or as slaves aboard Viking raiding vessels. (The Vikings traveled by sea in their ships to raid throughout many regions, as well as the British Isles and Ireland.) These distant ancestors were then either adopted by "Keane-Kane-Cain" Clan families, took the name or, as Len Keane, a DNA project administration, theorized, became part of a warrior clan like the Samurai of Japan.
Whatever the place of origin, it became easier to find other "Keane's" who make up 2% of the Irish population. So, as more people took the DNA tests, a small group of people with the Keane-Cain-Kane surname and unusual DNA identity was found that had ancestors from the northern County Galway region of Connemara in the community of Ballinakill. There were also later ancestral DNA links to areas north and south of the town of Westport (that is, Kilmeena and Aughagower) in County Mayo. These areas are all just a short distance from the Prendergast homeland of Accony. So, this has been another way to narrow down Great-grandfather Mathew's possible places of origin and easy connection to the Prendergast's.
From the book "Portrait of a Parish-Ballynkill, Connemara" that we purchased in the town of Clifden, nearby the Ballinakill area, there is a description of the settlers of this area as people who had to address the British charge to "go to Hell or Connaught."
The book notes: "In 1641 the Irish clans took advantage of the struggle between Charles I and Parliament in England to rise against the colonising English and Scots, and in the Civil War that raged over the next eleven years, more than 500,000 Irish (one third of the population) perished by the sword, plague or famine, or were banished. After 'The Reduction of Kilkenny' by Cromwell, an Order made on January 2, 1651, promising protection to persons in arms against the [English] Commonwealth upon their submission to the authority of Parliament, it specifically excluded certain places in Connacht as 'known harbors and receptacles for the enemy, and other bloody and mischievous persons....' "
High praise, indeed, for our ancestors! But wait, it gets worse. In the book "Tales of the West of Ireland" edited by Gertrude M. Horgan (c. 1966, 1988) and based on the early articles in 1910-to-1913 in The Mayo News newspaper by James Berry, he writes: "When you reach there, you may imagine...all the vast region to the West of this imaginary line I have drawn is...the vast territory of Connemara, the home of the exile and the outlaw in the old days. Of course, it is not all the wild region which our ancestors called Iarr Connaghta, but it is the impregnable, inaccessible citadel of the wilds of Iarr Counnaghta. Once you reached that region, you were as safe as if you had taken refuge in the moon. There was no road of any kind in this vast region, not even a beaten path...until 1833; hence there was no law, and everyone did as he pleased."
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From a different perspective, our Irish Cousin Patsy sent an article that mentioned "Keanes" in a 1969 issue of "An Coinneal," the biennial booklet from the Louisburgh area. The author, John O'Dowd of Falduff, wrote about the early settlement days of "Iar-umhal," the lands around the small mountain Croagh Patrick in County Mayo. The author notes" "I often think that this Connacht of ours, 'Connachta, cruinntheacht Eireann,' should erect a monument to Oliver Cromwell for his 'To hell or to Connacht!' For what did Cromwell's policy do? I shall answer, and at the same time I ask what did he and the other, little Cromwells mean. They tried to be rid of the flower of our Gaelic race; the men who would not submit to slavery, the warriors who stood against the foreigner, the bards who composed our people's songs, the historians who recorded the deeds of our fighting men. All that was best in the other provinces was cleared away; and Connacht, who had given many of these to the North in the first instance, now welcomed them back. I once asked the late William Keane of Killadoon what it was that brought his family, the famous fighting O'Cahans of Derry, into this part of Connacht, and he told me that he had heard the history of these events from his own father who, he said, was a fine seanchai...and came from a fighting race."
After matching people with the same DNA haplogroup, especially with a common surname and a common place that ancestors came from, people usually join a "DNA project group" and correspond with others in the group in an attempt to learn more about their ancestors. I have had email correspondence with "DNA cousins" Peter, Jim and Bill, whose ancestors all came from the same part of Ireland as our O'Keanes/Keanes. Sue and I met Peter in 2009 on our holiday in Ireland where he was also vacationing and taking an Irish language course.
More recently, Sue and I took the autosomal DNA testing that assesses male and female lines back five generations. Again, the testing results are limited to who else has taken the test, but we have been surprised to find a number of known and unknown cousin relationships, including two men from the same Prendergast homeland in the Kilgeever Parish area, plus the accidental meeting with Cousin Patsy, in the Kilmeena area.
After matching people with the same DNA haplogroup, especially with a common surname and a common place that ancestors came from, people usually join a "DNA project group" and correspond with others in the group in an attempt to learn more about their ancestors. I have had email correspondence with "DNA cousins" Peter, Jim and Bill, whose ancestors all came from the same part of Ireland as our O'Keanes/Keanes. Sue and I met Peter in 2009 on our holiday in Ireland where he was also vacationing and taking an Irish language course.
meeting Peter---a DNA cousin
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The autosomal DNA testing was done through both "MyHeritageDNA" and "AncestryDNA." Both give an "Ethnicity Estimate" which has changed several times as more results are compared. Differences found in the DNA testing reflect the differences in how each company breaks down various regions of the world. Testing details even note that a sibling taking the same test could get slightly different results.
The latest "Ethnicity Estimate," dated 21 September 2021, from Ancestry.com estimates that I am 53% "Ireland" (North Connacht, South Mayo, South West Mayo and South West Munster, North Kerry and North Cork). I am also 17% "England and Northwestern Europe," 16% "Scotland," 7% "Sweden and Denmark," 6% "Germanic Europe" and 1% Eastern Europe and Russia."
On the MyHeritageDNA testing, my ethnicity is estimated to be 69% "Irish, Scottish and Welsh," 8% "Greek and South Italian," 7% "Scandinavian," 6% "Balkan," 6% "English," 2% Ashkenazi Jewish," 1% "Nigerian" and 1% "South Asian."
The diversity of ethnicity and origins should not be surprising based on a genomic study done by geneticists at Trinity College Dublin that was discussed in a Washington Post article by Rachel Felman, dated 29 December 2017 with the title, "Ancient Irish genome reveals a massive migration from the east." The author notes: "Ireland is particularly interesting to geneticists, because it seems like a place where many ancient peoples converged. Based on the men's DNA, the researchers suspect that their ancestors may have come to Ireland from the Pontic Steppe---the area of Eastern Europe that sits over the Black Sea, including what's now the Ukraine. An Irish farmer...had DNA that spoke of ancestors mostly of Middle Eastern origin...."
This unusual "Keane-Cain-Kane" DNA haplogroup could even have been a part of the ancient humans described in a UPI article dated 16 April 2018 by Brook Hays. She describes Neolithic farmers migrating out of Anatolia, modern Turkey, several thousand years ago who traveled west across the Mediterranean, arriving in Britain around 6,000 years ago. The article goes on to note early farmers that also came from Spain and Portugal. As the farmers mixed with the hunter-gatherer population, they brought new ways of subsisting, new types of pottery and the tradition of building stone monuments. These Neolithic farmers were the likely builders of Stonehenge in England.
It has been long believed that the Irish descended from "the Celts." But, a March 2016 article in the Irish Central website notes that the DNA analysis of the bones in the remains found in County Antrim predate "the Celts" arrival on the Irish shore by around 1,000 years. "Instead, Irish ancestors may have come to Ireland from the Bible lands in the Middle East," The artifacts of these discovered people were hundreds of years older than Celtic artifacts anywhere in the world.
Looking towards Accony School from Bun na Thiaririn
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