My interest in Irish history and family history was first piqued when I met my first relative beyond my immediate family. My mother’s younger sister, Breda, visited New Zealand the summer of 1977. She told me the family story that we were descended from Thomas DAVIS (1814 – 1845) a figure in Irish history involved in the Young Ireland movement, and a poet and journalist. We might be on the far side of the world, but we had links to someone famous who had a deeply romantic story of literature and political rebellion. Thomas Davis was to become the focus of a school assignment the following year, and I took photos of the Thomas Davis statue in Dame Street on my first trip to Dublin three years later, and on subsequent visits as an adult. And that’s where it lay.
I don’t recall what triggered my adult desire to get to the bottom of the story. I was living in London and enjoyed regular trips to Ireland and to family there. It may have been the sightings of the Davis statue or the fabulous history collections in the bookshops that prompted me to think again about Thomas Davis. Whatever it was, now buried in my memory, I started what would become a multi-decade adventure into genealogy and family and social history. I did not know my arse from my elbow. I began with Thomas Davis and his family rather than starting with what I knew about our family and working back in time. Rookie mistake. Subsequently I learned a great deal about the Davises and the Dublin society they inhabited in the 1800s. I also spent enjoyable hours in the beautiful reading room of the National Library when holidaying in Dublin. I discovered that Thomas Davis died a childless bachelor at the age of 31. There went the family myth.[1] However, by this stage I was hooked on the thrill of the genealogical chase, immersing myself in periods of Irish history, learning the geography, demography, and socio historical customs of my motherland.
When I started researching it was a slow and expensive process, flipping through large index books in the family records office and ordering certificates in the genealogical equivalent of Russian Roulette. I spent many hours turning the wheels of microfilms of parish records and archived newspapers in the National Library in Dublin, scanning illegible writing from the 19th century, and waiting for records deliveries in the National Archives. The thrill of a find was all the sweeter for the length of time it took.
Having started researching my Irish family while living in London, I continued my perverse journey by starting to research my English family history after having moved to Dublin.
On what I considered my ‘Irish side’ (although it turns out I had two of these, through my father’s mother’s family) I unveiled the clashing histories of a Fenian whose daughters married Royal Irish Constabulary men, and whose son joined the British Army, followed by a grandson who fought as a Volunteer (Old I.R.A.) in the War of Independence and entered local and national politics. Women gave birth to multitudes and lost many. There was the story of a woman known as Fluffy who loved the stage, the loss of land, WW1 deaths, a child’s burning, a photo of a house that took me to Birmingham from N.Z. and of course, being Ireland, migration.
Many of these ancestors lived through periods of significant social and political change, seeing the demise of landlordism in Ireland, and independence to 26 counties, with the birth of a new State and all its machinery of law, government and military.
My ‘English side’ turned out to be equally fascinating: Irish famine migrants, southern agricultural workers, Cockneys, a gangster taken out by a hitman, and English Romany gypsies swept along by social change.
In the late 1990s and 2000s I undertook oral histories with my parents and their surviving siblings. These were a mixture of their stories and their memories of their families. Their memories seemed like the recent past at the time, but as all six have since been lost to death or dementia they are now precious recordings with links to lost generations.
Genealogy and family history allows us to connect ourselves and our personal biographies to those of forebears and the social history in which they lived. It enables us to part-form our own identities through the revelations of the past. DNA testing takes us further, demonstrating our connections across a web of genes and geographies. We are, none of us, one thing. In a time of increasing nationalism, intolerance of difference and rising tempers there is no better time to discover who we are as jigsaws and mosaics of all that has passed before, to and through us, if we are willing to let it.
Hackstaff (2010) argues that genealogy can be seen as a political practice and a means by which to grasp intersectionalities. From my experience it is an opportunity to grasp, absorb, and celebrate these intersectionalities and diversities. It has also proven a means by which to reunite parts of families who lost each other over generations. This family history is an opportunity for the reader, my kin, to share in the same.
It can only ever be a partial history, defined by the records accessible at the time of searching, and my interpretations and experience. These pieces are evidence-based and I otherwise make clear where family stories come into play. As a history it can never be complete as new data becomes available to prove and disprove current thinking, and our family continues to expand. I read guidance and examples on writing family histories. I do not feel at all comfortable in pretending to be the voice of our ancestors by writing a fictionalised narrative version of events. How can any of us, in our current geographical locations and in the 21st century, pretend to accurately portray the lives and emotions of these people? I do at times include my reflections and questions to prompt us to think about the context in which our ancestors lived.
Please note: not all family research uncovers positive histories about individuals’ behaviour and I have chosen not to publish anything that I believe may cause hurt to the living. I do not name anyone I believe to be alive in the posts.
I have managed to piece together some branches of the family tree via DNA links and this work is ongoing. By separating out my DNA results from my father’s I have been able to develop a picture of both sides of my family, and have been working my way through the hundreds of DNA connections to try to fill in the blanks left by the destruction or lack of records and the lack of family knowledge.
It’s been my privilege to piece together the story so far. I am indebted to a number of people for sharing their knowledge and interest: a very special thanks to Carol Bampton, John Creasey, Mick Crosbie, Tony McGinley, Michael Millward, Don O’Sullivan, Brian Vaughan, Frank Furlong, Catherine Neill and George Wadding (RIP) and to shared DNA correspondents who helped join the dots.
This site is dedicated with love and thanks to Maura, Peg, Breda, George, Jack, Tom and Eileen for the hours of shared stories, and to Paddy, Ita, Tony, Bridget, Olive, Mary, Julie and Dicky with whom I didn’t get that chance.
I hope you enjoy this attempt to tell the story of our family. Please, feel free to contribute, ask questions, add memories or correct facts. (I have hundreds of pages of documentation in background files if you are interested in more detail.) And if you are a part of our extended family, please get in touch.
[1] Or does it? Thomas Davis, a Protestant, was the son of James Thomas Davis – a surgeon in the Royal Artillery, from a family of Welsh blood but long settled in England – and Mary Atkins, daughter of John and Mary Atkins, descendant of an Anglo-Irish family who trace back to the Norman House of Howard, and the Celtic House of O’Sullivan Beare. (John was the son of Robert Atkins and Anne O’Sullivan). George Davis (1856-1912), my great grandfather originally from Wexford, was the son of John Davis and Maria Atkins. Was there an Atkins connection? See the Atkins family section for reference to the lineage of the Atkin(s) families of Leadington, Firville and Waterpark Carrigaline. I am exploring this.
In Search of Thomas Davis 