family name Donoghue Antrim

John,

You don’t say when any of these people were born. However I do see the marriage between Margaret Donoghue and William Dingsdale in Ince registration area in 1944, so that gives me a rough idea of her age. Presumably she was in her 20s then, and so born in the 1920s.

Looking at births in Wigan in the 1920s I see a Margaret Donoghue born Jan – March 1922 Volume 8c, page 37, registered in Wigan. Perhaps that’s her? (I also see a James born there in Apr – Jun 1926). If you order a copy of Margaret’s birth certificate, it will give you her mother’s maiden name. With that we can then search for her parents marriage in Ireland.

All I would say at this stage is Donoghue is not a very common surname in Co Antrim and I therefore wonder whether James (senior) came from some other county. But we can worry about that once we have his wife’s name.

You can order a copy of the birth certificate from this site:

http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/

 

James Donoghue and Margaret Mason married in England. Wigan Apr – Jun 1917 Volume 8c, page 100. I am afraid you’ll need to get that marriage certificate and the fathers names and occupations from that. When was James Donoghue born? That would be helpful too. What about a will? Did he leave a will? If so, check it in case it details family in Ireland.

I have struggled with this one.  There are dozens of James Donoghue births around 1895 in Ireland but I don’t see any in Antrim. The other thing that is unusual is Henry's occupation of miner. There were very few mines in Ireland (it doesn’t have much coal or other things worth mining), and so very few miners. There were a few small mines in Co Antrim (employing a couple of dozen people in 1911), in Ballycastle and the Antrim Glens, but I can’t find any Henry Donoghue working there in either the 1901 or 1911 census. I also looked for the death of a Henry who was a miner. I did not find one. I wonder if Henry had moved to England and was a miner there?