I am hoping I can once again request from this group some information. You have all been so helpful in the past. This is in honor of St. Paddy's day....the Spanish/Irish connection.
I spend my genealogical time between the Irish (mine) and the Spanish (my husband's) I constantly tease him that sooner or later I will find that we are related. We have some similar traits and sometimes that is good, but other times it causes conflicts. Anyway, I am descended from the O'Neill family in Northern Ireland on my maternal side. My great grandfather's name was Hugh O'Neill and my grandmother used to tell us tales of the great Hugh O'Neill. We always thought it was ...you know....just fairy tales. Well, although somewhat embellished, some of her stories are in rare historical books. Anyway, out of curiousity, I started researching the Spanish Armada. Hugh O'Neill (not my great grandfather, but the famous one) was linked to this. Then I found out that many ships from the Armada were wrecked along the Northern Ireland coast. A couple quite close to my paternal ancestor, Owen Gallagher's home of Rosbeg, Donegal Ireland. Some accounts say that most of the soldiers in the ships drowned or were killed by the Irish or interrogated and hung by the English. Other accounts say that some Irish people hid some of the survivors and they eventually made it back to Spain. (I have another link to send with an interesting description of the Irish by one of the survivors, will send later)
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