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Top o' the Mornin' to Ya! Blog May 13 2020 PART 1
When I first signed up on ancestry.com in the spring of 2013, it twas only putting the very basic information on Great Grandma Nell's family and later her husband Charles. What happened next surprised me even more- constant hints popping up taking me further and further back to areas such as Tuam County Galway, Louth, and Foxford Mayo Ireland.
Many Irish families from 1846-1850 went through the horrible Irish Famine It was in fact, quite a grim time in Irish history and took on as many as one million lives from hunger and disease from both the failed potato crops (the main source of income) but also from British rule who evicted many from their homes as they had no money to pay rent. With no way to survive it is estimated that well over a million families left Ireland first to England and than many onto America.
The potatoes began to look first like this
and then later like this
So, if you were wondering whether our ancestors were part of this famine~the answer is yes our ancestors were among them!
In Nell’s family, their names were Flannigan and Filben (or sometimes known as Filburn or Philbin). In my second newsletter I had told this story but for those relatives I have just reunited with- here it is again with some additional information......
The Flannigan family came from Tuam County Galway Ireland and arrived in the United States in 1848. Census resources indicate that the Filben family arrived sometime in the early 1800’s also coming from Ireland but from the area of Foxford Mayo. Both the Flannigan and Filben families lived on the Eastern Seaboard in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In the early 1850’s, the daughter of the Flannigan’s, Hanora met and eventually married the Filben’s son Thomas. Census takers indicate the marriage took place in or around 1853.
You may well be asking yourselves if Linda did not know who these people were in the 1800's album before then how does she now? And what exactly is this 1800's album that she refers to?!?
So let us back track a moment............. When Dear Aunt Susan loaned me her collection of family photo albums,this little gem below was among them
As Aunt Shirley and Uncle Bill both recalled, on the eve of Grandma Barbara's death on Feb 25, 1998 it twas the last time that all six Bruemmer siblings were together in the same room! This album had only been looked at by Grandma, Nell and perhaps by the Cook siblings. Yet no one in generations to follow ever asked who was who!?!
All pages were of black and white and/or sepia photos. These scanned pages have now been colorized using the program I spoke of in my second blog. As the six Bruemmer siblings sat down together, they looked at the pages and wondered out loud who these people were?
Thomas Filben and Hanora Flannigan
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