Maxwell family from Keady

Paula,

When it re-opens Armagh City library has a local studies section which may have material on Keady. For a good description of life in the area in the 1830s, you could read the Ordnance Survey memoirs. These were compiled on the instructions of the Duke of Wellington (then Prime Minister) primarily for taxation purposes. So a bit like the Domesday Book. They were compiled parish by parish, and describe the inhabitants, their occupations, pastimes, habits, they analyse the various different denominations by number, and report on health, schooling, seasonal migration patterns as well as permanent migration. And so on. A typical parish contains about 20 to 30 pages of information and some drawings. They are well worth reading if you want to get a feel for life there at that time. (It’s probably the most detailed contemporaneous summary that exists from that period).

There are copies on the bookshelves in PRONI’s main research room in Belfast and Armagh library is likely to have a copy. If not, you can order a copy from the Ulster Historical Foundation. If you e-mail them with details of the parish(es) you are interested in, they’ll send you the relevant volume(s). Generally there are 3 or 4 adjacent parishes in each volume. I think they are between £5 and £10 per volume depending whether it’s old stock or newer reprints.

https://www.booksireland.org.uk

I looked to see if Keady features in the early street directories for the 1820s and 1840s but it wasn’t big enough to merit an entry.

If you want to get a feel for what life was like in the townland in 1901, look at the census entries. Here’s Crossdened for example, 35 houses and a total population of 105. (No Maxwells). Nearly everyone in the townland was engaged in farming one way or another.

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Armagh/Keady_Rural/Crossdened/

Crossmore is much the same with 10 houses and a population of 58. 1 Maxwell who was a single man and a farmer.

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Armagh/Crossmore/Crossmore/

MacLysaght’s “Surnames of Ireland” says Maxwell is a “Scottish name very numerous in Ulster”. So your ancestors are probably descendants of Scots who moved to Armagh in the 1600s as part of the Plantation.

 

 

Here’s a bit on the Plantation and Philip Robinson’s book on the subject is worth reading. You probably get a copy from Amazon:

http://orrnamestudy.com/plantnire1610.htm

The Muster Rolls c 1630 list 1 Maxwell in Armagh then. He was William Maxwell who had a lease on 100 acres in Drumlack, in the barony of Fews on Sir Archball Atchison’s estate.  Some of the tenants there came from Midlothian.