McDonald Family Tree

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Invitation to Update the McDonald – Hurley – Torney Family Tree

Boy’s and Girl’s,

Sending this to all South Boston McDonald Clan. PLEASE forward to others that might enjoy seeing and/or helping with this project.

Hope you and clan(s) are all safe and healthy. With many of us home and/or retired, thought it might be a good time to ask all to take a look at the Family Tree and update it.

Some history……Kudo’s to Cliffy and Jane who first did the research in 1982, researching the McDonald Family Tree. (lots of neat history below)

As you can see with the images below, we have some excellent info, but as our clan has grown, it is time we update the family tree as best as we can with new babies, spouses, partners and unfortunately those we have lost.

When you have a few minutes take a look at our Ancestry.com site.
URL: https://www.ancestry.com
U: SouthBostonMcDonald (case sensitive)
P: redsox44

Please feel free to move around the site to your family and/or your own “block” on the site. Once you feel comfortable you can edit, add names etc.
Also would be great for you to add photos. Key is that you must add to the “Gallery” first, then add the each person’s “block”

If you have any questions/comments/edits, please feel free to contact me
Email: mcdonald44@me.com
Phone: 781-571-8276 (m)


Cliff and Jane’s McDonald Family ancestry visit to New Brunswick in 1982

I think you said that the family tree that Cliff & I made was presented at a family reunion in 1983.  If so, I think we must have made the trip to Canada just the year before, in 1982.  We had heard from “Dad” that the family had come to MA from South Nelson, NB.  By the time we went there, the town of South Nelson didn’t exist.  South Nelson must have been part of Nelson which was on the Miramichi River and near the towns of Chatham and Newcastle.  Since 1995, it has been part of the amalgamation of all these areas and known as simply Miramichi, New Brunswick.  Here are links that you may find interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miramichi,_New_Brunswick
https://www.miramichi.org/
In our attempts to research the family ancestors, we were disappointed to learn that many of the local government records (birth, marriage, death) had been lost in a fire many years earlier.  We then decided to try the local Roman Catholic church.  The church itself, St. Michael’s, was absolutely beautiful, an impressive structure in the midst of unimpressive surroundings.  The young people we met there and who were in charge of granting access to the church records were initially reluctant to let us have access to these records since the policy was that none less than 100 years old could be accessed.  Our interest was a little less than 100 years old.  However, they relented when they learned that we’d come all the way from Boston and that we could not find any information at town/city hall.  Their records were extensive and it seemed that every Irish family had sons named James, John, Thomas, Michael, etc. but “Charles Clifford” was unique.  That’s how we knew we had the right family!  (Honestly, I have wondered why/how that name was chosen.) Being able to see these church records was very helpful because we could see baptism records and find out the names of the Godparents who were often siblings of the parents so we could find out more “lateral” connections, not just “vertical.”  Here are some links to the city and the church:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Michael%27s_Basilica,_Miramichi#Features
https://stmichaelsbasilica.com/