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I have only recently discovered details about my ancestor Thady (Timothy) Connolly from Baltimore West Cork. My father had always told me that he came from Skibbereen and that when he first arrived in London he settled at a place called 'Dockhead' which is in Bermondsey. My father also told me that there were seven brothers but I have yet to locate any of them!
Baltimore I am told is a beautiful place and it must have been such a wrench to leave it and end up living in the East End slums!

I remembered that my grandfather who was Timothy's grandson had an aunt who was only 7 years older than he was and she would have been the youngest daughter of my ancestor from Baltimore. I also remembered that she had been to Ireland looking to see if she could find any trace of a family still there. I knew somehow that if I could find a descendent of this aunt I would find out more about my Timothy. My real breakthrough came when I found someone on Genes reunited searching for info on this aunt and after one quick email and three phone calls later from 3 different interested parties I spoke to the grand daughter of this aunt. (We now speak on the phone constantly and it is like we have known each other all out lives even though we have yet to meet!)

From then on it was plain sailing in no time at all after nealy 3 years of searching I found out little snippets of information about him. He had red hair and spoke Gaelic! and was quite a laid back man! I now have photographs of two of his daughters taking pride of place on my piano! He was a Deal Porter in the Surrey Docks where wood coming into the port was always unloaded which would explain why he was found on the census in Bermondsey in 1851.

My father his greatgrandson also worked in the London Docks as a docker as did so many of Timothy's descendents. Quite a few of his descendents have visited Skibbereen looking for information on the family because they didn't know that it was Baltimore that he hailed from

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