Hi Roger and Hi Catherine,
Thank you both very much for relying to my post.
I note the marriage date from Roger and that seems to fit with what I have got so far. I have uploaded the letter I received in 1993, (pre internet days!), from Cavan Genealogical Research Centre showing the birth date of Patrick Mulvany. It looks like he was born three years after Bartholomew and Joan were married. I have also uploaded the birth certificate extract and the original birth certificate of my grand father Owen Mulvaney, which shows that Patrick and Catherine Carroll were married in Cavan on Feb 16th 1860. I am not sure when or where the E in Mulvaney / Mulvany gets added but since Patrick signs the certificate with an "X" I assume that mispellings or omissions were not that important to him.
Catherine's comments are also very helpful. I can see that Currakeel and Curraghmore are adjacent in the maps from the Reserach Centre so it seems that Bartholomew is living in Curraghmore in 1821. We visited the area in 1994, after getting the letter from from the Research Centre. I can certainly confirm the single track roads !!
I was also following up in 1994 on a story that my Father used to tell at family gatherings. I thought the story rather far fetched at the time, but now I am not so sure. Apparently Bartholomew was a bit of a rebel and during one of the famines, at a gathering in Virginia, he took a pot shot at the local Landowner and was chased out of town. He apparently left the family and went to America to escape capture, where he opened a brewery in Wisconsin. As I say somewhat far fetched. When we arrived in Lurgan in 1994, I went to the local priest for help in tracing any Mulvaneys. He was new to the area and had no knowledge, but sent us to see a rather old resident in Currakeel. This man repeated my Father's story without much prompting from me and said that money was sent to the village for many years from America, right up to the early 1900s. He said that "Barty" was a known agitator in the area and always in trouble and it was no surprise that he had tried to shoot the landowner. How much of this story is myth and how much is fact I am not sure. I have not been able to verify it in any other way.
I am also interested in your comments on autosomal DNA testing and wonder how you went about this ? It would be good to know more about the process and the benefits.
Thank you both very much for taking the trouble to reply and for the information you have provided. I think another visit to Lurgan is on the cards in 2018. We are regular visitors to Ireland, usually taking a house over in Connemara for a couple of weeks in the Autumn each year, so we may need to make a diversion to find out more.
Warm regards from Nottingham.
Gerald Mulvaney
