<[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]m... > Within my grandparents families there was some tension. My Mother > could never pinnpoint what the problem was or where it came from. > My > Grandmother's family (Tighes and Branegan's from Counties Meath and > Louth respectively) had a strong dislike for my Grandfather Ray > Flanagan's mother and her family (Finnegans from Cork, the > Flanagan's > were from Roscommon). I thought it may be "White Lace" vs "Shanty > Irish" thing but neither of the families where "well to do" or "dirt > poor" for that matter. > > Both families were Irish Catholic but was there stong division in > families in the US during the Irish Revolution from 1916 to 1921? > What was the atmosphere here in the US? Were their conflicts > between > Irish Catholic groups here in the US at that time supporting or > against the revolution? If you are looking for some sort of logical structure in personal relationships reflecting some logical division in religion or politics, I'd recommend averting your eyes from the Irish. Illogic prevails and feuds go on longer than some Sicilian vendettas and with no known cause. Exception can be taken on name alone without even knowing the other party. I've illustrated it before with a story of my wife and I visiting County Cork. We both had ancestors there. Both lots were RC. Both of us speak with London accents because that is where we were brought up. When my wife mentioned the name she was looking for she was welcomed as honorary Irish and phrases were bandied about like 'one of them runs the local pub, why not go there and have a drink?' When I mentioned the name I was looking for, one B&B landlady was instantly ready to chuck me out and when she took the money made it clear that a future booking would not be accepted from 'one of the bloody English.' Since my wife's relative was a prison officer who imposed harsh discipline, and mine was a landowner who provided work, that seemed a mite unreasonable. Moreover my ancestors had been RC in Cork for at least 15 generations so anything less English is difficult to imagine. Nevertheless the name all by itself was sufficiently offensive to that landlady to make her irrationally combative and to her own loss. Going to the other end of the country, my Bain, McGlashan and McCauley lines were more or less evenly split between RC and Presbyterian. Some supported the IRA, some the UDF, but family fracas didn't necessarily follow those lines. Amongst the Presbyterians when one member of the family died the men foregathered to decide who would be in what position when carrying the coffin. Three days of solid drinking and fighting later they still hadn't agreed on positions round the coffin. They were so drunk and worn out that they had to get a local carter to shift it with his pony and trap. All later agreed that it was the best funeral in the family for a long time. None of them was ever able to explain the logical point of the whole argument. So your problem is probably insoluble. It is highly likely that your grandparents themselves couldn't give a logical answer if they were alive to be asked today. I'd suggest simply accepting with a grin that the ancestors did some damn silly things, and get on with more productive research than seeking the unknowable. It's not only in the Irish that this sort of thing can be found. One of my lines leads to Sussex. The eldest son in one generation, Thomas, was described as un vaurien, a blackguard. He was slung out of the family by his father Thomas and the second son Henry. The name Thomas was not to be used in the family ever again. For seven generations that held, but no one knew the nature of the ejectee's sins. Then my son's wife wanted their first child to be a Thomas. After a couple of centuries from the original ban, I didn't think there was any point in objecting. The mystery remains and will forever remain just that: a mystery there is no point in speculating about. Don