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.
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.