The final Ascendancy family that we shall look at are the Southwells, the pre-eminent Ascendancy family of Letterkenny. When Johanna Marbury died, the 1000 acres that had been granted to Captain Crawford that included the town of Letterkenny passed to her son from her second marriage, William Sempill, who in 1639 created the district of
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There is an oft-repeated phrase that ‘history is written by the winners’ and there is no doubt that the perception of Irishmen’s involvement in World War 1 was ‘changed utterly’ by the events of Easter 1916. When General John Maxwell issued the orders to execute the leaders of the short lived rebellion in our nation’s
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Another local Ascendancy family of the Letterkenny area are the Groves of Castlegrove. The family were originally residents of Castle Shanaghan in the seventeenth century and only moved to the Castlegrove area around 1730. Castle Shanaghan was originally granted to William Stewart as part of the Plantation in 1610 but was sold to the Grove
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