Home to Knockanarroor

Описание: Home to Knockanarroor Project

Overview
This is a video project of my journey back home to my family's roots in Knockanarroor Townland, located just east of the city of Killarney in County Kerry, in western Ireland. Knockanarroor, pronounced "knock-on-a-roar", is an unmarked dirt road where my grandmother's family lived at least until 1840s, before the Great Famine in Ireland starting in 1845. (There are several spelling of Knockanarroor, so I am using the spelling from the 1911 census.)

It is becoming increasing popular for descendants of immigrants in the United States to search for the origins even when they have few details, a century or more after their ancestors left their "old countries" in Europe or other lands. There are more resources available to the public as records become digitalized and available online.

My family was part of a Catholic colony settled in De Graff and Murdock in Minnesota, about 1876. Minnesota was poor in jobs during that time, but not in land. Land was set aside for the poor and homeless immigrants to move to in Swift County and make their livings farming. To this day, my family continues to farm the land my ancestors acquired.

Like many immigrants, my family left Ireland not by choice, but most likely out of a need for survival. A photo of my great-great-grand mother, Ellen Brennan Foley, was found this past winter in a pillow case with enough details to guide me to Ireland, after a short search with my handful of hints.

In April 2011, I travelled "home" for the first time known to my family to the precise location my Irish ancestors lived, worked, worshiped and made their living in a townland described by the locals as a "poorish land" of rough ground, surrounded by bogs.

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