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Anne Toner Newry Co. Armagh

Armagh

Volunteers:

We received another message in our info email box. This message is from Peter Gehrke from Australia. If you can offer any info or suggestions for Peter, Please post a comment. Thanks! Roger

Good morning,

 

I am trying to find information on my 3x great grandmother’s family from the Newry district in County Armagh, but my regular databases and online sources don’t seem to have anything useful. I would like to visit Ireland (and Northern Ireland) to see where she might have lived, as well as where several other ancestors originated, but need more details to plan my trip.

 

Can you suggest any conventional, or unconventional approaches that I could try? Specifically, I’d like to discover who her parents were, where and when she was born, when her parents died, and who might have fostered her before she left Ireland. I understand that this information may simply no longer exist.

 

This is what I know, from her Australian Immigration Record.

 

  1. Departed Liverpool aboard the Adam Lodge on 12 May 1841.
  2. Arrived in Sydney 30 August 1841
  3. Age on arrival 24 years, travelling as a single female. No accompanying passengers from the same district. Other non-verified sources place date of birth at March 1818, but this seems speculative. I’m bracketing 1813 to 1823.
  4. Parents both dead
  5. Roman Catholic
  6. Reference provided by George Maguire (I have located a Rev George Maguire who was a young Catholic priest in the Newry district in the 1830s and 1840s. I believe it is likely he who provided that reference.)
  7. Occupation -farm servant
  8. Travelling under the protection of Bernard Neale (there was no passenger by that name on the passenger or immigration lists. There was a freed convict of that name in Sydney who had originally come from nearby Dublin. I suspect, but have no documented evidence, that she may have agreed to work for him upon her arrival.
  9. Could not read or write (so did not attend school, was probably not cared for in an orphanage where nuns might have provided school lessons)
  10. Travel arranged by Gilchrist and Alexander as agents.

 

I have found several Catholic baptisms for people named Anne Toner in Catholic Parish Registers between, but there is insufficient detail to confirm who these records refer to.

 

From her Marriage Certificate (8 February 1842 in Sydney) and Death Certificate (23 June 1898), she does not appear to have told her husband or family anything about her parents, such as names, occupation, place of residence, suggesting she could not remember these details. So I believe they might have died while she was young, too young to remember. Since her husband (informant of her Death Certificate) did not know her parents’ names nor place of residence, it seems likely that she did not name her children after her parents.

 

Her life in Australia after her arrival is very well documented, so it is a stark contrast to find no confirmed information from Ireland before she departed.

 

Can you offer any suggestions?

 

 

Kind regards,

 

Peter

 

 

Castlemore RoscommonIrelandXO Volunteer

3 replies

Peter:

The town of Newry is split between Co. Down and Co. Armagh. The RC parish of Newry has baptismal records starting in September 1818 https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0455?locale=en I searched on the subscription site Roots Ireland and did not see any meaningful leads. Possibly Anne was born/baptized before 1818 and a record does not exist.

Have you taken a general DNA test? Possibly you will have matches with people who are distant cousins who might have more information on the Toner family.

Roger McDonnell

Castlemore RoscommonIrelandXO Volunteer

In the 1838 and 1839 Catholic Directories a George Maguire appears as a curate in Kilmore parish, Down & Connor Diocese, the parish is in Co. Down and located about 50 km (~30 miles) to the north-east of Newry next to Strangford Lough, the parish is sometimes referred to as 'Crossgar' after the name of a town in the area.

The Catholic registers for this parish are not included on the NLI system, but transcripts seem to be included on RootsIreland and cover from 1837 onward.

shanew147IrelandXO Volunteer

Thanks Shane, I have uncovered quite a lot of detail on George Maguire, from his training to ordination, parish appointments and his Will. Very interesting reading. So I think it is quite likely that it was he who provided the reference for Anne Toner. There are also some co-occurrences of Maguire and Toner families around Newry and in the Catholis cemeteries. So I'm certain the families knew each other. But I have no proof. More research might uncover further multiple lines of evidence.

Thanks again,

Peter

peter_joanne@b…

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