Erwin/Irwin

There’s a record of an Arthur Irwin farming in Dunturky townland near Ballynure in the tithe applotment records for 1834. This might be your ancestor is he was a farmer or had land:

http://www.irishgenealogyhub.com/antrim/tithe-applotments/ballynure-parish.php

No Irwin farm there by the time of Griffiths Valuation in 1861 which fits if he had emigrated in 1847. Dunturky is just on the outskirts of Ballynure. There’s a by-pass round the town which runs through the middle of it.

If Arthur was born in the Crumlin area (parish of Camlin) or Ballynure then the bad news is that none of the churches in these 2 areas have any records for the 1700s. So you probably won’t find a record of his birth.

To be listed in the tithes you had to have land. (The tithes were in effect a tax on land, so that’s why they were compiled). He may have been a miller as well as a farmer (you do see that in some of the land records) but if it’s the correct Arthur, then he definitely had some land.

PRONI the public record office in Belfast has a lease which mentions a small farm and corn mill in Dunturky, so there was certainly a mill there:

D162/110/21A  Draft lease for 61 years from 1 Nov. 1873. Yearly rent £95 Os.Od. Conway Richard Dobbs, Castle Dobbs and Montague William Edward Dobbs, his son to Thomas McKerrell, agricultural implement manufacturer, Mallusk, Co. Antrim. 14 acres, 27 perches, Statute measure, the Church Yard farm with the cotton mill, etc Toberdowney, Co Antrim also 5 acres, 1 rood, 38 perches, statute measure with the corn mill and kiln, Dunturky, and 27 acres, 2 perches, statute measure, Bryantang, Co. Antrim.

Another document, dated 25th Oct 1760 contains a list of tenants in Dunturky at that time. It might mention the Irwin family.

D1824/B/1/2/3/2 Counterpart lease for one life or 31 years, David Archbold of Belfast, gent., to John Forsyth of Ballynure, tanner: property in townland of Dunturky; Forsyth to provide grazing for cows of other tenants of Archbold between April and harvest, with list of tenants.

D1824/B/1/2/3/6 is another list of tenants in Dunturky dated c 1750

The above records are not on-line. They are held in PRONI (in paper format) and so a personal visit is required to view them.

L. Erwin,

The tithe was paid by the person who occupied the land. It might be the owner but often it was a tenant. The bigger landowners were never very willing to sell land in Ireland and so most farms were leased.  The inability to acquire outright ownership of land was a long running sore for farmers. If they leased land and improved it (as most would naturally do) when the lease came up for renewal, the landlord could increase the rent because the farm was now worth more.  Caused much ill feeling as you might imagine.

You can’t tell from the tithes whether the occupant was also the owner. Arthur may have owned his farm outright but statistically speaking, he probably didn’t.  But he could sell the unexpired portion of any lease as well as all the cattle, seed and equipment on the farm which he would own outright.  So it was still worth something.

The tithes for Dunturky are on-line on the PRONI site.  It takes a long time to download them and so I haven’t checked the size of Arthur’s holding. Presumably you have and found it to be 5 acres.  The measurements in the tithes for Ulster were usually in Cunningham acres (a measurement used in Ulster, Scotland and the north of England). Converting that to statute acres (multiply by 1.3) means the farm was 6.5 acres.

If Arthur had a mill, then there were 2 in the townland according to Griffiths. One was on plot 6 and the miller in 1861  was Thomas McKinstry, the other was next door on plot 7 and the tenant was Robert Majury. The mills would be water powered. Both were on what today is Church Rd, Ballynure. (That ties in with the lease in PRONI which mentions “the Church Yard farm”).

Stephen,

Ellen, Helen & Eleanor are all versions of the same name. I have a friend here in Ireland who is known as Helen but it’s Ellen on her birth certificate. So the variations you have found are all quite normal.

Roman Catholic parishes tended to be bigger than civil parishes and often encompassed several. To make it even easier they often had different names too. This link takes you to a site which has maps of the RC parishes and also details of what records they hold:

https://www.johngrenham.com/browse/counties/rcmaps/antrimrc.php#maps/

There are 3 RC parishes there now: Ballyclare (which includes the town of Ballynure), Larne & Carrickfergus. Larne & Carrickfergus used to be the one parish but were split into 2 around 1852 due, presumably, to population growth.

Irwin (and it’s many variants) is a very common name in Co. Antrim. There’s about 2000 in the 1901 census of the county A simple test of whether this Ballynure family is the same as yours would be to compare the religious denomination. The family you are looking at were evidently RC.  Georgia24 do you know what denomination Arthur was?

Georgia24,

To get the tithes, click on the e-catalogue option on the PRONI website. Enter “Dunturky tithe applotment.” That will bring you up 2 sets of records. FIN/5/A/44A & B. (I suspect both are identical).  Click on “view.”  They should then download (slowly).

The tithes are compiled townland by townland. Search through till you find Dunturky. The tithe will show you the precise acreage each person held and there are often comments on the quality of the land  eg 1st quality, 2nd etc.(which was relevant to the value). You can also see who someone’s likely immediate neighbours were which can help locate a property. For example, we know there were 2 mills in Dunturky. We don’t know yet which Arthur held. The tithes may make that clear anyway but if not, look to see if the other mill owner is still there in Griffiths. If he is, then by eliminating that one from the search, you can identify Arthur’s precisely.  The 2 mills were of course beside each other to take advantage of the river, but you might find it interesting to know exactly which was his.

 The tithes are dated c 1820 – c 1840 there because that is the broad band of years that the tithes were compiled over across the country but I know from another site that the particular year the Ballynure parish tithes were compiled was 1834. So we can date them more accurately.

There are also notebooks called “field books” which the Griffiths clerks used when first creating Griffiths Valuation.  It again was compiled for taxation purposes but assessed most property, not just land.  So labourers with only a house are in Griffiths (unless it was of a low value) not just folk with land. They are in the VAL/1 series of records. They are not on-line, so can’t be accessed remotely. So you have to go in person, to see them. (When PRONI is open of course. It’s closed at present). Background here:

https://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/valuation-books.html

The field books sometimes mention the property owner, but also provide a more detailed description of the property.

There’s a mill at the Ulster Folk museum at Cultra, outside Belfast. It gives you an idea of what your ancestor’s mill would have looked like:

https://www.nmni.com/our-museums/Ulster-Folk-Museum/Things-to-see/Gorti…

Stephen,

The Dunturky family appear to have been Presbyterian whereas your family were Roman Catholic. That’s not to say there couldn’t have been intermarriage but with it being such a common name in the area, unless you have something specifically linking your family to Ballynure, I’d be cautious about concluding it’s the same family. Carrickfergus is about 8 miles or so from Ballynure and Dunturky.  Not a huge distance but there were many families of that surname in the area.