Irish Family History

Dr Mark Humphrys has recently launched a competition to see whether any genealogist can help him investigate a mystery he’s been trying to solve for the last 23 years. Dr Humphrys is offering a €1,000 first prize (plus some smaller ones) to anyone who can help him find a link between two Irish families.

The Challenge: Can you help Mark Humphrys find a pertinent link between the Irish Cashel and Blennerhassett families?

Mark’s Grand-Aunt put together the tree above which implies there is a link between the two families, and Humphrys has been trying to establish a link (or prove that there isn’t one) since 1985, but without any luck to date.

Mark attributes his interest in genealogy to spending time at his Granny’s house in the 1980s as a teenager. ‘My family were all involved in the 1916-23 revolutions,’ he explains, ‘and the various family homes are full of memories of that period.’

So, why is he so eager to make a connection between the Cashels and the Blennerhassets? ‘The Blennerhassetts connect to the main “Western family tree” from which millions of people provably descend (including my wife and kids, but not me),’ says Mark. ‘If someone proves the link, I become a cousin of my wife, I inherit non-Irish ancestors for the first time, I can now visit standing houses in England where my ancestors came from, medieval history becomes full of events on which my existence probably depends, and I am related to all these people: http://humphrysfamilytree.com/famous.descents.html. Lots of fun. I suppose I’ve always thought every genealogist would be interested in getting onto the “Western family tree”. Sure there’s lots of fun in genealogy otherwise, but how could one not be interested in that?’

So, how is the challenge going so far? ‘Lots of interest,’ says Mark, ‘but no one has even cracked an interim result yet, let alone the big prize. They’re sending me stuff about random Cashels and Blennerhassetts but only one person has sent me stuff about my own Cashel line so far. It’s early days though.’

Let us know if you manage to find the missing link!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 12:07 am and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.