I have been greatly helped in this "construction project" by a lot of work that as already done years ago by my cousin Beth in the U.S. and my cousin John in Canada. Beth and John provided a lot of assistance, photos and advice in the beginning and although other family members have since come forward to help, John and Beth are two cousins to whom I am very grateful because if it were not for them, I could not have started this.

In October 2002 I survived a near-fatal motorcycle accident. (was on my 800 Suzuki going over to the college to give a lecture when I got hit by a women talking on her cell phone, she crossed her car into my lane and struck me head-on) I have since recovered, mostly, but there was a time when I wondered about whether I had done enough to prepare my 3 young children for things that lie ahead and one of the things I wanted them to know about was the colourful and rich family history they have on my Dougherty side (my mother) and my Richardson side (my father). After I became able to sit upright for longer periods, I decided to use my web design skills to build this site for sharing with my cousins, and building something to tell my children Douglas 17, Taylor 14 and Sarah 11. [I told Sarah the other day that there must be 20+ Sarah's among her Dougherty ancestors and living cousins]

In early May 2003 I bought the domain www.dougherty.ca and put these pages up {after having briefly hosted them on my own site www.witiger.com}.

The starting point for this site was originally old Alexander James Dougherty b. 1852, but as I received more info about his brothers and sisters,  decided to add those lines in too. Then Beth sent some info allowing me to go back further beyond Alex's dad, John J. Dougherty b. 1825 to his grandfather , James J. Dougherty, b. 1785, then Beth showed me a note suggesting that James J. had a brother named Patrick and that they had a father Patrick O'Dougherty b. 1750. I decided to stop at Patrick of 1750 because, as my cousin Neil Raymond Dougherty b. 1949 says, it is harder to establish anything beyond that. (Neil has indeed been to Buncrana in Inishowen in County Donegal). So we refer to this site as the descendants of Patrick O'Dougherty 1750 and to facilitate helpful communication with other O'Dochartaigh researchers we joined the O'Dochartaigh web ring.

May 4th, 2003
W. Tim G. Richardson 
son of Rosemary Jane Dougherty b. 1930 d. 1989

Apparently our ancestor Patrick spelled his last name O'Dougherty but his sons Patrick b. 1784 and James J. b. 1785 spelled their last name without the "O'"

Patrick B. 1750 - his wife was Teressa O'Donnell Baldreag - named such because they are "from a family famous for their fighting for the McDonnells. Her father was born in Desertegney in Inishowen. Baldreag was a nickname of this line of the O'Donnells
see  http://www.iol.ie/~inishowen/