John,
Sorry you didn’t get the previous message. There was a fault in our computer system last year and it appears that you didn’t get a notification when you should have. Please accept my apologies.
You say the family were Methodist. Well in Ireland Methodism took much longer to become established denomination than was the case in England and elsewhere. (Irish Methodists mostly didn’t want to break the link with the Church of Ireland). The earliest that Methodists in Ireland could baptise their own children was 1816, and I have never seen any Methodist marriages earlier than 1836. But for most circuits, it was years later before they conducted their own baptisms and marriages. So I think you’ll find that for the period you are looking at, your family would have still been using the Church of Ireland for births and marriages.
I looked at the records available for Methodists in the Clonfeacle area. There were two Meeting Houses (Blackwatertown and Moy). Neither has any baptisms prior to 1874.
However when we look at the Church of Ireland records available for Clonfeacle, there were 5 churches there. Annaghmore, Brantry, Clonfeacle, Derrygortreavy & Moy. Annaghmore only has records from 1856 onwards. The other 4 churches records were all destroyed in the 1922 fire in Dublin. So in short, sadly, there are no records for you to search.
Consequently you may struggle to find any records of your family at all. Do you have any idea of their townland or what their occupations were in Ireland?
