William John Mullins

Margaret,

You have obviously exhausted the most likely source of information on the family. You could search adjacent parishes to see if he was baptised there eg Blaris (Lisburn), Drumbo, Hillsborough & Annahilt.

Researching a weaver’s family from the 1830s or earlier can be challenging. They often lived a life that rarely got noticed on officaldom’s radar, and often moved around a bit to follow the available work (weaving was rarely a full time occupation and was often supplemented by labouring). I don’t see any Mullins/McMullan family in the area in Griffiths Valuation (1863), nor a death for any Joseph, post 1864, when death registration started. Drumbeg’s burial records start in 1818, so you could search them for a pre 1864 burial for Joseph.

I noticed a Henry Mussen living in Hill Hall in 1863, in Griffiths Valuation. That’s about the nearest match to any of the names given in the letter about friends from the area. (He was evidently a fairly wealthy individual with a 40 acre farm, including a gate lodge, situated on the modern Hill Hall Rd, Lisburn). Also a William Corkin living in a house on Henry Mussen’s land in the townland of Lisnatrunk, which is fairly near Hill Jall.

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml

There were no Mullins or variants in Hill Hall in the 1901 census:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Down/Drumbeg/Hillhall/

Rosdavies Co. Down site might have some information on the family:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/%7Erosdavies/

Margaret,

You probably know this already, but the O’ and Mc/Mac prefixes on Irish surnames are detachable, and so the records often vary accordingly. Also the idea of a single “correct” spelling of the surname is not something that our ancestors would have recognised. Spelling was generally down to the whim of the official who recorded it but even when people were quite well educated you often found major variations over the years. No-one really bothered.

You say you can’t find a death cert for James McMullan who was buried on 20.3.1900. Irish burial custom is to bury 3 days after death and I can see a death cert for a James McMullan on 17.3. 1900 aged 56, registered in Lisburn. I’d guess that’s your man. You can view the original certificate on-line on the GRONI website, using the “search registrations” option:

https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk

You will need to open an account and buy some credits. It costs £2 (sterling) to a view a certificate.

Margaret,

You can view the full death certificate on-line for £2 not £8. (Use the search deaths option).

An Irish death certificate contains the following information: Date and place of death. Usual address (if different to place of death); Name, sex, marital status, age, occupation, cause of death; informants name and address, and date the death was registered.

Discrepancies on death certificates of up to 10 years are very common. The age on a death certificate is just the informant’s best guess. People didn’t celebrate birthdays in Ireland the 1800s and often had little idea of how old they were themselves. So the informant had even less chance of getting it right. (No documentation was required. Nor did any exist in most cases anyway).

I’ve got a copy of a letter written in1909 by someone in Co. Donegal to his Minister, looking for his baptism certificate. In the letter he says that all he knows is that he was aged between 70 and 79. That was fairly typical.

Margaret,

Glad you have made some progress.

Regarding inaccurate ages, in general, people in Ireland in the 1800s didn’t celebrate birthdays, didn’t have birth certificates or passports (though they might sometimes have had a baptismal cert) and often had little accurate idea of their ages. Most ages on official documents were just a guess.

Alexander Irvine was born in 1863 in Antrim town and became a Minister living in the US. This extract from his book “The Chimney Corner revisited” perhaps explains why people often had to guess their ages:

“My mother kept a mental record of the twelve births. None of us ever knew, or cared to know, when we were born. When I heard of anybody in the more fortunate class celebrating a birthday I considered it a foolish imitation of the Queen’s birthday, which rankled in our little minds with 25th December or 12th July. In manhood there were times when I had to prove I was born somewhere, somewhen, and then it was that I discovered that I also had a birthday. The clerk of the parish informed me.”

I have attached the letter I referred to previously from someone in 1909 writing to his/her Minister, for proof of age. All he knew was that he was between “70 and 78 years of age.” It shows that the writer had only the vaguest idea of his age. Couldn’t narrow it down to within 9 years. (The reason for the letter was that the old age pension had been introduced in 1909 for people aged 70 and over. Documentary proof of age was required. Thus for the first time his age became important.).