Lidwill

The Lidwill's were established in Co. Tipperary from the mid 18th century. The immediate ancestor of the Dromard family was John Lidwill (1703-1769). John had two sons, George and Thomas. George lived at Lissanure, and married Miss Saul of Cashel, a co-heiress. Thomas Lidwill married Jemima in 1736. Jemima was the daughter and heiress of Mark Cowley of Clonmore and Cormackstown, and this branch of the family were the Clonmore Lidwill's.

George had 2 daughters and 2 sons. George’s two daughters were Anne Lidwill and Margaret Lidwill. John “Black Jack” was the eldest son and bought the Dromard property from Christopher Nutall in 1757. Robert of Lissanure was the second son and married Hester, daughter of Joseph Gubbins of Kilfrush, Co Limerick. Robert also had 2 daughters, Catharine Lidwill by Anne Purcell and Margaret Lidwill by Mary Dowling. Robert died in 1790.

John “Black Jack” Lidwill had a son George of Dromard, a well-known litterateur and politician. George married Eleanor in 1792. Eleanor was the daughter of Morgan Kavanagh of Ballyhale, Co. Kilkenny, and his wife Lady Frances Butler, sister of John, Earl of Ormonde. George and Eleanor had 2 sons and 2 daughters: Frederick (1800-1868), Henry, who died unmarried in 1846, Frances and Catherine.

George was a High Sheriff of Tipperary in 1807. George’s wife, Eleanor, was Catholic.  He was a close friend of Daniel O’Connell and a member of his Catholic Association. He was O’Connell’s second in dispute with Robert Peel, Chief Secretary of Ireland, and fought a duel with Peel’s second, Sir Charles Saxton 1815, with no fatality on either side. George, a liberal in politics, took the oath of the United Irish movement, founded in 1792, as early as January 1793. His family had marriage connections with the Lalors and some other Catholic families prominent in the promotion of full Catholic Emancipation achieved by Daniel O’Connell in 1829. In the Clonmel Herald of January 20th, 1808, he is listed as a Protestant and Gentleman supporting emancipation for Catholics.  

Mary Lidwill, my Great Great Grandmother, was likely the illegitimate child of one of the Lidwill women, Frances or Catherine. She was brought up as a Catholic by the Lidwill's as she would then have no claims on land, property or money that they had. Catholics could not own any property. From the 1827 Tithe Applotment we see Thomas Shelly renting in excess of 5 acres from landlord George Lidwill, Esq. Subsequent to that, in the 1850s, Patrick Shelly had in excess of 12 acres of land in Dromard rented from Frederick Lidwill, paying a rent of three pounds and fifteen shillings. The Lidwill's did not disown Mary when she married. Rather, it is likely the Lidwill's set up Patrick and Mary in Dromard, and, of course, the Shelley’s paid rent. It was known that Patrick and Mary's son, Martin Shelley, would pay a visit to the Lidwill's occasionally, which would only occur if there were some link.

Perhaps one of George and Eleanor’s two daughters – Frances or Catherine – was the mother of Mary Lidwill. George and Eleanor Lidwill, married in 1792 and had 4 children between 1792 and Eleanor’s death in September, 1802. More than likely, Frances and Catherine were the two eldest children as eldest son Frederick was born in 1800. Frances and Catherine would have been in their most fertile child-bearing years by 1820.