GapInTheHedge.com

This is a collection of reading resources that may be of use:

• McNEILL (Stephen). Life and times, decline and demise of Curraghbee, Co. Offaly, 1900-1997. Research project presented to the Department of Modern History, St. Patricks College, Maynooth, 1997.
  source: http://www.offalyhistory.com/content/reading_resources/offaly_gen/off_bibliog.htm
• Hemstead (Frank). A Life in the Flood Plain of The River Shannon.
  source: http://homepage.eircom.net/~gfoy/hemstead/

The locals talk about a James Golding being involved in the tithes war with Hickey and Micky Flynn (a cousin of the Hunt’s) and ending up in the Mullingar assizes. He was reputely turned over to the authorities by his landlord Richard Mathews. Micky Flynn was hung at Tarbrett Hill in view of his mothers house, a widow woman.

I've integrated Google Maps into the site so we can add bookmarks of places that are of interest. For starters I've added Clonmacnoise.

So I've been digging around some more and have found out quite a bit of background information... including a correct spelling for currabee...

Irelands Valuation office conducted it's first survey of property ownership in Ireland from 1848 to 1864. This survey became known as "Griffiths Valuation" after Richard Griffith who was the director of the office at that time. The survey was used to determine the amount of tax each person should pay towards the support of the poor within their poor law union. This involved determining the value of all privately held lands and buildings in rural as well as urban areas to figure the rate at which each unit of property could be rented year after year. The resulting survey was arranged by barony and civil parish with an index to the townlands appearing in each volume. Griffith's Valuation can be used as an excellent census substitute for the years after the Great Famine as censuses prior to 1901 were destroyed.

The name 'Hunt' seems to be found around the world and seems to stem from the name given to a member of a tribe who was responsible for hounds. There are also a number of different variations of the name due to the translation between english and irish.

Through the course of putting this site we've found a lot of other Hunts through doucementation and Internet searches. This document is an attempt to reference as many as possible.

• Ireland
  
  • Donal Hunt, Dublin, Ireland
• United States of America
  
  • Bernie Hunt, USA
• Canada
  
  • Ian Hunt, Canada
• United Kingdom
  
  • Andy & Lisa Hunt, Somerset, England
    

So I've just setup GapInTheHedge.com and started playing with Drupal as the content-management system for the site. Will keep you informed with updates as they happen...