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I don't see any date for this update coming out.  Someone said October but I don't see that on Ancestry's website.  Has anyone here been updated yet?

ANCESTRY discontinued showing matches under 8 cM some years ago unless you had put a note in like, “ possible Smith match” or whatever. The ANCESTRY PRO shows matches down to 6 cM.

The "child left behind" phenomenon is not rare and occurs in many cultures.  I found an example in my own family where mid-19c Irish ancestors left their oldest son, about age eight.  Within ten years, he joined his family in New York  William Bradford, a founder of New England, left his three-year-old son behind. He also joined the family years later.  It is not difficult to find examples when you start looking.

There are multiple reasons for this seemingly strange behavior.  The child was ill or frail can be one but I suspect that it was even more common to leave one child to help the old folks until they died.  As the family in the new country became established and more children were born, the child left behind became increasingly isolated or even alienated from his/her parents and siblings. 

The grandfather (Irish) of a close friend was a child left behind.  His parents and siblings went to Australia.  He never heard from them and understandably became very bitter.  As a young man, his uncle in America sent him a ticket and got him a job.  He never forgave his parents.  Only when Australian cousins contacted my friend after genealogical research, did she learn that the parents had sent tickets and money numerous times but the grandparents in Ireland never told him.  They didn't want him to go.  He went to his grave without ever learning the truth.

A good account of one Irish woman's experience as a child left behind is in the book "Staking Her Claim, Life of Belinda Mulrooney" by Melanie Mayer and Robert DeArmond.  Belinda was a fascinating Irish woman who eventually made and lost several fortunes in the Alaska Gold Rush of the 1890s.  The earlier part of the book tells of her experience as "a child left behind".  It was, as you might imagine, not easy.

Thank you for that great information, Frances.  They certainly look like relatives.

The best I can do on where the Quinlans lived was in nearby Kilcummer.  At the 1831 marriage of Patrick Quinlan and Margaret Gorman, the witnesses were David Hennessy and Johanna Hanlon.  David Hennessy married a Margaret Quinlan on 12 February 1829 in the parish of Annakissy.  This couple also immigrated to New York City and remained very close to the Quinlan-Gorman family there.  Margaret Quinlan Hennessy's obit in the NY Herald says she was from 'Kilcoorner', a misspelling of Kilcummer.  Kilcummer is 'an ancient parish now part of Castletownroche', according to Grove White.  So this indicates the Quinlans were from the same close area as the Gormans.  Again, thank you.

Thanks so much for that. Very interesting. I wish I were there to chat with him. Our elders are often a font of knowledge found nowhere else. It would be great if I still had cousins there.