When someone signs up for our weekly Letter from Ireland, we ask them for the Irish surnames in their family and the counties in Ireland their ancestor came from originally. As a result, we now have about 25,000 entries on our list. The following names are ones we received from readers whose ancestors came from…

Cape Clear on the Wild Atlantic Way

We left the pier in Baltimore (sharing a name and a link with Baltimore city in the USA) at 10.30am and headed off to Cape Clear across a gentle swell. Cape Clear has about 130 people living there permanently – all speaking Irish to varying degrees. That had dropped from a pre-famine population of over…

A Roadtrip Around 16 Counties of Ireland – Part 4

This week on our road trip around Ireland, we move to the counties of Cavan, Longford, Westmeath, Offaly and Tipperary. In this post we finish our roadtrip around 16 counties of Ireland. You can see a map of the journey below – do leave a comment at the end of this blog post! This is…

A Roadtrip Through 16 Counties of Ireland (Part 3)

A few weeks back we went on a road trip from Cork to Donegal and back – covering 16 counties in all. When we came back we wrote up a number of posts in our weekly newsletter – and these were some of the MOST popular newsletters we have done so far. This is Part…

The Tribes of Ireland – Ireland at the Birth of Your Irish Surname.

Do you have an Irish surname in your family tree? In this Letter from Ireland we look at the Tribes of Ireland in 1150. Join us as we take a tour off the kingdoms at this time and the surnames associated with them.