The Skerretts of ballinduff, Co. Galway, and Finvara, Co. Clare, have now died out in the male line--the last representative being Rev. Hyacinth Heffernan Skerrett, a priest. They were extensive landowners in both those counties eighty years ago. Some junior lines survive elsewhere, but the name is now very rare. It is included here because the family was one of the "Tribes of Galway". Of English origin it appears under the guise of Huscared, and subsequently Scared, as early as 1242, when they held lands in Connacht under Richard de Burgo. In 1378 we find the name as Scared, alias Scaret : in that year one of them was provost of Galway ; by 1414, when another of the name held that office, it had become Skeret. After that it occurs intermittently in the lists of mayors and sheriffs up tp 1642, and they were listed as Irish Papists in the return made under the Act of Settlement of proprietors in 1640. Twelve years after that date, two Skerretts were among those townsmen who refused to sign the articles of capitulation at the end of the siege of Galway. Two of the "tribe" were Archbishops of Tuam : Nicholas Skerrett, who was expelled from the see in 1583, and Mark Skerrett, who held it from 1756 to 1775.