Peadar ODowd - A Guide to Tracing Your Galway Ancestors

Lynchs Castle Galway, residence of the Mayor in 1654

A page from The Miseries and Beauties of Ireland by Jonathan Binns (London 1837).

County Galway is the second largest county in Ireland covering an area of 2,293 sq. miles (5,939 sq. km) with its chief centre of population, Galway City, divided by the River Corrib flowing from Lough Corrib, which in turn separates the high lands of Connemara to the west from farm lands to the east. The citys population of 72,414 (according to the 2006 census), combined with 159,052 in the county are the culmination of a long human presence imbedded in this western landscape dating back to Mesolithic or Middle Stone Ages times over 8,000 years ago.

Unlike other Irish urban areas, Galway City was not founded by a Viking influx, but owes its origins to 13th century Norman adventurers, led by Richard de Burgo, who established this, the most westerly of his Anglo-Norman settlements, on the eastern bank of the Corrib estuary in the 1230s.

To the native Corribside septs banished westwards beyond the river, these newcomers were Gall or strangers, and in time, this new growth centre gained the Gaelic title, Gaillimh, or The Place of the Strangers, with the former mutating into the familiar name of Galway today. The rising importance of this new settlement, which accumulated its prosperity on overseas trade, saw its name applied also to the county, when new territorial boundaries were drawn up in the wider province of Connacht in 1576.

Not surprisingly, the de Burgos, whose name was later anglicised to Burkes (or Bourkes in nearby County Mayo), introduced many newcomers into their confiscated western lands such as the powerful Berminghams of Athenry. The evolving town of Galway eventually came to be ruled by fourteen merchant families later known as The Tribes of Galway. These were the families Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, Darcy, Deane, Font, French, Joyce, Kirwan, Lynch, Martin, Morris and Skerrett. Some of these powerful families later spread their entrepreneurial expertise into managing country estates throughout the county. Many family members eventually emigrated and opened new commercial enterprises in both the old (Europe) and new (America) worlds.