Thanks, Jack; how embarrassing to have a Californian tell you where a town is in Northern Virginia (Walnut Creek, isn't that the other name for Eden?)!  and, I don't want to debate the Eastern Shore thing (for you who don't know is it the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay or the eastern shore of the Atlantic Ocean)?  Since my family is fron Norfolk I have both bodies of water covered.

My West Indies connection, I first went to cyndislist.com, then jamaicansamilysearch.com and their Sailors' list.  But search around Cyndi's List, I am sure there are more direct contacts now than when I did this 10+ years ago.


In a message dated 4/7/2006 2:01:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Jack Fallin <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>Dear List:
>
>Because I'm a Digest subscriber, I'm going to try to respond at once
>to a number of folks who picked up on my initial note.
>
>1.  Is a given surname Irish?
>
>The following website gives you a quick way of identifying potential
>Irish surnames.  Keep in mind that the site identifies names in
>Ireland -- you must consult the actual description to see whether it
>fits in as Gaelic Irish, Anglo-Norman [also sometimes called "Old
>English"], English, or (in a number of cases) Scots in origin:
>
>http://scripts.ireland.com/ancestor/surname/index.cfm
>
>2.  For Pat in Montana - what about those Lafflins?
>
>I went ahead and ran the above website for you -- it didn't find
>anyone spelled that particular way.  However, both Laughlin and
>MacLaughlin are definite Irish names (indeed I have a McLaughlin line
>on my mother's side).  Although my particular line pronounced the
>"gh" like a "k" -- it also seems pretty common for it to be
>pronounced like "f ," which would meet your phonetics.
>
>3. For Kathryn Holland - Tarralls, and where the heck is Lancaster
>County?
>
>Dear K., you don't give us dates for the West Indies detour, the
>dates are pretty important for trying to pick up pre-1700 patterns.
>Also, since you seem to be one of the rare ones who can actually nail
>down a West Indies connection, can we prevail on you to describe the
>resources that paid off.
>
>Sorry about Lancaster County, but it's a little difficult to name a
>prominent city.  How about Kilmarnock?  After all, this is a place
>where the county seat, including the requisite Confederate memorial
>with my 2G Grandfather's name on it,  is still called just "Lancaster
>Court House."  But I can't resist commenting on your note that you
>are "definitely an east coast Virginian."  Accomack aside, you can't
>get much more "east coast" in Northern Virginia than Lancaster County!
>
>4.  For Jeff Duval - where's the beef in 1679 Barbados and Kings of
>Leinster?
>
>I hear you.  I have a "Fallan" who was being held in Montserrat in
>1640 for being a part of a conspiracy that the 2nd Duke of Carlisle
>(who owned the West Indies at the time) was willing to see
>"repayred," a few other references on Barbados, some coming after two
>separate sets of Fallins (mine in Northumberland Co. VA before 1670
>and another set that we've never been able to connect in across the
>Bay in Dorchester, MD about 20 years later) had already arrived and
>that's about it.  Hence my desire to see if we can find any common
>threads.
>
>However, I wouldn't throw out the King of Leinster story; well into
>the 1700s the old Gaelic families in Ireland tended to stay in pretty
>closely defined areas.  Although I see a lot of discussion to the
>effect that "O'" in Irish names is a reference to grandfather
>(parallel with the actual use of Mc and Mac to refer to a person's
>father), it's my understanding that the "O'" [Ua] in Gaelic was much
>more general and referred, not to any given individual, but to the
>whole interrelated clan.  So it's perfectly possible that you have a
>reasonable claim to relationship to an old King of one of Ireland's
>original provinces -- but it wouldn't depend on the particular way
>your family happened to get here and would be generally equal to
>similar claims by every other Cavanaugh/Kavanaugh around the world.
>The notion of individual hereditary office did eventually creep in to
>the picture -- but it was just another form of Anglicization and the
>end game there was the elimination of all the old Gaelic nobility.
>
>Jack Fallin
>Walnut Creek, CA

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