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Finding Church Records for McNulty-Hafferan Marriage in Cork Cove in 1847

Cork

Tracing my ancestors through English records led to the discovery that my 2nd great grandmother was born Mary Ann(e) Hefferan in Limerick in 1823 (possibly 1816) and married in Cove of Cork on 17 July 1847, before immigrating to England as Mary Anne McNulty to raise a family and live there the rest of her life.

Her husband was James McNulty, born in 1814 in Mayo. On 4th June 1834 he enlisted in the Royal Marines in Birmingham, England, where he was attached for service in the Chatham Division. At the time of enlisting he listed his trade as blacksmith and his records showed he was born In Balaha, County Mayo. In the English Census 1871 his birth place is listed as Ball. I have so far not been able to identify either of these places in County Mayo. It has been suggested to me that it could be misspellings of Balla.

The above information was taken from three sources: (i) England Census records; (ii) James McNultys service records during his time in the Royal Marines; and (iii) Irish Marriage Records.

The Irish Marriage Records are:

Ireland, Select Marriages, 1619-1898

Ireland, Civil Registration Marriages Index, 1845-1958

In these records McNulty is wrongly recorded as Mcnaulty in the first and McNaulty in the second.

I have also learned from these records

Mary Annes father was William Hefferan

James McNultys father was also named James McNulty.

At the present time I am trying to locate more precisely/reliably where and when Mary Ann and James were born so I can research the family in more detail.

I am posting this query in the Cork listing in the hope that someone can help me to identify in which specific church they were married. Further I am hoping the records for that church might include further information about the two families and the places where members were living at the time of the wedding.

If I can learn more information from Cork records I will be better positioned to search for the families in Limerick and Mayo records specifically.

I would be most grateful for any help any one can provide.

Tony

tony.dorcey@gm…

2 replies

SInce the marriage is included in civil BMD Index and before 1864 it must have been non-Catholic or possibly registry Office - a civil marriage cert would include a few additional details - e.g. residences of the bride & groom, occupation of the fathers and groom - sometimes of the bride. The record should also show names of witnesses and details of where the marriage took place, the name of the church or registry office along with the name of the minister or registrar. The most likely denomination for the marriage would be Church of Ireland and the parish records at time are the same format as civil marriage cert with the same details recorded.

The town of Queenstown/Cove/Cobh is  split across two civil parishes Clonmel & Templerobin and the associated Church of Ireland parish was Clonmel, Cloyne Diocese. Registers noting baptisms, marriages and death/burials for this parish go back to 1761 and are held by the Representative Church Body Library in Co. Dublin, there also seems to the records for the parish available on Microfilm in the National Archives in Dublin CIty. As far as I know records for this parish are not currently available online at present. 

You can order a research cert for this marriage from the GRO - see option 1a on the IrishGenealogy website,the full index references are : Reg. District Cork, Year 1847, Volume  4, page 335. The IrishGenealogy website has register images for many records already but does not cover the early marriages yet, although these should be added this year.

shanew147IrelandXO Volunteer

I can give you some info about the McNulty's in Mayo, although the parish records do not go far enough back in the areas where they lived for a baptsimal record for your James McNulty to be likely.  My grandmother, Anne Marie McNulty, was born in 1885 in the parish of Killasser, which is between Swinford and Foxford, and the McNulty surname is very common in that parish and some neighboring ones.

In Irish, the surname McNulty is Mac an Ultaigh, which literally means “son of the Ulsterman” (Ultach = Ulsterman, and Ultaigh is the genitive case of the word), but it may simply refer to descent from the Ulaid  (in ancient Ireland the Uluti tribe), a nation of people for whom Ulster is named, which in remote times ruled the entirety of the North of Ireland.  According to MacLysaght’s “Surnames of Ireland”, the surname originated in Donegal (where McNulty's can still be found), and that is where the Mayo McNulty’s came from several centuries ago.  There were a lot of emigrants from Ulster to Connacht in the 17th century (Mayo is part of the province of Connacht), due to the plantation of Ulster by Protestants from Scotland and England, and McNulty emigrants from Ulster are also known to have moved to Counties Louth and Meath (in Meath, they usually just use the name Nulty).

A family of McNulty's migrated to the Callow Lakes area in Mayo in the 1640's, according to a history of the parish of Killasser, written by Bernard O'Hara.  After their arrival, members of the family constructed a number of mills in the area,  and the official Ordinance Survey of the Callow Lakes still shows the sites of two such mills and a millrace.  In the course of time, McNulty’s became numerous in the region, and the first parish priest of All Saints Church at Killasser was a McNulty.

There are also people named MacNalty or MacAnalty (spelled with an "a" in the middle, instead of a "u").  They are generally from a different family, whose name comes from the Irish name Mac Conallta, meaning "son of the wild hound", but they lived in the same areas as the McNulty's.

kevin45sf@yahoo.com

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