Family Tree

Hi Jill, your James was bapised in Trim in 1837 on first of May, address is just Trim, mother is Gaynor as you state, sponsors are William Gaynor and Rose Farrelly. You can see the entry here but only search by date https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0963 ;

I can see no birh for a Caroline Watts in Ireland and all the Watts births in Kildare are RC and in Castledermot which is not close to Leixlip, I tried Dublin also as the church records are free on Irish Genealogy, thin Leixlip may be in a Dublin parish as parts of Kildare are in the RC diocese of Dublin. There are two marriages for a Caroline Watts in 1810 and 1855, both Church of Ireland marriages.

The nearest Watts family to Leixlip in the Tithe Applottments (free site) are in Clane but it is not likely to be them as there is another town in between called Celbridge. Not everybody would be in the Tithes as you had to have at least an acre of land.

Watts is an unusal enough name here.

Regards

Pat

Jill I was a little slow in my answer, here were a number of siblings and may be more but between 1825 and 1845 the following children were baptised to the couple McNamara/ Gaynor, in Trim 

Denis February 1835; Bridget Dec 1831; Catherine Nov. 1839; Patrick March 1841; Elizabeth August 1844, there may be more, a coincidence I assume but there are also children born in Limerick city to a William McNamare and Margaret Garnor around the same period, no reason to believe they are relations but I am throwing it in as you may find it in your own searches and wonder about it, Limerick is a city about 100 miles from Trim.

Good Luck

Pat

Hi Jill, think that gave us a little breakthrough, I found the marriage of John Watts and Maria Shaw on the 4th June 1830 in St Catherines Parish, Dublin, you can view the transcription here, click on Church Records, area Dublin, Dublin is one of the few areas with online Church records done and transcribed and free to search, https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/ The witnesses are Thomas Roberts and William Shaw, it is a Church of Ireland marriage, that is Anglican or Prostestant. 

What is interesting is the address is Ryevale House, Leixlip, (this is on the Dublin / Kildare border, for civil purposes it is Kildare but the church diocese of Dublin (this is not unusual) Also if the marriage you have was RC you should look for an RC baptism of Caroline.

The address of Ryevale house struck me as Ryevale is now a common name in Leixlip (now famous as Intel produce computer chips there) there is mention of a private church there in the interesting link I attach, so the baptisms may have been there, about 40% plus of Anglican records were lost in our civil war (the public records office was hit by a shell in 1922 and one site were storing their munitions there) you could try mailing the local history section of the library to see if there are records of the house and tenants etc or the local archives, they are here http://kildare.ie/Library/LocalStudiesGenealogyArchives/ and some history of the area here, I like reading about the times they lived in. http://www.kildare.ie/leixliphistory/archives/leixlip_around_1798/ ; The rebellion of 1798 was fought on the rebels side using pikes hence the blacksmiths made them. Your Watts may have been military or just worked in the house.

Hope  you enjoy the history,

Pat

Jill, only I will get notified of this when you post here now unless someone is searching for it as you are and this post turns up, there is a list of professional genealogists here on the National Library site https://www.nli.ie/en/commission-research.aspx ; click on the difficult to see here for the list, all good ones will scope out the work and give you a cost before starting, however you may not be able to get much more than you have that is not available free unless wills or land records are searched but again there are not in most cases online. You can search here to see who registered land in Ireland and there are a good few Watts (land registry was not compulsory at this time) I see 54 entries from 1700 to 1850. However it is impossible to say which Watts might be yours and registering land indicates some wealth. https://irishdeedsindex.net/index.php ;

There are a number of FB pages for different counties but as we are not sure where she is from joining them may not assist and most people are stuck aroud where you are in time as only church records exist and a lot of Protestant and Presbyterian records are lost.

Good Luck

Pat

Jill, I find some people on Facebook very engaged in private pages often local to an area if you are on FB search under Kildare etc or try the names like Leixlip etc and ask to join.

Do a Google search for the National Library of Ireland and then look at genealogy or another go, https://www.nli.ie/ and also search Registry of Deeds Project and have a look but it  will not tell you a lot.

Ancestry is good and you find things on one site and not another etc, In case like yours it may be good to see if there are local history books but if there are it may be impossible to get a copy as they are usually one off publications and if available can be expensive but worth a try to see if the family done anything of note good or bad. Also newspaper archives both the British and Irish ones, remember pre 1921 we would be under the British ones but both have older ones too.

Also check if there is a Leixlip history society who may have info, there is also https://www.irishancestors.ie/ ;

Leixlip has been caught up in that it is now a commuter town to Dublin and most well known here as the place or one of the places where Intel make computer chips.

Good Luck

Pat