A Fascinating Family History
A gentleman who spells his last name the same as I, McDonnell, attended one of my book talks and later sent me a family history assembled by one of his cousins.
The history is of Black Jim McDonnell and his sister Rose Ann. Both were born in County Louth, Ireland, and immigrated to New Orleans, Louisiana in 1854 or thereabouts.
The family history is quite detailed and impressive. Rather than summarize it, I’m posting the entire family history – four pdf files.
If anyone has further information or can fill in any blanks, let me know. I’ll pass it on to the family.
I do have a couple of comments, based upon my own research and included in ClanDonnell:
Black Jim and Rose Ann arrived at the Port of New Orleans. The family history author has a theory as to why New Orleans. I have my own theory. Spoiler alert: it had nothing to do with employment opportunities in New Orleans.
The author noted a couple of spelling variations for the last name. A major lesson from my book: do not be concerned with English spellings of Irish last names.
Black Jim and Rose Ann were from County Louth, within the Armagh Archdiocese. Internal migration within Ireland before the Great Hunger (1845 to 1850) was such that the family was probably from Armagh and/or Louth for several generations. (Louth, by the way, is Lú in Irish, which means “smaller”.)
County Antrim was home of the main branch of ClanDonnell for centuries. The clan was strong enough to establish settlements extending into County Down and County Armagh. Black Jim and Rose were likely descendants of these McDonnells.
Rose Ann married a man named Red Jim McDonnell, who was no relation. For reasons stated in the book, it was not unusual in Ireland for woman to marry a man with the same last name. This had nothing to do with incest. Until the dispersal of the clans, many unrelated (or very distantly related) people within a community had the same last name.
I suspect Black Jim McDonnell had black hair and Red Jim had red hair. These descriptors were often used in old Ireland. I love that the two men used these descriptors once in Louisiana.