March 9, 2005
Meneely Newsletter # 6
Dear Friends and Family,
Once again I want to first welcome those of you
who have just started receiving this newsletter. I hope that you will find it
both enlightening and informative. Let us also take this time to thank
everyone who has sent their information in to our Clan Registrar USA/Canada,
Larry Meneely and still we want to encourage those of you who have not taken
the time to do so, to please make the time and effort to assist us in this
endeavor. There are some of you out there who have completed some research and
compiled a family file. We beg of you to go into your computer and open up
your file and forward it to us.
Accolades go out to cousin Dave Cuzzort on the
fine work he has done on the Meneely Clan website. Those of you who have not
yet visited the site or those of you who have not gone there recently should
do so now. The address is
http://clan.meneely.net/ . Dave has made many additions to the site
including many links to the information where I have done a lot of my
research. Be prepared though, as you can spend hours surfing around on these
links. I have been asked to express to all of you that the recent
interruptions on the website were due in part to: Dean and Melissa upgrading
the hardware and software for the server and there were a few days down time
because of DSL line problems with MCI. Let me also take this time to remind
you that the website belongs to all of Y-O-U. Anyone who wishes to add
information and or pictures to the site is welcome and encouraged to do so.
Our failure or success in large depends upon everyone's willingness to share
and to contribute.
Let me take some time to try and clear up a few
things that have been brought to my attention recently. First of all, no that
is not me pointing to the Meneely St. sign. That good looking fellow is my 3rd
cousin, and fellow researcher Nick Meneely. Also the 2012 clan gathering is
not just for one certain branch of the family, it is for all clan members
world wide. If you are a Meneely or a descendent of a Meneely then this
gathering is for you.
Next let us shed some light on some noticeable
research discrepancies. As time goes by we have more and more records
available to our disposal so research becomes easier and more accurate. There
have been some fellow family researchers who have, from time to time, come up
with different facts and sometimes these include either dates, names or
places. For instance some members of my particular branch of the family have
had a much later death date for Noble Cunningham Meneely, some also have him
being born in Pa. instead of NY. I show Noble's death to have occurred on
April 16, 1879. There are two things that support this date: #1 his wife is on
the 1880 census and he is not, #2 April 16, 1879 is on his tombstone something
which is hard to argue with. I believe that many thought Noble to be born in
Pa. because in the "Family Record of John C Meneely" it states that Noble's
brother John was born there. It was reasonable to assume then that Noble was
born there also. That is not the case, however, as records from the First
Presbyterian Church in Troy, New York show that Noble was christened there in
May of 1812 and he had elder siblings christened there before him. There is
also an apparent difference between what many researchers in my particular
line believe to be true and what is shown on Dan Meneely's Online Bell Museum.
There are some family records on Dan's website which were done by Philena
(Hanks) Meneely, the widow of Andrew. Philena states that Andrew was the
oldest son of Andrew James and Eleanor (Cobb) Meneely. Many of my fellow
researchers, including myself believe that John C Meneely who was born in
Ireland in 1787 or 1788 to be Andrew's elder brother. There are many things
which point to this as being true, most of which Larry so eloquently examined
in his addendum to the "Family Record of John C Meneely". There is another
fact which also lends credibility to this assertion:
my gr-great grandpa John Clinton Meneely's younger brother was named, you
guessed it, Andrew James Meneely. Now all of this leads to a couple of
possible scenarios; #1 we are wrong, #2 Philena was wrong or #3 John C Meneely
was Andrew's elder half brother. The son of Andrew James Meneely but not of
Eleanor Cobb. One theory is that Andrew James Meneely's first wife may have
been the sister of John Clinton. This would explain a lot of things, including
the relationship between the Meneely family and the Clinton family. It would
also help explain Harmon's claim that the "C" which appears many times as an
initial for someone's middle name to stand for Clinton and that it goes back
to the McClintock family of Scotland and Ireland. This at least gives us some
fodder for future digestion.
While doing research here recently I did a search
at ancestry.com for John Meneely on the 1860 federal census. I got 5 hits;
two of which were my gr-gr-gr-great grandpa and his son John C Meneely, who
were in Michigan Township, Clinton County, Indiana. There was a John Meneely
in California and one in New York. There was another who was a big surprise;
an additional John Meneely in Clinton County, Indiana. None of us knows what
the connection was but certainly they (our ancestors) did. And no, it was not
a repeated record of one of the aforementioned John Meneelys as it appeared to
be the same census taker and the ages were different. To top it all off, there
was at least one John Meneely missing on that search. We know that my gr-great
grandpa was living in Nevins Township, Vigo County but his name was spelled
incorrectly by the census taker (imagine that). I wonder how many other John
Meneelys were missed in a like manner?
In previous editions of this letter we have
discussed that the name Meneely comes from the Gaelic name Mac an Fhilidh
which means "son of the poet". Now before any of you go running off with some
romantic notion after watching the movie "Braveheart" that we were kilt clad
"warrior poets" running around the battlefield with Robert the Bruce and
William Wallace... let's examine a few things. As romantic an tempting an idea
that might be it would be a false notion. First of all we were not
Highlanders, we were Lowland Scots as were Robert the Bruce and William
Wallace and in fact all the noble houses of Scotland were Lowlanders. Lowland
Scots did not wear kilts. First of all the Gaelic word "Fhilidh" stood for a
specialized kind of poet which was a "file". Secondly the Gaelic word for a
poet who had gone mad from the atrocities he had witnessed in warfare which
forced him to live a hermits life was "geilt". The Lowland Scots readily
intermarried with the native Pictish peoples of Scotland and quickly gave up
their "Clannish" way of life to adopt feudalism with the arrival of the
Normans to Great Britain. Don't let this throw you as the Lowland Scots were a
very tough people and had existed as a buffer between the English and the
Highlanders. That was one of the reasons they so readily left Scotland for
Ireland during the plantation. It seems that life was extremely difficult when
you were constantly in danger of having your livestock stolen and crops or
home destroyed either by the Highlanders or the English. Also after coming to
America these hardy people made up the bulk of our frontier. During the
American Revolution the Scots-Irish made up about ten percent of the
population but they made up over thirty percent of our revolutionary force. It
has also been said that no Scots-Irish family was comfortable after
immigrating to America until they had moved at least twice. Many of the Ulster
Scots were more than a little disillusioned after fighting for independence
and against unfair taxation, one of the first things that President George
Washington did in order to get the new country on it's feet financially was to
adopt a new tax. Well the thing that was decided to tax first was whiskey.
This did not set well with many of our ancestors contemporaries as the
Scots-Irish Americans thought a man ought to be able to either eat or drink
his own corn without being taxed. This "whiskey rebellion" helped to open up
and settle many new parts of America. Rather than pay the taxes many people
simply left Pennsylvania and followed the Allegheny Mountains to the southern
frontier. (Pennsylvania had the largest population of Ulster Scots settlers
than any other colony.) If any of you have been to the Clan website and
listened to "Grand Time Coming" performed by an Ulster folk group it is easy to
see where Bluegrass music got its roots.
Now I don't know about any of the rest of you, but
I must confess that I can not help but to start to tap my foot when I listen
to "Grand Time Coming". I could never understand why a lad from Indiana would
like bluegrass. Or for that matter why the largest bluegrass festival in the
world, Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Festival is held in the little town of Bean
Blossom, Indiana. (Yes that is a real town, it is right next door to the
hamlet of Gnaw Bone, Indiana) After all Indiana fought on the Union side
during the Civil War. Maybe the reason for this is something deeply ingrained
in my inner most self. Perhaps it is an Ulster Scots thing. Now I know that a
lot of you reading this are very educated people. Some of you are doctors,
layers or have graduate degrees. Having a good education is also culturally a
Scots-Irish thing. John C Meneely, the first in my line to come to America in
1795 was an educated man. He piloted a steamboat on the Hudson River and after
moving to Ohio in the 1830's taught school. The Irish Presbyterians placed a
great emphasis on education. Now on the other end of the spectrum... do any of
you know where the terms "hillbilly" or "redneck" come from? Well, they too
are from Lowland Scots, but we will cover this in our next letter.
At last! There is attached to this newsletter a
copy of the newly approved Meneely Coat-of-Arms. It was commissioned by the
Clan Committee and unanimously approved for use on February 6, 2005. It was
designed by our Clan Registrar for Ireland/UK, Sam Meneely, Isle of Lewis,
Scotland. Here is the explanation of the symbols and their meaning.
As you are looking at it... supporting the shield
on the left side is a lion rampant signifying our Scottish lineage, it is
supported on the right by an Irish wolfhound rampant which stands for Ireland.
The crest atop the helmet is a fist holding a dagger which signifies our
willingness to defend our family, clan and country. There is a potato vine
entwined around the crest to signify an agricultural link as we were
originally a farming people. The motto at the top is Deus, Familia, Gens which
stands for God, Family, Country. The emblems on the shield are; upper right
third the "red hand of Ulster" which we find on the Ulster Provincial Flag and
on the official Coat-of-Arms for Northern Ireland. It is one of the oldest
symbols from that old province of Ireland: the upper left third is a Saltire
or the "Cross of Saint Andrew" which stands for Scots + Christian: the bottom
third is a salmon which stands for the long journey many of our family members
have made to new lands. Draped over the shield is a scarlet cloak with bright
yellow feathers worn by the Fhilidh of old to signify our earliest Gaelic
origins.
Please forward this to all your relatives in your
respective address books.
Peace and Blessings,