Many years ago I exchanged some e-mails with Ron Knowles, who had created a web site presenting his research on a Henneberry (one spelling variation) family from the Glen of Aherlow. The immigrant ancestors were David and Jane Cushing Henneberry, who settled in Will county, Illinois. At the time it seemed that we had little evidence of a possible connection between our families except for the Cushing name and that both the Henneberrys and our immigrant Cushing ancestors, Dennis Cushing and Catherine Casey, were married in Galbally, County Limerick, Ireland. Our exchanges must have been more than twenty years ago.
In the interim, I've been searching for Dennis' Cushing family in Ireland. And after 25 years, I have not found one. At least not one that is definitive and informative enough that I can attach a list of names of siblings and parents. Also in the interim, I've come to see that Cushing (or it's Irish spellings, Cushen at the time) was not a very common name and that they were nearly all located approximately in the triangle formed by the cities of Limerick, Tipperary and Cork. So two Cushings near Galbally were likely related, but determining the relationship, due to sparsity of records, is difficult.
In 2018 I reluctantly began submitting DNA samples for genealogy research. I say reluctantly because for years I had had misgivings about making my DNA public and opening up myself and anyone to whom I am related to abusive and discriminatory uses that will develop in the future that we can only imagine. I'm still not completely comfortable that submitting and revealing my DNA was wise. But without going into all my philosophical pros and cons, not the point of this article, I'll just say that this is where I am in my genealogy journey.
I've just been searching through ancestry.com family trees, a snippet of which is made available to me for having used their DNA analysis service, and came across Jane Cushing Henneberry. This is just one connection, and so far I don't know if this branch of the 32 branches visible to me is the source of the shared DNA. Nonetheless, this is an important connection to consider. I'll be searching for more such connections. In the meantime, I've been searching for the link on my web site to the Henneberry site, and can't find one. I'm sure there used to be one, but it must have been lost in the major revision I made several years ago. So I'll be adding a link and an explanation soon.
My memory is that the Henneberry and related Magner family groups were separate but both held information on the Henneberrys. It now looks to me like both sites are/were managed by Ron Knowles, but that neither has been updated since 2008. My attempt to reach Ron a few years ago did not get a response, so the pages may no longer be active. I should probably archive the Cushing related pages in case they disappear. But here are links to the primary Henneberry site and to the related Magner site.
Henneberry web site: http://www.henneberry.org/
Cushing page on site: http://www.henneberry.org/trees/cushing.htm
Magner site: http://www.magner.org/
This site doesn't have as much Cushing information, but does have some photos and descriptive information of the Glen of Aherlow area.
