Eilis,

I know very little about Dominick MORAN and his wife, Honora. It seems that everything that I could look up for them has had little information.

I know they arrived here in Lake County, IL when their daughter, Mary C. was 4 years old (the only child mentioned in the letter written by a man named Hulsey about 1900). The Hulsey letter also states "In 1840, Domenick & Honora built log cabin west of "the slue" in the S.W quarter of Section 7 of Map of Lake County, dated 1861, in Shields Township, IL."

However, the Illinois Public Land Sales records indicate he purchased 80 acres of land on December 9, 1842 for $1.25. I have no idea if the land mentioned in Hulsey's letter is the same land mentioned in the Illinois Public Land Sales records. I do know that the land mentioned in Hulsey's letter is not the same land that he raised his children on (two different towns). My best guess is that the 80 acres is the farm land he raised his children on.

According to census data (which has a 5 year variance in two different censuses) he was born about 1807 or 1812. Honora died in 1873, but does not appear on any censuses, so I have no idea how old she is. My county courthouse does not have death records or naturalization papers on either.

I wrote a center in Ireland about 3 years ago that does searches. They found nothing, but did tell me that Dominick was probably named after a patron saint of his home town.

Someone (a long time ago) helped me with an online search for Dom and Honora and came up with the possibility that her maiden name was JENNINGS, but the dates really didn't seem likely, but could have been.

I've searched every ships' lists/manifests that are available on line, and of course the message boards here, and have found nothing. I recently contacted the church they were affiliated with. It took them months to respond and when they did, I learned very little from them, i.e., baptism and marriage dates of a couple of their grandchildren.

And so, still don't know much...

Barbara