Waking the Tree
If my people are your people too, welcome!
This is a collection of translations, transcriptions and histories that I’ve generated over many years of research. The people I write about are little people, working people, often women – the ones you wouldn’t read about in school.
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A Farm at ‘Lake’ Hamilton
The O’Mullan family, including my 3rd great-grandfather William O’Mullan, leased a fair bit of acreage in Mount Hamilton – but it looks as though they had to drain a lake to get it. They rented portions of what was a lake in 1832, drained it, and brought it entirely under plough by 1837.
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Elizabeth Gallacher, very nearly Scottish
My great-grandmother was born in Dundee, Scotland to parents who were born in Scotland, and grandparents who were born in Ulster, Ireland. In the Scotland of her day, that made her Irish – not Scottish.
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Margaret Teresa Costello
My grandmother, Margaret Teresa Costello, was born to John J. Costello, a blacksmith, and Honora Brown in Newark, NJ on the 3rd of August 1903. Her father would died of kidney failure when she was not yet 3 years old, and she grew up in her mother’s boarding house on Plum St. in Newark.
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McAllens of Westminster
Daniel McAllen was a shoemaker born in Ireland around 1821 to James McAllen, a labourer. He emigrated first to England before the age of 20, and then to America at the age of 28, in 1848.
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Wiggans of Lancashire
This story tracks the Wiggans family in Lancashire, England back to 1730, although the name is much older. It is derived from the personal name “Wuicon” or Wigand – meaning high or noble – and it was first recorded in the Domesday Book as “Wighen” in 1086, in Cambridge.
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The Shoemaker’s Cottage
My 2nd great-grandfather, Daniel O’Mullan, moved to Moyaver from Mount Hamilton around the time he married Isabella Scally. They lived in a cottage on the Limepark Estate.