I will do all I can to fill up this chasm. You come of an older sept than Rickard O’Donovan, the clerk of the Crown. Yours ever sincerely,
John O’Donovan.
In reply to that letter, I wrote the following one to John O’Donovan, a copy of which I find among my old Irish papers:
Skibbereen, June 14, 1856.
Dear Sir—I have received your welcome letter and am convinced beyond a doubt that I am descended from Dermot MacEnesles, who, as you say lived at Lisnabreeny in the year 1632. I made mention to you in one of my former letters, of a great-grandaunt’s daughter of mine, Nance Long, (that time living), who was a bit of a genealogist, and I am sorry that she forfeited my good opinion of her veracity, by telling me that her grandfather Teige a Rossa was a grandson of Teige MacAneeis, who lived in Glean-a-Mhuilin; and, as I thought there was no MacAneeis, but the first named, I believed her as much as I would believe a man of the present day who would tell me he was a grandson of Brian Boru. She also said it was her grandfather who first came from Kilmeen to the neighborhood of Ross Carbery, where her uncle Denis (my great-grandfather) married Sheela Ni Islean, or Julia O’Donovan-Island. She used to speak much on the downfall supposed to be brought upon the Rossa family on account of such an alliance. To use her own words, her “grandfather was deprived of all his land by the Cromwells; and the Donovan Islands, having come by riches some way, were glad to catch any of the family.”
If you had any truthful correspondent about Ross, when editing your “Annals of the Four Masters,” he would or should have told you of my Clan-Donovan, my grandfather and five brothers of his (all with families), were then living at Milleenroe and Carrigagrianane. The names of these six brothers, Anglianized were: Jer, Denis, Conn, Dan, Flor and John. I was surprised they did not perpetuate the name of Teige, and on making inquiries to that effect, I learned that they had an uncle of the name who was a poet, was considered eccentric, and was known by the cognomen of Teige-na Veirsee; and they feared the eccentricity may follow the name. But the present generation (mostly now in America), have adopted it again.
As you have helped me, down as far as Dermot, son of the above Teige MacEnesles, I will give you the descent from him, and if it agrees with the intervening time, there can be no reason to doubt its correctness.
My father, Denis, was born about the year 1790, married in 1818, and died in 1847. He was son of Jer, son of Denis, son of Teige. The old woman’s grandfather and his grandfather, being Teige MacEnesles, or Teige MacAneeis, he must have been the son of the Dermot MacTeige MacEnesles mentioned in your letter. Yours, ever obliged,
Jer. O’Donovan-Rossa.
That letter brought this reply: