The State of the Search
A family history is never finished; it is only honestly paused. So before the appendices close this book, here is exactly where the search stood when I paused it, in the summer of 2026: what was won, what resisted, and where the next of us should dig.
The tree behind this book names 227 direct ancestors, across some fifteen generations, from a Cork registrar's entries to the will of a Tudor Exchequer man. In its final season the search was still moving: five lines were pushed back in a single July week; the Ievers to their 1660s founder, the Lanes of Lanespark toward Staffordshire, the Pennefathers to a Cromwellian cornet buried at the Rock of Cashel, the Hickeys and, through them, the Herricks of Shippool. And on almost the last Sunday of the work, my mother's side answered in kind: the Elliotts leapt three generations in a single day (from a Cork lane back to Golden in the Tipperary vale and the borderland around Birr) with the proving certificate found by nightfall, and a new 3× great-grandfather, Cornelius Sheehan, in the bargain. I say this not to boast but to make a point: the records are not exhausted. They were merely exhausted by me.
Every one of the lines in this tree ends somewhere, and each ending has been examined and classified. Most stop where the published record itself stops. There is no shame in ending at a man like Robert Ryves (c. 1490), "the first of his name of whom there is any record in England." But a good number are merely locked, with the key identified. For whoever takes this up after me, the keys are these:
The great wall is our own name
The line is documented to Richard Damery and Ann of Ballymodan, about 1720, with Richard and Margaret Damery at Bandon in the 1690s just behind them. In the final week of writing, the wall gave twice. James of Kilnameela's father (argued between the brothers John and Richard since Norman's charts of 1994) now stands as Richard (1763), probable: James raised his family on Richard's farm, succeeded him in it, and named his first son Richard; the Bandon estate lease papers, if they survive, hold the sentence that would prove it.
And in Bristol's servant registers the search found Richard Dymery of Dursley, broadweaver, indentured for Jamaica ten days after Sedgemoor, 1685. The leading working hypothesis for the crossing itself. The American end, meanwhile, is closed: the Connecticut probate of James (d. 1865) was read in full in 2026 and says nothing of his father. The answer, if it exists, is Irish: the Kilbrogan register before 1752 above all. Whether the family came from Gloucestershire, as the weight of evidence now leans, or elsewhere entirely, remains the oldest question in this book.
The quick wins I never took and the three I did
In the last days of writing, I finally spent the afternoons with Burke's that this paragraph was drafted to recommend, and they paid extravagantly: the Herrick page gave up four generations to a John Herrick who came over with Ormonde in 1641; the Lane page produced the sentence that would make Jane Lane, the King's saviour, my 9× great-grandfather's sister, a sentence whose trial, and fall, are told below; and the Pennefather pages proved that chain end to end. Let those stand as proof of the method. The wins still untaken: Ann Clutterham of Little Livermere (born 1802) has a baptism entry in the Suffolk indexes that will name her parents in a single search. The will of Arthur Swayne of Sarson lies at Kew, ordered by no one yet. The Bagot pedigree in Burke's Peerage would carry the Blithfield line and with it, perhaps, the deepest reach of this whole tree toward its Domesday tradition. And somewhere in Guy's Directory of Cork, a Bowdren or Treacy "builder" may yet prove the family memory of the firm.
The honest soft spots and the great open case
A handful of links in this book are graded probable rather than proven (Julia Condon of Kilmalooda among them), each flagged where it occurs. And one was grander, and I broke it myself: the Tipperary Lanes claimed descent from the Lanes of Bentley Hall, the family of Jane Lane who saved a king, and wore their arms; the printed pedigrees repeat the claim; but the contemporary records (Gregory King's pedigree, the founder's own will, the Colonel's documented children) dismantle it. And Chapter 12 shows the seams where a herald stitched two Williams into one. What survives is a better mystery for whoever digs next: who was the '49 officer William Lane of Cattiganstown? Four Lanes stand on the '49 lists; the 1625 State Papers show a Lane, cousin to the Earl of Oxford, seeking an Irish company; the Lanes of Vernon Mount, Cork, claimed the same Bentley blood; and the Monmouthshire cadets of Bentley vanish from the record at just the right time. Behind the answer, if it ever comes, wait Bagot, Cecil, and the road to Domesday. The book is built to survive either way.
Everything is left in order for you: the tree in its interactive form, the GEDCOM with every source noted and graded, the deep-dive files, the audit of every line's ending, and the dossier on the Damery origin itself. If you are reading this with the family name, or any of the hundred names inside it, the search is yours now.
Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito. Yield not to misfortunes; go the bolder against them.
It has served this family for a long time. It will serve you in the archives too.
The printed Afterword closed with 227 named direct ancestors and a wall standing at the head of the Damery line. Both numbers have since moved, and honesty requires the update in both directions. As of late July 2026 the chart carries some six hundred and forty named direct ancestors across forty-six graded generations: the Elliott forebears of Golden and Birr; the Jones of Drombeg generations recovered from the deeds and the Ross registers; the female lines climbing from my father's grandmother, Hunt, Westropp, Piers, Berkeley, Loftus and FitzMaurice, and the Bunburys of Cheshire back to a lord of Bunbury in King Stephen's reign; and, proven in the weeks these words were added, the de Vere descent and the Clare descent, twin anchors reaching the Domesday Book, and climbing on through the Clare earls, the Butlers of Ormond and the counts of Vermandois to what now stands at the summit: thirteen documented royal houses and twelve sovereign crowns, England and Scotland, Wales and the three Irish kingships, France, Normandy, the Frankish empire and Italy, Kiev and Sweden, with Edward I arrived by the Butler door, Kenneth MacAlpin and Rhodri Mawr by the north and west, and Charlemagne now reached by two roads. Two false royal gateways were tested and rejected on the evidence along the way, which is what lets the thirteen that held be believed (Chapters 22 to 26 of the living edition, the Journal, and the charts gathered at The Royal Houses tell those stories). The Damery wall itself has not moved an inch: the English well the Bandon name sprang from is still unfound, the doors of the printed Afterword still stand ajar, and the family still cannot say where its own rare name crossed from. The prize my father hunted arrived up the other side of the tree. The wall he hammered at waits for the next researcher, exactly as this book promised it would.