Nothing can quite compare to the experience of standing — for the first
time
— in the ruins of one’s ancestral home beneath a blue Irish sky! But in
order to
have that experience, you will need to discover the single most sought
after —
and the single most elusive — piece of information the genealogist
seeks: Where
did my immigrant ancestor come from? (Or, perhaps more accurately, where
do
I come from?) Many of us have little more to go on than a name
and a
vague sense of Irishness. Where do we begin?
I am blessed — or cursed — to count two unrelated Murphys among my sixteen
great-great-grandparents. For most genealogists, the search for a specific
place of origin in the “old-country” might be compared to a search for the
proverbial needle in a haystack. There are Murphys in every parish in Ireland!
All that said, the occurrence of a surname with a seemingly regional
flavour is often much more localized than even the locals realize. To anyone
born in southern New Brunswick, the surnames Sherwood and Kierstead — to cite
two of many possible examples — sound nearly as common as Smith and Jones will
to an Englishman. On close examination of nineteenth century census records,
however, one would find these names concentrated in only one or two rural Kings
County parishes. Similarly, a tour through rural west Cork could, in some
respects, be compared to a drive through New Brunswick’s Acadian Peninsula. (On
this stretch of the road, every second house is occupied by a Legere [a Driscoll
in Cork]; now, clearly, we are in LeBlanc [O’Mahoney] territory.) So in its
Irish context a name can reveal a lot more than one might expect. And the same
is true both of surnames and Christian names. You tell me that you immigrant
ancestor was called Moses Whalen. If I were a betting man, I would wager a
thousand dollars he was born in Waterford or Wexford. Why? Because among Irish
Catholics, the Christian name Moses was used almost exclusively in Counties
Waterford and Wexford. Florence is a “girl’s name.” Not in County Cork! The
list goes on and on. So where does one begin his search for Irish origins?
Begin with the name of your immigrant ancestor.
Patterns of Immigration:
When undertaking genealogical or biographical research, it is always helpful
to learn as much as one can about the general history of the area where one’s
subject settled. This is true not least of all because humans are in large
measure formed by their environments. What sort of education we
receive, whom we marry . . . and a host of other realities of our adult lives
are more or less determined by the situation of our birth and upbringing. When
it comes to identifying the specific place of origin of an Irish immigrant
ancestor, the first question the researcher ought to ask is: Where did she
settle? Irish immigration to and settlement in New Brunswick, while a complex
process, was determined, in the first instance, by pre-existing trade links
between ports in Ireland and in New Brunswick.
In the vast majority of cases, the earliest waves of immigrants simply set
sail from the port nearest their home village or townland and ended up “across
the pond” — in Miramichi, St. Andrews or Saint John, for instance — simply
because that’s where the vessel was headed.
Settlement in a host community was possible and followed immigration
only where there was a hope of viable employment. As an example, a group of
fishermen from the Cooley Peninsula of County Louth ended up settling together
in the Lower Cove district of Saint John because, while the local New
Brunswick-born fishing population had gone on to “bigger and better things” — in
terms of employment — they nevertheless continued to eat fish. In New
Brunswick, several large-scale regionally-based patterns of settlement developed
as a result of prior (and ongoing) trade links.
St. Andrews: During the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, the port of St. Andrews in Charlotte County developed strong links with
the Irish ports of Derry (or Londonderry) and Donegal. Eventually, the town of
St. Andrews and adjacent communities became home to large numbers of immigrants
from Derry and Donegal and their environs.
Saint John: Saint John’s pre-eminence
as a trading port laid the foundation for a complex web of
transatlantic migration patterns. While significant numbers of Irish
immigrants sailed to Saint John from the ports of Liverpool, Newry (in County
Down), or Sligo (and several other small ports in west Cork), the great majority
of Irish arriving in Saint John in the nineteenth century sailed from Donegal or
Derry in the north and Cork (Cobh) in the south.
Miramichi: If your immigrant ancestor settled on the banks
of the Miramichi, chances are he or she hailed from within fifty miles of the
City of Waterford or from somewhere in Counties Waterford, Wexford, Kilkenny,
Tipperary, or east Cork. As early as the seventeenth century, trade links had
developed between Waterford and the ports of Newfoundland — based initially on a
seasonal fishing migration. Eventually, the “Waterford Pattern” extended to
embrace much of northern Nova Scotia and the Miramichi.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, people of Irish birth or ancestry
had settled in every county and in every parish of New Brunswick. If your
ancestor settled in an area remote from the principal ports of entry, it may be
difficult to identify his or her place of origin in Ireland. If, for instance,
your Irish-born great-great-grandfather, Michael Sullivan, ended his days in
Madawaska County, it might be reasonable to ask yourself if he arrived in the
New World at Québec. In any case, it is important to remember that patterns
speak to the generalities of life and where genealogical research is concerned
we are looking at the specifics. While it is helpful to know that the majority
of Irish settlers on the Miramichi came from the vicinity of Waterford, it does
not necessarily follow that your Irish-born Miramichi ancestor did.
After all, we are talking about an individual and individuals seldom conform to
every pattern. I can think of several Irish-born settlers in Kent County who
arrived in Saint John, of Saint John settlers who arrived at St. Andrews, and of
at least one Miramichi settler who first set foot in the New World at
Boston!
The Gregarious Irish:
Wherever they have gone, the Irish — Catholic or Protestant — have looked for
people from their home village or townland and, where possible, they have
encouraged the immigration of their extended families and friends and
facilitated their settlement. This point becomes particularly salient when
trying to trace the old-country place of origin of an ancestor. Perhaps your
great-great-grandmother, Mary (Sullivan) O’Brien, left no trace of her
birthplace. Suddenly, the fact that her next-door neighbour was a Jeremiah
Sullivan becomes more significant to your search than it might have been had
Mary’s tombstone noted that she was “a native of Clonakilty, County Cork.”
Before investing countless hours trying to determine an
old-country-place-of-origin, it is essential that the researcher ask himself the
following questions:
1. Did my ancestor marry or have children in Ireland?
Looking for Paddy Driscoll’s birthplace in County Cork — where Driscoll is
as common as Doucet in New Brunswick’s Gloucester County — might take decades.
But, if you know that Paddy married a Copithorne before emigrating, a little
digging will lead you inevitably to the Parish of Creagh or one of the adjacent
parishes in west Cork where one is likely to find the only Copithornes in the
county.
2.What, if anything, do I know about my
immigrant-ancestor’s siblings, extended family and friends? Perhaps the
death notice of your ancestor, James Sproul, noted only that he was “a native of
County Tyrone, Ireland,” while that of his eldest and only Irish-born son,
Charles, recorded that he was “a native of Strabane, County Tyrone and
sixty-six years a resident of Shédiac.” Remember, it is much easier to search
the same records for more than one individual that to make several
trips to distant research facilities. When possible, approach the key
sources knowing who your ancestor chose as baptismal sponsors for his or her
children, and who witnessed her wedding or his will. Remember, we Irish are a
clannish bunch!
The Main Sources:
I. Death Notices:
Newspaper death notices served different purposes in different places. If
your immigrant-ancestor lived and died in Fredericton, Saint John, or Moncton,
or in or near a community with a daily newspaper, there is a good chance that
his or her death was noted in a column entitled simply “Died.” Death notices of
this sort served to inform the newspaper’s readership and those in their circle
of acquaintance of wake and funeral arrangements. (For the Irish, particularly
the Catholic Irish, wakes have always been major social occasions. In fact, in
past generations, countless couples met and began courting at wakes.)
Nineteenth-century New Brunswick death notices frequently recorded the place of
birth of the deceased, even when almost nothing else was noted. For instance,
on June 11, 1902, readers of the Saint John Globe read of the death of
“James Murphy, 92, a native of County Louth, Ireland, survived by eight
children.” I am convinced that the death notices of immigrants who came to New
Brunswick as part of a chain of settlers from a single old-country parish were
more likely to contain a reference to that birthplace than those of “lonely”
immigrants. That even the briefest of death notices often refer to the
deceased’s county or parish of birth reveals a great deal about how our
ancestors viewed themselves. A quick visit to the Provincial Archives of New
Brunswick’s website [http://archives.gnb.ca] will give the
researcher access to an enormous collection of vital records transcribed from
New Brunswick newspapers by the late Danny Johnson.
II. Tombstone Inscriptions:
Places of origin in Ireland — or for that matter, in Scotland, England, or in
any of the “old countries” that peopled New Brunswick — are frequently noted on
tombstones. Tombstones in many of the Province’s older cemeteries have been
transcribed for posterity by genealogical enthusiasts who have braved inclement
weather, barbed wire, and mosquitoes to achieve their ends. Many of these
transcriptions have been deposited with the Provincial Archives in Fredericton
and with the local library. A word of caution: if at all possible, it is best
for the researcher to inspect a tombstone of interest him or herself. Tombstone
transcription can be a daunting task; monuments are often partially or entirely
illegible, and more than one transcriber has exercised a greater than
appropriate amount of creativity in his work. In general, tombstones are
counted among the least accurate of genealogical sources. They are often
erected many years after the death of the individual or individuals they
commemorate, and, therefore, after memories have faded.
III. Land Petitions:
If the subject of your research settled in rural New Brunswick before 1860,
there is a good chance that he applied for a land grant. Applications for land
filed before 1830, in particular, tended to provide an exhilarating amount of
detail about the applicant: age, marital status, number of children, length of
residence in the Province and, very frequently, county of birth in Ireland. New
Brunswick Land Petitions can be searched at the Provincial Archives in
Fredericton or at the Saint John Regional Library (with a complete index
of more than 67,000 petitions available on the PANB website: http://archives.gnb.ca).
IV. Church Records:
A. If the subject of your search was Catholic and resided in
an area currently embraced by the Diocese of Saint John, your search for Irish
origins should begin at the Diocesan Archives at 1 Bayard Drive in Saint John.
Since the mid 1980’s, Diocesan Archivist Mary Kilfoil McDevitt has transcribed
nearly all the Archives’ pre-1900 baptismal, marriage and burial records onto
hundreds of thousands of family group sheets. These records are meticulously
organized, indexed, and cross-referenced by maiden surname of mother so that
they are easily accessible to even the novice researcher. (N.B. Even if your
ancestor’s group sheet is silent as to his birthplace, it is frequently possible
to infer a great deal on this question by consulting the group sheets of those
who stood as sponsors for his or her children.) Mrs. McDevitt can be contacted
at: The Diocesan Archives, 1 Bayard Drive, Saint John, NB E2L 3L5 (506)
653-6807.
Those interested in Irish Catholic families who settled in other parts of the
province, specifically in predominantly Acadian regions, are often pleasantly
surprised to find that an amazing amount of detail was recorded at the time of
their ancestor’s marriage, frequently including an exact place of birth in
Ireland. By the time the Irish began to arrive in New Brunswick in large
numbers, the Acadian population had intermarried to the point that almost every
marriage required some form of dispensation from church law. In this case, a
unique system of record keeping was necessitated, a system which detailed the
specifics of parentage and birthplace and which far exceeded the registration
requirements of the universal church. Many a Saint John or Kings County
researcher — exasperated after years of futile searching for his ancestor’s
place of origin in Ireland — has been left asking, “Why didn’t my Irish
ancestors settle in Westmorland [or Gloucester, etc.] County?”
B. For reasons which far transcend the scope of this
article, the records of the various Protestant denominations are far less useful
than those of the Catholic Church in determining the Irish birthplaces of
congregants. There are exceptions, however. For example: Anglican and
Methodist burial registers sometimes note the old-country birthplace of an
individual brought for burial. And, if you are determined to identify a place
of origin in Ireland, it is best to consult any and all sources which might
contain references to your subject. The record keeping requirements of many
denominations appear to have been determined at the congregational level.
Occasionally, a researcher has been surprised to find an invaluable marginal
notation on the baptismal, marriage, or burial entry of an ancestor occasioned
by little more than the musings of a distracted record keeper.
V. “Missing Friends”:
Sometimes we tend to forget that our immigrant ancestors — much like
ourselves — were, in their day, part of a complex web of kinship: they all had
parents, most had siblings, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, and cousins . .
. and friends. Some of these remained in Ireland; others went abroad, to places
as far-flung as Australia and New Zealand. With some, contact was maintained.
With others, contact was severed — either temporarily or permanently. Beginning
in 1831 and for the next eighty-five years, the Boston Pilot —
a Catholic weekly with wide circulation — carried more than 45,000 “Missing
Friends” advertisements placed by friends and relatives in search of loved ones.
Many of these ads contain references to individuals who either passed through
or settled in New Brunswick. No one knows exactly how many New Brunswick
immigrants were reunited with family or friends as a result of the notices, but,
whatever that figure, these nineteenth-century ads have helped and continue to
help many of our contemporaries find their ancestors. Search for your missing
friend (or relative) at:
http://www.newenglandancestors.org/database_search/MissingFriends_VOL1-8.asp
VI. Online Sources:
In recent years, internet genealogy has become a wildly popular phenomenon.
New genealogical sources appear online on a daily basis. Keeping up with them
could constitute a full-time job! Nonetheless, anyone attempting with
difficulty to identify the specific place of origin of an Irish immigrant should
visit http://www.failteromhat.com/griffiths.htm, where, at the push
of a button, it is possible to search one of the only extant “all Ireland”
sources: The Primary Valuation of Ireland. Compiled between 1848 and 1864, this
survey of Irish land ownership and occupancy became known as “Griffith’s
Valuation,” after Richard Griffith, the director of Ireland’s Valuation Office
at the time. Even if your ancestor left Ireland in 1820, reference to
“Griffith’s Valuation” may be helpful in determining the distribution of his/her
surname nationally or within a particular county or parish. Be forewarned: If
you are attempting to identify the specific place of origin of your Irish-born
ancestor, John Murphy, Griffith’s will be of little practical help. Perhaps,
however, your ancestor had a somewhat unusual surname or Christian name/surname
combination (or was married, in Ireland, to someone with an unusual surname).
Referring to “Griffith’s” might help you to locate a distant, or not-so-distant,
kinsman with the same name, thereby narrowing your search for a specific place
of origin. Overwhelmed by the online possibilities? Try accessing http://www.cyndislist.com/ireland.htm. for a growing
collection of Irish resources. And, when all else fails, try googling
your ancestor. Be sure to put his/her name in quotation marks and then to
include any key words (i.e. Tipperary). Sometimes it is possible to
find that needle in the “haystack” of cyberspace.