a gathering of the clans…

Welcome to the DonovanTribe Family Website! I’m glad you’re here! This site is a work of love…first starting with my mother as we sorted through Bishop Paul Donovan’s possessions following his death in 2011.

Discovering boxes upon boxes of photographs, letters, and postcards of his life’s work and travels, I wanted to know more about this man I knew as “Uncle Paul,” a man who had been such presence in my life and the lives of so many.

And thus, the adventure began—at first small, with a little Facebook page that grew slowly at first. But over time, we became a rather sizable bunch of relatives who “sorta” knew one another. And then our Grandpa Jack’s brother’s family discovered us…and in a few short days, we doubled in size (!!!). I soon realized that organizing the family stories and photos was going to be a bigger task than our little Facebook page could manage. And so now we are here!

HOW TO USE THIS WEBSITE:

There are two ways to navigate this website: one is to use the drop-down/pop-out menus at the top, and the other is to click the links that appear in bold text on the web pages.

The Richard Donovan link is a good place to start. It is organized like our family tree, starting with Richard, who is the patriarch of our branch of the Donovan family.

Under the Richard Donovan link are the names of each of his children. From those children, where an arrow (>) appears, pop-out menus appear to show their offspring, their children’s offspring, and on down the line to our current generations. Following this sequence, you can see who your ancestors and relatives are.

You can also use the SEARCH THE SITE! feature to locate a family member. My blog entries are also accessible from the list on the right side of every page, and I will be sharing the adventures of researching and discovering all of you as you discover all of us.

Because Bishop Paul documented so many of his unique experiences throughout his priesthood and service to the Church, I’ve set up a special menu dynamically linking you to timelines and Google Maps with additional information on his travels so you can experience them with him all over again.

Citations for photographs and sources of the material on this site appear in the Acknowledgments section. If I overlook you or a citation is incorrect, please send me a note and I will make the correction. The DNA section is definitely a work in progress…and I’ll share more information with you on this section when it is available.

This website is a work in progress, so some pages are more complete than others. Also, some of the subjects do not yet contain links. Eventually, both this website and my blog should have a complete list of subjects with links. In the meantime, have fun poking around on this site…and if you have a memory about someone and want to share it, be sure to use the Leave a Reply combox to post your message!

Top photo: Helen & Ronnie McCarthy, Jack & Mary Ellen Donovan, Rita McCarthy holding Arlene, Loretta Donovan & Patsy McCarthy.

Lower photo: Paul with other priests at the Pyramids at Gaza.

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