the walch family of shanagolden

Martin:

Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out!

I will alert our parish liaison in Shanagolden about your message.

Roger McDonnell

Hi Martin,

Someone has quite a bit of info regarding Solomon Walch on Ancestry.com It appears Solomon was a member of His Majesty's 80th Regiment. MarK C Moore has Solomon's Last Will posted and several pages with info about the Regiment Solomon served in.Other than the info compiled by Mark C Moore, I can find nothing else about Solomon. He was born too early for Church records, but it does appear that he held a higher place in society. Maybe the newspapers would have articles? I was unable to locate any.

I can find absolutely nothing about the Walloon Soldiers in the Shanagolden area.

I checked local history books that I own, MyHeritage, and also Ancestry.com.

The Shanid Historical Society Shanagolden has a FaceBook page. Have you tried them? http://www.facebook.com/The-Shanid-Historical-Society-Shanagolden-38126…

Best of luck to you in your search!

Patti Hacht

Kilcolman & Shanagolden IRO Parish Liaison

I dont know if this helps, but, I have a third great grandmother name Agatha (Agnes) Walsh, who was married to Thomas Guerin, who was born in 1780 in Foynes, Limerick. They had one sone William Guerin,1807 1878  She is as far back as I can trace that line of the family.

Thanks for raising this question, as to the origin of the "Walch" family arriving with the Williamite forces into Ireland.  I knew little about the Dutch Prince William of Orange and his battle with James VII for the British throne, and the battle at the Boyne River fought on Irish soil. Your question piqued my interest in how this critical situation affected the (native) Irish folk.

It's interesting, also, to read historians accounts of William's opinion of the quality of his forces: Not impressed by Scottish & English soldiers, his preferred infantry were professionals sourced from Denmark, the Netherland and supported by a large coningent of (French) Huguenot soldiers.

I can see the similarity of Walsh and Walch with modern eyes, but I see a Dutch/Bavarian link there as Walch (and Waelch). The 'ae' changes the vowel sound, and is printed as "a" with dots above -- call umlaut. I am thinking that your Walch could have originated as the trusted, prized professional soldiers selected by Prince William.  If that were the case, the UK historians may have record of these hired musketeers. It's worth a try. Particularly the grant of Irish land to the victors at Boyne would/should be recorded somewhere by the British. So that's another source to try. The pronunciation of WALCH in modern German is not like Welsh or Walsh. The W is like our V, the A is a long aahh and CH can be hard like Kick, or soft CHeese. I can't speak for Dutch.

The normal (very common in Ireland) has a meaning of surname WELSH, you can find via online search.

It's also interesting to wonder when the Walch family left Co. Limerick, and why?