This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/YWC.2ACI/5363.1.1.1 Message Board Post: Hello Phyllis, It is and was very common for Irish to name their houses both in Ireland as well as often in the places where they emigrated. The names could be anything and wouldn't at all necessarily need to be any connection to any place. So the house location could be anywhere in Ireland or even Nova Scotia. Drumheriff as a place name literally means ridge of the bull. It also means ridge or a long hill. As such it could be used to describe any house in any similar location. People often used to make coverlets for babies of family members or friends and some people still do it today. They turn into "family heirlooms" if saved of course. And it wouldn't be uncommon for the person to "sign" and date it. It was a pastime for many women of the time both in Ireland as well as Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia is well known for its rich history of quilts and quilting. Martha Orr could have been such a friend or relative of the family doing traditional needlework. Sometimes if members of an Irish family couldn't support a new child, the child went to a relative who could afford to raise it. This is a possibility although generally the child kept their family name because people didnt or couldn't afford to pay for the legal process of adoption. The family story that Anna Evelyn was adopted could or couldn't be true. Sometimes people would joke that a child was adopted because the child looked or acted differently than other family members and that could have been overheard and the story carried forth. I assume Anna Evelyn herself didn't make that statement? There's no official house name or related home for unwed mothers in Leitrim called Drumheriff House. But you can do some records research to try to answer some of the questions at least. First, you need to find more detail on James and Jennie and their children from records in Nova Scotia. Was Anna Evelyn even born in Ireland and did the family even come from Ireland? That needs to be clarified. There should be civil and church records in Nova Scotia for James and Jennie as well as their children showing where they were born. You should first look at the Canadian census records that might include a birth location for the family members and then civil and church records to see if you can find James and Jennie's marriage records as well as the children's birth records. There may be church records as well. That would at least give you a geographic location to search. See too if James and Jennie were born in Ireland and the location, i.e. the townland/civil parish and county. That's the location you'd be looking for in Ireland for the children too fromtheir records in Nova Scotia. You should look for ships passenger records for the family. If they emigrated from Ireland there should be passenger records at the port of arrival in Canada. Because their arrival would have apparently been late in the Nineteenth Century the records should be available and may include their place of residence in Ireland. Depending on the geographic location of the marriage and the children's births, as well as the birth location for the parents, you could then further research the records in that location, whether it be in Nova Scotia or Ireland. Then you'd at least have a more specific location to try to connect the family to Martha Orr. See if her name appeared as a sponsor for the marriage or the children's baptisms. Nova Scotia census records may include her living in the local area where the family lived. Regards. Eilís O'Hara Ireland