Doug McNeill's new website       May 2008

McNeill family history, comprising the known lineages of the following families:

  1. McNeill  -- from Co Antrim, Ireland.
  2. O'Connor -- from Co Kerry , Ireland.
  3. Lagan --
  4. Mullan --
  5. Fairthorne -- from Gloucestershire, England.
  6. Wicks -- from Gloucestershire, Englnd.
  7. Whittington -- from Gloucestershire, England.

These families came out to New Zealand in the mid- to late-1800s, settling in Canterbury and South Canterbury.

Timaru, Ashburton (and the inland plains) and Christchurch are the towns of interest.

Marriages -- a tale of three Irish sisters:

  1. Paddy McNeill married Catherine (Kate / Kitty) O'Connor.
  2. Michael (Mick) Lagan married Sarah O'Connor.
  3. John Mullan married Ann (Annie) O'Connor.

Sarah and Ann were significantly older than our paternal grandmother Kitty (Catherine), who came out to New Zealand as a 17-7ear-old, went home to bring out her mother, but was too late, and returned to New Zealand alone. This information, from one of Kitty's daughters (Sarah Eugenie, aka Meg or Peg,or Pearlie) helps identify the sisters and their approximate arrival dates. She asserted, when in her 90s, that she was the "seventh child of the seventh child..." which helps establish Kitty O'Connor's position  relative to her siblings in Ireland.  It is clear that Sarah O'Connor was probably the oldest child, Kitty at the tail and Ann about mid-way.

Lagan

The first to marry was Sarah O'Connor. 

Sarah and Mick Lagan married in Timaru in September 1884, were involved in the hotel trade there and then moved to the Tinwald Hotel. A photograph of them taken there in 1897 identifies their children, and Sarah's two sisters. It also refers to Anne as "Ann O'Connor (or Mullan)" ... and this clue helped track that marriage, which was only about a year old.

Mullan

Ann and John Mullan married in Ashburton in 1896. They, too, were in the hotel trade, holding the licence for the Ashburton Hotel .... just across the river from Tinwald (on the south bank of the  river). They later moved to Geraldine, running the Geraldine Hotel, and then later to Dunedin.  By now they were out of the hotel trade. John must have been seriously ill; it is Ann Mullan who is identified on documents, and shortly after she signs as a widow.

McNeill

Kitty and Patrick (Paddy) McNeill married in Ashburton in 1902. They, too, were rapidly involved in the hotel trade ... initially, it seems, at Kurow (where the first two children were born, one of them drowning as a toddler in the water race), then at Methven.  They then went farming at Lauriston, inland between Ashburton, Rakaia and Methven.