The Quillins come from IRELAND

                             

This post was made on 27 March 2023. I'm reposting it because I'm going WAY BACK in the Quillin history....and this is where my Family History work ALL began.

Breaking Ground

As a child, we have an instant connection with our immediate family. It is there that our roots are established, and it is there that we build our foundation. I was fortunate to live near most of my extended family. I knew my aunts and uncles well, and my cousins were my first playmates. Another bonus was that I knew three of my great-grandparents personally. As I grew up, I always felt those close family ties, and I was always curious about the others that came before them.

After I got married, my husband and I became world travelers. I had already begun documenting the basic roots of my family with the help of a few family historians that I knew personally. As we planned our trip to Ireland for the summer of 1990, I was inspired by my grandmother's maiden name, McNair. My thought was that with the "Mc" in this name, that surely, I had Irish roots. I got the bright idea to make a few trips to the Texas State Archives to see if I could quickly establish a connection with family in Ireland. Yeah, right?

All I found on these trips to the archives was frustration. In fact, I could not find any of my closest McNair relatives; therefore, the search was a dead end. The problem was that I was a fledgling genealogist and I had this "hurry up" factor involved. (*Note: shortly after my trip to Ireland, I found a wealth of information about my McNair roots.) I gave up the ghost and folded up all my research papers to wait for my husband, who by the way, found a few gems about his family on these visits to the archives. During my wait, I decided to check out my maiden name, Quillin.

Quillin, hum...? It is a unique name, different than most last names. Voilà! I hit the jackpot! Right off the bat in the card catalogue, I learned that there was a MacQuillin book listed in the Library of Congress. I went to the stacks and there it was: The Quillin (MacQuillin) Family; The MacQuillins in Ireland by Claude MacQuillin. Better still was the fact that my ancient ancestors had a glorious castle in Northern Ireland, now in ruins. And I WAS GOING TO IRELAND in a few short months. 

My excitement sent me through the roof, and needless to say, our trip to Ireland took on a whole new look. This book connected me all the way down to my daddy, with my brother listed as a child. This was beyond my wildest dreams, and I look forward to sharing more about my daddy, my Quillin roots, and my trip to Ireland in following blog posts.