Need help with an Irish record

+5 votes
687 views

I'm researching my 2g-grandfather, Daniel Hourigan. I found a record that I think is him, and it indicates that he was born in 1821 and died in 1871. These dates fit with things I know for certain. For example, he married in 1836. His son, Daniel, my g-grandfather, was born in 1845. When his son first married in 1872, that record recorded that his father was deceased.

My question is, in this record, who is Ellen? Would that be his wife? Because if it is his wife, than this is not my Daniel Hourigan. His wife was Margaret O'Brien.

Also, in this image, can you tell me the Christian names of Margaret and Daniel's fathers? I think Daniel's father was William, but I'm not certain, and I have no idea what Margaret's father's name was.

WikiTree profile: Daniel Horrigan
in Genealogy Help by Paul Schmehl G2G6 Pilot (165k points)
edited by Paul Schmehl

4 Answers

+5 votes
It wouldn't necessarily be his spouse. Ellen could likely be a child, sibling, or even a parent.
by Jeremiah Pedro G2G Crew (530 points)
+6 votes
According to the related record on RootsIreland.ie (paid site - I purchased 1 month access for another project I'm working on) the information on this marriage record is this:
10 February 1836 / Parish of Ballybricken & Bohermore
Daniel Hourigan, of Limerick married Margaret O'Brien of Caherelly - witnesses:  Denis O'Brien and William Hourigan (and Michael Brien)
Married by special licence.
by Greg Clarke G2G6 Pilot (136k points)
Thank you so much. I think "by special license" was because he was only 15 at the time, right? (I don't know how old Margaret was.)

Is it safe to assume that Denis O"Brien would be Margaret's father, and William Hourigan would be Daniel's father?

I found a record for Margaret O'Brien born on 22 Apr 1819 whose father was Denis and whose mother was Ellen. My problem is, I'm completely unfamiliar with the geography of Ireland, so I don't know if her location makes it possible for her to be Daniel's wife.

Denis O'Brien witnessed the marriage, and Ellen witnessed Daniel's death, so this is a possibility for her.

It’s a good guess, but I would not assume that.  Even if you knew those were the names of the fathers, the witnesses could have been brothers or cousins.
+4 votes

The civil register that the 1871 record was extracted from is available on irishgenealogy.ie.

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_returns/deaths_1871/020752/7280554.pdf

It does not state Ellen's relation, but it does state he is married at the time of his death (not widowed).

by S Brooks G2G6 Mach 1 (18.5k points)
Given that he was only 50, it wouldn't be unusual for his wife to survive him. I wish it had said his profession was stone cutter. Is it unusual for a man to be a pensioner at 50 in those days?

I haven't seen the record that indicates that he was a stone cutter, but that seems like an occupation that could lead to debilitating conditions?  Note that Ellen the informer lists her residence as the same location as his place of death.  I tried to locate the named residence, but I'm way too amateur to have any success.  Given that he was apparently Catholic, it might be useful to locate the RC burial record that matches that death registration.

Also to note: my experience with NYC death registrations - they were pretty good at registering all deaths and issuing death certificates by the ~1900. FamilySearch (FS) has transcribed most DCs from NYC from that time period.  There are details that don't match up with your man, but I do think this DC is interesting

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2WXF-1FV

does that address match up for any family members?  Also important to remember - info on a DC is only as good as the informants knew/could remember.

An Irish researcher told me one time (when I was researching my Ireland-born ancestors) not to get hung up on DOBs when researching there.  I have a great-grand-uncle whose birth year seemed to vary by +/-10 years on census records...

Oh- found the townland on FS -

Ireland, Limerick, Caherconlish church records, 1841-1880

https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/2527225?availability=Family%20History%20Library

There are records for the Catholic church there, FS doesn't have them online, but perhaps they are elsewhere?

https://www.logainm.ie/en/s?txt=Caherconlish&str=on

Oh, wow, I just found out about the NLI site

https://registers.nli.ie/registers/vtls000632673#page/2/mode/1up

Happy hunting!

I have looked at the record. That's a different family. Daniel's mother's name was Margaret, not Bridget. Also, it says he was a resident in the US for 30 years, which means he immigrated in the 1870s.

My ggrandfather Daniel married in Ireland in 1872, and again in 1882. They had their first child (my grandmother) in New York in 1883, so they probably emigrated immediately after marrying in August 1882. So, maybe 1882 or early 83 (grandma was born in June), but even 1882 would only put them in the US for twenty years.
+4 votes
Bandon in County Cork (where one Margaret O'Brien was baptised in 1819) is 123km from Caherelly in County Limerick (where the other Margaret O'Brien lived at the time of her marriage in 1836):
https://goo.gl/maps/JDhMVBKBqAbM7SPVA

That sort of internal migration in rural Ireland would have been extremely unusual at that time.

Margaret O'Brien is a very common name.  By 1911 (by when the population was much smaller, but the survival rate of records is much higher), there were 919 Margaret O'Briens in Ireland, not allowing for any spelling variations:
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/results.jsp?searchMoreVisible=false&census_year=1911&surname=o%27brien&firstname=margaret&search=Search

By comparison, there were only 289 Dan* H*r*g*ns, and the wild cards pick up completely different names such as Harrington and Hartigan as well as numerous variants of Hourigan (but not including Organ).

Old Age Pensions were not introduced until 1909.  Before then, pensioners were almost exclusively military pensioners.  Police pensioners tended to explicitly indicate that as the source of their pension.

The use of the various extracts at familysearch.org and elsewhere from the Irish records freely available online at civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie, registers.nli.ie, etc., should be discouraged as the extracts often miss critical details from the originals.

Given the patchy survival of records and the limited internal migration, you should start with the place where you know your ancestor lived and concentrate on the surviving records for that place, rather than hop around the country looking for other people with similar names living in places with a better survival of records.

A good source for identifying which records survive for a particular place is
https://www.johngrenham.com/browse/
by Paddy Waldron G2G6 Mach 7 (79.8k points)
Thank you, Paddy.

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