COLLINS, and others of Dunmanway parish, including CROWLEY, DONOVAN, REGAN, SULLIVAN...
Greetings:
Like Tim Lemire, who posted to this site in January 2018, "My goal is to locate and connect with living relatives in Ireland".
I am a Collins and have traced my ancestry back to the mid 1700's, principally in Dunmanway. Before they emigrated to Ontario, Canada, my ancestors were members of the Dunmanway parish. They lived in the surrounding townlands, and were all farming families. For many years prior to their emigration, between 1845 and 1850, they were tenants on the Donovan farm in Derinasafa/Derrynasafagh.
My Collins ancestors, and many others from the Dunmanway region, made the voyage to North America (Ontario,Canada) and settled primarily in the counties of Middlesex, Elgin and Huron. Those in my tree, many related by marriages over two centuries, include these: Breen, Collins, Coughlin, Coveney, Crowley, Deasy, Daly, Donovan, Grace, Hooley/Whooley, Hurley, Leary/O'Leary, Mahoney, Maloney, Manning, McCarthy, Murphy, O'Brien/Brien, Regan, Ronan, Sullivan/O'Sullivan and Sweeney.
All of these families lived near and among each other after their arrivals in Canada, which primarily occurred between 1840 and 1880. I have a wealth of information, stories, photos and records, about my ancestors and the Dunmanway emigrants. But most of what I have gathered and discovered has added little to my knowledge of my ancestors lives in Ireland, before they left. What I am earnestly seeking is any resident/residents of West Cork who might have some connection to the ancestors of Dunmanway area as described here.
I have done extensive y-DNA testing in an effort to aid my search. However, myself and less than a dozen other Collins in West Cork, share a unique DNA not expected by the experts to exist in Ireland at all. I have been classed in a haplogroup in which only one other tester appears. In short, DNA matching for me has been nearly nill, and has not advanced my quest to know more about my ancestry pre-emigration.
I am encouraging any interested readers of this post to contact me. Bridging the gap of nearly 175 years between now and then has been expectedly difficult. How glorious it would be to hear from anyone with a relationship to any of these people.
Kind regards:
Michael Collins
P.S. I previously posted to this site in January, 2019. I uploaded some photos of ancestors, but am including here another upload of my great, great grandmother, Honora (Sullivan) Collins. She married Thomas Collins in Drinagh in 1843, and they lived thereafter in Derinasafa, on the Donovan farm where other family also resided. 30 years after arriving in Canada, in 1881 she left there, to join my great grandfather, Michael Thomas Collins, in Los Angeles, California. She died there in 1904, at age 90.
