Adventures in Genealogy

The Boyles of Killaneen

My Irish ancestors hailed from the townland of Killaneen in County Leitrim. Descendants of the Boyles in America, Ireland, and Australia kept in touch with each other through letters and postcards, many of them saved in boxes by the recipients, handed down through the generations. In 2021 my cousin Ken Boyle in Ireland and I began a project to gather them into a collection, scan them, and transcribe them for those future descendants who might not be familiar with the cursive handwriting that almost all of them contain. We then distributed them in book form, with about 50 copies of the book now in the hands of our extended family.

The 300-page 8x10 inch book spans 100 years of correspondence over four generations of Boyle descendants, from 1893 through 1994. Ken and I spent the spring and summer of 2021 compiling it, putting transcriptions and scans of the original letters on facing pages, and adding commentary to provide readers with context for the contents of the letters. I added a separate companion volume that detailed the genealogy of the Boyle line for additional context.

In 2024, Ken saw a news report about a project at the University of Galway. Historian Kerby Miller, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Missouri, had donated his collection of writings from Irish emigrants, some 400 years’ worth of correspondence that he had collected from strangers. The news report said that the collection was being prepared for on-line access, incorporating the ability to search it in various ways. Ken quickly got in touch with Professor Miller, and we coordinated with the University of Galway to get our own family's letters integrated into their wider collection. Our letters "went live" on their web site in early 2025.

The books can be read at https://www.blurb.com/b/11454341 with the on-line version at https://imirce.universityofgalway.ie, click on "Collections" in the header there or search for "Killaneen".

Submitted by Tom Boyle