Ryan & Purcell, Cloneen
My Great grandfather, Patrick Ryan (PR2), came to Australia from Co. Kilkenny about 1862. In 1869 in Rockhampton, Queensland he married Ellen Heffernan from Co. Carlow. Patricks father, James, came to Australia in 1866. All three were illiterate.
Information provided by illiterate foreigners with an accent and recorded in Australia was frequently misinterpreted. Such was the case with the family name of Patricks mother, recorded as Catherine Lurrill on the marriage certificate of Patrick and Ellen but Catherine Purcell on the death certificate of James. Lurrill or any variants does not seem to exist as a name, so her family name, more than likely, was Purcell.
No date of birth for either James or Patrick is recorded but Patricks age recorded on his marriage and death certificate, and on the birth certificate of a son, my grnadfather, all indicate 1840 unless he was born in late 1839. There are 81 records in Roots Ireland for the baptism of a Patrick Ryan in Co. Kilkenny from 1835 to 1845, but only three with a mother having the family name Purcel or Purcell. The names of parents for one (bap 1837) are Geoffrey and Judith - so he can be ruled out. The other two were both baptised in 1840 (Parish of Clough), the parents of one being Patrick Ryan (PR1) and Catherine Purcell, and of the other James Ryan and Eleanor Purcell. Address for both was recorded as Cloneen. Now, the first names for the parents of PR2 on all official documents in Australia where this information was recorded are James and Catherine, not Patrck, not Ellenor.
Griffith Valuation records show James and PR1 having adjacent lease holdings in the townland of Cloneen and with houses in close proximity. This would suggest both men were closely related, probably brothers, and the women were possibly sisters.
James and Ellen had 11 children, PR1 and Catherine had 9. Childrens names: James, John, Mary, Patrick, Stephen and Thomas were common to both families; James and John repeated in the family of PR1 and Catherine; Anne, Elizabeth, Ellen and Judith were in the family of James and Ellen only with Elizabeth being repeated; Richard was only in the family of PR1 and Catherine. Information provided by PR2 for the death register of James lists the only children as being himself, 2 dead males and one dead female not hard evidence for anything but at the same time, provides no corroboration of other information.
I have no data to enable crosschecking and so cannot be absolutely certain that my Great grandfather, Patrick Ryan (PR2), is from Cloneen though I would be reasonably confident that he is. Assuming that he is from Cloneen, however, who were his parents: James Ryan and Ellenor Purcell or Patrick Ryan and Catherine Purcell? I suspect the former since it was James who came to Australia but why the confusion?