The Lunney Family genealogy bulletin board is a great place to post questions that you may have about your ancestors and to post information that would be helpful to others.  This website also has links and search functions for other spellings of the family name (i.e. Lunny, Lunnie, Luney, Looney, etc.).

The Ulster Historical Foundation provides genealogical information and services.  They sponsor lecture tours of Ireland for serious family history and genealogy buffs. 

The Inn By The Sea in Cape Elizabeth, Maine is the best place to stay in Maine.  The accommodations are luxury apartments with a gourmet restaurant, swimming pool and tennis court.  The Inn sits on a high bluff above Crescent Beach and Seal Cove. The beach is natural and unspoiled with dunes, wooded picnic areas, clean bathrooms and a snack bar.  The present Inn is on the site of the historic Crescent Beach Inn and is next to the original town cemetary, with headstones dating from the 1700's.  The Inn is only 20 minutes from downtown Portland, Maine and the exciting Old Port district.  Cape Elizabeth is the site of the famous Portland Headlight lighthouse and the Two Lights lighthouses, has two large state parks on the ocean, a large town park (Ft. Williams Park) on the ocean, and is a great place for walking and bicycling.

My favorite pub/restaurant is Ri Ra located in the Old Port district of Portland, Maine at 72 Commercial St. (phone: 207.761.4446).

 

Imagine yourself walking off a busy street through a door that leads you back in time to the peaceful and cozy atmosphere of a traditional pub 100 hundred years ago in Ireland.  “All the pub’s interiors were salvaged and restored in Ireland and shipped to Portland.  Ri Ra is an exciting combination of history and culture. I cannot imagine more appropriate surroundings than Portland’s waterfront area,” said Ciaran Sheehan, a native of Dublin who designed the pub and is one of the owners.  The pub is on two levels, with three distinct areas. The first area is the traditional 'shop pub'. For centuries, people throughout rural Ireland have gathered in these small cozy pubs. These pubs served as the local grocer, post office, draper, pub and community gathering place. The barback and counter at Ri Ra were the centerpiece of a pub that opened its doors to the Irish public in the center of a small coastal town called Annagassin, Co. Louth in the early 1900’s. The bar counter also incorporates a small ‘snug’ at one end that is typical of a country pub shop. The entry doors from the street to the shop area were salvaged from the well-known ‘Langtons Pub of Kilkenny’. There is a very old pot belly stove from Spike Island Prison, in Cove, Co.Cork ready to warm punters during Portland’s cold winter months. The Victorian area next to the ‘shop bar’ is representative of a Victorian Dublin pub. The paneling used in the bar counter is circa 1880. It was originally part of the cashier counter at Allied Irish Bank, Westmorland St., Dublin. The back bar fixture came from Fallon’s, a chemist whose place of business was on Grafton St. in Dublin. The frieze on the back bar is decorated with the original hand painted lettering.  As you move to ‘Upstairs at Ri Ra,’ customers can enjoy spectacular Waterfront views while enjoying fine cuisine created by the pub’s chef, Alan McGrath. Chef Alan McGrath moved from Co. Cork to Portland in 1991. He has built a solid reputation in the city particularly in Fore Street where he spent four years. “Ireland with it’s growing culinary reputation around the world provides lots of inspiration from which to draw. I am very excited to have the opportunity to introduce Portland to some of my native country’s dishes, both traditional and contemporary, from pub fare downstairs to more creative cuisine ‘Upstairs at Ri Ra’”.

Ri Ra has other locations in Charlotte and Raleigh North Carolina, Burlington Vermont and Providence Rhode Island.