Quinn Family of Kilkeel, Down, Northern Ireland

Quin(n) is a fairly common name in the civil parish of Kilkeel. Here’s a list of households who were farming there in 1830, including 3 called Thomas.

http://www.irishgenealogyhub.com/down/tithe-applotment-books/kilkeel-parish.php

Catherine’s birth is long before the start of birth and death registration in Ireland (1864) and so you won’t find a birth certificate for her or her siblings, nor a record of her marriage. You’ll only find death certificates for her parents if they lived beyond 1864. For research before 1864 we normally rely on church records but in this case there are none. There are 2 RC parishes in the area. Kilkeel’s records start in 1839 and Lower Mourne’s in 1842. There are no surviving censuses for the period you are interested in. It’s possible that there are no records of Catherine or her family, as it was in the early 1800s, to find. If her father was a farmer, and alive in 1830, then he’s probably one of the Thomases listed in the tithes. (Tithes were drawn up for tax purposes, and listed all those with land. So farmers are listed but labourers/weavers and others without any significant quantity of land are not). But there’s no obvious way of saying which might be hers.

Scott,

The postcode for the Kilkeel area is BT34. I searched the telephone directory - https://www.ukphonebook.com - for Quinn + BT34. I found 437. So there’s quite a few Quinns in that area today, especially when you take into account that most younger people don’t have a public land line any more and aren’t in the phone book, so there’s probably several thousand of them in the area.

You ask how to find out if you are related to any of those families. Obviously the records you need don’t exist. The odd family in the area with an interest in their ancestry might be able to trace back to the early 1800s, but most here wouldn’t know more than 3 generations (so back to 1900 say).  There are plenty of people in Ireland interested in genealogy and the numbers are growing but taking the population as a whole there wouldn’t be the same level of interest as you find in countries like the USA or Australia. (We mostly know where our ancestors came from and there isn’t the same curiosity).  So the average family will have no idea who their ancestors were in 1800. The only way you might find out if you were related to any of them would be through DNA, I would think.  Family Tree DNA reportedly has more people with Ulster roots than any other company. That obviously increases the chances of finding a match. You might want to try them or, if you have already tested, you can transfer your results to them for no fee.

The North of Ireland Family History Society is running an Ulster DNA project in conjunction with FTDNA and can offer testing kits at a reduced price.  http://www.nifhs.org (Go to DNA project on the website).