Irish Roots Magazine
1998 Number 4
Mike Fennessy writes about THE FENNESSY CLAN GATHERING
Fennessy
derives from the ancient Irish name Fiangus. Sounds simple, but there are over a thousand years in
between! Fortunately our
Meeting in Clonmel, County Tipperary in August 1998 had a splendid talk
entitled Historic and Gaelic Aspects of the Ancient Name of Ó
Fianghusa researched over many years and delivered by Áine Ní
Fhiannusa and Richard M. Fennessy.
Many
other talks filled the weekend programme attended by over 100 people,
more than half traveling from New Zealand, Australia, USA, Canada and
Switzerland. Educated
guesses put the total number of Fennessys alive today at between 2,000
and 5,000. With a name like ours, spelling variations and misspellings
have been, and still are, very common.
Richard J. Fennessy of New Jersey, USA, author of the book Fennessy
of the County Tipperary (1981) gave an update on his lifelong work
with a talk entitled Various Spellings of the Irish Name Fennessy.
The talk followed sequentially from the above and looked at the
many reasons and ways that the ‘English’ spelling of the name had
been altered during the last few hundred years.
He focused upon the ‘Wild Geese’ times as well as the mass
emigrations brought about by the Famine and other difficulties.
He also stressed the problems that arose when poor, often
illiterate, families were catalogued by officials from verbal statements
of their name. This latter point probably effected a large proportion of
Irish families, particularly if the names were more than two syllables
and offered many opportunities for phonetic spelling.
From
where do the Fennessy families originate?
Like so many Irish clans it is not possible to link everyone
together, mainly because formal records are scarce before about 1800.
We identified, at the Meeting, nearly 20 septs.
It is likely that several of these will be linked quite soon, but
there will remain probably six to eight septs that geographically have
been in the same areas for several hundred years and we have little
chance of proving connections. The distribution of the present day Irish families, many
still resident in the localities of their grandparents, is within an
oval from Waterford City to County Clare.
It is without doubt a Munster family name.
There are few occurrences north of Tipperary, except for
migrations to Dublin, most of which are relatively recent.
Several septs can trace back nine or ten generations.
When these homesteads are plotted geographically the oval
distribution is confirmed, and includes the areas around Waterford City,
Lismore, Clonmel, Limerick City, Nenagh, and North County Clare.
Clonmel was chosen as the venue for the Meeting and has the
highest density of Fennessy names today.
Fennessy
is the most common variation of our name today, although the Fennessey
variation in the USA is nearly as common.
It became abundantly clear during the Meeting that spelling and
language variations of the family name have been widespread, although
with increasing literacy and communication some families have returned
to the Fennessy spelling. It has caused many of us to admit that
we need to re-examine the data accumulated in our searches and be much
more sympathetic to occurrences of other representations of the name
than we have been until now – we may have missed an important
connection!
We
know that several septs were economically successful, particularly in
farming, nurseries (horticulture) and shoe manufacture.
This success was not widespread and many families were harshly
fragmented during the Famine Years.
Even for those that were above the pauper level, a great many
emigrations occurred throughout the nineteenth century.
Present day numerical evidence suggests that USA, England,
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa (in descending order)
received the majority of emigrants.
It is interesting to note from the work of Kevin Edward Fennessy
of Hastings, New Zealand, that the majority of the Fennessys found today
in Australia and New Zealand are descended from one family at Coolagaree,
County Clare. There is no
discernable pattern for families found in present day USA and it appears
that all septs contributed to the emigrations.
Clonmel
Corporation helped to make our week’s activities enjoyable and we are
grateful for their hospitality. The
Mayor, Mrs. Vera Hewitt, paid us a particular honor by planting a
commemorative sapling of the Fennessy Oak (Quercus Robur Fennessii)
in their grounds at Malview.
The
Fennessy clan will almost certainly regard Clonmel as a geographical and
cultural base. As well as
many homestead locations, some still occupied by relatives, the recently
established Fennessys Hotel at Clonmel serves as a lighthouse to
visiting cousins. Run by
Richard and Esther Fennessy as a family business it offers a warm
welcome. Richard is the
head librarian at Waterford City Library, and is also a Gaelic speaker
and enthusiastic historian.
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