Two McBrien – Allingham families of Leitrim and Donegal

These two McBrien – Allingham families in evaluation of family relationships. I have written about odd coincidences in genealogy before but this one is much more confusing. So this is just a note to say be careful.

I first encountered the family of John McBrien and Elizabeth Allingham when I expanded my study of the genealogy of the Allingham family of the Glencar area of Killasnet parish in County Leitrim Ireland. The first Allingham record we have of my great grandmother Ruth Allingham is her 1854 marriage in the small Church of Ireland near Glencar Lake (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FG6K-Y74).

In 1856 Elizabeth Allingham (who is probably her sister) married John Mcbrien in the same church (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FGFX-L78).

John McBrien and Elizabeth Allingham had quite a few children in Ireland and then moved to Ontario, Canada. I started tracing some of those children forward a bit in hopes of running into another genealogist who might know a bit more about the Allinghams and McBriens than I did.

I noticed that some traced these families back to John McBrien and Elizabeth Allingham of Donegal. Other had one from Donegal and the other from Leitrim. Both were was unexpected. Was it the same family I was researching? Perhaps they lived in Leitrim for a while, moved to Donegal and then on to Canada. Perhaps there were 2 families with the same names.

So I began to look at more records.

I found these records at IrishGenealogy.ie

Marriage 1873 in Donegal
https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1873/11286/8140160.pdf

Marriage 1856 in Leitrim
https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/files/civil/marriage_returns/marriages_1856/09515/5448812.pdf

Notice the marriages are in different counties and about 17 years apart. The Donegal Elizabeth is a dressmaker and her father Thomas is a fisherman. The Leitrim Elizabeth lists no occupation and her father Thomas is a farmer. Both Johns have a father named John but the Donegal John is a shoemaker but the Leitrim John is a farmer.

 

Nero fiddles while Rome burns

Maybe it happened or maybe not. But there is a current version of this type of behavior.

Sean Duffy is the Secretary of Transportation but rather than trying to make Transportation safer or better, he has elected to go on vacation and film a reality TV show with his family.

An article about this starts this way:

Over the past seven months, there have been 3 commercial airline crashes resulting in 11 deaths, along with numerous near-misses and deadly small plane crashes. Rather than addressing the ongoing deterioration of America’s transportation infrastructure, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has been on vacation and filming a reality TV show with his family, all seemingly paid for by the very companies he should be regulating.

“Despite sustained shortages of air traffic controllers, Congressional Republicans leading a historic defunding of the TSA that ground the nation’s airports to a halt, and numerous commercial airline crashes, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has decided to abandon his Senate-confirmed role in favor of attempting to relive his glory days of being a reality TV star” said Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser.

Is this any way to run our government?

The sad Republican rule

Those of us who have looked at Republican primary results soon realize there is a sad rule in Republican politics.

If you believe in the Constitution (or vote against President Trump, sometimes these two choices are indistinguishable), you will lose the Primary to someone the President favors (usually a less qualified candidate). And in most cases, the loser of the Primary does not have any real chance of keeping his or her office.

In the past, the Republicans have been reasonable but most of those Traditional Republicans have left the party. Please stand up for our Constitution, rather than a Party that no longer exists.