Tradition

"All the O'Flaherties are from Galway."  Ultimately, this is true.  From the era of the Ua Briuin Seola in the sixth century (and before) our ancestors had occupied the areas around Loch Corrib (also known as Loch Orbsen), until the 13th century when the Saxons and Normans built the walled town of Galway on the banks of the river Galimh.

Then the convulsions of the seventeenth century shattered "the country of the O'Fflahertyes" who were thrust landless on the world.  Yet, the ultimate homeland remained Iar Connacht.  In the mid-nineteenth century several of the O'Flaherty family remained in the Galway area, their tradition proudly represented by Martin and Anthony O'Flaherty, and too, by the father of Liam and Tom O'Flaherty, the Aran Islander, Michael O'Flaherty.

Sadlier, we'll speak of Laertes later.

My task, as I have chosen to believe it, will be to find out the path, genealogically and sociologically, of my ancestors from Iar Connact to Dublin.  Where did the Rathfarnham sept originate?  What sept of the Iar Connactians spawned them?

The fabulous possibilities of Dublin intrigue me.  Undocumented, unauthorized, unknown, we guess about the past.  There was a point in James Hardiman's career when he must have said, "I didn't know that."  Now, I have Rathfarnham and Dublin.  I didn't know that.  Now I have the possibility of finding "Pat Flaherty's" father, who survived the United Irishman and French Invasion of the 1790's, the Act of Union, and Emmet's rebellion of 1803.

Here, too, is the Industrial Revolution and the link to the paper manufacturing that the family lore discloses.

Check Rathfarnham here: http://www.southdublinhistory.ie/Rathfarnham/rathfarnham_history.htm



The marriage information I have puts "Pat Flaherty" in Rathfarnham along with an Andrew Flagherty, who seems to be a brother.  Why were they in Rathfarnham?  Who started the community.  What was their relationship to the other O'Flaherty families that had migrated to the Dublin area and show up in the church records of all these parishes for hundreds of years, indeed they still live there.

This post is dedicated to Queen Maeve.