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« on: Wednesday 04 January 23 09:10 GMT (UK) »
Well, what can I say with your help I have managed to speak with a living relative.
Thank you all so much. Now to find my dad's birth cert.
Tue, 3 Jan at 22:23
Yes, Donna, you have definitely reached the right person. You and I are second cousins, so I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. Mona, Pauline and Dessie were my aunts and uncle. There were four other siblings, William (my father), Seamus (who died in the 1918 flu), Joseph, and Sean. They are all now deceased. My grandfather, also William Toner, had five siblings, Ciss, Jim, Margaret, Johnny, and Peter. I never met Peter. I was told that he was a bit ‘wild’ and had gone to England! The family seemed to have lost touch. A cousin told me that he thought that Peter had a son called Don and perhaps a daughter, though perhaps the daughter was Don’s daughter (yourself). The notes are unclear.
I don’t really do family history. My sister, Elsie, who died in 1994 aged 57 had some interest in that, and traced out a rough family tree, and after she died I fleshed it out to some extent and explored the Grantham connection on my mother’s side. I hope to be able to send you tomorrow the family tree I made out (father’s side only) and Elsie’s earlier sketch, which mentions Peter (England) and Don and the word ‘daughter’. Elsie’s sketch is on the back of a large irregularly shaped calendar page so I will have to send it in parts that you can fit together if you want. She has written down a few names that I don’t have and has also covered my mother’s side of the family.
Elsie was my only sibling and was unmarried and had no children, and as a Catholic priest I had no children either. I am now 83. I keep contact with a few of my cousins (mostly Pauline’s family) but have lost touch with most of them, and sadly do not always hear of deaths among the rather large number of them. The family tree does not include any details about them, though I could give you further information about some of them. Some did well in life, and one of them, Stephen Donnelly (centre left of my tree) is the Minister for Health in the Irish government. I am further down on the left, as ‘Billy’.
My grandfather, Peter’s brother, did some haulage, including with horse and cart, and had a large piggery on South Summer Street. When that street was redeveloped, they moved to 42-3 Donore Avenue, which they seemed to own already. I remember visiting Mona and Dessie there. When I was a small child there was still grazing land a mile or so from Donore Avenue.
It is getting late so must finish for now. I still drive to the office in the Jesuit HQ early each morning and do some work there. I live in the suburbs of Dublin with one other Jesuit priest. Our numbers are declining fast!
Best wishes.
Bill
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