Meneely
Newsletter #4
Dear
Friends and Family,
First
of all, let's start this off by thanking all of you that have sent in your
information to Larry, and also to encourage those of you who have not done so, to go ahead, and take the time
and do it. He has been extremely busy indexing all the family trees that
we have received so far. Additionally we have had some
success in connecting with some distant family
members in our line and well as in another. I also want to welcome all the new
family members who are now receiving this newsletter,
there are now about 120 households on our e-mail list. We have made new
contacts both here in the
I
need at this time to make a correction to our last newsletter. In it both Larry
and myself had put that we were descendants of Andrew
James and Elizabeth (Cobb) Meneely; it should have read Eleanor (Cobb) Meneely.
My apologies to all you family researchers out there.
We both knew better but it got by both of us.
Cousin
Dave Cuzzort is finished with the first draft of our
Clan Meneely webpage and it should be uploaded and available for all very soon.
We have had more responses to the 2012 reunion or gathering. As a matter of fact, if only half the people show up who have expressed an interest, we will have quite a crowd.
Recently
I was able to purchase a 1912 portrait taken at a Meneely family reunion in
Now
for what has been promised:
Are
we Irish or Ulster Scots (Scots-Irish):
First
of all the term Scots-Irish is strictly an American idiom. In its sound there
appears to be a connection between the Scots and the Irish, almost like a hybridization. This is not so. The term means someone who
is from
Now as a lad growing up, there were two things that I remember being on the evening news on a nightly basis. One was the war in
In
the course of doing genealogical research in the earliest available records to
date we find Meneely's with Christian names like;
Alexander, John, Robert, William, Samuel and in my line Andrew. All these names
are Scottish first names. Andrew was the patron saint of
So
here it is... although the name Meneely has its root in the Gaelic language and
was most probably originally Irish (especially when it was Mac an Fhilidh) we were by nationality at least by the year 1700 Ulster Scots. If for no other reason the simple fact
that our male ancestors would have married Protestant brides would
have in effect made them Scotsmen eventually.
Now
as for our affiliation with other families or Clans:
There
are some that say we are a derivative of the Mac
Neil Clan of Scotland, others say that we take our stock from the O'Neils of Ireland while yet others say we come from the O'Dochartaigh's of Donegal. Of the first two let us take a
look. According to the Mac Neil Clan Association of Canada, Meneely is one of
over a thousand versions of the Mac Neil name. Yet the official Clan
Association of Scotland says in the "History of MacNeill
Clan" ..." another Galloway family, the MacNeillys
are unrelated - their name is derived from "mac an fhilidh" meaning son
of the poet.
Most
of this confusion is due to the one unique thing that sets us apart.....our
name. Since the second syllable in our name is "neel"
different persons at different times and for their own reasons have used the
sound of our name to link us with other like sounding names.
The
same thing goes for our link to the O'Neil Clan we have been associated to them mostly through phonics. However it
should be noted that the MacNeills are an offshoot of
the O'Neills of Antrim. Both families trace their
lineage to "Niall of the Nine Hostages". Here is an interesting fact
it seems young Niall was the youngest son of the current Ard Reigh or High King of
Ireland. The old king had two wives and had sired three sons with his first
wife and fathered Niall with his second and favorite wife. The old king had
tested his sons to see who would succeed him as king
and young Niall passed the test with flying colors while his brothers failed
miserably. The kings first wife learning of the old king's decision
plotted for the demise of young Niall so the old man hid his son with....let's
see if you can guess... a Fhilidh who then
raised him as his own. Thus we see that Niall was also a "son of
a poet" or a Mac an Fhilidh.
On
to the O'Dochartaigh connection: I have heard from
Patrick O'Dougherty who is the Manager of the O'Dochartaigh Clan Association.
Now first I must tell you that Patrick admits that he is an American and Gaelic
illiterate. He writes..."This clan is so populated that all septs have nick-names; Out of the
Patrick's
claims do need further investigation but ultimately he has opened up the door
to more questions and few if any concrete answers. There may be a lot of truth
in what he says (or not) but this does not explain how the Meneelys came to be protestants. We also already know that
most Meneely's were at one time McNeelys
or McNeillys or such. After all our own Grant Nichol
has been to Ireland many times (14 I believe) and he tells us that often
the name McNeilly is pronounced Meneely. (For those of
you who are more than one or two generations removed it is pronounced Men
- eel - ee.) We may find that the O'Doc Meneelys got their
nick-name because one of their ancestors married a Meneely woman.
Coming up in the next edition;
we shall start on some individual family
histories.
If
you are able to, I ask all of you to put Larry Meneely on your "safe
list" or "buddy list" for Meneely Clan business: his
e-mail address is Barlar@aol.com
. Remember
our family members who are in harms way in service to their country.
Please forward this to all your relatives in your address books.
As
always
Peace
and Blessings,
Vence Meneely
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This site was last updated 02/18/07
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Thanks to Dean and Melissa Meneely