Looking to find out where in Donegal my GGF Michael McDade b1845 was born.

BStP,

Scottish records are mostly held on the Scotlandspeople site. Accessing them is easy and cheap.

https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/

You can search their indexes free. I can see a marriage between Michael McDade and Helen Cleary registered in Row/Rhu (near Dumbarton) in 1870. GROS ref 503/47. You might want to look at that to ensure it is your family. The certificate should also tell you both sets of parents names and occupations plus whether they were alive or dead at that date. If you let us know that information we can see if we can find anything in Donegal records. (Irish death records start in 1864).

Helen and Ellen are interchangeable. Ellen tends to be more common in Ireland and Helen in Scotland but there are no hard and fast rules and the same person often uses one in Ireland and the other in Scotland. And the Mc/O’ prefixes were frequently dropped.

I can see what looks like this family in the indexes to the 1891 Scottish census. Helen plus 8 children in Bonhill, Dumbarton (GROS ref 493/15/9). (No sign of Michael).

Do search all the Scottish censuses that Michael and his wife may appear in, in case they record more than “Ireland” as place of birth. Sometimes you get a townland or a parish.

The Poor Law records tell you that Michael McDade was dead by 1895. I see a death in Bonhill in 1889 age 46 (GROS ref 493/215). Mother’s maiden name McAusland. That ties  in with the poor law information.

Brenda,

You don’t need to order the marriage certificate. You can view it on-line instantly on Scotlandspeople for about £1.80.

Michael’s parents were named as James McDade and Mary McAusland in the Poor Law records, but you should get Michael's marriage cert to be sure. Mistakes do get made. Plus it will tell you whether both were alive at that date. (Mary appears to have died in 1876. Her cert will tell you whether her husband was still alive at that date. He may have died in Scotland too).

You ask how I found Michael’s death on Scotlandspeople. I knew he was dead by 1895 (from the Poor Law records) and that he was alive around 1885 (son William was aged 10 in 1895). So I simply searched the death indexes for Michael McDade deaths 1885 - 1895. There were 9 across all of Scotland but only 1 in Bonhill and that had mother’s maiden name as McAusland. So surely has to be the right death.

Brenda,

There’s a conflict between the marriage certificate which gives Michael’s father as John, and the Poor Law records where it is James. That information presumably coming from Helen. I’d favour the marriage certificate information as it came first hand from Michael who surely should know his own father’s name, whereas with the Poor Law it’s coming from Helen who perhaps never met or knew her father-in-law. Certainly he was dead at the time she married.

I suspect that John McDade may have died in Ireland and then his widow Mary went to Scotland to live with her son. Just a guess. Death registration started in Scotland in 1855. I searched 1855 to 1870 for a John McDade death in the Bonhill area but did not find one. So either he died before 1855 or he died in Ireland. I think he probably died in Ireland.

Death registration started in Ireland in 1864. I searched the records for 1864 - 1870 and found just 1 adult John McDade death. That was in 1866 in Dunfanaghy registration area. He was 66, so born c 1800. Unfortunately Irish death records for 1864 to 1870 are not on-line free yet, and you need to order a copy from the General Register Office:

https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-social-protection/services/birth-death-marriage-and-other-certificates/

Note that I do not know whether this is the correct John McDade, just he’s the only adult in Donegal in the available years and his age seems suitable. If your John died before 1864, there will be no death certificate to find. RC churches rarely kept burial records and unless there’s a gravestone there may be no record to find. Labourers could rarely afford a gravestone so I would not be optimistic about finding one.

I searched Irish Catholic records for a marriage between John McDade and Mary McAusland but did not find one. That’s not too surprising because they must have married before c 1843 and hardly any RC parishes in Donegal have records for that era. Most in that county didn’t start to keep them till the 1850s and 1860s.

Worth mentioning perhaps that some of the on-line trees show John McDade as living in Old Kilpatrick (which is near Bonhill) in the 1861 Scottish census. However I think that’s wrong. I think it's another John McDade as he was a widower. I see no sign of your John McDade in that area in the census.

Possibly DNA testing may be a way of matching with others who have additional information about where the family originate. Family Tree DNA reportedly has more people with Ulster roots than any other company. That obviously increases the chances of finding a match. You might want to try them or, if you have already tested, you can transfer your results for no fee.

The North of Ireland Family History Society is running an Ulster DNA project and can offer FTDNA testing kits at a reduced price. http://www.nifhs.org (Go to DNA project on the website).

Brenda,

You may be curious as to why they went to Scotland. Ireland lacks natural resources. No coal, oil, iron ore etc, and so apart from a modest amount of shipbuilding in Belfast and the Belfast linen mills (which mostly only employed women or teenagers as they were cheaper & nimbler), it did not really get the industrial revolution that benefited England and Scotland where mills, steelworks, ship building, coal mining and all their support industries were major employers creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Much better paid than subsistence farming or weaving. (Labourers usually did weaving in the winter months when there wasn’t much farm work needed). Added to that you had the effects of a massive population explosion in Ireland – up from 3 million in 1750 to 8 million in 1841 (no-one is really sure of the reasons why but reduced neo-natal deaths seem to be a factor) and the famine. So some push factors and some pull factors saw huge numbers of people leave Ireland. Something like 8 million people emigrated from Ireland between 1801 & 1921.

https://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/emigration-Ireland-19th-century.html

If you look at the Scottish censuses for the Glasgow area in the late 1800s, you will see that about one in five was born in Ireland. Scotland was a particularly popular place to go to work because it was easy and very cheap to get to. For someone in Donegal there were regular overnight sailings from Derry/Londonderry to Greenock and Glasgow’s Broomilaw Quay. The shipping companies main business was cargo (cattle) and the passengers were just top-up revenue. Competition was fierce and passenger fares very low. People working in Scotland could come home for weddings or the harvest, as well as holidays (Glasgow used to shut down for 2 weeks every July, known as the Glasgow Fair holiday and there would then be a huge exodus to Ireland).  You could also send children back to stay with their grandparents, thereby leaving the wife free to work. You couldn’t do all those things so easily from Australia, America or Canada. 

Which of Michael’s sons are you trying to trace?  I’ll see if I can help.

William McDade looks to be in Bonhill in the 1921 census. Aged 33, single and boarding with the Ward family at 13 Random St. There’s a likely death for him in Dumbarton in 1929, GROS ref: 429/195 (Mother’s maiden name showing in the indexes as McCleary).

John looks to be in the 1921 census for Bonhill aged 35. GROS ref 493/15/3. He looks to have died in Bonhill in 1953 aged 66 GROS ref 493/2. The death cert should tell you whether he ever married, and his wife’s name. Perhaps he has descendants in Scotland today?

I didn’t see either James or Daniel in the 1921 census, though James is a very common name and if he had moved away from the Bonhill area there are too many to search easily. I don’t see an obvious death for Daniel (not such a common name) but James is too common to be able to identify a likely one.

I looked for Scottish marriages for Daniel 1901 to 1920. There were 7, a couple of which you can probably discount due to having middle names. So there are 5 you could look up if you were sufficiently interested.

So John & William look to have stayed in Scotland, Daniel & James may have left. Hope this helps.

The Poor Law application tells you Helen said she moved to Scotland in May 1871 from Dunmore. That may not be quite right as she married in Scotland the year before. Her application was for Outdoor Relief. So that means she wanted to stay in her own home (rather than be admitted to the Workhouse) where she would hopefully receive some food and other assistance. The notes make moving reading, don’t they, “bed on the floor. Wretched house. No furniture.” Very sad. “Settlement Ireland” indicates that the authorities regarded Ireland as her place of origin. In certain cases, depending on how long the person had lived in in Scotland, the authorities sometimes sent Poor Law applicants back to their parish of origin (passing the problem back to the Poor Law Union there). Clearly they didn’t in this case.

There are 5 different townlands named Dunmore in Co. Donegal, in the civil parishes of Killea, Mevagh, Raymunterdoney, Templecrone and Tullyfern. But there isn't a parish named Dunmore (in Donegal. There is one in Galway). Any idea of which one your family may have lived in? RC records for those 5 parishes start in 1843, 1871, 1849, 1868 & 1868 respectively.

Neither McDade (and variant spellings) or McAusland are very common in Co Donegal. I checked Griffiths Valuation (1858) and there were none in any of the 5 Dunmores in Donegal.

Interestingly, according to the John Grenham website McAusland is thought to be a Scottish name and folk in Donegal are reputed to be descended from families around Dumbarton which, ironically is where the McDade family ended up living in the 1800s.