You can order a photocopy of the 1866 marriage from GRO Roscommon for ?4 per certificate. Put the place, year, quarter (where there is one), volume & page number on the application form (anywhere). Don?t worry about leaving some boxes blank. You don?t need to fill them all in if you have the reference details. http://www.groireland.ie/
You have to post or fax the form to them but they will e-mail the copy certificate to you if you wish. Tick the relevant box on the form.
Tradition was to marry in the bride?s church (assuming the couple attended different churches) so that may be the place to look for the bride?s baptism and that of any siblings. Unless it was a registry office marriage, the church will be on the certificate.
Ballymena is where the civil registrar?s office was for births, deaths and marriages in that part of Co Antrim. So a birth, marriage or death in the Portglenone area will show up in civil records, listed under Ballymena, which is sort of the county town..
A townland is the smallest administrative area of land in Ireland. They can vary in size from 1 acre up to 5000 acres, though most are between 50 and 500 acres. The whole country is divided into townlands. Many are rural, and there is not necessarily any town in a townland. Indeed some have no-one living in them at all, eg mountain tops and uninhabited islands. Originating in the older Gaelic dispensation, and dating back to the 11th century, if not earlier, townlands were used as the basis of leases in the estate system, and subsequently to assess valuations and tithes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
In rural areas there were no street names or house numbers (that is still the case in some parts) and your townland was sufficient to identify you or get a letter delivered. The postman, and anyone else who mattered, knew exactly where in the townland everyone lived. They survive today as important markers of local identity. (A townland is not the same as a US township).
A group of townlands makes a parish and a group of parishes makes a barony.
So the McIlvenny family appear to have lived on a farm in the townland of Garvaghy. That townland is partly urban (ie the village of Portglenone) and partly rural eg where your family farmed. I would expect to see Garvaghy appear on the birth and marriage certificates rather than Portglenone, which would have been the nearest postal town. A letter would have been addressed to the family at Garvaghy, Portglenone, Co Antrim.
In Northern Ireland, in the 1950s and 60s it was decided to name all the roads and allocate house numbers in each townland. There are a couple of roads in Garvaghy but the main one now is Garvaghy Rd. But it dodn't have that name in the 1800s.
As well as being the postal town, Portglenone is also the parish name.
The way of seeing the modern map on Griffiths is to bring up the contemporary (old) map. You?ll then see in the top right hand corner a tool. If you slide it left to right or vice versa it switches between the two maps. Now, in general, on the contemporary maps, the individual plots are outlined in red. For some reason some of the townlands around Portglenone do not have that feature. So I can?t tell you from the on-line version, exactly where the farm was. However Ballymena library do have Griffiths maps of Garvaghy with all the farms shown. So you can find out that way. Or, I see from the phone book that there?s an E. McIlvenny at 8 Garvaghy Rd, Portglenone, BT44 8EF. So that might be the family farm with a modern descendant on it. If it isn?t the family farm, I feel pretty sure they may be able to tell you of any other McIlvennys in the area. You might want to get in touch.
