Ireland XO
Back to Message Board

Connells/O'Connells from County Clare, Ireland to Australia

Limerick

Hi,

My family (O'Connell) is planning a trip to Ireland and we wanted to trace a few significant places to visit in terms of our Irish heritage.

This is what I know fromreserach to date....

The following family travelled to Sydney arriving in March 1854 on the ship Rodney. They are recorded in the shipping logs as the Connell family but every reference in Australia is O'Connell.

James Connell (b c.1809) married a Bridget Arhill(b c.1805-10) circa 1830 in County Clare. Bridget's parents wereThomas Arhill, a farmer, andBridget Doyle.

James and Bridget had the following children; Patrick, Catherine, Martin, Thomas, Michael and John. All family members travelled to Australia.

Patrick was the first to travel to Australia leaving on the David McIver and arriving Sydney1852.

Bridget died in 1873 in Sydney (Redfern). James died before 1866.

I am trying to establish a previous generation connection to James.

Would love to hear from someone who knows more of the story.

Thanks

Brad

IrelandXO member

3 replies

Brad:

Welcome to ireland Reaching Out!

It will be difficult to determine where exactly your family came from in Co. Clare. James would have been too young for the Tithe Applotment listings and the family left Ireland before the Griffiths Valuation was taken in Co. Clare. Also Connell/O'Connell is a very common name. I did search for Arhill in the Tithes and Griffiths and got no record.

Roots Ireland has only around eight RC parishes on their data base and I got no record when I searched for possible baptismal records for children of James and Bridget.

The Co. Clare library has a very good genealogy site which may be of some assistance

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/genealogy/genealog.htm

You may want to consider autosomal DNA testing at some point.

Roger McDonnell

Castlemore RoscommonIrelandXO Volunteer

Hi again,

 

I have since found out that the family came from Dunass (from shipping records) and that Bridget's maiden name was Arahill.  Her father was Thomas Arahill and her mother was Bridget Doyle.

We will be in Ireland in May and we are all starting to get excited about finally visiting Ireland.

Kind regards

Brad

IrelandXO member

Brad:

Enjoy the trip. We have been over 8 times. If you get a chance, make sure you visit Doolin and the nearby Cliffs of Moher.

Roger

Castlemore RoscommonIrelandXO Volunteer

Reply

Reply
One image file up to 2 MB.