Things have moved on considerably since my last sally in 2018. I now have a pretty complete picture of my late mother through various certificates; and am in regular contact with my half-sister, Brid (Brigitte in France, where we both live).
Brid and I have compared notes, memories and intuitions and we found that somehow we both had the notion that the Ducies got to Ireland through the expulsion of the Huguenots from France. I'm quite prepared to be disillusioned in this respect.
More specifically, it turns out that my mother spent some time in Kerry and that there were (are?) several Ducie families in the Kingdom.
Then, too, remotely, it appears that Ducies (hardly the humbler folk) moved from France to England along with William the Conqueror and that he settled lands on them in Staffordshire.
Not quite so remotely, a surprise in my own research has been that amongst papers involving my mother's family - British army records, information that James emigrated to the States and so on - there is the odd letter written between the Carlow Ducies and Ducies in Staffordshire. These, in truth, do not amount to much. But can someone enlighten me as to where the Irish Ducies came from - I'd expect there to be complex histories? Perhaps a more definite link can be established beween Carlow and Staffordshire and, likewise, with Ducies in Kerry.
Onwards and, perhaps, sideways.
roly
