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...