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Question about finding ancestor in Griffith's Valuation

Greetings!

Many of us have tried to find our ancestor in Griffith's Valuation to no avail.

I know by a marriage record in Ballingarry, Co. Tipperary he was married 1849 and reared his family and son his family as well, Earlshill until 1883.

He was a coal mining engineer, working for the Mining Company of Ireland in Earlshill this entire time until they all moved away about 1883 to Thurles (son & family) and Tuam, Co. Galway where he was proprietor of a hotel.

Question: Is it possible we can't find him because as an engineer -most likely in management, he and his family lived on mining company property, therefore he wouldn't have been recorded as having land and been taxed? How come he is not in the Valuation despite living there in those years?

Name: William Morris

kathclval@gmail.com

16 replies

Griffiths details the Earlshill coal mine as consisting of coalmine, outbuildings and waste but there’s no mention of any residential property so I don’t think he (or anyone else) lived there. 

Griffiths isn’t a complete census. There are lots of people who weren’t listed including those lodging with someone, servants, folk in a property of too low a value to be worth listing, and so on.  Another possibility is that he wasn’t living there when Griffiths was compiled. It is dated 1850 and so was probably compiled in the 12 months around that. You mention he married in 1849, so perhaps he hadn’t arrived, or alternatively was temporarily working elsewhere when the information was gathered?

The Valuation Revision Books (sometimes referred to as the Cancelled Books) are in the Valuation Office in Dublin. They take Griffiths forward to the 1930s. You could check them to see if there is any record of him post 1850. They are not on-line and so you need to visit the Valuation Office in person or contact them to get a search done.

https://www.valoff.ie/en/archive-research/

Elwyn, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘IrelandXO Volunteer

Hi,  Did William have a daughter called Elsie?
Did pass on in Tuam about 1898?
Names of the cildren would help.It's easier to work backwards.
Margot

Margot Secrette

Thank you Elwyn and Margot!

William was an educated man. I've been unable to find his origins/birth. Marriage -Sept 1849 to Mary Burke/Bourke (origins?) is earliest record. Published rebuttal letter in Nature Journal 1878 re: underground temperatures in the coal mines -a very scholarly letter. Wm Morris Passed away Dec. 1897, Tuam on Bishop St. in care of his daughter Ellen. 

1.Eldest son *William Bourke Morris-bap. March 1849 Ballingarry(oops!) Wm m. Ellen Forde Jan.1872, Gortnahoe, Co. Tipperary. He was colliery steward & later manager. Died 1887, Thurles of TB.

2. Daughter Maria Morris can't be found in baptismal records. Born circa 1851-53? Death record 1885/news clipping give evidence to her existence. *[Could Wm have been in training at this time-     living elsewhere?-out of the country? Where? This could explain his education, why he's not in GV & why his daughter's birth/bap. wasn't recorded. Where do I look for evidence of him this period?]

3. Son Edmund Morris bap. 1854, Ballingarry (from Earlshill). He is mentioned in sister Ellen Morris-Guy's Will as witness. Bachelor, engineer as per 1911 Census Dublin. Died 1923.

4.Daughter Ellen Bourke Morris bap. 1855, Ballingarry. She moved with parents and sister to Tuam abt 1883. After brother Wm died 1887, Ellen and father Wm. took in three of his daughters when their mother & 2 brother emigrated to US. Ellen/Nellie/Elsie managed hotel with her father Wm and is listed as proprietor on the marriage record to Edward G Guy, Tuam 1888. Ellen and Edward purchased the Hotel and after Edward's death 1905. They had 3 living children. Ellen remained in Tuam, overseeing the hotel until her death 1939.

     *I am descended from Wm Bourke Morris and his son Wm. Joseph Morris. In 2017, I reconnected with descendants of Ellen B Morris-Guy after 140 years of separation.

Many many thanks for your help in processing this missing link :) Blessings, Katy

kathclval@gmail.com

Hi Katy,
William's death was registered in 1898.
It says Elsie, then in the 1901 Census she is listed as Nellie Guy.
Margot

Margot Secrette

Ireland never had very many coal mines. There were a few deposits of generally not very high quality coal or lignite but it didn’t have the huge quantities found in England, Scotland and elsewhere in Europe. Where did William learn his mining skills? Possibly in England or Scotland. Have you checked the 1851 censuses for England & Scotland in case the family is there?

Otherwise I'd look at the Valuation Revision records for Earlshill to see if and when he shows up in them.

Elwyn, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘IrelandXO Volunteer

Elwyn - I so appreciate your assistance! Now to connect with the resources which I hope will be available during this time of pandemic.

Blessings,

k

kathclval@gmail.com

Greeting Elwyn!

Attached is the Letter to the Editor rebuttal to article in NATURE Journal 23 May 1878 as written by William Morris of Earlshill Colliery.

Using this piece, I would appreciate knowing your overall assessment of this mining engineer from Earlshill. Would he have popped out of nowhere to work as engineer? Did his position require special skills? Could he have picked these skills up on the job? Where would he have been educated? 

I hope to find him in the 1851 Census and will use this article (which can be found on Google books I think) to give more clues as he references other mining operations in England. I think the actual article on the underground temperatures in the mines was published in said Journal Jan or Feb 1878. I have tried to find experts in Mining Co. of England and Ireland 1800s. to no avail. Best luck I've had was viewing Irish newspapers about the company. Seems coal mining was on the way out and that was one of the reasons my family left the area. Biggest reason was ill health...pulmonary issues caused the deaths of his eldest son and daughter. Eventually, this was also William's cause of death.

Thank you!

kathclval@gmail.com
Mourant

Katy,

The letter suggests to me a man who was very well educated. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had had a university education.  Have you checked with Trinity in Dublin in case he qualified there? Going by his age at death he was born c 1822, so he might have qualified around 1844.

When he married in 1849 he was about 27. That gives him time to have gone to University and/or gained experience as an engineer and manager somewhere. Was he perhaps from England originally?

I don’t think the skills to be an engineer and run a colliery were something you picked up on the job.  You would need to have a detailed understanding of rocks, construction of mineshafts, how to extract excess water (mines were always flooding and needed pumps). Plus his literary skills suggest a high standard of education too.

I assume you haven’t found an obituary for him? (I looked on one newspaper archive site but didn’t see anything other than the announcements for his death).

 

 

Elwyn, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘IrelandXO Volunteer

Thanks Margot for wondering about a possible family connection here.

I've been uable to determine if Martin and William were related because I still don't know when and where William was born...nor do I know who his parents were. At the very least, they would have known each other given their surnames and location. There were other Morris' in the area but paper trails have gone cold and possible dna connections illusive.

kathclval@gmail.com

Thank you Elwyn for sharing your insight.

I have indeed done my best to check Trinity records for evidence of William's presence there. Is it possible he was in attendance at some time but perhaps didn't graduate? I've checked other Irish institutions but found they weren't in operation at the time he would have gone to school there. A 2018 issue of Old Tuam Jornal has an article of how that area of Co. Galway was known for it's engineers. I wasn't able to find anything about education though. I've never been able to discover why William moved to Tuam to be proprietor of the hotel there after working and living in Co. Tipperary for at least 40 years. So maybe he was from there originally.

I learned from the abstract from "Mining Education in England and Wales in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Centry by Roderick and Stephens, that the British didn't take mining education seriously as an academic study until the 1880s. Mining education was mainly by apprenticeship. On the Continent, there were places for academic study of mining however (Belgium?).

I did find something of interest today in learning there was Wigan Mining College. The history of this college - perhaps the earliest of its kind in England, states it was founded in 1857. Another article stated its founding date as 1851. I've sent an extensive query to Wigan Schools Cultural Service in hopes they might find some information or give me direction.

In seaching England-Scotland 1851 Census records, no one really 'fits the bill' nor have I been able to find a birth record for daughter Maria. 

Many thanks for not giving up on my quest!

Blessings, k

kathclval@gmail.com

Katy,

Yes it is possible William attended university but did not qualify (though Trinity should still have a record of him).  Few professions required a mandatory degree until the 1850s or later. Many Universities charged extra for matriculating, and so some students didn’t bother taking their final exams. (Surprising as it may seem it was sufficient to be able to say you had studied at X university for Y years. That would get you a job).

Trinity was the only university in Ireland at the relevant time (1840s). It had accepted Catholic students from the 1790s but the Catholic church opposed people studying there for many years after that because it was seen as essentially a Protestant university.  Obviously some Catholic families ignored that, but others did shy away from Trinity and sometimes sent their children to other institutions, perhaps in France or Italy. 

Your man was clearly well educated. I can’t believe he would have been appointed manager of a colliery without some previous experience. But I think tracking this training down is going to be hard. You could well be right that he picked it up on the job via an apprenticeship, but it doesn’t account for his high standard of literacy. He must have attended a decent school to achieve that. In the mid 1800s, most Irish people stopped attending school when they were about 12 and as a result were either barely literate or totally illiterate. William stands out.  Unless he got a scholarship, someone had the finance to give him a complete education.

Elwyn, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘IrelandXO Volunteer

Dear Elywn,

I have just heard back from Wigan Schools Cultural Service and sadly, their response to me is that they are closed due to covid....so, I wait

 

kathclval@gmail.com

Elwyn, Thank you.

You give me much to ponder - so many unanswered questions. It was unfortunate that my great grandfather and brother, hid their Irish origins probably due to the fact they emigrated as teens who wanted a new life for themselves. As a result, our heritage stories were lost to future generations. So, I'm 'asking' him for help to uncover enough of the story to enlighten my retelling of it as truthfully as possible given passage of time and lack of records.

You are accompanying me in my quest to know family and that means a lot. Thank you for your efforts, Elwyn.

Katy

-I so wish I could find William's origins (place, parents, occupation) as I believe this would explain so much :) I will not give up...

kathclval@gmail.com

Hi,
I searched through the Parish Books for Baptisms in Ballingarry. 
I saw this.....it may be your William.
5th November 1814  the place states Crohane it is south of Ballingarry parents Thomas Morris and Mary Fitzgerald.
02492/04, Ballingarry - Catholic Parish Registers at the NLI

Crohane Tipperary map - Bing Maps

Thomas Morris in Crohane in the Tithe records
The Tithe Applotment Books, 1823-37 (nationalarchives.ie)

Number 69 on the page Thomas Morris
004587426/004587426_00405.pdf (nationalarchives.ie)

From the birth I saw, you would have to look further down to see if there are other William Morris' or other children to Thomas and Mary.

 

Margot Secrette

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