Broughgammon, Ballintoy

Broughgammon is a townland. That’s an Irish administrative unit. 547 acres in this case. In the 1901 census there were 18 homes there and a total population of 85. Most were engaged in farming in one way or another. There were 5 McGowan households:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Antrim/Ballintoy/Broug…

John & William here could be Agnes’s siblings:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Antrim/Ballintoy/Broug…

You can see where Broughgammon is by using the maps on Griffiths Valuation which will also show heads of household in 1861. The modern A2 coast road goes through the middle of Broughgammon. (There may well be a farm there which today calls itself Broughgammon farm, but in the 1800s most farms didn't have names and what Broughgammon meant then was all of the land comprising the townland).

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml?action=nameS…

The families’ denomination was Church of Ireland. Sadly Ballintoy Church of Ireland’s records were lost in the 1922 fire. The only thing that exists still is a census compiled in 1803. There’s an Archibald son of Daniel listed in Broughgammon in it. Might be your family.

http://billmacafee.com/19centurydatabases.htm

Here’s a marriage for Margaret McGowan aged 31 in 1861, daughter of Henry McGowan. I think Henry may have been Archibald senior’s brother.

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_re…

Ballintoy Church of Ireland is still there and open to the public. If you google it, you should easily find photos. It's in a prominent position overlooking Rathlin Island and the Mull of Kintyre.

In general, people in Ireland in the 1800s didn’t celebrate birthdays & didn’t have birth certificates (though they might sometimes have had a baptismal cert) and often had little accurate idea of their ages. Most ages on official documents were just a guess.

Alexander Irvine was born in 1863 in Antrim town and became a Minister living in the US. This extract from his book “The Chimney Corner revisited” perhaps explains why people often had to guess their ages:

“My mother kept a mental record of the twelve births. None of us ever knew, or cared to know, when we were born. When I heard of anybody in the more fortunate class celebrating a birthday I considered it a foolish imitation of the Queen’s birthday, which rankled in our little minds with 25th December or 12th July. In manhood there were times when I had to prove I was born somewhere, somewhen, and then it was that I discovered that I also had a birthday. The clerk of the parish informed me.”

I have attached a letter which I found in parish records in PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast from someone in Pettigoe, Co. Donegal in 1908 writing to his Minister, asking for proof of age (ie a baptismal certificate). All he knew was that he was between “70 and 78 years of age.” He clearly had only the vaguest idea and couldn’t narrow it down to within 9 years. (The likely reason for the letter was that the old age pension was being introduced in 1909 for people aged 70 and over. Documentary proof of age was required. Thus, probably for the first time in his life, establishing his age accurately became relevant to him).