© Donal G. Burke 2015 While the Darcy family was established and rose to prominence in the late medieval period in the town of Galway, a branch of the family came to be established at Kiltullagh in the half-barony of Athenry by the seventeenth century. Members of this branch were dispossessed of part of their […]

© Donal G. Burke 2016 Dr. Edward MacLysaght in his ‘Irish Families, Their Names, Arms and Origins’ stated that Fahy is ‘almost exclusively a County Galway name, though it is also to be found in the areas bordering that county, such as north Tipperary and in Dublin.’[i] He described them as ‘a sept of the […]

© Donal G. Burke 2015 There are few surviving references to members of the Ledgett family in east Galway. Those few records indicate that the family were Protestant, of the Anglican Church of Ireland and resident about the parish of Fahy, near the town of Eyrecourt in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. One of the […]

© Donal G. Burke 2015 The arms of Andrew O Hearne of Hearnsbrook, parish of Killimorbologue in the county of Galway, who died in 1733, were described in a pedigree dated 1782 of his descendant Lady Maria O Kelly, Countess of the Holy Roman Empire, as ‘Gules, three herons Argent membered Or’ given by William […]

© Donal G. Burke 2015 Edward MacLysaght in his ‘More Irish Families’ wrote of the Tannians that, while there were some families of the name in County Galway in the middle of the twentieth century the name was little known outside Connacht.[i] He noted that the ‘Gaelic-Irish’ form of the name O Tanaidhen was used […]

© Donal G. Burke 2015 Edward MacLysaght wrote in his ‘Irish Families, Their Names, Arms and Origins’ that Cannon was ‘the anglicized form of the name of two quite distinct Irish septs. Though identical in English these two are different in Irish. One is Ó Canáin: this is a Hy Many (Ui Máine) sept of […]

© Donal G. Burke 2015 Edward MacLysaght, in his ‘Irish Families, Their Names, Arms and Origins,’ described the name Moran as essentially a Connacht name and held that the majority of the population so called belong to the Connacht counties of Mayo, Galway, Roscommon and Leitrim. This he ascribed to the presence at one time […]

© Donal G. Burke 2015 One of the earliest references to individuals of the name Mulgehy in County Galway dates from the late sixteenth century, with the inclusion of Donnagh oge (ie. óg or ‘the younger’) O Molgeyhe and Teig og O Mulgehy among the many of the county issued a pardon by the Crown […]

© Donal G. Burke 2015 Edward MacLysaght, sometime Chief Herald of Ireland, in his ‘Irish Families’ stated that ‘the O Downeys were of some importance in early medieval times, when there were two distinct septs of Ó Dúnadhaigh. That of Síl Anmchadha, of the same stock as the O Maddens, several of whom are described […]

© Donal G. Burke 2015 The graveyard known in the twentieth century as the old graveyard at Kiltormer in east Galway pre-dated the nineteenth century as a burial ground, with its earliest surviving headstones dating from the eighteenth century. In 1838 it was referred to as the ‘old grave-yard still in use.’[i] The old graveyard […]