My sister who believes my father's family is from Loughrea.

Hello Joseph.

My family, the Sweeney's, are from Loughrea.  I live in New Mexico, USA, and have visited Loughrea twice (once in June 2009 for 2 weeks, and once in June 2011 for 2 weeks.)  On both occations I stayed in the town... I didn't "do the tourist thing".  I wanted to KNOW the town where my great grandmother was from.

There is a hotel called "O'Dea's" on Bride Street.  When we visited in June 2011, O'Dea's Hotel was only open on the weekends, so the best time to contact them would be a Saturday, I would think.  You can "google" the hotel as well, as they are listed on several Ireland websites for places to stay.

My husband and I photographed the entire Abbey Graveyard, and the Internment Register for that graveyard in 2011.  There are several O'Dea family members who are buried in the Abbey.  We have uploaded about 70 pages of the 170 page Internment Register, complete with the photographs we took of all the headstones, on the website www.findagrave.com.   You can go to the main page, search for a cemetery, type "Carmelite Abbey", in country "Ireland", and it will show a link to that cemetery.  Then you can search through the names we've already loaded.

The Hotel used to be called "the Railway Hotel", but I don't know when the name changed to "O'Dea's".

Thank you,

Mary Van Dyke