Clan McMahon Family Genealogy Page

Researching Your Irish Roots and a Listing of Family Trees

 

Rather than listing everyone's family trees, I am encouraging people to list their own lineage at OneGreatFamily.  Join the group: McMahons of Oriel.  The advantage is that their computer will match our ancestors automatically once we have enough people who have listed their known ancestry.

 

Searching for your Irish Roots:

It has become clear to me that many of you who visit this site are primarily interested in exploring your own family roots.  There's not much that I can do to help you with that.  It is difficult and time consuming, but there are some resources available to help you and I have listed them below.

One of the problems, as far as I can tell, seems to be that there are no government records of births and deaths prior to some date around 1870 or so.  Our lineage page shows names up to 1640 to 1700.  So there remains a gap for all of us of about 200 years.  Some of these records apparently do exist but are church records.  There are organizations (listed below) that will attempt to find the records of specific individuals for a fee, but I have found that there is definitely some communication difficulty in getting the search focused properly.

I'd like to deal with this issue (and am making inquiries in Ireland) by finding an individual to track down all of the MacMahon records of births and deaths during this period.  I would then post this to the site in the form of an extended family tree and you would then be able to link your ancestry directly into a lineage dating all the way back to the Collas.  I do not know if I will be able to accomplish this task and it is certain that I will not be able to do so without someone stepping up to do the tedious research on the Irish side of the pond.

Meanwhile, those of you seeking to link your known ancestry to our historical one are about to embark on a difficult task, especially if you know little about where your ancestors came from or when.  The following list of resources is intended to aid you. 

You may begin your search at Ellis Island to see if you can find which ship they came to the US on.  If you don't already know it, this will also tell you the town they came from as they listed this on the ship's transport records:

Ellis Island Immigration Records

This site - OneGreatFamily - has a tremendous number of listings and I suggest that we each add our families to it.  I have started a group on this site.  The group name is: MacMahon of Oriel.  The group password is Oriel.  You may use these to enter the site and add what you know about your family genealogy to the group.  The site's software automatically searches for others who add data that can match your own:

 

Search for your ancestors at OneGreatFamily! - Click Here

or

Onegreatfamily

Or, you may search for them in Ireland:

Researching Irish Ancestors: An Introduction

Ulster Historical Foundation

Your Irish Roots: Irish Genealogy

County Monaghan IrelandGenWeb

This organization will research for you for a fee.  Paid searches will provide only very broad information on persons with the same name or similar names to the person you are searching for.  After you receive the report, expect to use it as a research tool for further refinement on your part.

Ancestral Research Service

Research Form

Searchable Database

Here is a source of written information on finding ancestors:

Ulster Historical Foundation Bookstore

And here are some other useful links to aid you in your search:

Civil Maps

Contact the Ulster Historical Foundation by email

Northern Ireland Family History

Ancestry Ireland

Find your ancestors www.ancestryireland.com

Name, location or date:

Note: If you need records before 1845 or so, you'll have to visit either The National Archives in Dublin yourself (or hire a private researcher) or visit the local parish church in the community where your ancestors were born.

The National Library of Ireland

The National Archives of Ireland: Family History and Genealogy Introduction

 

If you cannot find your ancestors, you may wish to participate in the McMahon Surname DNA Project.  This may be your only option to establish your ties to one of the two septs of McMahon.

 

 

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