The following comes from an email I had sent 5/20/12.  This was before we had heard about the Limerick connection for the James Sullivan family, discovered by the Dunnville historical society August 2014.  Patrick O’Neil, forever famous for Paddy O’Neil’s trunk that was opened 5/12/12, is the uncle by marriage to Sarah Flanagan Sullivan, wife of James Sullivan.  The obituary was discovered by going through microfilm, that ever dizzying process, on a trip I had made to Dunnville, visiting the offices of the Dunnville Chronicle.

From microfilm of Dunnville Chronicle Issue 35 1900
8/31/1900
“Patrick O’Neil was born March 17, 1818 in Desert Martan, Deary Island, Ireland. He came to Canada in 1843, settling at Niagara Falls. In 1849 he purchased the farm on the Robinson Road now owned by Anderson Waines. About 20 years ago he purchased another farm in Dunn and lived there until he came to Dunnville 15 years ago, and has since lived on John St. He revisited Ireland twice. In politics he was a Reformer. He was a strict attendant at St Michael’s church, firm in his faith but liberal minded. His more than usual gift of Irish wit and humor, his fund of reported anecdotes to always suit the occasion, seemed inexhaustible. His wife, who died in 1890, was Catherine HARKENS of Leitrim, Ireland, and was a sister of the late Mrs. Flannigan of Wainfleet. There are still living three sisters, Sarah, in Ireland, Jane and Mrs. John Daly, and one brother Peter, of Niagara Falls.”

I then made some comments in my notebook as follows:
Under Purely Personal:
“John Daly and wife and James Daly of Niagara Falls were here attending the funeral of the late Patrick O’Neil.”
My notebook also reads: “Reverend Crinion, St Michael’s 1897”
Current observation: if the “late Mrs. Flannigan of Wainfleet” is Sarah Flannigan’s mother (Sarah Flannigan being the grandmother of jerry, Janie, tim and myself), then Paddy O’Neil would have been Sarah’s uncle ie Paddy is the husband of Sarah’s aunt Catherine.
Jerry had done lovely research years ago in which he says that Sarah Flannigan was the daughter of Edward Flannigan and Mary McNeff, and was one of eight children: Catherine, Elizabeth, Mary, Frances, John, Edward and Martin. Sarah’s mother Mary (nee McNeff) Flannigan, was born in Leitrim County Ireland. (near Sligo and Willam Butler Yeats, hoo ha!) Sarah’s mother died 4/8/1894 at age 67.
So Catherine Harkens, sister of the late Mrs Flannigan (aka Mary McNeff) are both born in Leitrim County.
I don’t understand why ‘HARKENS’ was capitalized in the above obituary (I think it was, that is the way my handwriting had it) and whether that actually is a different last name from McNeff—were they half sisters? Or is ‘Harkens’ a middle name?
So these are the first Sullivan connections (so far) with geographical origins in Ireland: the Flannigan girls from County Leitrim and the in-law Paddy O’Neil from “Desert Martan” which maybe is Desertmartin, in County Derry, Northern Ireland (per google search so far).
Paddy O’Neil came “out” in 1843 just before the famine hit 1845-1850. James came in 1848 or 1847 (he gave two different dates in later Canadian census reports. I wonder if the families had any knowledge of each other before arriving in Canada?
Peter 5/20/12

What follows was a related email sent 5/12 about the above visit to Dunnville:
Dear family,

aka new information re-discovered:

In August of 2002, I took a first reconnaissance trip to get information about the current owner of the former Sullivan farm on the Bird Rd. This was also a trip to begin to research St Michael’s cemetary there in Dunnville.

I stopped in the post office downtown on that trip and made some inquiries and happened to get the postal carrier for the Bird road route who said that the house “is all by itself, blue, not many blue houses” along that stretch of the Bird road. She gave me the name of the owner as Wayne Langlois. (In the next year, 10/13/03, on a glorious early Fall day that happened to be Canada day as well, a van load of us, Janie, Jerry, Tim and cousins Margaret Marie Sullivan and Maureen Brady, having sent a preliminary letter and setting up a day to visit, met Kerry Langlois–Wayne is his son–and he said as soon as he saw a letter signed by a Sullivan it rang a bell because he had found a foundation stone in the basement with ‘Sulivan’ written on it. This trip was videotaped–more about that at another time).

For the 2002 trip, I brought along a notebook/journal that Wendy bought me for the purpose of taking notes. I just pulled out that notebook and saw that I had written down the obituary of Paddy O’Neil, found on microfilm at the Dunnville Chronicle, dated 8/31/1900. “Holy Kafrump!” said I, forgetting that I had gathered this information 10 years ago. I am attaching the transcribed obituary in a word document.

BTW, little piece of local history, our now long departed and sometimes hysterical Irish Setter was named Patsy O’Kneel.