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Those give me some more new ideas to try, although some may be too far back in Monaghan and Clare.

Shane,

Thank you so very much. I guess you are online right now too, as I was stunned to see a reply so quickly.

That is very helpful information. Also,  you have introduced me to a new website, which seems very promising  for this and other research I am doing.

I try to put myself into the times and places of what/who I am looking for. No trains, roads or vehicles, just wagon/cart tracks and streams/rivers, old native American trails and so on, how far a person could walk or ride on horseback in a few hours, how far they could have gone to find a spouse, etc.

My wife and I have ancestors also from the very, very beginning of French Canada, to the Great Plains of the United States and Canada in the time of covered wagons and buffalo still running wild (as late as early 1900's), to Paris and Cumbria in the 1500's.

As a result of your information, I am going to look even harder in Leitrim, to see if there are any other avenues I should be following.

Do you still live around there?

Thank you.

Hello Berlin,
Just a quick note tonight before bedtime. Thank you so much for answering so promptly. I do not have ancestry.com, but may use a friend's account periodically to check things out. Our genealogies have seemed rather complete, given the places we have to look, how far back we have already gone, and the surviving records in those places.

Small lacunae and large brick walls have defeated further archival research. But Scotlands people, the online Irish records and help from folks on Genforum, etc. have helped tremendously.

Using the reconstituted Irish records now on the web, knowing for sure that my ggf was born 1836 in Dromahair gave me a new starting point and there he was. I was pretty certain that some of the records I saw there might be his grandparents and earlier. I guess I needed some enouragement.

One gentleman near here had online info about Armstrongs (with many common first names to our group) from Manorhamilton, which I could see was nearby. He assured me that no Armstrong from Manorhamilton could possibly be related to those from Dromahair. Funny - I thought it seemed promising to pursue, since he too was against a brick wall. In any event,....

You have quite a bit of my basic info to consider as you pursue things a bit more. Robert Armstrong was a farmer here, his son Adam also a farmer, but reknowned as a great barn builder (his from the 1860's still stands in magnificent condition), his house also.  He built one church, and a residence for one of his daughters. Did he learn this from his father? 

As I sit here, I have several recent  photos of Dromahair taken in 2009 by inlaws on a special sidetrip for us. Two of the church, one of its sign, five of Armstrong headstones in the cemetery, one of a green sign that says "Welcome to Dromahair, Seat of the O'Rourkes, Lord of Breifne", and one of the main street, on a slight downhill slope.

I shall look at your Ancestry info. Please let me know what else you find, or wish to know.

I am able to give you one more surprise. I read the fine print on your latest post more carefully, and saw the other families you are working on. My wife is a Grimes. Her great-great grandfather Thomas b. abt. 1801 and wife Mary Carroll b.abt. 1806, each born Ireland, no more place info.  Son named Michael b. abt. 1838 Ireland and Thomas b. abt 1843. They all seemed to come to Canada together. The two Thomases were shoemakers, here at least.

A Grimes genealogist in Ottawa did extensive work on his great grandfather Michael Grimes and Michael's brother John Grimes. In doing it he came upon my wife's line. All his uncles assured him their two families were not related to ours. But, when Thomas (1801) arrived, he immediately took up residence for a  few years in the village of Navan, Ontario 25 miles east of Ottawa, where the John Grimes family had been farming for a few years already. Next decennial census, the Thomas Grimes family is living in Chelsea, Quebec, 10 miles north  across the Ottawa River from the City of Ottawa. Chelsea is where Michael Grimes had been farming already, for a few years too.

John Grimes had his mother ( and the mother of Michal of Cchelsea) living with his family in Navan. Our Thomas, Michael and John were of very similar ages (The drive today from Navan, Ontario in to Ottawa, on to Chelsea is today a delightful drive of less that an hour. Back then, it would have been a very, very tough trip by horse or wagon and ferry. Navan and Chelsea are still small villages, Ottawa is a big city).

When Thomas Grimes' wife Mary died in Chelsea in 1862, one of the witnesses was Michael Grimes, but which Michael? Son, or brother-in-law? And, we have never proved Thomas' son Michael really existed, we go only on someone else's research on his existence, which we have not duplicated.

The genealogy of Michael Grimes of Chelsea is called "The Descendants of Michael Grimes - from Tipperary to Chelsea." We do know from our research that Grimes was not very common in Tipperary in the early 19th century.

My wife's father and aunt also maintained they had been told they were not related to these other two Grimes families and descendants, in the area. There seem to have been too many coincidences. Were these three men brothers, cousins or friends? To make it worse, the late author of that genealogy was the spitting image of an older cousin in my wife's family - so close, it was uncanny. Of course, now that we learn more, that older generation has passed and we no have no one to question but ourselves.

I guess some of my own family is from Monahan or Clare - great-great- grandparents born there about 1820, their children born in Dumbarton, Scotland.

I'll close for now.