This little girl is the only one of my ancestors, back to 1800, not born in south Ulster.
It brings to mind another little girl, her great-grandmother, who was born in India about 1794 and married 11 years later.
Welcome To Treasure your Exceptions
“If I may throw out a word of counsel to beginners, it is: Treasure your exceptions! When there are none, the work gets so dull that no one cares to carry it further. Keep them always uncovered and in sight. Exceptions are like the rough brickwork of a growing building which tells that there is more to come and shows where the next construction is to be.”
–William Bateson, in The Method and Scope of Genetics, 1908.
If you want me to explore your family history, go directly to my services page.
If you want to see what I have been able to find out about my family - read on.
Of course I invite you to do both!
This site is a showcase for the possibilities that exist for those with Irish ancestry.
Family Index (or just click the blue info icons, blue arrow leads to the beginnings of my story)
This site builds on work started two generations ago by my great-uncle Jack (Rev John Morell McWilliam) 1885-1970. Reading his notes and the geneological and other materials he left, it is clear that while he collected a considerable mass of data some of which would otherwise have been lost, there were also significant errors of interpretation. In other words, more recent information and techniques have become available. I assume that this is also going to apply to my own work. In this site while I am trying to be as objective and source based as possible, inevitably my own prejudices and biases will appear. I can only hope that, as with Jack, some of the material I present would likewise also have been lost.
This applies both to my own childhood memories and more importantly memories from my parents and others of their generation and the one before them which guided me while searching the various genealogical and historical records.
The first law of science is that 'the science is never settled; it is always contingent on the next piece of data'; the same principle applies in genealogy. It follows that this site is very much a work in progress.
Search the site
I am working on a 'Search Box' for the entire site.
In the meantime CONTROL F gives a FIND Box for individual pages. This function is particularly useful for data rich pages ie Legal Papers, Church Records, Census Records etc.
Note that in many cases original spellings of names & places as recorded in the original record were retained. For example Morell also appears as Murrell, Mureall, Muriel etc.
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