Happy St. Patrick's Day!

For starters, let's get the good stuff out of the way. :) A FREEBIE!!!

If you are wearin' o' the green today, here's a cute little St. Patrick's Day card (print some out, sign them and pass them out like Valentines!), a bookmark with the Legend of the Shamrock, and a Celtic Cross element for your scrapbook pages for you to download free. Just click on the image to go to the download page.

I've been doing research on my Irish Heritage and was so psyched to be able to trace a direct line from myself to my ancestors several generations back who hailed from County Armagh, Ireland. County Armagh was the religious capital of Ireland and the very place St. Patrick chose to build his church. The Connelly brothers (who later changed the spelling to Conley) came to America and were instrumental in the settling of the colonies - particularly in South Carolina and specifically Charleston. This line has very interesting stories attached to it.
One of my ancestors served in Braddock's Army at Ft. Duquesne (and to think I worked in Pittsburgh for years and didn't know I had a personal connection!) His son was a Captain in the North Carolina Militia. He was married to Ann MACGREGOR, a member of the Clan MacGregor one of the oldest and most historic as well as the most persecuted of the Scottish Clans.
My great great great grandfather was a civilian who was killed by Rogue Confederates during the Civil War because they suspected he had Union ideals. His daughter married John C. Oney, who in my mind was a hero in the Civil War. I am currently working on an album documenting his service as part of the Civil War Challenge at Heritage Scrap (running through March 22nd). Their daughter was my great grandmother, my paternal grandmother's mother.

Here is the page I did that put all of this research together. It was for the Celtic Heritage Challenge at Heritage Scrap which closes at midnight tonight if you'd like to submit a layout! (Click on the image to go see it closer in the gallery.) There's also a Celtic Font challenge going on.

I love the challenges at Heritage Scrap, because they really do challenge me to dig deeper and discover a little more about my roots, and therefore, myself. And of course, there's also the opportunity to win prizes from the Heritage Scrap Shoppe, too! If you would like to know where you came from, or maybe you already do, but have all that research in a filing cabinet, come on over to Heritage Scrap and start putting it into layouts that you can put into the hands of your children and grandchildren. Heritage Albums are a Living Legacy that will become family heirlooms and passed down for generations! And that's no blarney! :)