The origins of the Beausang surname I – French Revolution? Try East Cork

All of four months ago – seems about a quarter that long ago – I posted about my Cork Smiddy and Beausang roots. Judging from some of the search terms that direct to my blog, it seems there’s a good bit of demand out there for the Beausang part in particular. So, I’ve decided to [...]

Byrne, baby, Byrne… Wicklow inferno!

OK, my blog titles are getting worse not better! Welcome, nonetheless, to another Irish genealogy post. Earlier this week, I was contacted by my fourth cousin, Stephen Macken. Like myself, Stephen runs a family tree website on myheritage.com. Stephen worked out, through the SmartMatch system, that we share a set of great-great-great-grandparents. Thomas Boyd, whose [...]

John, Mary & Anastasia, take a bow: Cork’s Smiddys and Beausangs in 1901

The Irish Family History Foundation has started to put online its researchers’ work on the earliest complete Irish Censuses – those of 1901 and 1911. (Permit me to digress and lament the various circumstances, from bizarre mid-Great War bureaucratic decisions to Irish Civil war tactics, that led to the destruction of the 1821-1891 Irish censuses, [...]