Aloha Paul---
Through just an unconfirmed family story O'Neill is one of many family names on the Rachford side. Funny but then, O'Neill is one of those names like Smith in Ireland.
As far as the Catholic part goes....his religion on the information page I received from Peggy Dekker in Alturas says "Catholic----originally". My father said that he had no religion. I heard from another distant relation that Christopher Charles (or C.C.) was married twice but have no information, other than Augusta----who was a firm Methodist and raised her children as Methodists. They were not married in the Church and not by a priest. The birth and marriage dates make them 37 and 31 respectively. That is pretty old for 1867 when they married. Also someone who emigrated after being born in the east of Quebec and then lived in Fort Bidwell in the midst of the Indian Wars in the West were often running away from something. I do have his obit, and NOTHING is written about his early life before he reached California ....nothing about his siblings or mother or father or Quebec.
Augusta was from a big farm back in Virgina and I wonder how she got to the frontier. It's fun to speculate on. I wish we had interviews with them or could be a fly on the wall. I also know from family lore that C.C. was a fort "suttler" or person who ran the trading post, he was the third sheriff of Modoc Co., and he was a prospector in N. California. My father said that he was the suttler for forts all across the west, including Kansas and Colorado areas until he settled down in Fort Bidwell, California.
Anyway, I don't have the emigration dates for him. Also, from my father's stories, C.C. entered the states in the mid-west and worked his way across the mainland to Fort Bidwell in what is now California state.
I do have Thomas (Rochford in Ireland) Ratchford
(b. 1806) was born to Thomas Rochford(b. 1736--d.?) and Ann Byrne (b. 1740--d.?)
Another distant cousin told me that the Snyder family tree in Virginia is fairly well documented but I haven't looked it up.