Our last day in Belfast

For two days straight we have searched in PRONI (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland). The facilities are brand new and with in walking distance of down town Belfast, and within eye site of the Titanic Center. It has been very fruitful. With all discoveries there are parts that are very convincing and a few other parts that might cause one to hesitate. We have put some of the more interesting bits of "information" into new.familysearch.org and encourage your discussion. Let us know what you think.
Without revealing any thing specific, we can say that ...
Brett has mastered the maps of the city of Belfast in the 1800's, and knows everywhere the McKennas and Singletons lived. Tomorrow he will take us on a tour.
Rich and Quinn have not only exhausted the baptismal, marriage and death records from the Christ Church, and St. Anns Cathedral data bases, but in the process they have guided our discovery of hundreds of other possible relatives.
Todd has identified at least two or three new resources at the Linen Hall Library that will be helpful in pursuing the discovery of future generations.
Rich has shared with us the history of the church in Ireland, exposing how extremely lucky we are that our ancestors we ever to find the church.
Quinn ended our day by picking a record with Rich that didn,t contain what he wanted but, but added five married siblins to another line. What a way to finish.
Brett has demonstrated how to survive on the "wrong" side of the line.
The weather is truly beautiful, the people are wonderfully convivial (unless driving an automobile), and the spirit has guided us daily.
Thanks for your encouragement and prayers.
Cheery-O

The story begins to take shape.

On Wednesday we traveled from Leslie Castle to Belfast through the beautiful country side. Ireland truly is an emerald isle. We love the country side and the people who live here.

We were able to retrace the steps of John Taylor and the first missionaries to ireland. We even had the opportunity to visit the small lake where the very first person from ireland was baptized. What a wonderful experience.

It turns out the first missionaries were preaching in the cities just immediately south and west of Belfast. This is directly between the Mckenna homelands and Belfast.

We had the opportunity to stop in a town near Lisburn and visited at an information center. The woman there was very helpful and confirmed that during the series of potato famines in the 1840's that many people left all and migrated to where the work was in Belfast. She then directed us to a "linen" museum. We were able to see how this was made and also got some good additional information about when factories begin to be built which would attract people into the belfast area from the surrounding communities.

We are beginning to think seriously that the McKenna's came from this country in the 1840's and that is why we can't find any records of them in belfast prior to this. We also have a really good lead on a birth of a Hugh McKenna with parents in this country. Today's work will be to try and get as much confirming evidence as possible.

We also had the opportunity to revisit Hugh McKenna's grave. That is the picture of Todd pointing to the ground by the tree. There is no head stone. Kind of sad.

The story is beginning to take shape. We are excited and having a wonderful and safe time. Out love goes out to all of family while we are away. You have our prayers and thoughts.

Records, Names, and Books Galore

Today was a busy and full day. We started by working at the public records office in Dublin. Who would have guessed how many books on marriages, deaths and births you could go through in one day. We went through quite a few names and some misses before we found our first matches for the trip. We were able to confirm marriages for one of Hugh McKenna’s children and a couple of other direct hits to add to our records. We are excited to find even more.

You can only get 5 copies of records per person per day, so after we finished with our 20 copies, we checked out of the hotel and headed to Emyvale. We visited a cathedral on the way where John McKenna had been given recognition and memorialized in one of the stain glass windows.

After that we visited a cemetery where the McKenna clan chieftans had been buried. We took down some additional names from here that we will try to do their work as well.

We also visited a hill where a McKenna clan had a three ring fortress built. Please ignore the 4 grown men trespassing across someone’s fence and onto private property.

We also took a drive around the country side and stopped and talked to a really nice norseman. He invited us in for coffee, but we politely declined. The people here in Ireland are really nice.

We are staying tonight at the Lodge at Leslie Castle. We are tired but excited to continue on the search tomorrow in Belfast.

Monday - The work begins

Brett offered a phenomenal prayer this morning and then the world fell apart. Unbeknownst to us there was a bank holiday in Dublin today and so the records office and the national archives were closed. Woops.

Because of Brett's wonderful prayer we were still able to find several promising possibilities for Hugh's marriage date and parentage. We will do further work tomorrow to see if these leads will bear fruit.

We visited a monument dedicated to the famine victims of Ireland who emigrated to the West. The McKenna family participated in the sponsorship of the monument. It was touching to imagine the serious impact of the famine that started in 1845 and ended in 1850, but not before it claimed 1,000,000 lives and forced 1,000,000 people to emigrate. We also visited Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells. Also we saw the Dublin tower where Patrick O'Donnel escaped and took refuge with the McKenna Clan.

We ate dinner in the Hard Rock Cafe and Brett bought some T-shirts for his favorite people in the world. If you don't get one, so sorry, too bad.

Sunday in Ireland

We have arrived. Yeah!!!!

We landed safely in the emerald isle about 3 hours later than expected. But no matter, we had a great nights sleep on the plane and we are ready to go. We checked into our wonderful hotel and then went out to see the sights. Here are some of the pictures from our stroll around town in the afternoon.

We also took the opportunity to stop by the Abbey Presbyterian church for services. However, it was a Romanian Pentecostal congregation and the service was all in Romanian. It was an enlightening experience to worship with those of another faith in their mother tongue.

Dinner was Great!! As we had traditional irish food, including Irish stew, irish bacon and cabbage, guiness steak and potatoes, and venison sausage (in remembrance of the original Hugh McKenna who killed a mighty stag with his knife in 600 AD).

Tomorrow the work begins.

The day that would never end

Our plans included a 5 hour layover in Atlanta. But we had the pleasant opportunity (sarcasm) to spend more than 8 hours there on Saturday. Wow. It feels like we could have swum to Ireland. Look how tired Richard is in this picture. I think I notice a little bit of drool coming from his mouth. :)

We are on our way!

We started our adventure today in the Salt Lake City airport. We are so excited. Here we are waiting to get on our plane.

We were grateful to be able to land safely in Atlanta. Here we are checking out the garbage services.