Posts Tagged ‘Irish lineage’
Irish Maybe
Growing up, I had no clue about my family’s ethnic origins. I’m pretty sure my father responded with “American” when I brought up the question. Today, since it’s St. Patrick’s Day, everybody is a little bit Irish, aren’t they? I’ve never really identified with the occasion, but I probably should.
Even after my many sporadic plunges into my family ancestry, I’m still not convinced about the ultimate origin of the “Hays” name. When a second cousin enlisted the help of professionals, they pointed to a pretty focused area of the counties of southern Ireland, yet the result from my DNA hint at the surrounding region excluding Ireland.
At this point, I’m more inclined to cling to what I know and claim my obvious Canadian heritage.
Cyndie occasionally shares a wonderful recollection of her earliest query about her family ethnicity. The simplified version from so many kids where it gets described as half of one nationality and half of another led her to ask her father, by way of a written note slipped under the bathroom door, “What am I half of?”
She was shocked when the answer came back, “Half-wit.”
I am half my mom and half my dad; a quarter of each of my grandparents. Sometimes I feel a little like a half-wit.
On March 17th, I’m possibly a little Irish.
Don’t tell my DNA.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
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Relative Proximity
I recently received new information on a detail of my family history that adds intrigue to the fact Cyndie and I ended up living in Beldenville, Wisconsin. The pertinent morsel is revealed near the bottom of the first column of my great-great-grandfather, Stephen W. Hays’s (b.1829-d.1910) obituary.
After my great-grandfather, John W. Hays was born in 1860, the family moved from Vankleek Hill, Ontario, to Red Wing, Minnesota. Six years later, they moved to Pierce County, Wisconsin, where they stayed for 13-years before moving again, this time to South Dakota.
Beldenville is located due north of Redwing and is positioned near the center of Pierce County.
I have a new inspiration to see if we can discover where in Pierce County my ancestors once lived.
I’ve also gained a new interest in exploring the possibilities of relocating to the land between Ottawa and Montreal where my most-likely-Irish ancestors owned a farm, in case I finally act on a mostly-idle threat to flee this country’s dreary governance.
In an interesting genealogy note, I’ll point out that the surname, Hays, is misspelled several times with an added “e” in my great-great-grandfather’s obituary, even though the correct spelling also appears farther down. This was a burden for me when I first began my genealogy research because my initial goal was to find out why our name didn’t include the “e” which so many people seem to want to insert.
I struggled to grow comfortable with accepting all varieties of spellings in the quest to identify actual blood relations on the tree. I have come to realize how much more the person matters than the versions of surname spelling.
Based on information gathered from my Y-DNA, the closest connections of Hays matches have a very common origination in the counties of southern Ireland. Although I have a high percentage of English ancestry (a more common origin of the surname Hayes with that “e”), the lineage of my surname points toward Irish, where there is a chance the original moniker may have been “Hay.”
All the more appropriate that we have been growing hay on our Beldenville property, ay?
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Relative Something 