I got started on my family history as a result of being given a large amount of information that my grandad's cousin, John Holmes of Monasterevin, had put together relating to the Co Laois Holmes family. This inspired me to follow it up, and further information and assistance came through Richard Holmes of Australia and various Holmes he is in contact with on the web, including a distant cousin, Dianne Friden in California.
My own research gave me some information on the Zimber story, but it was another distant cousin, Martin Zimber from Canada, who gave me the vital information connecting to the "Schwarzwald". Further information relating to the Black Forest families came from Paul Dold and Jürgen Sterk.
Of course, as interesting as all this is, there are still many other stories to be told when you look at the list of names below, so I'm really just starting on this journey. The advent of the internet over the recent years has made my contacts with all these people possible. So this site is my effort to make contact with others and share the information I have accumulated over the years.
I'm descended from people called Holmes (Laois/Kildare), Kirwan (Dublin), O'Flaherty (Waterford), Nagle (Tipperary), Zimber (Baden-Württemberg), Kavanagh (Dublin), Reale (Waterford), Larkin (Tipperary), Lee (Offaly/Westmeath), Long (Waterford), Mannion (Tipperary), Ashmore (Waterford), Quinn (Waterford), Courneen (Tipperary), Arthurs (Laois) and Barley (Laois).
And on Helen's side the names are Kelly (Laois), McCarthy (Cork), Sheedy (Tipperary), Cronin (Cork/Limerick) and Dineen (Cork).
