Patrick McGOWAN/Honoria FRAIN

I seem to recall another posting here not long ago about the Kilturra area, so you might look for that to see whether it has any helpful info.   Kilturra is the name of both a civil parish (an administrative district), and a townland within that civil parish.  You can see more info about the civil parish here, and will see a link there to info about the townland.

https://www.townlands.ie/mayo/kilturra/

Kilturra is in the Catholic parish of Kilshalvey, which straddles the border of Mayo and Sligo.  The parish records which are available online can be found at this site: 

https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0124

Those records go back to the 1840's for baptisms, and earlier for marriages, so you may be able to find baptismal records for Patrick and Honoria there (looking in the 1845-55 time frame would be my guess, because people married pretty young in East Mayo).  That would take you back another generation.  You should also be able to find a marriage record for them, assuming that Honoria was from the same parish (weddings usually took place in the bride's parish).

Kilshalvey lies mostly in Sligo, and that is an area where the border was changed in the 1800's, so it may be that the part of Kilshalvey which is now in Mayo was formerly in Sligo.

All of  the chldrenn you listed were born after the start of civil registration of births in 1864, so there should be birth records online for them.  There's another contributor here who has ready access to a database with such records, so he will probably be able to answer that for you.

 

I checked the Family Search database [https://www.familysearch.org], and there have been two sets of records created for what appears to be your McGowan family, with two separate records for  Patrick (which need to be merged, but I'll leave that to you or other family members).  You can find the two records for Patrick under these ID numbers, once at the site (once you set up a free account):

ID # L6FD-RTN, showing a son named James McGowan, born 24 Dec 1874

ID # 894CM-LX6, showing a daughter name Honora Jane McGowan:  9 May 1886

One set of records shows the mother as Honoria Frain, and the other as Honor Frain, but the various forms of the given name Honora were often used interchangeably in records.

In each record at Family Search, at the right hand side of the record you can see the screen names of those who have created or modified the record, and can send them private messages, so you might be able to get more info by contacting them (and perhaps also locate some relatives that way).  If you merge the records for Patrick and Honora, and add the names of the other known children, the Family Search software will start looking for documents relevant to the family, and should eventually find the civil birth records for all of the children, possibly turning up the child you have as "P" and whoever came later.  Modifying records can take some practice, but the database is really good (it's the largest in the world), so in the end it could be very worthwhile.  It's run by the LDS church, so they have classes in using it at their Family History Centers (there is at least one in the Vancouver area).  Everyone is welcome there, and no one will bother you about convertnig or anything like that (I'm not a Mormon and I've used their centers many times).

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I knew Roger would find some good info for you.  The Catholic parish of Carracastle is the one just to the south of Kilshalvey, but it may be that Kilturra itself is in Kilshalvey, because that's one of the alternate names for Kilshalvey.  One possibilty is that Patrick was from Kilshalvey, but Honoria was from not far away in Carracastle, and so the wedding took place there.

Roger is probably right about the Carracastke records not going far back enough forr your needs, but if it were me I'd still check the earliest Carracastle baptisms (and still check for Patrick in Kilshalvey as well).  As I said, people in East Mayo quite often married very young, even after the Famine.  I have a great-grandmother who was in her mid-teens when she married not far away in Killasser parish.

You can use the interactive map at the Kilshalvey page which I gave you to move on to Carracastle and search there.  You can also use it to get to the records in Swineford (Kilconduff), for the othe rbranch of your family (discussed inn your other message).  Those records go much further back..

Kevin and Roger,

Thank you both so much. I can't wait to get at all of these sites and hopefully find some answers.

Nora