After our father's passing, my sister and I became interested in our heritage. As is so often the case, we regretted not beginning our research much sooner.

As we began to delve more deeply into our ancestry, we found several of our great-grandfather's relatives; people we never knew were here in the states.  Interestingly, as we came to know them a bit better, we found that the family history that was passed down to us, was word-for-word the same as those that had been passed down through their families.

I have only recently begun this site (June 2004), so there is very little here, and it is far from comprehensive. As time permits, I will be adding the family history that's been handed down through the generations, some links to Irish websites and celtic genealogy sites. 

My hope is to use the web as an opportunity to pool all the information we, and other relations have compiled into one place - providing a central resource for further research.  My goal is to make this information more interesting as well, by rewriting the family history in a more entertaining fashion.

I hope this website will prove a resource for those descended from the Blackwood and the Lowe families as well as those researching their own Irish heritage in the County Down, Ireland area.

To hear a song named for our county, Star of County Down, and read its lyrics, please visit this page.

As time permits, we'll be elaborating on the family history and hopefully present the entire chronicle by the end of the year. Since we've contacted several people with very similar-to-exact versions of this history, by providing the entire narrative, I'm hoping to find others.

Graveyard Photos

Our Sordid Past

Daily Life in the 1830s

Planning the Trip Across the Pond

The Voyage

Arriving in the U.S.