Re: LOPDELL family of Mass. and Ireland
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In reply to:
LOPDELL family of Mass. and Ireland
CHARLOTTE PLUMMER TAYLOR 7/08/00
Actually, much of the Lopdell family emigrated to New Zealand, and the last Lopdell in Athenry (Co. Galway) was bought out by the government after 1922 and emigrated to Kenya, where his son John Hugh Antony Lopdell was b. 1932.He went to NZ around 1954 and for many years Tony Lopdell was the best-known voice in NZ weather forecasting (I'm told by another cousin).The Lopdells came to Co. Galway in 1657, in the person of James Lopdell, a cousin of the Nicholas Lobdell who came to Hingham MA in 1635 with his two (very) young children, one of them my ancestor Simon Lobdell (b. 1632 in Northam, Devon).You may want to check the Lobdell Family Genealogy Forum: there you will find entries from Ross Miller in NZ, whose wife is a descendant of the first NZ Lopdells and thus of your Irish family. The name was indifferently Lopdell, Lobdell, or Lobden in the 16th-17th centuries, tho' the Irish branch was always Lopdell and the American Lobdell (or, rarely, Lobden). -- Jared Lobdell