Hi Felicia,
Thanx for the timely reply. When I was really young, I am 70 now, my grandad John was president of the Sligomen's Association in NYC. This august group was quite large. If you google this organization you will see who the president's were + when.
Several of my dad's 1st or 2nd cousins were also president, way back when. Sad to say, Felicia, bro Dud is with us no more. He was 6 years older than me. He was 70 when he cashed in his chips.
I had hoped I could find the detail map he posted to his now defunct website showing all of Rathlee, Easkey, Carrowmacbryan, but have had no luck so far. The Google maps of the area are not as good as the one Dudley found.
Eva (*) is the only person I am aware of who has the kind of detailed info we both need to complete our searches. When I took my dad to the Church on the corner by the main road to Ballina, we saw the same names in the Church records for the hatched, matched + detached of that parish you mentioned.
My Dad's granpa was Michael born in the 1850's which is consistent with the Michael you found. Yes we have a Bridget married to that Michael.
I will have to see if my cousin Pauline (*), who now lives in Leopardstown, near Dublin, remembers the exact house number her mom was born in. I think Pauline's mom was Kathleen, the youngest sister to my grandpa John, his brother Joe, there is another brother who's name I can't recall.
Joe Hanley had 2 sons, Paul and Christy who both lived in NYC in the 50's-60s. Paul later went back to UK. Christy stayed in NYC. Joe's son Michael John stayed in the family house which has been in the Hanley name for over 400 years.
Pauline has a sister (*), a researcher at the Dublin main library who did a very detailed search of the family tree going back beyond Brian Boru. A guy named (*) tried to fob off portions of (*)'s original research as his own. I will have to see where on my hard drive that link is. That (*) dude, inserted his family tree into (*)'s narrative in the 1700's when its obvious to me, after that point the lineage goes straight back to Carrowmacbryan and that eliminated any connection to this wanna be.
The next best thing for both of us is to send a dna sample to Brian Sykes at Oxford U. If you haven't read up on Brian Sykes, you need to. He wrote the book 7 Daughters of Eve, which made possible the dna info that is now available. If you or a close relative have red hair that enhances our search even more.
Red hair + red beards run thru our family line. Presently I am in Sweden and have no access to any of my remaining Irish-amareekin relatives. I have 2 brothers in the NYC area, but neither has shown any family roots interests. My son (*) in New Jersey is definitely interested.
My grandpa ran a saloon in lower Manhattan prior to the Prohibition, if that may be of any use to you. His wife's name was Catherine Connington, yet, her sisters upon arrival in Philadelphia, used the name Conaughton of their mother's side.
(*) Moderator's note: names of living people removed. Please exchange such recent family information by personal message (PM)- each of you will need to have at least 3 posts before you can use PM system.
