Reflections

In 2014, Mark Lawton, started writing what he had hoped would be the first of many versions of our family history. Mark, always wanted this family narrative to read like a story - because that’s what it is – a story. It is our story.

There is no formal bibliography, but, our sources were exhaustive. A truncated summary of those sources are: recorded world history, because over the last several centuries, our family members have lived, experienced and participated in an evolving local, national and global history; newspapers (such as the Boston Globe and Brockton Enterprise); libraries (such as the National Archives in Waltham, Massachusetts and the Brockton Public Library); magazines (such as the New York Herald Tribune Magazine and the New England School of Law Alumni Newsletter); maps (such as Ordnance Survey Maps, published by the Director of the Ordnance Survey Office, Phoenix Park, Dublin, in addition to maps from Connecticut and Massachusetts); birth, marriage and death certificates (from both America, England and Ireland – both civil registration and ecclesiastical records); photographs (and, there are many hundreds of them; see our ‘Family Photo History’); books (such as ‘Due to Enemy Action’ by Stephen Puleo; Samuel Lewis’ 1837 book entitled ‘A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland’; and, Asenath Nicholson’s 1847 book entitled ‘Ireland’s Welcome to the Stranger’, to name only a few); Griffith’s Valuation of Ireland, which provides detailed information of where people lived in Ireland and the property they possessed between 1848 and 1864; the ever popular, Ancestry.com.

Most importantly, our own family oral history which has fortunately been passed on to those relatives named in the ‘Acknowledgments’ section. Our family oral history was remarkably accurate when checked against all other sources.

We hope you enjoyed your story.