FACE IT

[Emmett]

Stucco, you remind me of Les Stroud aka Surviverman.

[JCO]

How 'bout a picture of a cowboy there emmett

[Emmett]

Hmmmm. k.
[attachment=0:398fsava]IMG_0002.JPG[/attachment:398fsava]
Thats as good as you're getting!
Me writing on the Flogging Molly tour bus "Buffalo or Bust". The funniest thing was the drummer catching me doing it!

I wanted to give you the blurry picture of me blacksmithing, but I apparently lost that picture when my hard drive died.

[stucco]

I guess I’m not the only tattooed guy here.

[Emmett]

My name is James Christopher O'Brian

Woh! That's an O'Brian with an "a"? That's a rare thing! Do you have family in Buffalo NY? O'Brian is also my last name!

[stucco]

[Emmett]

Exactly!

[JCO]

Yes Stucco, I do have a few tattoos courtesy of the USN experience.

Emmett, as to our name, I was told by my Grandfather many, many years ago (he was born in 1887) that all O'Brians in the world are related to one small clan from Ireland. He told that it all came about because of twin brothers named O'Brien who vied for control of the clan when their daddy died.

When the dust settled, the one that lost the vote, took those that would follow and to spite his brother and those that went against him, he changed his new clan's name from O'Brien to O'Brian and declared a war of unrest against his brother. Nothing came of the war because shortly thereafter the other brother became ill and died, but his followers would not allow the other brother to come back as clan leader and declared him and his followers banished.

I don't know how many years ago this was to have happened but apparently it was quite some time ago.

I was told by my Grandfather that his father, my Great Grandfather, came to America with his mother (his father was already dead) in 1863 at the age of 16 and as soon as he stepped off the ship in Boston, he was forced into the Union Army and put right back on a ship and sent to the front lines along with other male Irish immigrants as young as 12 and 13 who had just arrived. About 3 months after he had been shipped off, another lad who he had come over with told him that he had receive news from his mother that my Great Grandfather's mother had died of starvation. Welcome to America...it's somewhat different now....!

So I guess we're related somewhere back there in time. Welcome to the "CLAN"...!

So Emmett, I guess we are from the DARK SIDE and it's really strange, but I have never met an O'Brien that I actually liked although there have been few that I have actually met. Nothing personal, I'm sure there must be some O'Briens I would like...maybe...

[Emmett]

Maybe that's why my family won't talk about our ancestry! If only my grandpa was still alive I'd ask him. Not that he'd know really. I wonder if there's any documentation of that? I guess I have another research project.

[JCO]

I don't know how or where you were raised Emmett, but I was raised by my Grandparents on a farm in the flat lands at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in Southeast Missouri. I asked my Grandfather about his daddy when I was Senior in High School, for one thing because he never talked about him and secondly because we had been studying the immigrant makeup of America in history class in school and I was curious about how my Great Grandfather had come to be in America.

I've researched it a number of times, but have never found anything to substantiate what my Grandfather told me about the O'Brian name but I did find that the O'Brian name and many other versions of it are suppose to have all originated with an Irish King named Brian.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...CMg4LMgn-6KIfw

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/4/23?catId=6

http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.f...mily-crest.htm

My Grandfather was an easy going man but you never could catch him off guard with anything you said except I guess he didn't expect to have it come at him from me. He said I don't talk about my daddy because then I have to admit to myself that he's no longer with me. That's when he told me about the O'Brians and how his daddy came to America and was an orphan fighting a war in a strange land at the age of 16.

He talked for hours about everything he knew about his daddy and what it was like growing up to be the only son (child) of an only son (child). Strangely enough, my Grandfather had only one child (a son) who was my father and I am an only child (son) and I have only one child (a son) who will 22 in October this year. "AND THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!" That was the only time he ever talked about his daddy. My Grandfather live to be 97 and I still miss him greatly even today and he's been gone many years now. WELCOME TO THE CLAN O'BRIAN...