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Note: http://www.araltas.com/features/grogan/ On the origin of the Grogan family:
The O prefix of this name - Ó Gruagáin in Irish - was dropped in the seventeenth century and does not appear to have been resumed at all in recent times. We hear first of the sept in 1265 under which date the Four Masters and other annalists record the death of Maelbrighde Ó Grugáin (or Ó Grocan) of Elphin (Roscommon).
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries references to the name in our surviving records are plentiful, but by 1550 the sept had been dispersed from their homeland in Connacht to an unusual degree. In the Tudor Fiants, in which the name appears usually as O'Grogan, but with variants such as O'Grugane, O'Growgane and O'Gruogan, six of the relevant dozen relate to Co. Limerick, the others to counties Kildare, Offaly and Tipperary, and only one is placed near the sept's original habitat. None is from Co. Westmeath, yet less than a century later, when Petty's "census" was compiled in 1659, Grogan is listed as one of the principal Irish surnames in the barony of Farbill in that county and also in the barony of Ballyboy, Co. Offaly.
Some of the names by which these men and women were recorded are brief pedigrees in themselves: e.g. Molaghlin MacEe MacCoin O'Gruagan of Castleton, Co Limerick, who in 1579 was with many of his neighbours fined twenty shillings, pardoned and ordered to find security for his peaceful behaviour. Katherine nyne Tyaung, alias Katharin ny Gruagaine, of Gortaclecane, Co. Kerry, provides another intriguing entry. Most of these people are described as husbandmen and yeomen, though we have also a horseman, a tailor and even a labourer. Unlike most of our earlier records the Fiants are not concerned solely with landholders, soldiers and officials.
Few townlands were named later than the early seventeenth century so that Ballygrogan in Co. Tipperary and Derrygrogan in Offaly, near Tullamore, presumably called after branches of the family, provide corroborative evidence of their establishment in those areas. Modem statistics also indicate their wide distribution in recent times: birth registrations show approximately the same number in three provinces with considerably fewer in Ulster: in the northern province the variants Groggan, Groogan and Grugan are found, the last of these being apparently almost peculiar to the Omagh district.
In the seventeenth century we find, for example, one as a witness to the will of Nugent, Baron of Delyin, in 1602, another Dominican Prior of Urlagh in 1631, another in the list of 1649 officers.
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