This article is from page 15 of the 2012-02-28 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 15 JPG
AN AMERICAN man is appealing to the people of West Clare to help him track down his Irish ancestors, and reunite a family that has been split apart since the Great Famine, more than 150 years ago. The Minnesota native is hoping that the people of Clare can help him track down any relatives of Mathias Breen, who hailed from the area of Kilofin in Labasheeda, and emigrated to America in 1851. Mathias Breen was born in 1833. His father’s name was Thomas Breen of Laghkil and it is thought that his father was probably Mathias Breen (Snr) of Ballina. Mathias (Jnr), who is the American’s great-grandfather, emigrated to the city of St Paul in America in 1951, just after the Great Famine. The American ancestor has contacted the Ireland Reaching Out project, asking them to assist him in tracing his Clare cousins. “The project is about connecting members of the Irish diaspora from all over the world, with people from the own parish and where their ancestors actually came from. We have volunteers in a number of parishes all over Ireland and they are researching their parishes and finding out who have gone abroad from their parish for the last 150 years. We are tracing those people and trying to reconnect the descendants of the people abroad with their parish back home,” said Paula Kennedy of the Ireland Reaching Out Project “While we normally look for people in foreign countries to connect with, we were contacted by a man in America who is looking for Breens in West Clare. He is looking for any descendants of his family and is very keen to make some sort of connections. At the moment, we have only one or two parishes in Clare who are part of the Reaching Out Project but we are hoping that more will come on board in the next little while.” Anyone who has information on the Breen family from West Clare and, specifically, any relatives of Mathias Breen is asked to visit www. irelandxo.com and make themselves known or ring 091 842013.