Where We're From – The Unknown

This post is the last of my posts on this subject. It's also going to take on a different form, because I've got no specific locations to point to with these. The locations in this post are either family rumour, my own conjecture based on names and locations, or my assumption based on the origins of certain groups.

I'll start with the Galician Jews. Though I've nothing before my great-grandparents' births in the late 1800s, most Galician Jews were German or Russian Jews. Because of the location and names involved, I'm inclined to say that my family were German aka Ashkanazi Jews. I don't know how many generations they lived in Galicia, but they probably migrated there at some point between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, as that seems to be when most migration from Germany to Galicia took place for the Jews. And whoever my original Jewish German ancestor might have been probably came to Germany with the migrations from the Middle East in the tenth or eleventh century.

There's also the Hilinger/Hillinger family, whose origins seem to be from Austria, though I have not specific connection to my family as of yet. Nor do I understand how the Austrian Hillingers might have ended up in Galicia, if they are connected.

The next family origin I've speculated on is my Northern Irish roots. Three of the four names I have for those families are what we in America call Scots-Irish, meaning those Gaels who lived in Scotland but were transported out of Scotland and settled in Northern Ireland. Of the four names I have for my family (Curran, Park, Dunlop and Blair), only Curran is a well-known Ulster-based name. The other three all have strong origins in Scotland, leading me to believe it quite likely that at least one line, if not all three, probably trace back to Scotland, though as of yet, I have no proof. I guess time will tell.

The final and most-murky family mystery line is that of the possible Huguenot origins of one of my Welsh lines. I've only recently learned about this one, and though I have some speculation about which line it might be, it's really too soon to tell. But if that's so, that means at least one of my lines originally has origins in France. Which is one of those places I always assumed I had no connection to before this, which I find amusing. And goes to show—you should never just assume anything.


And really, that's it. I'd love to be able to prove even a tiny fraction of any of the above speculations, but that's going to take a lot of digging, and many more generations before I can prove or disprove any of them, so I guess I'll just have to wait to find out.

Thank you all for reading along (if you did), and if you have any insight into any of the above locations, I'd love to hear about it. Particularly if you have any connections to any of the following families: (Galician) Seneft/Senft, Hilinger/Hillinger, Kresch, Reich, (Northern Irish) Curran, Park, Blair, Dunlop, (Welsh) Jones, Griffiths, Gabriel (I believe this is the Huguenot line) /Howel/Howells, Roberts.

Resources:
* The History of Jews in Galicia
* The History of Eastern European Jews
* Ulster Scots People (aka Scots Irish)
* Huguenot