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The McCulloughs from Islandmagee or Larne

Inver (Antrim)

Other than the baptism of son Ephraim in May of 1824, I've found no records in Co Antrim for the family of James McCullough and Jane/Jeannette Rogers. They probably married circa 1820 and may have even been born and married in Scotland. I've been unable to find anything about them in any online databases or at the NLI in Dublin or at PRONI in Belfast. Some records of the family members in Canada and the US say they were born in Scotland and others say they were born in Ireland. There is no record that I've found that is certain to be for this James McCullough and his wife. It is known that they had at least the following children: Ephraim, Matilda, Thomas, and Eliza. The last is my gg grandmother. There may have also been a William and/or a James who emigrated. I found one record on Griffiths Valuation for an Ephraim McCullough who lived in Drumgurland townland in Islandmagee. Perhaps he was a brother of James and possibly the uncle of the younger Ephraim. I've joined Facebook groups for Antrim and Islandmagee but nothing has turned up. Eliza's obituary said that she arrived in the US with her parents in 1850 but I've found no records to substantiate that. Eliza married Edward Byrne/Burns in Ogdensburg, New York in 1851 and they later moved to Brockville, Ontario. just across the St Lawrence River. Edward Byrne was from Co Wicklow.

Sunnyseeker

6 replies

There are a number of family trees on Ancestry.com showing this family. James and Jane and many of their children lived in Canada.

glanvil3@aol.com

Hello Patricia

I just entered a long response and I wasn't logged in so it's gone. Ugh.

I've checked the family trees on ancestry and had found a few things. Mostly it's my tree that is cited as the source of any information. Several others refer to a family of McCulloughs in New Brunswick who identified as Irish but mine always identified as Scottish, despite emigrating from Ireland. That family arrived in New Brunswick long before mine arrived in Canada and I've never found any connection to any of them. There's no evidence that James and Jane/Jeannette ever left Ireland, other than a sentence in the obituary of my great great grandmother who was their daughter, Eliza. She married Edward Byrne from Co Wicklow, in Ogdensburg, NY in 1851. They later moved to Ontario, settling on a farm just outside of Brockville.

I have records of the McCullough children and later generations in Ontario and Michigan, in the first and succeeding generations after they immigrated to North America. It's Irish/Scottish records I can't find. Neither NLI in Dublin nor PRONI in Belfast can help. It cost me a couple of hundred Euros to find that out.

I saw one tree that looked to have some hopeful information but the owner cited a source for the marriage of James and Jane, but the spouse was Elizabeth Fleming so I'm looking with considerable scepticism at the rest of that tree.

I'll be taking advantage of the fact that our public library now has access to sources on familysearch.org that were previously only accessible at FHL sites or online to LDS church members. Even that is a long shot.

Maybe I'll have to spend more time in Co Antrim or even Co Down, to see if any local paper records exist to help solve the puzzle. They were Presbyterian but the baptism I found for their oldest son, Ephraim, was in the CoI at Larne, Inver Parish.

Ann

Sunnyseeker

Your struggle to find records for the McCullough family is probably because few exist. As far as baptism and marriage records are concerned, the Church of Ireland in Islandmagee lost all its early records in the 1922 fire; 1st Presbyterian have baptisms and marriages from 1829 onwards & 2nd Presbyterian 1854. Prior to those dates either records simply weren’t kept, or in some cases, they may have been lost. Most of your baptisms and the marriage appear to date to before any Islandmagee records begin.

A high percentage of the population of Islandmagee are of Scots origins but the main influx was in the 1600s, I think it more likely that your ancestors were born in Ireland rather than Scotland but could be wrong. A lot of the male population there were seafarers and it is only 25 miles across to Scotland so it’s possible they came from there. People born in Ireland of Scottish ancestry (known as Ulster-Scots here and Scotch Irish in North America] often show up in records in the US and Canada as of Scottish origins. That's just how they saw their heritage, even if actually born in Ireland..

The North of Ireland Family History Society is running a special DNA project trying to trace all the families in Islandmagee. You might want to participate in that. Go to DNA project on their website.

North of Ireland DNA Project - NIFHS.org

The Valuation Revision books on the PRONI website show Ephraim McCullagh being deleted from his cottage in Drumgurland in 1871. I think this may be his death, in Port Muck which is not far away in 1878. He was a cooper by trade and aged 84. His wife was still alive.

7192771.pdf

This looks to be his wife’s death in 1883, back in Drumgurland. Her daughter Martha Templeton was the informant.

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_returns/deaths_1883/06367/4827098.pdf

Martha married in 1871 in 1st Presbyterian so that was probably the McCullough family church. (You might want to check for gravestones).

8158350.pdf

These in the 1901 census may be descendants:

National Archives: Census of Ireland 1911

Elwyn, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘IrelandXO Volunteer

Dear Elwyn

Many many thanks. You are a fountain of information. I hope I can buy you a pint on my next trip to Ireland, likely in Spring 2026. I've saved the records in the links.

I had heard some time ago that the church records no longer existed because of a fire. I hadn't realized it was the fire in Dublin, that every time-travelling genealogist would love to have extinguished. Just how the baptism of Ephraim, in 1824, turned up is a mystery. Some of the children, including my Eliza, were born after 1829. It is interesting to hear that they might have been in Ireland for centuries yet still considered themselves to be Scots. The son, Ephraim, has his place of birth as Scotland on his headstone in Michigan, yet he was baptized in Larne. He and his brother Thomas were sailors on the Great Lakes after coming to Canada so that kept a family tradition goinng

.

I've been a member of the North of Ireland DNA project for a few years and I'll have another look to see if anything has turned up in the past few months. Nobody has ever contacted me about a match and I never found any when I have looked. Fingers crossed.

As you can imagine, very little useful work will happen for me today. I've just declared it to be McCullough research day.

I either missed the death of Ephraim McC in Drumgurland in Irishgenealogy.ie or misfiled it and didn't realize I had it. For now, my theory is that he was the brother of James McC, given his age and James' son's name. That name survived another generation in Canada and the US. Eliza McC Burns named a son Ephraim. My Dad knew him as Uncle Eph. Also Ephraim having a daughter named Martha corresponds with what I noted about James' daughter Matilda, who was sometimes called Martha. I'll follow up on the Templetons.

I won a copy of William Roulston's book "Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors" and will delve into it more deeply now.

I last visited Islandmagee in 2015 with my sister, after an initial visit with my father in 2008. I think we walked around every graveyard in the area. We met with Beth and Dora Kane near Portmuck through a connection by marriage to the Semples of Larne. They were so gracious and welcoming and tramped around with us. I'm sure Beth must have passed away by now but possibly Dora is still there. Such hospitality to strangers would be rarely found here.

Thank you again. I understand the problems of researching after that fire, but I have the motivation now to dig up what I can online. I'll have to schedule a visit to GRONI and PRONI on my next trip.

Sincerely,

Ann Burns

Ottawa, Canada

Sunnyseeker

Ann,

The only church records lost in the 1922 fire were Church of Ireland records (ironically sent there for safe keeping). In your case though Islandmagee’s records are amongst those burned I don’t think it is likely to affect you. I am pretty sure your ancestors were Presbyterians. They didn’t store any records in Dublin. Indeed, as far as Islandmagee is concerned, I don’t think the Presbyterian congregations there had any records to store.

The Presbyterian church in Ireland was fairly laid back about record keeping. There are a few churches in Co Antrim with records back to the late 1600s but that’s about 6 churches out of say 300 congregations. There have been Presbyterian churches in Islandmagee and nearby since the late 1600s but they mostly didn’t keep records. No way round that. (Larne Non Subscribing Presbyterian congregation does have records from 1720 but that’s fairly unusual).

Regarding how Ulster-Scots felt (and some still feel), 200,000 Scots settled in Ireland – mostly in Ulster – in the 1600s. That was about 20% of entire Scottish population. Men and women came in equal numbers and tended to marry each other, so keeping their Scottish traditions very much alive. They also looked down on the native Irish whom they saw as pagan and inferior. There was of course some intermarriage but many Presbyterians kept themselves to themselves. There are many accounts from the 1700s and early 1800s in Antrim & Derry of how the predominant accent in the area was Scottish.Scots could be identified by the blue bonnets they wore, and so on. And you’ll know from your own visits that 400 years later the accent and dialect in some parts of Ulster remains very different to that in Dublin or Kerry. The Scots stamped their presence on Ulster. Today many of their descendants don’t see themselves as Irish at all.(For nationality purposes they mostly regard themselves as British). It’s probably the main reason Northern Ireland remains part of the UK and not the Republic of Ireland.

Samuel Thompson, the Bard of Carngranny, expressed the position of eighteenth century Irish Presbyterians in the following verse: -

"I love my native land, no doubt,

Attach'd to her thro' thick and thin

Yet tho' I'm Irish all without

I'm every item Scotch within."

David Hume’s book “Eagle’s Wings – the story of the Ulster Scots and Scotch-Irish” is a pretty good account of the Scots move to Ulster and then why many later decided to leave again for North America (and elsewhere). Dr Roulston’s book is also very helpful. He’s one of the top genealogists in Ireland. Definitely read that.

Elwyn, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘IrelandXO Volunteer

Elwyn

Once again I've learned a lot from your reply and am very grateful. Indeed my McCulloughs were Presbyterians. Eliza converted to Catholicism when she married Edward Byrne in 1851. There is no record of that marriage because it was a "mixed" marriage and would have been performed in the vestry and not recorded. Happily, the local newspaper printed congratulations to them on their 60th anniversary and gave the date, church, and even the name of the priest. The unsubstantiated story goes that the family cut Eliza off when she converted, but then again, it was a long winding road via the McCulloughs in the US to Semples/Samples in Ottawa, that I came to have a photocopy of a formal photograph of Edward Byrne and Eliza McCullough when they were probably in their sixties or seventies.

I've spent most of my time since your last reply, looking for McCullough traces. Oddly, I have a second McCullough connection through a marriage to my McDonald/McDonnell folks from Co Carlow. That took place in Aylmer, Quebec across the river from Ottawa. I don't think there is a connection to the McCullough family I asked about, although they are also from Larne. McCullough seems to have been a fairly common name there. I'm often stumped in trying to verify records because most of my Irish ancestors had the most common surnames in the areas they came from, and of course, used a fairly short list of first names as well. I wish there had been a Bartholomew or Thaddeus or Gabriel somewhere to make it easier. It's easy to guess where my Byrne family called home, and still does.

Records I've found here say that my McCulloughs were from Ireland, not Scotland, but now I understand better why they always called themselves Scots. I'll try to find a copy of David Hume's book. Our genealogy society library might have a copy.

William Roulston comes to Canada pretty regularly and I always attend his presentations.

Onwards and upwards, or I suppose I should say backwards.

Ann

Sunnyseeker

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