Go Green!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! From long ago genealogy research that my mother did I knew one branch of my father’s ancestors came from County Antrim in Northern Ireland. So on St. Patrick’s Day I knew I was supposed wear orange. I may have done that once in my youth, but mostly I wore green.

My research over the last year or so shows that another branch of Dad’s ancestors came from the South – County Meath, County Cavan, County Wexford, and Dublin. The two branches began to intermarry in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1725.

So, I and my siblings have a right to wear green.

Though from what I saw today at the grocery store lots of people wore green that looked like they didn’t have a drop of Irish blood in them.

When I was in Northern Ireland in 2001 I visited some of the museums where I learned some of the history of the area. The English took over the six counties of the North in 1604 (I don’t remember the method). These English nobles cleared out much of the native Irish and brought in some Scots to do the labor on these estates. And this included some of my ancestors. James Moore was born in Glasgow in 1612. His son James Jr. was born in County Antrim in 1650. Junior’s son Andrew and his son James III moved to Pennsylvania sometime between 1717 and 1725.