cahill_ancestors@prodigy.net
Cahill Cooperative Ancestors
Over 500 Earliest-Known Cahill Families
on file in our private genealogy database
Welcome from Jim and Rosalie Saitta Cahill
We do free comparisons of early Cahill family history backgrounds to look for
possible matches with unknown relatives.
Background
This database began with our mailing project of 1984-1986 trying (as yet in vain)
to locate descendants of the siblings of our immigrant James (first documented near
Chicago in 1853). We hope that those third, fourth, or fifth cousins can add to what
we know about our line in Ireland and the United States.
After the declining results from those 1,750 pieces of mail
and from personal approaches by us and project members, we made this a pioneering
project on the Internet in 1995. We continue to use this confidential database to do free
comparisons for those with Cahill/Cohill/Cahall etc. ancestry who send what they know
about their first-known generations.
Most recently, the match rate for new families has been better than 1 in 5.
For the year prior to June of 2000, 45 new families registered, of which 24 percent
have been verified as related to one or more families in the database. Overall,
23 percent of families in the database are verified as related to another family.
As of June 1, 2000 there were 586 early Cahill histories in the database, 137 of
them verified as being related in 50 family lines, or clans (properly "septs" in Ireland).
A few of these had known that they were related, but most had newfound relatives.
More than half (57%) of the chief family reporters have a surname other than Cahill,
so perhaps Cahill descendants with other surnames are more numerous or more
interested in family history than those who have descended in the male line.
Most of the registered families are in the United States, but some are in Canada,
Australia, and England. All Cahills appear to have originated in Ireland, so please
be sure to note it if your family may have started elsewhere.
How to Register
Send what you know of your earliest Cahill and his or her children and grandchildren,
briefly stating how you are related to that line or interested in it.
For our
comparisons, at least two items are needed, preferably at least two for each of the
early generations. The more details provided, the more effective the comparisons
can be (for example, you may know only the names of some early relatives, but these
names may be the only existing links to another family; also there have been several
cases where a previously registered family added a new place name and this triggered
a similarity leading to a verified connection).
You may write out what you know, or list the items by the numbers below, or send
an e-mail attachment with an existing listing or a GEDCOM file--whatever is easy for
you (we do not think that computer screen fill-in forms are a good way to report
family history). If you do not know exact dates and places, estimates will help.
Key items begin with an asterisk (*).
1..*Name of your 1st known Cahill
2....From what Irish county (or state or province)
3....From what locality (town or parish)
4..*Your 1st Cahill's date of birth
5....Names of brothers and sisters
6..*Names and places of siblings or other early relatives living outside Ireland
7....Port of entry where your 1st Cahill arrived outside Ireland
8....Date your 1st Cahill arrived outside Ireland
9..*Spouse of your 1st Cahill
10...Country, place, and date of marriage
11.*Children's names, dates, their spouses
12...Grandchildren of your 1st Cahill
13.*Places lived outside Ireland (earliest first)
14...Any other identifying info, such as stories (usually have some basis in fact)
Even today, many family reporters do not have e-mail addresses in the database, so
registration requires your postal address for possible use in Similarity Reports
(below). We keep street addresses, e-mail addresses, and histories confidential, as
most were submitted for release only to possible relatives.
After reading the two "Commitments" sections below, send your early family
information and postal address or comments to us at--
cahill_ancestors@prodigy.net
Note to commercial genealogists--Send your postal address and ask
for ours so that you can have your Cahill-ancestry clients contact us
directly for our free services.
Commitments: Ours
We usually check our mail weekly and acknowledge messages
as received. Depending on our schedules, we try to enter
new information, do comparisons, and reply the next week.
Our postal address is included in our initial acknowledgment.
Family Numbers and members' ID Numbers are assigned sequentially and tie family
members together (a family member reported later will have a higher ID Number
but will still be tied to the Family Number).
If our computer-assisted comparisons show any significant similarities with any other
family, we send the same Similarity Report to both family reporters. This report
contains the basic information of both families and the postal and any e-mail
addresses of the reporters. This enables either reporter to contact the other to
exchange more information and to work together on deciding what
these similarities may mean (however, each family is its own final authority).
Perhaps this contact between family reporters will be to greet a newfound relative!
Commitments: Yours
This is a cooperative effort. By registering you agree to help future
searchers by reporting your first impressions and what you later decide about any
similarities reported to you. A check-sheet is included with each Similarity Report
to make it easy for you to provide this feedback. Those not replying to a Similarity
Report will not be sent any further reports. To save us from repeated lookups,
please put your assigned family number (F___) on all correspondence, preferably
placed first in the subject heading.
New families are continually being added, and your family history will be included in
comparing new families with those in the database. Please notify us of any changes
in your e-mail and especially your postal address, which is usually more permanent
(the US postal service forwards mail for a year after a change-of-address). Several
new families had significant similarities with another
family, but we could not notify them because they had not sent their postal address
and their return e-mail address did not work. Also, some previously registered families
did not receive our reports of similarities with new families because their addresses
were no longer valid, so please keep your addresses up-to-date.
If you have previously corresponded with us, and already have a Family Number and
have revised your family history, please send us a copy so that we can keep your file
up-to-date to benefit future searchers, and for comparing your family information
with that of new families. Please update our e-mail address in your records if you
do not have this one.
Generic History of our Name
The Cahill name is one of the oldest in Europe. The Irish had surnames very early,
and O'Cahill was one of the first. The earliest recorded person of our name was
a monk, Flan O'Cahill, who died in 938 A.D. It is extremely unlikely that anyone can
trace a member of his or her family back to Flan's family.
The O'Cahills have links back to Irish pagan leaders in the 200s and 400s A.D.
By 1000 A.D. the O'Cahills controlled much of south Galway,
east Clare, and western and northern Tipperary. This predominance
was ended in the 1200s by the O'Shaugnessys and the O'Donoghues, perhaps both in
alliance with the Norman-English who had recently arrived in Ireland.
Those 13th century defeats may have led to the loss in most lines of their "O,"
which indicates both descent and predominance. However it happened, by 1659
the name "O'Cahill" had been almost entirely
replaced by "Cahill" as a common surname in a listing of workers on the
large farms following the English Cromwellian land confiscations.
Today Cahill is the most common surname in Munster, the old southwestern province,
which includes the counties of Clare, Limerick, Kerry, Cork, Waterford, and Tipperary.
The Irish there pronounce it with the accent on the first syllable with a
short "a" and in the last syllable an almost-swallowed "h". This can be described
as pronounced "CA" (accented) as in cattle, and "hill" as hull.
(Articles and sources about Cahills are included in our "Cahill Cooperative
Newsletter," which began in 1987 and now has over 550 pages. When a suitable
text-search system is available, we may add its pages to this site.)
Our Privacy Policy
This site keeps your family information in a database not connected to the Internet.
As stated at the end of the section "How to Register," we release your family
information and your postal and e-mail addresses only in Similarity Reports to those
who could be your relatives. These Similarity Reports also warn against any further
transfer of anyone's family information without the written consent of the
original family reporter or a successor. This site has no motive other than trying
to find out more about our own Cahill ancestors and cooperating with others doing
the same.
Potential Personal and Family Privacy Problems
Many other genealogical sites put the seeker's family information out in public
view. There are also commercial and other organizations soliciting family histories
for publication on web sites and on Compact Discs, which the company can then sell
to anyone or any company.
Any public listing of family information may pose potential
problems. Some people see this as exposing them and their descendants to possible
misuse of their family information, including information about deceased ancestors.
Modern applications for medical coverage, life insurance, and even employment
could be adversely affected if the company suspects that some of your ancestors died
earlier than the average for that time, or that your family has a genetic
predisposition to a serious disease. Public collections of family histories
make it easier for computers to discover such things, and also may make identity
theft easier.
History of This Site
This was the only Cahill genealogy site when it was first posted on the Internet in
August 1995 with part of its URL as "cahillancestors" and entitled "Cahill
Cooperative Ancestors." A few years later there were several Cahill
mailing lists on commercial servers, one even using the name "Cahill Cooperative."
The text of this site was slightly revised in October 1995 and on October 30, 1996.
In late June and early July 2000 we added several sections.
In mid-2000 part of the address of this site had to be changed because Prodigy.net
was closing its old personal web pages at Prodigy.com. The new personal web page
addresses automatically have the member's e-mail name, so it was fortunate that
when we had to choose a new and permanent e-mail name in 1999, we chose "cahill_ancestors,"
which was very
similar to our website address at that time. In mid-2000 we added three descriptive sentences
to the heading and were able to keep the original page title of "Cahill Cooperative Ancestors," which
may help some search engines to keep track of it. However,
these address changes may cause errors with personal bookmarks, with links from other websites, and
with listings on search engines, at least for several months.
There were about 300 visits to this site from August to October 1995. From
November 1995 to July 6, 2000 there were about 5,700 visits (in
recent years probably most visits were from search engines updating their
indexes).
Since July 6, 2000 the number of visits is
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