Ancestry surprise!

[sathor]

And keep looking. I signed up for ancestry.com to find the Scots that I was told about on my dad's side of the family, only to find out that the Scottish Ancestor we had just so happened to be born there because their family was trying to avoid a war or something, all their siblings were born elsewhere.

I was disheartened a bit, until my sister provided me with her research on my mom's side, and it filled in one hole that was able to go back 1 more generation, to a Gordon.

Of course, I married a woman who's g-g-g-grandparent was a MacDonald. But since Ky's records were burned away a number of years ago (a whole bunch of years ago) the trails end there rather quickly.

Keep looking, you might be surprised what you find.

[The Barry]

Keep digging, you'll never know what will come up.

Since you've found some Irish family links, check out the county tartans, some of them are quite beautiful.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.