The name, the branches and the cousins
Every post about the Damerys themselves: the name and its origins, the branches worldwide, the cousins who wrote in, and the family album. The discoveries on the descents are on the full Journal.
The wall moves back
For thirty years the oldest wall in the research stood at 1750. It has now moved. Richard and Margaret Damery were burying family at Bandon in the 1690s, and Margaret, buried in 1696, is both the earliest dated Damery record in the town and the family's earliest documented ancestress on the name.
20 September 2026
The shield on the wax
Seven hundred years ago a woman pressed the family arms into wax. The old heralds recorded her seal, and here it is again, redrawn by hand, carrying the coat that stil…
10 August 2026
Lunch at Sandringham
Of all the branches of this family, the Melbourne Dammerys are the one I have sat down to lunch with. A Saturday by the bay in March 2020, a cousin called Sue, and the…
8 August 2026
The New Brunswick Damerys
Who is Greg Damery, and where does his branch fit? Loyalists out of Boston in 1783, a lumber fortune on the St. John River, and a great-uncle sent to fight within sigh…
6 August 2026
The Damerys who held the brush
The name Damery does not only appear on gallery labels as a sitter. Three times, at least, it appears as the artist: the painter brothers of Liege, a French draughtsma…
4 August 2026
There is a Damery hanging in Boston
A cousin from the Canadian branch of the name has been in touch, and he sent me something wonderful: a portrait by Greuze, painted around 1765, hanging in the Museum o…
2 August 2026
Unmarrying the founder
A deed read in full has dissolved a marriage this research itself made three weeks ago, recovered six forgotten daughters of the first Jones of Drombeg, and left the f…
21 July 2026
An old master who never existed
A new painting of the family arms in the manner of an antique watercolour, with a signature in the corner that rewards a second look.
17 July 2026
Shaw in the family album
A tall man in tweeds and a flat cap, wicker chairs on a lawn, and nothing written on the back. We think we know who he is, and what he was doing in the neighbourhood.
15 July 2026
The captain in the family
The young man standing beside his mother at the Drombeg stones grew up to command ships. In the first months of the war he fought off a Luftwaffe bomber with nothing b…
13 July 2026
Picnics among the stones
The Drombeg stone circle has stood above Glandore for three thousand years. For one family, it was also the far field: the place you took visitors, and a picnic.
7 July 2026
A visit to Castle Freke
Two photographs from the family album record the Jones family visiting their people at Castle Freke, the great ivy-covered pile of the Evans-Frekes near Rosscarbery.
6 July 2026
Carrig Bawn, 8 April 1921
One page of the family album carries a burned-out house, a group of onlookers, and four handwritten words. It is the War of Independence, three months before the Truce.
5 July 2026