James Woods/Jane Gordon/John Woods, Co Tyrone, Ireland

Hi Jocelyn

Here is the only baptism record for a Brigid Gordon in Roscommon in 1858 from www.rootsireland.ie/:

Name:Brigid GordonDate of Birth:28-Feb-1858
Date of Baptism:11-Nov-1111Address:Not RecordedParish/District:LOUGHLYNNGender:FemaleCountyCo. Roscommon
Denomination:Roman Catholic
Father:Dominic GordonMother:Catherine KellyOccupation:
Sponsor 1 /
Informant 1:William DuffySponsor 2 /
Informant 2:Catherine Kelly

There are also 2 in 1859 & 1 in 1857

The only Jane I could find with parents James & Jane was 1854 Monaghan! I couldn't find a Sara.

There are 3 for John Woods with parents James & Jane but they are 1867 Armagh 1869 Leitrim and 1871 Antrim - none in 1864

If you search on GRONI (Govt Records of Northern Ireland) the records start in 1864; there are 10 records for John Woods 1864 & 1864. GRONI is a bit tricky to navigate. It is a government site so the first page you need to find Family History; the second page you select Research Family History online; third page hit the green GRONI link.

Col

 

The GRONI site has the birth of a John Woods on 3.5.1864 registered in Strabane, Co Tyrone. Mother’s maiden name was Gordon. Might be worth investigating. You can view the original certificates on-line on the GRONI website, using the “search registrations” option:

 

https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk

 

You will need to open an account and buy some credits. It costs £2 (sterling) to a view a certificate.

I looked for other children to that couple post 1864 (which is when birth registration started in Ireland) but did not find any. No sign of parents marriage in Ireland pre 1864. What denomination were they, do you know? Can’t see the marriage in Scotland either 1855 – 1864.

Jocelyn,

Catholic baptisms usually have 2 sponsors. They are equivalent to godparents in other denominations. They can be friends or family. (Anyone considered likely to support the child in its faith).

If the marriage was RC, and in Ireland pre 1864, then it won’t be in the statutory records. Not all RC parish records have survived, and not all of those that have are on-line. If you have not so far found this marriage then probably it’s in one of those 2 categories. (If it’s any consolation to you an RC marriage cert from that period probably won’t contain much more information than the couples names and witnesses. No parents names etc).

Regarding when your Gordon ancestors went to Ireland, I really can’t answer that with precise detail. This site states that it’s a Plantation name. 100,000 Scots (mostly Presbyterian lowland Scots) moved to Ireland in the 1600s as a part of the Plantation.   But you are not necessarily looking at clan migration. With some exceptions the clans are confined to the Scottish Highlands and weren’t much involved in the plantation of Ireland. Statistically your ancestors are more likely to have come from the lowland areas of Scotland.

http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/surname/

But having said that, people have been going backwards and forwards between the 2 islands since Ireland was first inhabited 5000 years ago. (At the closest point in Co Antrim, Scotland is only 13 miles away. People swim it in a few hours for charity). There was always a lot of seasonal traffic back and forth to participate in the Scottish harvest and that sort of thing. Scottish soldiers were garrisoned in Ireland, and so on. To find Scots in Ireland and Irish people in Scotland was no more surprising than to find someone from Christchurch living in Wellington or vice versa, but with the proviso that Ireland to Scotland is a shorter journey than Christchurch to Wellington. Very difficult therefore to say when an individual family moved. And many moved back and forth all the time (as they still do today).

Let me know the townland on the 1863/64 birth certificate and I’ll see if I can garner any additional information about the family from Griffiths and other sources.

 

Elwyn

Jocelyn,

I had a look in the Valuation Revision records which list houses and their occupants to see if I could find a Woods or Gordon family in Ardstraw c 1864. I didn’t see one, so probably they either didn’t live there too long or they were lodging with someone. I see that Jane gave birth in the workhouse (which had a free hospital) so evidently she had hit hard times.

You ask how the Gordon family would have travelled to Ireland in the 1800s. For someone living in Tyrone, the likely route would be from Glasgow to the city of Derry. There was a regular service on that route until the 1960s. The port has always had a lot of trade with Scotland and there are records showing that the early settlers from Scotland used it in the 1600s and then fanned out across Counties Derry, Tyrone & Donegal, and beyond. Large quantities of cattle were shipped from Ireland to the Scottish markets and freight in the other direction was the usual sort of things that a non industrial country like Ireland needed to import. Household goods, etc. Passengers were sort of top up revenue for the shipping companies.

The railway reached Derry in 1847, so travel to Strabane after that year would be very easy indeed. (In the 1920s, a fast train from Derry to Strabane took 20 minutes). Even before the railway arrived it wasn’t a difficult journey.

 

 

Jocelyn,

There are no passenger records for travel from Scotland to Ireland. It was a short domestic journey and no records have ever been kept. (North Island to South Island in New Zealand. That sort of journey). Passenger records were really only ever compiled for inter-continental journeys eg to America or New Zealand. Domestic journeys or travel to France etc did not normally generate passenger lists.

Going back over the information you gave previously, I see that you found a death for Jane Woods in 1871 aged 30. Is it this death?

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_returns/deaths_1871/020774/7287686.pdf

If so, I don’t think it’s the right Jane Woods. That lady was still married (not a widow) and her husband was a gas-fitter, not a labourer. She lived in Sion. I suspect her husband was Patrick. Likewise I don’t think the other 1871 death is right either. This is it:

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_returns/deaths_1871/020760/7283259.pdf

That lady was also still married (probably to Thomas Woods) and she lived in Newtownards which is about 100 miles from Strabane.  I can see that it is on a number of trees on a tree on Ancestry. I would say it is simply wrong.

This 1874 death looks to me to be more likely. The age, location, marital status and husband’s occupation all fit:

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_returns/deaths_1874/020644/7242806.pdf

That would have Jane born c 1834, the same as James.  That fits much better. You might get a little more information about her from the workhouse admission records which fortunately have survived. They are in PRONI in Belfast. Who was looking after her children I wonder, or were they in the workhouse too? Information on Strabane Workhouse here:

http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Strabane/

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

I had a look at the trees on Ancestry. There are 27 with this family but they nearly all repeat the same information, so people have just copied someone else’s research. Many have James parents as James b 1822 and Catherine McGery (McGairy) b 1823. A moment’s reflection should have them realise that cannot be correct, but evidently that didn’t happen.  (The parents would have both been 10 when James was born). Someone’s been guessing and others have slavishly copied it. You do see a lot of poor quality research on some trees. Or to use the correct technical term, utter rubbish.

I have a little information for you. There is a baptism on 17.3.1862 in the RC parish of Ardstraw East for James Woods, to James & Jane. The baptism entry is noted “Gordon a protestant”. So you know from this that Jane was protestant (if from Scotland then statistically she's likely to be Presbyterian) and that James was Catholic. 

https://registers.nli.ie/registers/vtls000632983#page/8/mode/1up

Ardstraw East’s records only start in 1860. So my guess is that James & Jane married there c 1859 (if daughter Sarah Jane was born in 1860). And that’s why you can’t find the marriage record. It doesn’t exist. Likewise if it’s where James comes from, there are no baptism records for the 1830s so it will be virtually impossible to know who his parents were.

Finding Jane’s origins is also going to be virtually impossible, especially without parents names. I searched the Scotlandspeople site for Presbyterian births for Jane Gordon 1830 – 1838. There are 100, spread across Scotland from the Borders to Inverness. Take your pick.

Jocelyn,

I am puzzled over Jane’s mother being named Monaghan. You would expect it to be Gordon surely? Did she re-marry a Monaghan?  Keep a slightly open mind about the forename Eleanor/Ellen, if her mother was Scottish. That name in Scotland tends to be Helen. It causes all sorts of confusion when people moved from Ireland to Scotland or vice versa. They often switched to the local preference.

I searched the death records for Ellen Monaghan deaths in the Strabane area 1864 onwards. I found just one, a widow who had been married to Felix Monaghan and who lived in Magheracoltan:

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_returns/deaths_1890/06116/4746077.pdf

This is the only Monaghan family in that townland in 1901 and so may be connected:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Tyrone/Churchlands/Magheracoltan/1751508/

 

Yes the workhouse had records of who lived there. They are called the admission records. (They kept other records too, so it’s helpful to identify the ones you need). Don’t expect too much from the admission records. It’s fairly basic information. The format varies slightly according to when the records were compiled but, in 1904 for example, you could expect to see:

1. Admission number
2. Date of admission
3. If previously relieved, reference to last register number
4. Name of Inmate
5. Residence previous to admission
6. Sex
7. Age
8. If adult, whether single, widower or widow; if child whether orphan, deserted, legitimate or illegitimate
9. Employment or calling
10. Religious denomination
11. Whether disabled and description of disability
12. Name of spouse
13. Number of children (which appears to be the number of dependent children, as opposed to the total number of children the person has ever had).
14. Observations of inmate when admitted eg “Casual & clean” or “To the infirmary”
15. Date of discharge or death

Like most other museums in Ireland at the moment, PRONI is closed at present due to Covid but will obviously re-open in due course when it is safe to do so.

 

 

Jocelyn,

I did not pick up your query in December about the workhouse admission records. Sorry about that.  The records are in PRONI in Belfast. They are not on-line. You need to go in person or get a researcher to go and look them up for you. Researchers in the PRONI area: http://sgni.net  

(PRONI is closed at present due to Covid).

With regard to Jane who died in Strabane workhouse, if family chose to collect the body they could bury it in any local cemetery but in cases where no-one came forward then the deceased was buried in an unmarked communal grave near the workhouse.  Here’s a little information on Strabane workhouse. It includes a map which shows the location of the burial ground at the rear of the buildings.

http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Strabane/

Bruckless or Brocklis is in Ardstraw parish, and we know James was Catholic. Possible graveyards in that area are Ardstraw Old (townland of Ardstraw), Pubble (townland of same name), Dregish RC (Envagh), Drumnabey (Drumnabey), Scarvagherin (townland of same name). James was a labourer, and few labourers could afford a gravestone so sadly, like Jane, he’s probably in an unmarked grave. You may struggle to locate it.