"FAN" discovery in a cemetery

Several related Burke and Flynn families left Derrycraff in Aghagower Parish, Co Mayo, around the time of the Famine, and ended up settling in/near Perth in Scotland. We don't presently know whether they left because of starvation and extreme hardship, or whether they were evicted from their land.

Recently my third cousin Maggie Gaffney visited the Perth area, and made a visit to Wellshill Cemetery to see the grave of our mutual 3x-great-grandparents, Michael Burke and Bridget Flynn. She had made a previous visit, and had given me a copy of a photo of their headstone.

This stone marks the burial place of Michael Burke and his wife Bridget, whose maiden surname of Flynn is used on the stone, and of their daughter Mary. Mary is found on the 1861 census as a child aged 9, the only member of the family listed at 134 High St Perth who was born in Perthshire, Perth, rather than in Ireland. At the base of this headstone you can vaguely read the name of John, who died in New Zealand. He was the son of Michael and Bridget, and brother of Martin Burke, my 2x-great-grandfather. John is buried in the Darfield Catholic Cemetery in New Zealand, alongside his sister-in-law Ann Burke née Philp, and his niece Mary Burke, the eldest daughter of Martin and Ann.

When Maggie sent me the above headstone photo, she also sent me another photo from a slight distance, that gave an overview of the position of the headstone in the cemetery. There was another headstone quite close to 'our' one, but I never gave it much thought.

On Maggie's recent return visit to this cemetery, she took some time to clear the earth from the base of our 3x-grt-grandparents' headstone so you could read John's details more clearly. She also sent me a close-up photo that had both headstones. On the adjoining headstone, the name was Judy Flynn. Flynn is quite a common name in Ireland, but the proximity of these two stones had me querying whether there was a FAN relationship going on here, ie Friends, Associates and Neighbours. Could the Flynns in neighbouring graves be connected somehow? Judy was not a name I had ever heard of in our family, but it seemed it was worth exploring the possibility.

On this headstone Judy Flynn was listed as being 58 years old when she died in 1861, so it would seem she was born around 1803. The second name on the headstone was Ann Mulroy who died in 1908. This raised questions about whether Mulroy might be Judy's married name, and whether Ann could perhaps be Judy's child.

As it turned out it was surprisingly easy to get an initial answer to my query about whether Bridget and Judy Flynn were related. There was help on Ancestry, as several people are clearly researching the Milroy/Mulroy family, and someone had put a death registration for Judy on her profile.

It became immediately obvious that Judy and Bridget were most likely to be sisters. We know that Bridget's parents were Patrick Flynn and Mary Flynn née Derrick/Derrig, and these names were listed as parents for Judy. We also know that Bridget had a brother called Peter Flynn who had come to Perth, and the informant for Judy's death was a Peter Flynn, who was described as her brother, present at her death.

Clearly at some stage more research will be needed to uncover more links and confirmation. From the trees on Ancestry, it seems as if the Milroy descendants don't know about Judy's nephew Martin Burke who came to New Zealand. Contacting them is on my list of things to do. Meanwhile, I am just glad I thought of pursuing the possibility of a FAN relationship, even if the neighbours concerned were in a graveyard.

Thanks to Maggie Gaffney for sharing the headstone photos with me, and for thus sparking off this whole FAN investigation!

Riordan Land in Ireland- Where and when?

A third cousin recently had time in the Valuation Office in Dublin, and offered to look up some of my land queries- so I gathered together some of the info I had for the Riordan (and Malone) families. Thanks Maggie! https://www.iwikiwi.com/

I knew from his marriage record that my great-grandfather Patrick Riordan was born in Curraheen, Co Limerick, about 1843 to John Riordan and Bidy Quane. I searched in several townlands called Curraheen with no luck- distinct lack of Riordans, Malones, Quanes or O'Donnells.  In the end, thanks to something I managed to find on Google, it looked like the place name had changed, and the farm was at Cullane South, Ballylanders Parish, Co Limerick, not far from Mitchelstown and Galbally. On the section I found via Griffiths, there was an old fort/tower called Carheen on the property.

 Some of the bits and pieces I found included:

1829 Tithe Applotment Book- widow Riordan is living in Curraheen in the parish of Ballylanders.                         (Also a John Quane in Knockbrack in parish of Ballylanders).

 1826- John Riordan listed as gaining lease of land at Cullane South, Ballylanders, No20.

This would seem to possibly be my 2x-great-grandfather John Riordan. Note Patrick Creagh and Jno Creagh at nearby sections (18,19) (Suspect intermarriage between families)

 On Griffiths Valuation- John Riordan has section 20 in Cullane South. A Modern overlay map shows the property is bordered by Cullane S road and Tully Rd, and is to the east of the River Ahapurca.

 1850 June 4^th- Ellen, daughter of John Riordan and Bidy Quane baptised. Last daughter in family, Bridget, born 1855.

 1871-1874- Ballylanders Evictions. New landlord, Charles Wilmot Smith, put up rents hugely. Some tenants evicted when couldn’t pay. John Riordan appears to be one of these. However, 1870 Land Act came into play, and eventually by 1874 it seems most were readmitted to their holdings. A William Creagh was the bailiff and was very unpopular. I have many DNA matches with Creagh descendants, and it seems that perhaps John Riordan’s sister might have married a Creagh, and he left for Queensland.

1877- 28 April 1877, James Riordan, the brother of Patrick Riordan, married Bridget Hanlon in church at Ballylanders.

Census 1901 James – family listed as residents of a house 12 in Cullane South
Don’t know if they have shifted from property 20, or if things have been renumbered. It's possible John Riordan bought a Creagh property when he left for Australia.
Census 1911; listed on census as living in house 10 in Cullane South.

Extract of Census Return 1916- for James Riordan Address still given as Cullane South; James Riordan’s address living with Michael O’Riordan (Michael was born in Cullane 1883.)

1916 2nd Feb, Farm transferred to son Michael Riordan (O’Riordan) on his marriage.

1921- War of Independence, death of William O’Riordan, son of James Riordan and Bridget Hanlon, James still appears to be living on farm. (Info from various sources including newspapers and military records.)

Michael – seems to have died young. His wife was forced to sell holding to pay debts – sometime between 1916 and 1931.
1931 James Riordan died

That's enough of the bits and pieces. If you are reading this and think you might be a Riordan descendant from Cullane South, I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

I also have some 'bits and pieces' about the Malone family, between nearby Ballyfeerode townland, and Ballynadrideen, Ballyhea Parish, just over the border in Co Cork. But the connections involve a lot of supposition at this stage! One day I might blog about them!

 

Addison's Flat- Unclaimed Mail

I have never been able to find a shipping record that listed my great-grandfather James Lalor when he left Victoria for the gold fields of the West Coast in New Zealand. It seems that such sailings were often treated as 'domestic' sailings, and passenger lists weren't routinely published.
However, I found an obituary from the Greymouth Evening Star, 5 October 1916, that said James came from Melbourne first to the goldmining area of Addison's Flat, near Westport, sailing via the ship Lightning.

With the help of the people at the Westport i-Site last summer, I managed to find where Addison's Flat was, not far out of Westport, and visited it. These days it's not obvious it used to be a thriving mining settlement, though the ground is uneven, giving hints of its past. There is a cemetery still there, and that has some more recent burials of rural inhabitants.

You can let yourself in through a gate, and cross farmland to the cemetery. There is something very special about being able to walk where you know your ancestor was living, treading in his footsteps, even though the 1860s were long ago. And from this relatively flat land, you look across to the mountains of the West Coast, that seem to have a sense of foreboding with them.

There is a historic noticeboard in the cemetery that gives some of the early flavour of the settlement. There are historic photos, a notice about a coach that takes miners to a hotel in Westport on a weekend, and a notice about the formation of a branch of the Hibernian Society, which indicates many Irish miners were on the land there.

Some years ago I attended a talk by Fiona Brooker of Memories in Time where she described tracking a relative's movements down via Trove and Papers Past, but I never got around to diligently trying that. Then the other day I stumbled onto a clue when I was just randomly surfing Papers Past using Lalor as a search term. (I know, rabbit holes and all that!)

What I found, via the Westport Times, 13 May 1869, was a list of unclaimed letters from Addison's Flat in January 1869. I can't be absolutely certain that this is 'my' James Lalor of course, as there were a couple of others on the Coast, but it seems quite likely it is. By September 1871 his marriage was being recorded in Greymouth to Catherine Rowland, and he then remained with South Beach as his residence for the rest of his life.

Perdu en Mer- Lost at Sea

I have written in a previous blog post about Captain Thomas Jean PAYN from Jersey, brother of my great-grandfather Francis Davis Payn. In January 1876, Thomas is recorded as receiving his certificate of competency as a Master in the Merchant Service. Several years later in January 1881, he is recorded as Mate when joining the ship “Gryalva” in Liverpool, and then he succeeded as Master at Benin on 4 April 1881. (Ancestry: Liverpool, England, Crew Lists 1861-1919 for Thomas J Payn; Gryalva 1881.)

Sadly, Thomas Jean lost his life at sea in 1893 while serving as a Captain, and this is recorded on a Payn family headstone, in St Martin's Parish, Jersey, as:

'comme aussi de Capt Thomas Jean Payn   
perdu en mer
dans l'année 1893
dans sa 46ème année.'   

I have previously tried searching old newspapers for more information about how Thomas John Payn died, but without success. But as is often the way with genealogy, answers to some of those lingering questions do finally emerge.

The first breakthrough came when I discovered an aerogramme that had been uploaded to Ancestry, sent by ‘Cousin Hilda’ Payn in 1958 from Taupo, New Zealand, to a couple getting married in Europe. Cousin Hilda was the daughter of Captain Payn, and would have been aged about 9 years old when her father died at sea. A woman called Joy had uploaded this letter, and I messaged her, and magically, she replied! During the course of several emails, Joy told me that Cousin Hilda had been in possession of a painting of her father’s boat, but left it behind with family in Jersey when she emigrated. Joy’s family had recently had this painting cleaned, and she offered to email me a photo of it. This was one of those special moments in genealogy, when suddenly a person in your family tree becomes ‘real’.

Grijalva, captained by Thomas J Payn

But I still didn’t know anything concrete about when or how Captain Payn had been lost at sea. I found a Lloyd’s shipping website but unlocking any information from it seemed beyond me, even with this excellent guide to the Merchant Navy wrecks losses and casualties from the Royal Museums Greenwich. Enter stage left, my clever genie 3^rd cousin Maggie. She happened to be in the process of researching some early shipboard immigrants to New Zealand, and I mentioned to her that my Captain Payn had been lost at sea but I hadn’t been able to find out anything much about the circumstances. By the next morning she had found two newspaper articles about the Grijalva, feared lost, under Captain Payn. (Note, the spelling of the ship varies in different sources, and potentially a search with 'Payne' would find more entries.)

The first newspaper clipping was from the Liverpool Weekly Courier, 23 December 1893, with a headline, ‘Feared loss of a Liverpool vessel and all hands’. And it read that: “Great anxiety is now felt for the safety of the Liverpool vessel Grijalva, and in many quarters she is regarded as lost with all on board.” The ship left Opobo River, West Africa, on the 20^th July for Liverpool, but nothing more had been heard of her. She was under the command of Captain Payn, and had a valuable cargo of African produce.

Modern Opobo is in the south of modern Nigeria, and presumably the old river port was somewhere in the vicinity.

The second clipping that Maggie sent me was a Lloyd’s notice, published on 1 February 1894 on the Lloyd’s list, with the Committee of Lloyd’s seeking any information. It read: “The Grijalva, Payn, of Liverpool, which sailed from Opobo for port of call, on July 20, 1893.”

Armed with Maggie's newspaper details I made a visit to my local library, hoping to perhaps learn a little more, using either the FMP or BNA websites. There were in fact many references to the Grijalva in ordinary shipping news, eg in the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette on 17 October 1891 it was recorded: "British barque, Grijalva, Payne, from Hamburg to Benin, with gin and coal."

But by late 1893- early 1894, it was clear that great fears were held. One newspaper said that the barque had 'a cargo of palm kernels in bags, and had sailed from Opobo on July 20 1893, 'and has not since been heard of.'

So, it appears that Captain Payn came to grief in the Grijalva somewhere on the sea journey from the west coast of Africa, back to Liverpool, with all hands. Most likely, the ship rests on the sea floor, one of many such ship wrecks.

I am grateful to both Joy and Maggie for the extra information they have given me about Captain Thomas John Payn. His life had a sad ending, but it is good to know more about what happened.
Margaret Riordan
May-June 2023

 

William O'Riordan- died in Lackelly Ambush, 1921

Having not grown up in Ireland, I often find it hard to understand aspects of Irish history I encounter while trying to learn more about my own family story. But then an event with a family connection happens, and suddenly I grasp a bit more.

William O’Riordan was the youngest son and child of James Riordan, farmer of Cullane, Ballylanders, and Bridget Hanlon. He was born around 1894, (though finding his birth registration has proven so far to be elusive.) A kind friend has sent me his baptism record, and he was baptised 21 July 1894 in Ballylanders, with John Quane and El Fitzgerald as sponsors. He died 2 May 1921, aged 27 years, in the Lackelly Ambush, a victim of bullets from the ‘Black and Tans’.

It was easy enough to find a family for William O’Riordan in the 1901 census, though until recently I wasn’t completely sure that it was linked with our family. I knew that Patrick Riordan my great-grandfather had a brother James, and that Patrick had come from Cullane South. In a search for James Riordan in Co Limerick in the 1901 census, there were 21 James Riordans, but only one was from the townland of Cullane South, Cullane, Ballylanders Parish.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Limerick/Cullane/Cullane_South/1506050/

 In the 1901 census, William Riordan was the youngest in the household, aged 6, described as a scholar who could read & write. He used the English language, and his father James was the only family member who used Irish & English. There were seven family members at home in this census, the parents and five children. His older brother Patrick wasn't at home in 1901: in mid-1903 he was ordained priest at Carlow College and then left for Australia. By the time of the 1911 census, there were four family members at home, the parents, and their two adult children Bridget (29) and Michael (27). William would have been about 16 at this time, and wasn’t living at home.

The reason I finally became sure this was the family of ‘our’ James, was because of a few ‘Trove’ mentions, when I was researching the story of Fr Patrick O’Riordan in NSW, Australia. He was known to be a cousin of the Riordan family in New Zealand, as well as of two O’Donnell priest-cousins. The ‘shorter’ version of that story is here:
http://kiwinomadancestors.blogspot.com/2022/10/fr-patrick-oriordan-1879-1933.html

 In 1921 there were two accounts in ‘Trove’ of the death and funeral of Captain William O’Riordan, and he was named as a brother of Father P O’Riordan of Binalong, Australia.
The W.A. Record, Perth, (Sat 17 Dec 1921) carried an account of the procession to the Ballylanders graveyard on 24 September 1921. William O’Riordan was described as an Irish Volunteer, and he was laid to rest in the Republican plot. Some 20,000 people took part in the procession from where they had first been buried, to their permanent resting place. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/212401323

A longer article in The Catholic Press, Sydney on 1 Dec 1921, gave more details, about how the bodies had been disinterred from a temporary resting place near Herbertstown, and High Mass was celebrated before the procession set off for Ballylanders which was 11 miles away. The chief mourners for Captain O’Riordan were said to be James O’Riordan and Mrs O’Riordan (parents), John and Michael O'Riordan (brothers) and Bridget O’Riordan (sister). https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/106253922

The Lackelly Ambush is well documented, and took place during the Irish War for Independence. William O’Riordan was part of the East Limerick Flying Column, and on 2 May 1921, he was part of a combined group surprised by members of the Green Howard Regiment of the British Army. Four IRA members were killed in the ambush. According to a video, ‘Lackelly Remembered’, Thomas Howard was killed outright, but William O’Riordan was wounded, and later beaten to death.
The bodies of the four IRA members were placed on a cart for removal to Galbally by the British, but in a battle the cart was retrieved by the IRA. The four bodies were buried first at a farm, but soon re-buried in the disused Rathjordan graveyard near Herbertstown. Several months later, during the Truce, the bodies of William O’Riordan and Thomas Howard were reburied at Ballylanders.
There is a video that explains all these events, called ‘Lackelly Remembered 1921-2021’. https://youtu.be/arFLL-M6GjA

A copy of William Riordan’s death registration is available by searching Irish civil registration. https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/civil-search.jsp
This states that he ‘died from effects of bullet wounds Killed instantaneously”.

 There is a large amount of detail available online about the Lackelly Ambush. In particular, there is a huge file on the Ambush that is on the Irish Military Archives Collection.
https://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/military-service-pensions-collection-1916-1923/1916-1923-resources/operation/lackelly-ambush/

As part of this file, there is also a section devoted to William O’Riordan, DP6340, and largely that comprises applications made by family members for compensation. https://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/military-service-pensions-collection-1916-1923/1916-1923-resources/operation/lackelly-ambush/  According to the rules, none of the family members qualified for compensation, as they weren’t dependants of William at the time of his death. This even applied to his elderly parents. However, the file is well worth perusing for the amount of genealogical information contained within.

The Emly Historical Society recorded an event in 2018 when they took a guided tour to the site of the 1921 Way of Independence Ambush Site. http://emlyhistoricalsociety.ie/blog/2018/04/03/hello-world-2/ There is a photo included of the memorial that includes William O’Riordan’s name.

The final resting place of William O’Riordan is in the Republican plot in Ballylanders Cemetery. https://historicgraves.com/ladywell/li-lwbl-0204/grave

About the writer: Margaret Riordan
I am a New Zealand-born Riordan descendant, living in New Zealand, and my grandfather Martin Riordan was a first cousin of William O’Riordan.
Coincidentally, my grandfather Martin also died in 1921, just  few months after William’s death, of acute influenzal pneumonia.

NZ Cemetery Info- Summarised by Family Line

Sometime ago I started summarising NZ cemetery information for each family line. Then I stopped, and only recently discovered that I had finished all the paternal family lines, but hadn't finished any maternal ones!

So I have been quite busy in the last fortnight with summarising two of my NZ maternal lines. I finished my grandparent's family- Lalor-Payn, then got into the Payn-Scettrini maternal line. (Next I have the Scettrini-Heneberry and Lalor-Rowland lines to do.)

There are four different pieces I have done for each family. Firstly, I make a summary table of the particular family line, starting with the grandparents or great-grandparents at the top, then followed by the various children and their spouses. Next I do a table for each person/couple that has names, position of the grave in which cemetery, and a small photo of the headstone if there is one. My third part of the process involves a larger photo of each headstone, together with a transcription. There's a final section where I have put cemetery maps where they are available, and have highlighted where the family grave is.

Here are some 'excerpts' from the Payn-Scettrini tables.

It was a chance to find out the 'gaps' in my knowledge, and in some cases it was a little surprising to find some 'errors'. In FindAGrave for instance, I had managed to assign a great-aunt into the wrong cemetery- but that is fixed now.

Now I need to share the info with cousins, and especially the 'extended' cousins. And next time I am in the South Island, and more especially on the West Coast, I will have the info I need to go and visit of these family graves. I was at Karoro Cemetery in January, and was aware that my knowledge about where certain great-auntys' graves were wasn't good enough to find their last resting places.

Photograph Organisation- Begun!

Sorting out old family photographs has been on the 'to do' list for a couple of years now, and really, 2023 must be the year I get properly started on the task! In February I even wrote a piece for the local genealogy newsletter, drawing attention to a series of magazine articles in Family Tree Magazine by Ann Larkham from the UK. (This magazine is in my local library.) She was interviewed for the magazine website, and discusses why and how to treasure family photos.

There's a good summary of her five step process on her own website. I am at the first stage of this- Gather & Back-up- but at least all the family photos are now all on one table ready to be dealt with!

In January a cousin asked me if I had a copy of a group photo taken at a family reunion back in 1992 in Kumara. As part of my gathering process today, I found the photo he was wanting. I have scanned a copy, and also scanned it with a slip with all the names on. (That's a tip I read on Twitter somewhere!)
A sad thing about this photo is that only two of the ten of us in the photo are still alive. I was awfully young then- about 34!- and still with dark hair.

The table is full of photos- let the sorting and organising begin!