I live in Ontario Canada and am trying to research my father’s lineage. He was born in London England in 1910 and moved to Donegal area some time later, perhaps with his mother.
She was also born in England and her name was Rose Butler-Inkpen. There are no known records of his father’s name . It does seem that she may have been married as the birth certificate makes no mention of marital status.
From conversations with locals in Malin Head in Donegal, it seems that he lived there and that he was called Gerald or Gerard Butler McQuillan. I was even shown the house on the hill where (allegedly) he lived with his mother?? She was known as “Rose the Bush” and also held the family nickname (fellamie).
There is a school there that he was supposed to have attended but unfortunately burned down and left no records. There are also reports of him mentioning that he spent at least some of his childhood in Drogheda!
Unfortunately, my father did not talk about his childhood and so all information is sketchy at best. Rose in Malin Head may have been a Doherty and may not have been his mother? We cannot ascertain where the McQuillan came from as it was not a common name in that area. Adoption……..perhaps!
My father left Malin Head to work in Ulster sometime in the late thirties and worked for Scirocco works in Belfast for a while. He went to Africa as a missionary in 1946 and died there in 1971.
I have recently obtained his birth certificate which gives at least some concrete evidence of his place of birth but the rest becomes vague indeed. I am hoping that someone reading this may know something that would help me to focus my search
Living in Canada, I am not ideally situated to research ancestral records in Ireland or UK and so decided to try here first.
Thank you, Andrew Gerald McQuillan
