Looking for my Irish Family

Ronda:

There are no church records in Co. Galway that I'm aware of that go back to the 1600s.

There is no townland called Dolphin in Co. Galway. the closest is a Dolphinsbarn in Co. Dublin. Possibly it was a place name in Co. Galway back in the 1600s but when official townlands were adopted in the 1800s the name did not make the official list.

Roger McDonnell

Hello Ronda,

As has been suggested looking to conventional sources are unlikely to bear any fruit in your research. The Burke family name is a notable dynasty in Galway and researching the various published works on the various branches may bring rewards. Some free e books are available at http://freeirishebooks.blogspot.ie/ .

Working on the placename you have may not be a dead end though. Some pre 1670 placenames have been preserved and their more recent townland name provided, unfortunately though these are not searchable and require a little work.
The Down Survey of 1670 primarily looks at the ownership of land by name and religion. Fortunately with a large number of the current townlands the pre 1670 name is also provided.

As a starting point if you copy and paste the townlands/Barony etc to a word document from the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_townlands_of_County_Galway, and then visit http://downsurvey.tcd.ie/landowners.php#mc=53.179014,-8.594991&z=8 you are at the starting point of indexing pre 1670 placenames to their current name for Galway. On the Down Survey map zoom in to 100% and click on each highlighted (green) area and the salient details will be provided.

Locate the matching Townland of name from the Down Survey map in your word document and enter the Down Survey name against it. This will be a time consuming process and no guarantee that the name Dolphin will be found. Nothing ventured nothing gained !!.

At the end of the process you will have as complete a list as is available of historic placenames to aid your research and hopefully Dolphin will be found. Utilising this list when referencing any details from the e-books should make your research a little less complicated .
An additional site of use with placenames of Galway http://places.galwaylibrary.ie/default.html will be invaluable when the Irish language is used in any area of your research.

If this all proves too daunting at this point please copy and paste these details to a word document as you will no doubt return to the subject . Good Luck.

Hello there,

Possibly this will help you (follow the link): 

http://burkeseastgalway.com/dolphin/

I believe the Dolphin family was related with the Burke family.

I hope this helps,

Mario Delfin

In reference to New Zealand where William Burke died in 1687.

The first recorded European sighting of New Zealand was on 13 December 1642 by Able Tasman. Your dates may indeed be correct and if so it would be a very interesting piece of New Zealand history and should be verified.

Mary
 

Kia ora from New Zealand,

Sorry team, but I don't think the New Zealand reference is correct, at least in terms of our current country of that name. Abel Tasman did find one corner of New Zealand in 1642, had some crew killed by local Maori after attempting to trade and sailed on never to return - they did not land. 

The next known European contact was by Capt James Cook in HM Barque Endeavour in 1769, who mapped the whole coastline, did land in multiple places and conversed with the Maori inhabitants via his Tahitian interpreter Tupaia. He also visited on his second and third voyages of exploration of the Pacific, but no crew or scientists were left behind. Some whalers and sealers (and later a few escaped convicts from New South Wales) did visit and a few stayed in the early 19th century but the European population was tiny until after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed with Maori in 1840, when settlers started arriving in a trickle. Significant migration did not start until 2 decades later.

Hope that helps.

Nga mihi,

John Mitchell (descended from the Mitchells and Hessions of Tuam, Galway)

I have Burke ancestry from Ireland and would be happy to collaborate with anyone who sees a family connection. My email address is:  michael.pomerantz44@gmail.com   I also have DNA data and have identified many other Irish cousins thanks to Ireland XO.

From my records:

Michael Francis King was my great grandfather and father to my grandmother Alice Solheim.

The efforts to trace Alice’s paternal ancestry have proven to be more of a challenge. Despite a lot of speculative leads if one relies strictly on evidence based records we only know that Michael’s parents were Patrick King (1815-1880) and Hannah/Nora/Honor (Burke) King (1827-1896) and that they were married on 11 October 1850 in Castlegar, County Galway. They most likely emigrated to America during 1850-1852. Patrick was from Renmore, County Galway. His parents may have been James and Anne King. Hannah/Nora/Honor’s parents were Patrick and Nora Burk according to her death certificate. She was born in Tuam, Galway, Ireland , Ireland, baptised on 3 October 1827 in Tuam and died in Braintree, Massachusetts on 13 May 1896 and was buried in Rockingham, New hampshire.