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.
Rathfarnham
I left Monaghan and the borderlands region where my ancestors had lived, certainly since the eighteenth century, over 40 years ago and now live in Rathfarnham, Dublin.
It is with some amusement that I realise that a branch of my family had been here before me. An archbishop of Dublin, Adam Loftus, was granted Rathfarnham in the 1580s. It was he who rebuilt Rathfarnham Castle in the form it is in today. One of his daughters, Anne, married Sir Edward Blayney and presumably moved to Monaghan.
William 'Speaker' Conolly bought the Castle in the 1720s though he never lived there. He also built the Hell Fire Club as a hunting lodge, supposedly because he could see both Rathfarnham Castle and Castletown House.
Links to main Family Index / Conolly of Ballyshannon
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