Well...we closed another mystery about our family origin.  We had been trying to get baptismal and marriage records from the Emly & Cashel Archdiocese in Tipperary for Margaret McDonald and Edward Hill, and were running into dead ends.  We had hypothesized that the Hill, Campbell, McDonald, and Ryan families knew each other in Tipperary, but could never quite prove it. 

We decided to request the Iowa death certificate for Margaret Hill, so that we could see if it provided information about her family in Ireland.  While modern day certificates contain genealogical information (parent names & surnames), this type of data was sporadically recorded on death certificates in 1907...so it might be there but not guaranteed.

Fortunately, it was there.  The record tells us that her parents were William and Margaret McDonnell.  This cleared up another mystery - was she a McDonald, McDonnell or McDonough?  Now we know.  The only other thing this record shows was that he was a farmer, but doesn't tell us exactly where.

Our next task is to find Edward Hill's parents.

Longstone is 700 meters from Killoscully village, and based on census information and Catholic records, the majority of McDonnells were centered around this village and a townland a few hundred meters to the west, Guaranbeg.