Ancestry surprise!

[Bugbear]

Oh, gees... I have a family member who goes around saying "cheaply-ness is next to godly-ness," and claims that makes him Scottish; that and that he buys tins of shortbread from time to time...

Congratulations on finding your Irish roots.

[Riverkilt]

I'm descended from a long line of Brett/Britts...which no doubt came from Brittany...you could consider such a tartan in honor of your first name...

Ron

[BroosterB1]

Till recently the family accepted the fact that we were Irish, then I started digging; one good place to start is surname search on ElectricScotland.com. For years and years, the English used the Scots to "control" the Irish, seems the surname we thought was Irish was really Scottish.

Keep digging you may be surprised what you find.

Of course the Irish Sea is such a wide expanse that no one could have possibly sailed it before say 3000 BCE, or could they?

[billmcc]

On the other hand, in creating a new, comprehensive, digital family tree from all this information, I discovered a number of ancestors from Ireland!

My father considered his heritage to be Irish. The family did spend about 100 years in Ireland, but were originally from Scotland.

[McFarkus]

from Chicago. The journey towards filling in your family tree is a wonderful and worthwhile experience.

[EagleJCS]

If you keep digging, you might discover that some of your Irish ancestors might really be Scotts.

Better yet, they may be Scots!

(The Border Clan Scott uses two t's these days, the general term is one t. Once upon a time, the clan used one, but differentiated when common spelling started.)

[Skipper1]

Keep digging - Though the majority of Irish tartans are alligned with geographic entities, there are some irish names that have tartans of their own. A few examples - Doyle, O'Rourke, Down, Forde. Here is a link that might interest you - http://www.scotchcorner.com/mill-text/irish-index.html

I am sure there are others the more experienced members could point you to.

And - irish, scot, breton - all celts - and surely linked by blood some time in the ancient past.

[BrettH]

I finished as much of my tree as I could without primary research, and the Irish connection seems to be about it. My great-great-grandmother (Hughes) was from Dundalk, in Louth County, Ireland. I can't find information beyond that, though apparently much (most?) of the physical data was destroyed. The Louth County tartan is one I could see myself wearing.

The coincidental part was when I started working on my wife's side of the family. Her g-g-g-grandfather had always claimed to be the son of Robert E. Lee, whose ancestry gets traced back to King Robert II of Scotland!

Definitely an interesting twist to my research.

[Jerry]

Better yet, they may be Scots!

(The Border Clan Scott uses two t's these days, the general term is one t. Once upon a time, the clan used one, but differentiated when common spelling started.)

Oops, in some forums it's called a "double tap" Here, it's just another typo.