CHAPTER ONE -HOW THIS FAMILY HISTORY PROJECT BEGAN…Some time prior the death of our mother Dorothy Clark O’Donnell (1901-1980), my brother Laurence was sitting with several older relatives in Dorothy’s home asking questions of family history. His notes were jotted on a large manila envelope that somehow was given to me. In that rather unpromising way began what is to follow. My quest was to try to organize our family story. I have arbitrarily limited my efforts to study the family tree of four branches of my immediate ancestors. Thus we have the parents of my father, Thomas Edward O’Donnell viz. John O’Donnell & his bride Annie Elizabeth Murphy. We also have the parents of my mother, Dorothy Clark O’Donnell, viz. Peter J. Clark & his bride Genevieve Fortune. Most family members have received separately a large number of genealogical sketches indicating lines of descent, names and birth/death years. These sketches have now been corrected and updated; hence older sketches should be discarded. In a sense the sketches tell in basic outline what is to follow.