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Honora O'Flynn's Irish Ancestors
Posted by Pat Flynn <pkjf@eircom.net> on Thu, 18 Jun 2009, in response to looking for the o'flynn family ancestors of county kerry, posted by mike logsdon on Sat, 02 Nov 2002
There are some threads that present details in this story as follows:- Honora born Derry or Kerry about 1680.Since the destruction of the religious houses in the mid 1500's until catholic emancipation in 1830 there is a shortage of documents that facilitates the tracing of the native Irish. The best we can do is assemble what information that is available elsewhere to get a feel of their story and it is that story that I am interested in. The line of events to your great ancestor presents in that story. If we were to assume that she was born in Derry in the northern province of Ulster, that location could fit in with the O’Flynn decadency from the Hy-Tuirtre kingdom that collapsed about 1350 further to pressure arising from the Gaelic O’Neill kingdom on their western flank and the pressure from the Anglo-Norman expansion on their eastern flank. They are first mentioned in the ancient Annals of Ulster from about A.D 600 where they controlled a kingdom on a territory some 800 square miles in area in central Ulster. Their early Gaelic or Celtic kingdom lasted for about one thousand years. They had replaced the first Ulster kingdom of the Rudricans whose ancestors arrived there about 1250 BC. The Rudricans were defeated at the Battle of Farney in modern day County Monaghan in South Central Ulster about the year A.D 324.
How might Honora have found her way to Kerry at the opposite end of the country?
This could have happened as a consequence of the War of the Two Kings/The Williamite Wars/The Jacobite Wars that took place between 1689-1692. As the Williamites gained the upper hand the native Irish who herded large herds of livestock in Creaghts moved as refugees so as to keep themselves and their families within Jacobite controlled territory. As the war progressed the Jacobite territory became reduced until finally they were compressed into the south west regions including Kerry.
Story who was a chaplain and chronicler traveling with the Williamite army (a latter day embedded reporter) observes respecting the native Irish: "It has been an ancient custom amongst them, still to remove out of the way with their cattle and all their substance, at the approach of an enemy". Of the inconvenient multitudes of the Ulster Irish, in particular, alluded to as having retired, in this manner, into the territory occupied by King James's forces, the Williamite chaplain Story, in describing the return of those emigrants to the North, in October, 1691, after the conclusion of the war by the Treaty of Limerick, says: "All the roads and other places leading from the counties of Kerry and Clare towards the North, are now full of nothing but Creaghts, and vast stocks of cattle driving homewards,"
There existed, as practiced out of the colonial military fort at Kinsale in Cork a process whereby young girls would be snatched and transported to be the wives of frontier settlers in the new world colonies. There was great demand from new world frontier planters for young women “marriageable and not past breeding” and this demand was satisfied by “man catchers” who “Spirited” away or stole young Irish girls and sold them to shipping captains. Sorry, that I have no names as to her ancestors. Her descendants know the rest of the story.
A point of note – there was also a refugee exodus from Ulster in 1643 and members of that out flux also reached the Kerry region.
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