Samuel Neill

Ancestral Clues and Lessons: Samuel Neill (1838-1912)

Posted on April 29, 2017, updated on April 29, 2017 by mjnrootdig

This is part of a series of short posts focusing on what I have learned about research (or life in general) from an ancestor. These may or may not be entirely serious. We will leave up to the reader to decide–after all, research is about evaluation of evidence 😉 ) Samuel Neill (1838/1839 County Derry, […]

My Irish Neills

Posted on January 18, 2017, updated on January 18, 2017 by mjnrootdig

Like many genealogists with Irish immigrants, I don’t have a great deal of information on my Irish family in Ireland. Samuel Neill immigrated as a single man in 1864, arriving in Canada’s New Brunswick Province with his married brother Joseph and Joseph’s young family. The Neills were living in Limavady when they left Ireland for […]

Confusing Box 384 with 381–Samuel is There!

Posted on November 10, 2015, updated on November 10, 2015 by mjnrootdig

I looked for it so many times I was nearly blue in the face. The index to estates for Hancock County, Illinois, indicated that the estate packet of Samuel Neill who died in 1912 was in box 384. I went through the contents of box 384 more times than I could remember, hoping to find […]

Why Was the Brother Not the Bondsman and Migration Timeline Questions on the Neills

Posted on September 1, 2015 by mjnrootdig

Sometimes it just takes time for things to “click.” And sometimes even after things click there are more questions than answers. In writing up my Irish problem on Annie (Murphy) Neill, I realized that I had not fully researched the bondsman (Edward Durbin) on her 1865 marriage to Samuel Neill in New Brunswick, Canada. In […]

Leaving South Dakota in the Winter of 1912

Posted on June 12, 2015, updated on June 12, 2015 by mjnrootdig

I discovered this item quite by accident while giving a webinar on using newspapers on the Library of Congress website. The January 1912 reference in the Dakota Farmers’ Leader of Canton, South Dakota, indicated that my uncle and aunt, Louis and Mary (Neill) Rampley, were leaving South Dakota and returning home to Illinois. The article stated […]