Dear Jeff,
I will see can I help you. Without a name of townland (that is the name given to a cluster of fields in rural places) it would be difficult to find your family, however the name Larkin is not very common in Co. Cavan, 33 occur in the 1901 Census, but none of them are Cornelius, however the majority of the Larkin's occur in the East of the County. McMahon's are more frequent 292 occur, but with spelling variations you may find more, they also occur mainly in in East of Cavan but are also scattered throughout the county. Larkin & McMahon would be also common County Monaghan names, which is one of the counties adjoining Co. Cavan, while this has got me nowhere, the clustering of the names may give you something to work on. Civil registeration did not commence until 1864 and they can now be accessed for free at irishgenealogy.ie. This does not help you find the people you are looking for, but I suggest that you look for deaths of people with names similar to Cornelius ( would also be called Con) Larkin as there was naming patterns in Irish families and you may find his parent's death. Reilly would be a very common name in County Cavan and is also written prefixed with O' and likewise McMahon may just be written as Mahon
Did any other family follow them to America, as frequently there was a chain migration, you could research them and this may give you a break in your research. I also searched church marriage records on http://cavan.rootsireland.ie it is a fee paying site and I did not find a marriage for Cornelius, did they get married in Ireland ? The age gap might also indicate that she was his second wife, as women frequently died in childbirth.
As County Cavan was in the province of Ulster some records may be available at https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni
Newspapers can be accessed at https://www.irishnewsarchive.com, for a fee, while free to view you may find some mention of your family at http://www.irelandoldnews.com if they committed a crime or for the wealthier familiies some of their social events are mentioned
All of the following records are free to search available at http://www.genealogy.nationalarchives.ie ;
- Census of Ireland, 1901 and 1911, and pre-1901 survivals
- Census Search Forms, 1841 – 51
- Tithe Applotment Books, 1823 – 37
- Soldiers’ Wills, 1914 – 1918
- Calendars of Wills and Administrations, 1858 – 1922
- Prerogative and diocesan copies of some wills and indexes to others, 1596 – 1858
- Diocesan and Prerogative Marriage Licence Bonds Indexes, 1623 – 1866
- Catholic qualification & convert rolls, 1700 – 1845
- Valuation Office house, field, tenure and quarto books 1824 – 1856
- Shipping agreements and crew lists, 1863 – 1921
- Will Registers 1858 – 1900
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I am sorry if I have not given you anything concrete to work on and indeed you may have tried all of the above, if you have stories in the family they may lead somewhere, look at wills in America, they may have left something to someown in Ireland, can you find any headstones, they may have noted a townland on them or named a house after a townland.
Best Wishes and please let me know if you have made any progress.
Regards Carmel O'Callaghan
