Where Did We Originate?

  Where Did We Originate???

Firstly, I do not want this to sound like a history lesson but, I want to create a background to the origins of our great family name and those tough and brave people that went before us.

 There are several theories as to where the Corridan Family originated from, and I am sure there is a very strong argument for each one, be it from Translations in The Book of Ballymote(1390/91) or The Spanish Armada (1588) and Don de Felipe Cordoba……is there a connection to a large flat offshore rock on the Aran Islands known on The Admiralty Charts as Table Rock and locally as An Corradán ??

What we do know is that The Corridans left County Clare about 1657 during the Terror of Cromwell. They lived on a stony and rocky patch of elevated ground in The Burren in North West Clare, in Townlands known as Cragycorridan East & West, which are still there today.  If you stand at Ballinalacken Castle and look westward towards The Atlantic, Cragycorridan forms part of the area between you and the Ocean. It is said of The Burren that “there is not enough trees to hang a man, not enough water to drown a man and not enough earth to bury a man”. When they left County Clare , they must have left “lock, stock and barrel” as they left very few traces behind.

William Collis was a Cromwellian Officer and his son John married  Mary Corridan,  daughter of Philip Óg Corridan.  Mary and her Husband got lands near Barrow, south of Ballyheigue and Kerry head.  Philip Óg got land in Glenderry, west of Ballyheigue.  This marked the arrival of the Corridans to Kerry and Keelvicida in Glenderry as their home. Incidentally, The Collis Family and their Agents over the following 250 years or so, evicted and left homeless and hungry, many Corridan families and indeed , many Irish Families.

Over the years and decades as The Corridan Clan grew, they spread their wings to Ballybunion, Drombeg, Listowel, Duagh, Lixnaw, Tralee, Ardfert and probably anywhere they could get land. It did not take them long to venture a little further to England and to that great and distant land called  America.