Briens (O'Briens) of Tipperary

Question

I'm researching Irish roots for a friend of the family, and would like some help figuring out the family (parents and siblings) of one of their great-great-greats James O'Brien (abt.1853-1902), O'Brien-13142

Specifically - I'm trying to determine if his parents, Patrick Brien and Anastatia Ryan could be the Patrick and Anne that got married in Youghalarra parish in 1840.

James and two siblings (John and Maria) were all born in Kilsheelan (civil) parish, and the Gambonsfield and Kilcash Catholic Church.   There are however, multiple children born to a Patrick and Anne in Youghalarra, where the three Kilsheelan children could fit in between ... but ... if I'm reading the map right (and not getting my townlands and parishes and unions mixed up), I'm not sure how likely it is that the same couple would travel back and forth between them.

Any help on sorting out the Briens / O'Briens of County Tipperary would be appreciated.

On the parents profiles, I've listed the children and marriage in question.  On James' profile - I've listed ALL Patrick Brien +  ? Ryan marriages and baptisms in the timeframe I'm interested, in the hopes that would help me sort things out, and maybe it will be helpful to you too.

Thanks!

PS - I built an Irish Citation app that I'm using to create these source citations you may see I've used from RootsIreland, IrishGenealogy.ie, or the Church Registers of NLI.  It's still in draft form - and some things may not work as expected, but if you want to play with it yourself - go for it.

Answer 1

Great news, Greg - I look forward to trying out the app.

Both for this (O')Brien family and for the citation app, it is important to recognise that Irish parishes generally (outside the big cities) had one set of registers covering multiple churches. In this case, the churches in Gambonsfield/Gammonsfield/Kilsheelan and in Kilcash are 6.3km apart: https://goo.gl/maps/s3rMSTBCcAPmdYbdA

You can read my notes for a talk that I gave on this topic some years ago (before the wonderful maps.osi.ie website was shut down) at http://www.pwaldron.info/parishes/

For parishes with which I am not familiar, I usually need to consult the present-day diocesan website, e.g. in this case https://waterfordlismore.ie/parish-details/?parishID=34

Lewis's Topography from 1837 is also often a big help in figuring out the divergence between the civil and catholic parishes. In this case, it confirms that the civil parish of Kilsheelan is divided by the River Suir between two counties, Tipperary and Waterford: https://www.libraryireland.com/topog/K/Kilsheelan-Offa-East-Tipperary.php

The townland index at https://thecore.com/seanruad/ can also be very useful for figuring out such geographical idiosyncracies.

The bottom line for the app is that it will usually be much safer to use the word "parish" where you are tempted to use the word "church".

Answer 2

There's a double prefix typo in the https://https//registers.nli.ie/ link on the fifth line at https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/clarke11007/Irish.php

After watching your explanatory video, I realised that the sample profile on the third last line was carried over from the Canadian Census Citation Creator - there are no Irish sources cited at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/McElroy-2921  Perhaps you intended to use one of the O'Brien profiles.

Comments

Hi there Paddy, thanks so much for your responses.  I’ve just finished playing for our Good Friday service, and will be busy most of this weekend.  I look forward to stealing an hour or two when no one is looking to digest your suggestions.

Thanks for the notes about mistakes to fix.  And oops. I used my Canadian census app as a template and haven’t actually done a how to video for the Irish app yet.  My mistake there.  I’ll look into the error you are getting in 1891 and get back to you.

Thanks again

Greg

Answer 3

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong ...

The Canadian Census Citation Creator appears to work, but the citation which I built for my GGgrandfather in the 1891 census appears to be full of blanks:
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Nolan-3974#_note-CdnCensus

In the Irish Sites Citation Creator, when I click on the green "Compile Citation" button in either Firefox or Chrome, the Record Type: box pops up correctly identifying the record as a Marriage, but the Citation box remains blank.  The Record URL that I tried is James O'Brien's marriage at
https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/details-civil/61cc982921197?b=https%3A%2F%2Fcivilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie%2Fchurchrecords%2Fcivil-perform-search.jsp%3Fnamefm%3Dmary%26namel%3Drocket*%26location%3DClonmel%26yyfrom%3D1877%26yyto%3D1877%26type%3DM%26submit%3DSearch

Comments

HI there Paddy!

It looks like you're accessing the newer version of the Library and Archives Canada site - which I thought was still in beta mode.  I'm going to have to adjust my CCCC app to parse the slightly different text on this page properly.

I'll let you know once I've got that working.

 - Greg

Answer 4

Now to the substantive question:

As I have noted in the biography of your Patrick Brien, in Killurney in Griffith's Valuation (25 Oct 1850), Patrick Bryan, the only Bryan or variant in the townland, occupied (no. 3) a house with rateable annual valuation of 10 shillings on 4a 3r 1p.

A few months earlier, there are listings for Patrick Brien in two townlands in Youghalarra parish in Griffith's Valuation (14 May 1850), Ballymoylan/Ballymoylin and Barbaha:
https://www.failteromhat.com/griffiths/tipperary/youghalarra.htm

These comprised Patrick Brien (Tone) and three plain Patrick Briens occupying land and buildings in Ballymoylan and a landless Patrick Brien in Barbaha:
https://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml?action=doNameSearch&Submit.x=47&Submit.y=14&familyname=brien&firstname=patrick&countyname=TIPPERARY%2C+NORTH+RIDING&parishname=YOUGHALARRA

There were still four (O')Brien households in Ballymoylin in 1901:
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Tipperary/Youghalarra/Ballymoylin/
but none left in Barbaha:
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Tipperary/Youghalarra/Barbaha/

Ballymoylan/Ballymoylin is 90km from Killurney:
https://goo.gl/maps/8zjetYukjTst4kRZ9

Mrs. Brien of Youghalarra was Anne or Nancy in the baptism records of all of her children.

Mrs. Brien of Killurney was Anastatia in the baptism records of all of her children.

These are almost certainly just parallel families, and almost certainly NOT a single family hopping back and forth between the two ends of the county.  Even the Templederry and Youghalarra families are likely just parallel families.

I found another child in the Killurney family (a second John/Johannes baptised on 14 Feb 1847), who was picked up by ancestry.com's indexers but may have been misread by rootsireland.ie's indexers.

The failure to find marriage records is most likely down to the brides being from nearby parishes for which the marriage registers have not survived, or else down to transcription or indexing or translation errors.  It is important to bear in mind that survival dates for parish registers vary dramatically from one parish to the next.

The Catholic parish currently described as Kilsheelan & Kilcash and described by the NLI as Gambonsfield and Kilcash is probably coterminous with the two civil parishes of Kilsheelan and Temple-etney, but you would need a local expert from that end of the county to confirm my conjecture.  By coincidence, my own second cousin Fr Paul Waldron is actually the current parish priest of Carrick-on-Suir, two parishes to the east!

Comments

Wow - that's great - thanks Paddy for that - so much info -and very helpful.  When I looked at the map (I was using townlands.ie to find the parishes) - I could tell that Kilsheelan was quite far from Youghalarra, so I thought it unlikely they would go back and forth multiple times.  I wondered if there were some social unrest, or maybe a migratory job might explain it, but more likely just parallel families as you suggest.  I guess I assumed that most of the Catholic registers had survived because I've been pretty lucky finding people so far (which actually surprised me) - but - if there are holes, then that definitely would explain the missing marriage records.

Thanks for finding the second John Brien - I'll add a profile for him if you haven't already done so.

Question about Griffiths:  Is it only the head of the household listed ?  Is there any type of census or census substitute before 1901 where we could see a list of the children of Patrick + Anastatia in one place?  Or am I dreaming ..?

Thanks again Paddy for jumping in!  I'll see if I can fix those apps problems you've found sometime tomorrow before I head back to church for Holy Saturday mass.

---

Yes, Griffith's is head of household only.  Your best hope of filling in the gaps between the births and the 1901 census might be to search the local civil marriage registers if they have been fully indexed by rootsireland.ie.  As luck would have it, the records for Kilsheelan registrar's (dispensary) district are indexed up to 1921.  See under Tipperary South at http://www.rootsireland.ie/ifhf/generic.php?filename=sources.tpl&selectedMenu=sources

And remember that irishgenealogy.ie can give different search results depending on whether your search term is Brien or OBrien or O'Brien!