Hi Lura,
Thanks for forwarding my message to Dr. O'Carroll; hopefully something may come of
it.
It's interesting that his surname is still O'Carroll, and quite rare as well, at
least in England and Wales. According to a surname profiling page on the National Trust
website there were 17,336 people with the surname Carroll in 1998 compared with only 689
O'Carrolls. In 1881 there were 5,997 Carrolls, and so few with the surname
O'Carroll that they don't appear in the website's figures.
All the O'Carrolls I've come across in a genealogical context seem to have
well-documented family histories going back hundreds of years. I wonder whether their
ancestors were more highly-placed in society back then and didn't feel the same
pressure to abandon the O prefix as more lowly branches of the family.
Peter.
We have a Dr. O'Carroll in England whose ancestors have lived for
hundreds of years in Kilkenny, Ireland. I didn't learn yet if that is
the town or the county of Kilkenny. I guess no one told him to drop
the O' in the Irish Sea as you did. :-) He has not joined this mail
list, so I am going to Bcc: your letter to him. The two of you are
not too far apart in England, so he may wish to make contact with you.
He or his brother is sending a DNA sample to be part of the CARROLL
DNA Project. If you sent your sample now, you might have news to
share with family by Christmas.