A long, steamy holiday weekend! A good time for surfing the internet and doing a little family history research!

We IGSI volunteers have been particularly busy in recent weeks with preparations for the VIRTUAL Celtic Connections Conference. I had the pleasure of helping to make Webinar recordings for a number of our esteemed speakers including two with Scottish/Irish expertise, Chris Paton and Tina Beaird. It's definitely a treat to get a sneak-peak at these excellent presentations!

As I've posted previously, my 3X great-grandmother, Elizabeth McIlwaine/McKlveen, was born in Ireland (circa 1792) to Scottish-born parents. 

My line of Scots-Irish ancestry settled in western Pennsylvania in about 1800. So far my research has been ineffective in getting back to a townland in Ireland. I'd exhaustively queried my 3X great-grandmother and her two brothers, but I decided to take a closer look at the family's neighbors in the 1810 U.S.census. Some of the surnames were Campbell, McLain, Mathews, Johnston.

Digging into the Campbells led me to this entry about the Olivers. These are not "my people," but wouldn't it be a wonderful discovery if it was! Derrybeg and the Dromocose cemetery on a platter!