[ arbor : tree ] + [ borealis : northern ]
It has been a very busy few months here at Arborealis, with recent updates to the website in line with WordPress’s new Full Site Editor method for designing, launching, and maintaining a website. At this date, we have completed about two-thirds of this task. We might have made greater progress but have continued to publish … Read more
Since writing the first installment of “The lot of the soldier’s wife” in 2015, the recent discovery of a (third) marriage record lifts Mary McDonnell out of the inscrutable murk of family history mystery. Nevertheless, Mary has led us on a merry genealogical chase to learning what was her lot for the twenty-one years between … Read more
Like so many other Irishmen from the province of Ulster, young Thomas Huggins ventured out to the American colonies in the early 1770s, to seek his fortune. It seems unlikely that a Revolutionary War was a part of the 18th century American Dream that Thomas sought—but that, indeed, is what he got. Equally, it is … Read more
So little was etched into the written record about our great-great-great grandmother, Mary McDonnell (1794–1869), the earliest known of our ancestors in this line from the county of Mayo. Of course, the system of record keeping favoured male heads of household, tradesmen, and soldiers. Women tended to fall off the archival radar. While we are … Read more
One evil consequence of the penal laws was, that the Irish being denied the exercise of the honourable profession of arms at home, (as alluded to in the introduction to this section,) the high-mettled youth of the land were driven to take service under foreign banners; and England had often to regret the valour of … Read more
Over the course of the next four-and-a-half years, I hope to undertake a Great War remembrance project. The intent of this project is to provide complete biographical sketches for each of our extended family’s casualties of the Great War. This is no small undertaking, as the number in the list shown on the page, We … Read more