Genealogical Troves ~ Volume Three

By Dennis Ford

Genealogical Troves ~ Volume Three provides nineteenth and twentieth century records of births, baptisms, marriages and deaths pertaining to the—


• Hunt families


• Fitzmaurice families

—who resided in the vicinity of Ballyhaunis in Eastern County Mayo.

Records in Troves ~ Volume Three derive from the civil and Roman Catholic Parishes of Annagh and Bekan in County Mayo and Kiltullagh in County Roscommon. Records include—

• Roman Catholic Parish registers

• Civil records

• Census records

• the Calendar of Wills

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663237316

Dennis Ford

Dennis Ford is the author of nineteen books, including the recent novels Tracks That Lead To Joy and World Without End. He lives on the Jersey Shore, where he walks the beaches and thinks about ghosts.

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 Dennis Ford.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-3730-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3731-6 (e)

iUniverse rev. date:03/22/2022

Contents

Preface

Sources

Hunt

Fitzmaurice

to the people of the past, that we remember them

                I was going to add a subtitle—Does Everyone

in Ireland Have the Same First Name?—but

                changed my mind out of respect for the people

                included in this volume. Probably, they used

                Irish names, family connections and sobriquets

                to distinguish among individuals. Lacking this

                information a century later, we’re not so fortunate.

Preface

The quest to collect genealogical records pertaining to my ancestral septs has grown in scope since its inception. Originally conceived as two volumes, the number of records necessitated a third volume. This volume includes nineteenth century and early twentieth century records pertaining to—

~ Hunt families residing in the vicinity of the market town of Ballyhaunis in County Mayo.

~ Fitzmaurice families residing in the vicinity of Ballyhaunis.

Records for these families are limited to the civil and Roman Catholic Parishes of Annagh and Bekan in County Mayo and Kiltullagh Parish in County Roscommon. A few records document families in Aghamore and Knock parishes in County Mayo. Civil records for the parishes in County Mayo reside in the Claremorris registration district. Civil records for Kiltullagh parish reside in the Castlerea registration district of County Roscommon.

Civil records are available on-line at www.irishgenealogy.ie. Records for births and marriages commence in 1864. Death records commence in 1871. Records continue into the 1950s. They are searchable by name, year and registration district. (The latter facilitates searches, but is not required.) The website is periodically updated. In addition, the website contains select Roman Catholic church records. Unluckily, parishes in the vicinity of Ballyhaunis are not available.

Roman Catholic parish registers are available on-line at www.registers.nli.ie. The records terminate circa 1880. The records are searchable by event and date, not by surname. The legibility of the records, which are images of the parish registers, varies greatly. Records for Kiltullagh Parish are in excellent condition and legible. Early records for Bekan Parish are not always legible. The quality of the Annagh Parish records is deplorable. The handwriting of the priests is a scrawl from 1851 – 1870. In addition, the bottom sections of the on-line images are frequently blacked out and illegible. An additional, and nontrivial, problem with the Annagh and Bekan registers is that the pages are not always in chronological order. Depending on which priest entered the records, events in the same month and year could appear in different places in the register. (The chronological order improves in later registers.) As in the first two volumes, I elected to include only the month and year of individual records.

When I first became active in genealogy in the early 1990s I, like everyone else, used the microfilms created by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Microfilms for both Annagh and Bekan parishes extended into the early twentieth century. It may be possible to consult www.familysearch.org in the event the microfilmed records were entered into the on-line database.

Census records for 1901 and 1911 are available at www.census.nationalarchives.ie. The records are searchable by surname and townland. Ballyhaunis records are searchable by street name.

Land records are available on-line at the Valuation Office at www.irish-geneaography.com/valuation-office. Griffith’s Valuation is available at www.askaboutireland.ie. The Tithe Applotment Books are available at www.titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie. The website of the National Archives of Ireland contains a number of interesting databases, including a Calendar of Wills that can be searched by surname, county and date of death. Find My Past (www.findmypast.com) has a huge selection of records including Ballyhaunis petty court records—an excellent trove of unique records. These records, which are not included in this volume, are available for a modest monthly fee.

All records in Genealogical Troves ~ Volume Three need to be verified. There may be errors in transcription—interpretation of handwriting is often analogous to interpreting a Rorschach card. Informants may have provided inaccurate details. Priests and civil registrars may have erred in recording events. Researchers who digitized the records may have made errors. Shamefully, I may have erred in copying names and dates.

Families had several months to report events to the authorities, so it can happen that the dates in the civil registers are discrepant from the dates of the actual events. (Families may have failed to report events to the civil authorities—this seems to have occurred most often with death records.) Unless there are corresponding baptism records, dates of births should be considered approximations. Dates of deaths and ages of decedents in civil records should also be considered approximations. Frequently, informants had only estimates of the decedents’ actual ages.

Family records in Genealogical Troves ~ Volume Three should be considered incomplete—this is especially the case with older records. Baptisms and marriages that occurred before the commencement of church registers are permanently lost. Deaths and burials were not recorded by the churches included in this volume. Illegible handwriting may have resulted in overlooked records or in erroneous interpretations of names and dates. Prior to the 1870s, data from Annagh Parish are underrepresented in this volume. Pages may be missing from the extant church registers—chunks of pages appear to be missing in some registers.

Family records that appear in Volume Three are in chronological order from the first occurrence of names and events in parish registers or civil records. The names of godparents and witnesses in church records are in parentheses. Except for a few families, birth records in Volume Three generally terminate circa 1900. Marriage and death records continue to 1940. Parish names in marriage records are transcribed from the church registers. The parish of the bride was utilized for post-1864 marriages that have no matching church records. (This is an assumption.) The term Bekan refers to the parish name and not to the name of the townland, unless otherwise specified. Question marks are used to indicate uncertainties in transcribing names, dates and townlands. Where indicated, records require further verification.

Sources

Annagh Parish registers – Nov. 1851 – Nov. 1880

Bekan Parish registers – May 1832 – May 1872

Kiltullagh Parish registers – Augt. 1839 – Apr. 1881

Tuam Archdiocese Record of Marriages – 1821 – 1829

Civil Registers of Births, Claremorris & Castlerea districts – 1864 – circa 1900

Civil Registers of Marriages, Claremorris & Castlerea districts – 1864 – 1940

Civil Registers of Deaths, Claremorris & Castlerea districts – circa 1871 – 1940

Tithe Applotment Books – 1833

Griffith’s Valuation – 1856

Calendar of Wills – 1858 - 1922

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Hunt

The surname Hunt derives from O Fiachna, translated as the hunt or the chase. The sept is part of the Siol Muireadaigh, descendants of King Muireadach Muillethan (died 702). In turn, the Siol Muireadaigh were part of the Ui Bruin Ai, descendants of Brion, half brother to Niall of the Nine Hostages. Brion lived in the late fourth/early fifth centuries. The Siol Muireadaigh inhabited Western Roscommon and included families of the MacDermotts and the O’Connors, kings of the region. The Hunt families were strongly localized in the vicinity of Ballyhaunis, especially in Annagh and Bekan Parishes.

An alternate origin of the Hunt sept is that it derives from the Ui Fiachrach, descendants of Fiachra, Brion’s brother. This group of families was localized in Sligo, Mayo and Galway.

1796 Flax Seed Premium Entitlements

Hugh Hunt, Knock Parish

Diocese of Tuam Marriage Records

Patrick Hunt & Catherine Kilduff

m. June 1821 (John Hunt & Thomas Murphy), Aghamore & Knock Parish

Michael Hunt & Anne Swift

m. Sept. 1821 (Michael Morilly & Murdagh Finn), Bekan Parish

Hugh Hunt & Bridget Cunnane

m. Feb. 1822