Shean Duff O'Higgins was the original founder of the O'Higgins and Higgins families, he is supposedly of Irish blood and origin with a family lost to the past. He was born around 1600 C.E He was married to one of the daughters of the royal family of O'Connor and claimed to be related to the king Niall of the Nine Hostages of Tara. The Higgins family, and O'Higgins family were known relations of the O'Neil dynasty through the becoming of sept's to the dynasty. He was the first head of the ancestral seat of Ballynary and the one of the major barons of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland in Connacht due to his family's relations with the O'Neil dynasty.