pquinn on Family Tree Circles

I have been looking at scanned copies online of the Griffiths Valuation for years, so why I got so excited when ancestry.com announced that they had just released actual viewable copies is beyond me.

But... it took the ancestry.com scanned records to bring something to my attention, because that was when I first noticed this oddity. My family comes from Donegal and Tyrone. I've only pulled the Donegal records so far, and have not had a chance to start on the Tyrone records, so I don't know yet if this appears on those or not.

There seems to be specific "pockets" of my relatives on the Griffiths that have dark black pen or pencil marks to the left of their names! On some pages, it may only be one or two names. On other pages, there are a LOT of marks.

On a couple of the pages where a group of relatives were all living pretty much together, there is a big hand written black "X" to the left of their names!

I wrote to the Library of Ireland about this - they asked if these marks were possibly somehow made by the scanning equipment. Nope - they are indeed human made marks. It was suggested that someone may have marked their place while transcribing them. Nope - these marks aren't like that. Some pages will have one person with this black mark. Other pages, there will be two people right next to each other - they will have this mark and no one else on the page does. On yet other pages, there will be several "clusters" of names, and each one of them will have this mark. And the "X" mark by a couple of groups - that really has me baffled.

It was also suggested that I look at other web sites and see if the marks are also on their scanned copies. They are, so they are indeed on the original records.

It wouldn't mean anything to me except for the fact that these marks are appearing to the left of EVERY ONE of my relatives! I thought I would have to use a highlighter or make a mark of my own to pick people out on the Valuation list. Turns out, I don't have to - someone did it for me decades ago! lol

My husband suggested (jokingly) that maybe the marks meant that these people were known troublemakers and they were being brought to someone's attention - who knows? He could be right! lol

It was also considered by another family member that maybe it meant that these people emigrated, and that's what the marks mean. But these aren't the ones who did - these are the family that stayed in Ireland.

I've been extremely lucky in finding my family in Ireland - the relatives managed to keep their ancestry information intact and it has been a piece of cake to gather my data from old saved Bibles and other documents they kept hidden away. We can take our line way back without a break thanks to this.

But... now to the puzzle of WHY are there big black marks by my relatives? Hmm....

My gr-grandfather James QUINN came to America in 1848. He arrived in the Boston harbor on November 17, 1848 on the Ship Coronet. James came with 4 other relatives, we believe they were all brothers.

According to family in Ireland, one of the boys left immediately for New Jersey to work in an uncle's bar. James and at least one brother (Patrick) stayed in Boston, but in 1850 the brother was killed. According to the story, Patrick was a milkman and James would help him with his route. One morning the reins got tangled, so Patrick climbed on the back of one of the horses to untangle them. He slipped and fell, hitting his head on the street, and it killed him instantly.

In 1852, James married Catherine Ann OVERN, who was also an Irish immigrant. They married in St. Mary's Church in Charlestown, MA.

By 1856, James now had 3 sons. The family joined a settlement party that was heading into Minnesota. They settled in an area that was known as Erin, in Rice County. We know that some of the OVERN family came with them, or joined them very soon after.

What happened to the remaining 3 QUINN boys? That's a question we would love to figure out. We're sure that at least one of them also migrated into Minnesota. In fact, there were many QUINN's living in Minnesota during this time period; they seem to have associated with each other, and we have to assume that at least some of them were related to us.

I read about a Patrick Quinn who was an Indian interpreter in upper MN, and was massacred in an uprising. Some of the family still in MN today say that they were told this man was related to us. I can't say for sure, all surviving archived information on him say he was born in Dublin. But there must have been some connection somewhere, why else would the descendants today say he was related?

That's all for now. It's been a fascinating journey so far, and it's not over by a long shot!

I am descended from James Patrick QUINN, born 1828 in Ballintra, Donegal. James came to America in 1848, arriving in the Boston Harbor.

He married Catherine Anne OVERN, who was born in Enniskillen, Fermanagh in 1833, and came to America in 1835. Catherine's parents were both born in Cloughenramer, Newry, Down.

James and Catherine migrated from Boston/Charlestown to the small settlement of Erin, Rice County, MN in 1857.

I'll get more into stories regarding the family later on. For now, these are the bare facts to begin with.