Hi, everyone. My first post here.
I'm looking for any information on William Rea of Drumskee (1680-1785) and his ancestry. I believe William was born in Drumskee, or somewhere in Dromore Parish, anyway and that his grandfather, possibly also a William, may have been the emmigrant from the Scottish lowlands, circa early 1600s, as there was a William Rea (also a James and a Gilbert Rea) on the Muster Roll for County Down, taken in Bangor in 1631. It's been really difficult to piece things together for this period, due to the sparse data available. Any help would be appreciated, especially any lookups someone in or near Belfast could do for me at PRONI. I've already mined Ros Davies County Down site and everything else I could find online. It looks like PRONI has what I really need to see, but, I'm in Oklahoma, USA and don't have ready access.
My family lived in Drumskee for at least two or three generations, before some of them moved to Newry, where my g-g-g-g-grandfather Matthew Sutherland Rea emmigrated to Pennsylvania from in 1774.
It looks like there may have been a line of cousins around Warrenpoint and Rostrevor, also, though they appear to have lived a century later.
Gary
