The Coonan Trilogy

In the foreground is the entrance to the ancient St. Cronan’s Monastery in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary. In the background is St. Cronan’s Church which was built on the ruins of a much earlier church. The Coonan name has been associated with the church in Roscrea since prior to 1000 A.D.

            The research papers and notes of Robert J. Conan, Jr., Ph.D. which have been published on this site, as part of the Conan Archival Project, have provided the motivation for this set of papers. In what has evolved into a trilogy a goal has been to summarize and update Conan’s research and to connect with present day descendants. At the same time every effort was made to search for connections among the families described by Conan and to stretch the family lines as far back into the past as possible.  

The Coonans of Roscrea - NEW

Oct 2018

This paper continues the effort to organize, consolidate and extend the research of Robert Conan. The following paper describes the Coonan families found in the area of Ireland around Roscrea, Co. Tipperary. The material found in Conan’s notes pertaining to this subject consists of two parts: (1) a structured family report covering five generations and (2) a set of interviews conducted by Robert Conan in Ireland during 1970 and 1972. The data in the structured family report covers the period from the mid-1700s to the early 1800s. The Robert Conan interviews covered the then current generation of Coonan descendants and went back one or two generations. The overall goal is to connect the earlier Coonan generations with the more recent descendants.

 The information has been structured as family trees to achieve a concentration of the information and to increase the probability of discovering other family connections. The geographic proximity of the families described in this paper holds the promise of finding connections among them. A more long range goal is to find connections with the Upperchurch Coonan families, which were described in an earlier paper.

The Upperchurch Coonan Families  

Aug 2018

              This paper connects the research of the late Robert J. Conan, Jr., (1924-2002), concerning Coonan families from the Upperchurch area, with their descendants. In the late 60s and early 70s Robert Conan made multiple trips to Ireland where he sought out and interviewed as many Coonan descendants as he could find. During the last year, through the efforts of Robert Conan’s nephew, Paul B. Conan, Jr., his research papers and the notes, upon which those papers are based, have been published on the mcgrathsearch.com web site as part of the Conan Archive Project. Among Robert’s original material are the hand written notes which he produced contemporaneously with those Ireland interviews. After several months of exchanging information with Philip Coonan of Co. Laois, and his cousins Tom Carroll and Pat Donnelly, the possible connection of several Coonan lines to a common Coonan ancestor in the Upperchurch area has begun to take shape.

The Conan Family of Foilagoule

Mar 2018

             The Jerry Conan family survived the Great Irish Famine on their small five acre farm in the townland of Foilagoule, in Moyaliff civil parish, Co. Tipperary. As the famine came to an end various members of his family decided to emigrate from Ireland to America. Five of his six known children would leave Ireland in the decade after the famine and they all settled in the Pompey area of Onondaga County in Central New York State. In this paper five Conan children are followed through census and church records and newspaper archives. These sources were used to trace the five families through at least two generations. The Conans married into other Upperchurch families: Ryan, Maher and Phelan.