Website history and aims
This website was first launched in April 2020 with the purpose of researching and preserving the history of Lees and Lee families who historically inhabited Northern Ireland, with a focus on the area around Lough Neagh. This page will feature research into other families as well as occasional genealogical musings.
Lees is a variant of Lee, and both surnames are uncommon names in Northern Ireland. In fact, many families carrying the name appear to trace back to the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th Century. Versions of the surname developed independently in Scotland, England and Ireland, each with different etymologies.
By consulting surviving historical records, using DNA research, and connecting with living Lees descendants, it is my hope to identify which families were related to each other, establish the families’ early origins -whether in Scotland, England or Ireland-, and trace the migration of the many Ulster Lees families who emigrated.
Because every project must have a scope, the main focus of Ulster Lees is to research Lees families and the many related families who at some point lived in the area West and North of Lough Neagh covering areas in Cookstown, Magherafelt and Ballymena registration districts, as well as part the Southern part of Coleraine district.
That being said, I will also be posting information on many other Lees and Lee families that I come across in my research. I want to feature content about other Northern Irish Lees/Lee families too, and would welcome contributions from other researchers and Ulster Lee/Lees family descendants. So please do reach out if you have information to share.
History of the name Lee or Lees
The Lee(s) surname appears under many variants; Leese; Lays; Lay; Lea; Lae; Leas; Lease; Layse; Layze; Leigh; Leathes; Leaths; Ly, and perhaps more still. Some of these spellings survive to the present day. In many early records, variants of the name were used interchangeably, with the same individual often appearing under different spellings even in the same records.
Also, when families migrated, it was common for the ‘s’ to be dropped, and many examples of this have been found with families migrating to the USA, the UK, and beyond.
For the above reasons, this project will attempt to cover all variants of the Lees or Lee surname.