The Irish Civil War of 1922-23 was a terrible tragedy for any new country. Thousands of people were killed and even today the final casualty figures are not really known.
The surname Strain, which is quite numerous in north County Donegal, has a distinguished family history which stretches way back to early medieval times.
The Annals of the Four Masters (also often known as the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland), is one of the most important collections of Irish annals, written at the Franciscan house at Bundrowes in south County Donegal in the 1630s. These annals can also be a great genealogical resource as they record the deaths and very often the major events in the lives of thousands of medieval Gaelic Irish chieftains and kings, and often their wives and children and most important followers also.
The arrival of well armed mercenaries (gallóglaigh ~ foreign warriors), to Ireland from the Gaelic Highlands and Islands of Scotland in the late medieval period, greatly contributed to the growth in the military power of the major Gaelic Irish chieftains who could afford to hire a galloglass constable with his company of warriors and reward them with grants of land and many other priviledges.