The Great Ferriter Family

When I was growing up being a “Farritor” meant that your family was from Custer County, Nebraska, where story telling remained strong. And where in the 19th century on a lonely homestead on the grassy Plains of North America, Farritors spoke to young ones living in a dugout on the side of a hill of a far away place called Ireland where Ferriters were once great landowners, of a town named Ballyferriter, of the remnants of a Castle sometimes called Sybil’s Castle, and of cove on the sea called Ferriters’ Cove.

I took the above photograph last summer, on the former homestead of Robert Garrett Farritor. This is the hillside location where the Farritors built their first home, a simple earthen dugout shelter. Later a whole valley became known as Farritor’s Valley and a one-room schoolhouse built on donated Farritor land was known as Farritor’s school. The descendants of this family today live all over the United States and the World, but a few are yet farmers and ranchers.
Michele Farritor McMurray

(Farritors are from the Ferriter family, the name was spelled as Farritor on the Naturalization Papers of our immigrant ancestor Sean Lucais Feiritear in 1845 in a Pennsylvania Courthouse; he was illiterate in English and could not direct how his surname should be recorded, and it became the standardized spelling for our family.)

Archived comments:

Seoirse said...

    Michele,

    Great history and insight! This is exactly the type of rich background on Family that we can all be enriched by.

    Thanks,

    George

    21 November 2007 09:46