Beth,
You ask whether the RC church has records equivalent to the Kirk Session records. The short answer is no. The Church of Scotland is Presbyterian and they have always had a method of regulating their members by summoning transgressors to the Kirk Session (comprising the Minister and his elders) to explain themselves and where appropriate, be punished. That might take the form of being banned from Communion for a time and/or standing in front of the congregation to publicly admit their sins. Pre-nuptial fornication being a very popular one. Presbyterians are big on sin, in my experience. And this would all be recorded in the Kirk Session minutes, for all to see and know. The Catholic church had their own ways but it didn’t involve that approach, nor did it involve any record keeping (or none that have ever made it into the public domain anyway).
Regarding education, the children would all likely have received the same education. The National School system started in Ireland in the 1830s and most children would attend from about age 5 or 6 onwards. I don’t think the teaching was always of the top quality but it would provide a basic education, if the children attended regularly enough. The problem was that a lot of parents couldn’t see any value in educating their children. They preferred to have them around the farm to do tasks, and so attendance was often a bit intermittent, especially at harvest time and other busy periods. Parents would often send for a child at school to run a message for them, instead of being educated. Most would only attend part–time after age about 10 and would stop altogether around 12 or 13. But it wasn’t a custom to favour one child over the others in my experiences. Some school attendance records have survived and are on Findmypast. You could always search them.
I would think that James trained locally, probably apprenticed to another mason. (But no records will have survived).
Dealing with your question about who would inherit the farm and sub-dividing it, you are correct. If you look at Griffiths you will see that Charley had a total of about 14 acres. (40 perches in a rood and 4 roods in an acre). That was fairly typical. A small farm, probably on mediocre land, knowing parts of Cavan (it’s got a lot of bog), and just really adequate to support 1 family. There was no scope for subdividing most farms as they were already small. The farm usually, but not invariably, went to the eldest son. And in this case it looks to have passed to one of the younger sons. Possibly the others had declined the opportunity. I don't suppose you’ll ever know.
There was no spare land in Ireland and so the other sons would find it difficult to get a farm of their own and normally had to leave and make their way in the world.
Ireland has very few natural resources (no oil, coal, iron ore etc) and so did not benefit from the industrial revolution in the 1800s, the way Scotland, England, the US, Canada & Australia did, which created hundreds of thousands of comparatively well-paid new jobs in new industries (coal mining, steel making, railways, ship building etc). So that was a big pull factor. There had also been a huge population explosion in Ireland going up from about 3 million people in 1750 to 8 million in 1830. There simply weren’t jobs for all those people. In much of Ireland the only employment was subsistence farming topped up in Ulster and one or two other areas with a bit of linen weaving. And then the straw that broke the camel’s back, along came the famine, numerous times throughout the 1800s. The worst period was when the potato crop failed almost completely 3 years in a row in the late 1840s, and then partially several more years after that.
Other factors encouraged emigration, eg early mechanisation on farms. With new machines to turn the soil and plant seed, farmers no longer needed an army of agricultural labourers to help on the farm. So those jobs were rapidly disappearing. Likewise mechanisation had led to linen factories being set up in places like Belfast. These made home weaving uneconomic and so also upset the labourer’s family economy. Agriculture was the biggest single employer in Ireland, but it was mostly a barter economy. Few people had any ready cash save what they could make from weaving or any government sponsored work such as building new roads. So when the opportunity arose to get jobs with a regular wage packet, as opposed to a few pence from your father each week, the decision to migrate wasn’t really all that hard to make. So it was as much about economic betterment as anything.
There was a massive tide of migration all through that century, including long before the famine. Years after the worst of the famine it’s impact was still being felt across Ireland, and there were still plenty of much better job opportunities in Australia and the USA. (After Scotland and England, the USA was the most popular destination for emigrants with about 40 to 50% choosing it. Only about 5% of Irish emigrants chose Australia and New Zealand, possibly due to the costs and length of the voyage).
I looked in the tithe applotment records for Killybandrick in 1825 to see if the Drum(mond) family was listed. They are not. Doesn’t mean they weren’t there, just they didn’t have a farm. However there was a James Monaghan with a half share of 12 acres. So that could be Ellen’s family.
http://titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie/reels/tab//004587397/00…
