The Daughertys

First, the spelling of the name. It is perhaps the most variously spelled name of any in the world: Dogharty, Dogherty, Doherty, Daugherty, Dougherty, Daughety, Doughety, Daughtery, Daughtry, Doiety, Dockery, Docherty. All names come from the original forebear, Dochartagh.

My Daugherty ancestry goes back to Owen Dogharty, who migrated from County Donegal, Ireland, to Lower Norfolk County, Virginia, in 1673. I have not proven it yet, but he may be the Owen, second child and first son of William O'Dogherty, that child baptized in St. Columb's Cathedral (a Protestant cathedral) in the City of Derry in April, 1656.

The Daughertys had lost their last Gaelic Chieftain and many of their other noble leaders with the defeat and death of Cahir Rua O'Dogherty in 1608 and the "Flight of the Earls" in the same year.

What followed was a massive "plantation" of Scottish and English immigrants onto Irish lands, particularly in the Ulster region, of which Donegal was a part. King James was determined to have people in the north of Ireland who were loyal to him. Moreover, after the Civil War in England in the 1640's, which resulted in the beheading of King Charles I and his replacement by Oliver Cromwell, a war in which many Irish Catholics had sided with Charles, Cromwell was determined to send the rebellious Irish "to Hell or to Connaught." Massacring thousands of Irish, Catholic and Protestant alike, from Dublin to Derry, he drove many of the Daughertys out of Donegal and, perhaps, eventually, out of Ireland.

This site still under construction.