Very Interesting
Greetings ....
Ireland ...
Anti-Catholic
emphasis
Riney - The genesis of the name
Our Clan ...
Lincoln's Teacher, Riney ...
Remembering Lincoln ...
Rineys (US) ...
The Enemy ....
Sara Riney's Work
Queries prompted an explanation
This is my response Of December 28th to email sent by Mrs.Anderson, Texas.
The content of her email follows my explanation of the name, Riney.
Origin of the Riney name, as I understand it
It is so nice hearing from you. I appreciate you relating
some of the history of our Riney ancestors. The Riney name is one that
leaves a listener in Ireland wondering if they had heard one utter the
name Riley or Reilly unless they resided close to the town of Kenmare
where I was born. Some fifteen years ago while in Dublin I paid a visit
to Dublin Castle searching for the origin of the Riney name in their
archives and came upon a terse explanation as to its origin. It read;
Riney (O'Raigne in Gaeilge), a name peculiar to South Kerry.
Upon arriving in the States during the mid fifties I thought that it
would be highly unlikely that I would come across anybody named Riney
except for that of my Uncle Jerry or his children perhaps, assuming he
had any. He was a wireless operator who sailed on Cunard ships and
decided to come ashore at some point during the late thirties. We never
again heard from him. Today on the Web I see the Riney name popping up
everywhere. It is such an exciting challenge to find out how this all
came about.
Oral history on the Rineys as passed down by people living in the
mountainous region of Gleninchaquin (eight miles, south west of Kenmare)
and throughout the area strongly hint that we were originally O'Neills.
Somehow related to the last great Irish leader the "Great O'Neill" as he was then known by.
Hugh O'Neill was the Earl of Tyrone who linked up with the Spanish in an
vain attempt to wrest Ireland from English rule. They were defeated in 1601
at the Battle of Kinsale by Lord Mountjoy. After the debacle they fled
and it is believed that some of our O'Neill ancestors managed to avoid
capture by taking to the high grounds, that of the Caha Mountain range that
lies between County Cork (the site of the Kinsale battle) and County Kerry.
A Little History ...
Downplayed
...
Sabotage
Hugh O'Neill fled to Spain (eventually) and his lands in the province of Ulster were
planted with Protestants from England and Scotland. The problems that
exist today are as a result of this event in history. This came about
close to the end of the reign of Elizabeth I. She provided training for
him at Sanderingham with hopes that he would secure Ireland for her. Having gotten his military
training he returned home and went on a campaign to liberate Ireland instead.
The Rineys were originally O'Neill as stated. The name change
was a means to avoid being captured and worse by the forces of Mountjoy
and Carew who had routed the Irish and Spanish forces at the Battle of Kinsale.
Hugh, their leader, known also as the "Great O'Neill" was deemed to being
the equivalent of a king. He was in truth the last of the great Irish
warrior with hopes of liberating his country.
Ri, is the Irish for king and ney is an abbreviated version of Neill. When
put together we have Riney which means King Neill - this is the oral
history as passed down over all these years. I went to visit an elderly
lady, a Mrs O'Sullivan in her Gleninchaquin home some years back. She told me of her experience
on the first day that she entered the classroom of Master McCarthy, her
teacher. He upon hearing her response of Riney to his question as to her
surname proceeded to write down O'Neill instead of Riney and made some
comment to the effect that O'Neill was her proper family name. Thereafter
she was known as an O'Neill.
Riney first cousins of my father, arrived in the US during the twenties
and had their name changed. A brother Dan who lived in the Far Rockaways,
New York, changed his name to O'Neill while his brother(whose name escapes
me) residing in New Jersey at the time, had his name changed to O'Neil. I claim to
be the O'Neill with no "L."
The reason for the aforementioned name changes had to do with
economic reasons where perhaps the Riney name did seem Irish enough and
as a consequence lost out on employment opportunities. Dan, now an O'Neill,
whom I met some time after my arrival in the US in the mid fifties told me
about my Uncle Jerry Riney whom he would meet whenever the ship he sailed
on would dock in New York. Dan is no longer with us and neither is his
sister, Mary, whose baptismal papers from Ireland has her as an O'Neill.
It is all so very confusing. Perhaps, because of her brother's name
name change it necessitated paperwork adjustments be made so that Dan could
act as her sponsor.
It was important for me to discover that the larger number of
connected family members had little interest in knowing of their origin.
Name changes are evidentially traumatic as is a lack of knowledge
about one's history. Such a lack makes for a great sense of inadequacy.
Then, there are those who are crippled by the stereotyping of their
people and who attempt to become one with their abuser.
The Rineys have been coming to America at different periods over
the years beginning some thirty years after the Battle of Kinsale, is
my surmisal. This would dovetail with the movement of the Catholic
followers of Charles Calvert (Lord Baltimore) who accompanied
him from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland for the area of Saint
Mary's in the state we now know as Maryland. Their eagerness in leaving
the old world was due to religious persecution. The king of the day James I
granted the land of Maryland to Calvert's son Leonard even with the knowledge
that his father, Charles Calvert, had died. Charles was evidentially highly
regarded in spite of his being of the Catholic faith.
Kinsale, the site where the battle of 1601 took place, has a natural port
and could accommodate large sized ships of the day and it is for that reason
why it was so highly prized by the English. The Rineys who joined
Calvert then and those who sailed later for Maryland were leaving the
place where their ancestors were routed from. Funny, but there is a
little town in close proximity to Kinsale called Baltimore. It probably
got its name from Lord Baltimore who after all spent some years
administering the region of Connaught and County Clare for the Crown.
Some years ago I paid a visit to the New York Public Library and
found Rineys mentioned in some of the documents that I came across. I know
some arrived through the port of Boston in the 1700 and they have
been coming in one way or another ever since.
Their Going ...
Imperialism
Historian Thierry's works
Second cousin Joseph O'Neill (father was born Riney) send a two
page photo copy of Thierry's book which he picked up at a library
sale.
<![CDATA[
O'Neill's Irish Grievances addressed to Pope John XXII as in
French historian Thierry (1795-1856) three volume history
on the Norman Conquest. Note his spelling on Donald O'Neyl
grievances per below and the explanation for the derivation
of the name Riney, described earlier - one could more reasonably appreciate how
Ri (king) and Neyl as the suffix yielded RineyL - including the L might have
been too daring a move. Those involved with the Great O'Neill at the
Battle of Kinsale had to be extremely careful of a terrible fate that would
most assuredly befall them were they discovered.
................... culled from a page or two ..................................
"To John, pope-Donald O'Neyl, King of Ulster, together with
the inferior kings and chiefs of that territory, and the whole
Irish population: -
"Most holy father-We here transmit to you some exact and candid
particulars concerning the state of our nation and the wrongs
which our forefathers have suffered, and we are suffering, from
the kings of England, from their agents, and from the English
barons born in Ireland. After driving us by violence from our
spacious habitations, from our fields, from our paternal
inheritances, and compelling us, in order to save our lives
to make our abode in the mountains, the marshes, the woods,
and the hollows of the rocks, they are now incessantly harrassing
us in these miserable retreats, to expel us from them, and
appropriate to themselves the whole extent of our country.
Hence results an implacable enmity between them and us: and it
was a pope, who placed us in this miserable condition. They
had promised that pope that they would fashion the people
of Hibernia to good morals, and give them good laws: so far
from doing which, they have annihilated all the written laws,
by which we were formerly governed: they have left us without
laws, the better to accomplish our ruin: or have established
among us detestable ones, some of which are as follows: -
"It is a rule in the King of England's courts of justice in
Ireland, that every man who is not of Irish extraction,
may institute a judicial process of any kind, and that this
power is forbidden to the Irish, whether clergy or laity.
If as too frequently happens, an Englishman murders an
Irish, clerk or layman, the assassin is neither punished
corporally, nor even fined; on the contrary, the more
considerable the murdered person was amongst us, the
more his muderer is excused, honoured, and rewarded
by his countrymen-even by the religious men and the
bishops.
No Irishman can dispose of his property on his death-bed:
the English appropriate it to themselves. All the religious orders
established in Ireland on the English territory, are forbidden
to receive into their houses men of the Irish nation.
"The English who have dwelt among us for many years, are
called of 'the middle race,' are not therefore less cruel to us
than the others. Sometimes they invite to their tables the
first men of our nation, and treacherously kill them in the
midst of the banquet, or in their sleep. Thus it was that
Thomas De Clare, having allured to his house Brian the Red
of Thomond, his brother-in-law, put him to death by surprise,
after communicating with him in the same consecrated host,
divided in two parts. These crimes appear to them honourable
and praiseworthy: and it is the belief of all their laymen, and
many of their churchmen, that there is no more sin in killing
an Irishman than in killing a dog.
Their monks say with assurance that after killing a man of
our nation (which but too often happens) they should not think
themselves bound to abstain from saying mass for a single day.
As proof of this, the Cisterian monks established at Granard,
in the diocese of Armagh, and those of the same order at the
island (Ynes) in Ulster, are daily attacking us with arms, wounding
and killing Irishmen, yet say their masses as usual.
Brother Simon, of the order of Minors, a relative of the Bishop of
Coventry, has publicly preached that there is not the smallest harm
in killing or robbing an Irishman. In short, they all maintain that it is
allowable for them to take from us whatsoever they can of our lands
and goods: nor are their consciences at all burdened in consequence,
not even in the article of death.
"All these grievences, added to the difference of language and manners
existing between them and us, preclude all hope of our ever having peace
or truce with them in this life: so great is, in them, the lust of dominion:
so eager in us the lawful and the natural desire of escaping from an
intolerable bondage, and recovering the inheritance of our forefathers.
We cherish, at the bottom of our hearts, an inveterate hatred, produced
by lengthened recollections of injustice - by the murder of our fathers,
brothers, and nearest kindred - and which will not extinguish in our time,
nor in that of our children. So that, as long as we have life, we will fight
against them, without regret or remorse, in defense of our rights.
We will not cease to fight against and annoy them, until the day when
they themselves, for want of power, shall have ceased to do us harm,
and the Supreme Judge shall have taken just vengence on their crimes:
which we firmly hope, will sooner or later come to pass. Until then we
will make war upon them until death, to recover the independence which
is our natural right: being compelled thereto by very necessity, and
willing rather to brave danger like men, than to languish under insult."
This promise of war until death, made upwards of four hundred years
ago, is not forgotten (as of year 2000 - adding another four we have
over 800 years of continuing experiences with a brutish people,
their cunning, murder and guile, but now with a difference - their modus
operandi is cleverly camouflaged by their might Big Brother cousin
in the Americas) : it is a melancholy fact, but worthy of remark, that
in our own days blood has flowed in Ireland on account of the old quarrel
of the conquest. The period in futurity when this quarrel shall be
terminated, it is impossible to foresee: and aversion for England, its
government, its manners, and its language, is still the native passion
of the Irish race. From the day of the invasion, the will of that race
of men has, been constantly opposed by the will of its masters;
it was detested what they have loved, and loved what they have detested.
They whose long misfortunes were in great measure caused by the
ambition of the popes, rushed into arms of popery with a sort of
fury, as soon as England had freed herself from it. This unconquerable
obstincy-this lenghtened remembrance of departed liberty-this faculty
of preserving and nourishing, through ages of physical misery and
suffering, the thought of that which is no more-of never despairing of
a constantly vanquished cause, for which many generations have
successivelyt, and in vain, perished in the field, and by the
executioner - is perhaps the most extraordinary and greatest example
that a people has ever give.
<p>
Somewhat of a tenacity of memory which characterises the Irish race,
was also to be found in the Celtic race of the inhabitants of Wales: weak
as they were in the twelfth century, they still hoped for their enfranchisement
from all foreign dominion, and even for the return of the period when
they possessed the whole island of Britain.
]]>
The story of Rineys amazes..
Slainte (Health)
Oh! to dream of the Kerry Dancing
Rineys possibly in Calvert's other Colony
Newfoundland Colony ...
Side History ...
RC Church
On the Web
Ms. Anderson's email of December 28, 1996
An email on December 28, 1996 based on seeing
one of my pages.
Saint Patrick, Missouri
Hello,
Thanks for information about our ancestral Rineys and
Kerry...our 3-great grandparents were Rose and Richard Riney
of the story you are carrying about the first log church in
St. Patrick, Missouri...we cannot get our family tree any further
back than Richard's father, John B. Riney....thanks to you I
assume they left Maryland for Kentucky because of the religious
pressure you mention...the only Rineys we can find in ship's logs
are Charles and Catherine in the 1760's....then we find wonderful
listings of the family tree of Zachariah Riney in the Riney family
history on the Web....but that line goes no further back than
Thomas Riney, died 1795, with no further information....do you know
whether everyone is descended from Charles, or whether a whole bunch
of Rineys came over from Ireland?
Thanks again...
How it was/is ...
MountJoy ....
Owen Roe
Origin of Names ....
Gaeilge ....
Getsemani ...
Lincoln's Birthplace
!Top of Page
Riney Soil
Email: raigne@yahoo.com
