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Elizabeth Evans

My 3 x Great Grandmother was called Elizabeth Evans. I know she married Peter Kenny in Glasgow on 22 October 1821 and died on 8 July 1855. According to the record of her death on the ScotlandsPeople website, she was born in County Tyrone in about 1784/5 and had lived in Glasgow for 40 years at the time of her death. So I'm guessing that she emigrated from Ireland to Scotland in about 1815.
I also know that Peter Kenny was her second husband. She was previously married to a John or Anthony McMillan, but I don't know the date of that marriage or whether it took place in Ireland or Scotland. That's about all that I know about my Irish ancestor, so any further advice or information would be most welcome.

RonStreeter

3 replies

A birth in the 1780s and a marriage in the early 1800s are both well before the start of statutory birth registration (1864) and statutory marriage registration (1845) in Ireland. To trace Elizabeth’s family you would need to rely on church records. Not all parishes in Tyrone have records for the 1700s and of those that do few are on-line.

You haven’t said what denomination Elizabeth was, though I can see the Kenny marriage was Presbyterian (Church of Scotland), so she may have been brought up that denomination in Ireland, though another possibility is that it was her first husband’s denomination.

I looked at the 1901 census of Tyrone. There were 44 people named Evans there then. The majority were Church of Ireland (ie Episcopalian) though there were 10 Presbyterians and 7 Catholics. 

The majority of surviving church records for Tyrone are in PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast. They are not on-line and a personal visit is required to view them. (It’s closed at present due to Covid). Without knowing where in Tyrone she lived, it would be a matter of checking every parish in the county, perhaps starting first with those where the name was found in 1901. (That’s the oldest complete Irish census).

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie

If you are unable to go yourself, you could employ a researcher. Researchers in the PRONI area: http://sgni.net

 

Elwyn

Elwyn, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘IrelandXO Volunteer

Thanks for your quick reply and your helpful comments.  I've tried looking for Elizabeth Kenny in the 1851 census, thinking that might identify the parish in County Tyrone where she was born, but I haven't been able to find her so far. I'll try a few fuzzy searches in case her surname has been transcribed incorrectly.

RonStreeter

I've tried looking for Elizabeth Kenny in the 1851 census, thinking that might identify the parish in County Tyrone where she was born, but I haven't been able to find her so far. pdf to jpg

Austin

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