Welcome to the Scrapbook of the O'Neall Family, Irish Quakers and Friends
In the first version of this web site, installed on 18 November 1998, we pointed out that these pages were "relatively new (but, just like the rest of us, they're getting older). So they should be changing rather rapidly." Well, although "rapidly" was perhaps not quite an accurate word, they are changing. Version history:
Yes, the pun is intended. These pages are the product of some of those O'Nealls. There's a little more on us here.
This page is the first page of our scrapbook, being a set of stories, pictures and articles that are as near to contemporary to the protagonists (ancestors) as we can find. For more direct access to specific pages, try the Site Map. But now, on with the "scrapbook".
About 1725, there arrived in the American colonies, in an area which would become part of the state of Delaware, a man who called himself Hugh O'Neall. Hugh who, according to family tradition, was descended from the O'Neills of Shane's Castle, County Antrim, Ireland, was supposedly the progenitor of a series of American descendants, the "Hugh cousins", as an Internet list devoted partly to the subject appropriately calls them. Many of these folks were members -- and, sometimes, prominent members -- of the American community of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, as they are more often known. These pages will sketch the history of some of those Friends -- and of their friends -- and therefore are dedicated to them, to their families and to their deeds, via the souvenirs and stories they have left us.
In order to transmit these stories and histories with as much immediacy as possible, we will endeavor to let their actors or nearby spectators speak for themselves whenever possible. We hope you'll like them and get at least a chuckle or two from perusing them.
We don't claim to have all the data available on this vast subject, so if you know something we don't and you think we ought to, please mail us.
The story of our immigrant ancestor is in itself an excellent example of family tradition at work. For more information on his life and what we do and do not know about it, read the traditional history of Hugh O'Neall. Read at your own risk; this story rarely fails to provoke controversy among his descendants ... and even his non-descendants!
The children of Hugh O'Neall were born in the years leading up to the American Revolution. We think that the story of their differing reactions to the events of that period are representative of the hopes and deeds of the period. It is interesting to note that of Hugh's seven sons, there were, in some sense, "two of each" (plus one "spare"). Two were patriots and fought on the side of the rebelling colonies in the American Revolutionary War, two were Tories and fought on the side of the British, and two were Quakers and thereby got in trouble with everybody! We don't know very much about the seventh nor about the daughter.
So here are the entries to Hugh's children. Good reading!
A Revolutionary soldier, James
Neal.
That's all for the moment.
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