An Introduction to My Family History

This blog traces the Holmes family and the related Zimber, Kirwan, Nagle, O'Flaherty, Ashmore and Quinn families, their connections, and the stories that have emerged from researching them.

The research ranges from the Midlands of Ireland to Waterford and Tipperary, from Dublin to the Black Forest of Germany and the goldfields of California, and from nineteenth-century military service to the lives of ordinary families recorded in censuses, church records and other surviving sources.

The articles below are grouped by family connection. Some follow a particular ancestral line; others explore individuals or collateral branches whose stories have emerged during the research.

Edward Kirwan Snr - On The North West Frontier

A Dublin Labourer's Son

Edward Kirwan was born in Dublin in late 1863 or early 1864, the son of Patrick & Catherine Kirwan, and grew up in the parish of St Catherine’s in the densely populated inner city. His early life was shaped by the working-class environment of Dublin in the mid-Victorian period, where labouring work was common and military service offered one of the few structured routes to stable income and travel. By the age of 18, he had enlisted in the British Army, joining the 1st Battalion of the 22nd Regiment of Foot (later the Cheshire Regiment) in Dublin on 26 August 1878. At enlistment, he was recorded as 5 ft 5½ in tall, with a fresh complexion, brown hair, hazel eyes, and minor scars on his forehead and forearm. His profile is consistent with the broader pattern of Irish urban recruitment into the British infantry during this period, particularly from Dublin's working-class districts.

Soldier of the Empire

After initial training in Buttevant, Co. Cork and home service, Kirwan was deployed to India in October 1879. This placed him within the North-West Frontier military system at a time when British forces were consolidating control following the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880). His service record situates him within a network of interconnected cantonments rather than a single fixed garrison. These included Peshawar, the principal frontier headquarters and administrative hub; Nowshera, a forward staging cantonment exposed to malaria-prone lowlands; Cherat, a hill station used primarily for convalescence and recovery from illness; Ambala, a major rear-area cantonment and depot; and Allahabad, part of the wider imperial logistics system through which troops were processed into and out of Indian service. Within this system, soldiers were routinely rotated between stations, often in response to operational requirements, climate, and health rather than formal combat deployment.

Witches in the Family: The Tragic Fate of Bartle and Waldburga Faller

Family history often brings unexpected discoveries. While tracing my Faller ancestors from the Black Forest region of southwestern Germany, I came across a darker chapter from the 17th century: two members of the family —  Bartle and Waldburga Faller, the brother and sister of my 9th great-grandfather Jakob Faller — were executed after being accused of witchcraft in the Freiburg area during the height of the European witch trials.

Their story came to me only in fragments (see the graphic "Hexenwahn im Schwarzwald" below), but it offers a haunting glimpse into the fear and uncertainty of life in early modern Germany.

The Faller Family in the Black Forest

The Faller family lived in the rural Black Forest communities northeast of Freiburg im Breisgau, in what is now Baden-Württemberg. Life in this mountainous region was difficult even in the best of times. Families depended heavily on farming and livestock, and survival could be threatened by harsh winters, poor harvests, disease, or war.

Methodism and the Holmes family

The story of Methodism in our family runs through two very different worlds: the rural midlands of Ireland and the villages of the Black Forest in Baden. Yet these two traditions — one shaped by Irish Primitive Methodism and the other by German Lutheran Pietism — eventually converged in the marriage of my great-grandparents, John Holmes and Albertina Zimber. Their shared Methodist faith may well have been one of the strongest influences drawing them together.

My grandfather Tom came from a Methodist family, though the Holmes family itself had originally belonged to the Church of Ireland. The transition can be seen clearly in the Irish census returns of 1901. In it, his grandfather John Holmes is recorded as Church of Ireland, while John's wife Anna Maria Lee and their children are listed as Methodist. It seems likely that, through marriage and family life, the Methodist tradition of the Lees became the faith of the Holmes household.

Black Forest Clockmakers in Ireland and Cornwall: Migration, Industry, and the Zimber Family

 

In the nineteenth century, the small towns and villages of Germany’s Black Forest region sent skilled craftsmen across the world. Among them were members of the Zimber family, who established long-running clock and jewellery businesses in New Ross, County Wexford, and Bodmin in Cornwall. Their story reflects a broader history of migration, industrial change, and family enterprise that connected rural Germany with provincial Ireland and Britain during the age of industrialisation.

The history of the Zimber family can be understood not simply as a story of emigration, but as part of the wider transformation of the Black Forest clock industry itself. As traditional rural clockmaking came under pressure from industrialisation during the nineteenth century, many families adapted by creating international trading and retail networks that stretched far beyond Germany.