Monday, March 17, 2008

Do We Have Irish Eyes to Smile?

Today is Saint Patrick's Day, which is a day of great celebration!

Here in the metro Indianapolis area, there is a very large Irish population. I haven't spent much time looking at my genealogy before today, but today I'm on a mission to find out if there is any Irish in my bloodline.

As you probably can tell if you have seen the title of this blog, our surname is Lesnet. It is a unique name and in case you are wondering, it is of German heritage. Christian Lesnett, whose story you can read about here, immigrated to America in 1752 from Hesse-Kassel, Germany.

There is a lot of information about the genealogy of my paternal grandparents, but my maternal grandparents family trees are a bit more mysterious. Since the Internet is crawling with information about my Lesnet lineage, we will start there in our search for some Blarney Stone Kissin' Irish blood!

My grandmother's maiden name was Briner (Breiner), which looks to be Dutch - No Dice!

My Great Grandmother's maiden name was Conkey, which appears to be Welsh. It also could have been McConky once upon a time, which is most definitely Irish! We've got a shot, but we'll keep going.

My Great Great Grandmother's maiden name was Logan - Let's keep going!

My Great Great Great Grandmother's maiden name was...BRANNEN! Elizabeth Brannen was born 3/13/1811 in IRELAND, which is where Irish people come from!!!

Well, I guess I'm at least 1/32 Irish! That is something to be proud of, although I feel bad that I missed the Saint Patrick's Day parade today. I also felt a little bad that my wonderful son, Kai may only be 1/64 Irish until Stephanie reminded me that her Great Grandfather's name was Bliss O'Ferrell, which makes her at least 1/16 Irish. Now for all of you math wizzes at home, I'm sure that you have done the math and you already know that Kai more than 1/13 Irish! This is truly a cause for celebration!

Here is a picture of 3 generations of Crazy Irish Lesnet Men:


The above picture was taken at a Lesnet family get together yesterday hosted by our cousins Brad and Molly up by Fort Wayne. It was the first time that any of our extended family members had met Kai. Next weekend, we are going to go up to Bowling Green, Ohio to see the Eridon side of the family. We will be spending a couple of nights up there and it looks like we may have to drive 2 cars up there with the amount of stuff that we have on our packing list. It is amazing how many accessories kids seem to need.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!

3 comments:

Stephanie B said...

Ah, now that is grasping at straws. ;-) Hope you had a great St. Patty's Day- don't worry; it is the day when everyone gets to be a little Irish (even if they are not... much). Glad to see you on the blogosphere!

~Stephanie "Yes I'm Irish- my mother's maiden name was Finagin thank you very much" Burton

Phillips said...

Nice.....glad you have made it into the bloging world. I'll have to put this on my favorites so that I can waste more time at work everyday checking my list of blogs :)

Janet said...

Just filing in some gaps. "Briner" is also German and the maternal side of that family is "Waterston" which is Scotch-Irish. "Conkey" is also Scotch-Irish. So reading your blog about miles per gallon, you can see that your thifty and sensible Scotch blood is still very active to this day. ha ha
~ Janet