BERRY family of Tuam, County Galway
I am looking for more information on a Berry family of Tuam,
County Galway. Someone suggested I post here to see if
someone from the family in Tuam or who knows of them sees
it. I would like to know their actual origins.
My 4th great grandmother, Catherine Berry, was baptized
Roman Catholic, in Tuam, County Galway, on 28 Oct 1799,
the child of Alexander Berry and Bridget Halleran (O'Halloran).
At age 16 she was married to Richard Allen, in Tuam,
by a Church of Ireland military chaplain, who baptized their
only child a year later.
I don't know what faith the Berry family was. I have surmised,
because a family of merchants involved in the governing
body of Tuam used the names James and Alexander, that
they were Protestant. All marriages I'm finding at Ancestry
involving the Berry family are of Catholics,and often involve
the Halloran family. This could be a bias in what records are
available at Ancestry.
I have found at Ancestry obituaries for people named Berry
who still live in and near Tuam. This family also sometimes
owned land on the coast of Galway, some of it in Galway City,
and some far away on Galway's southwestern coast.
My great grandfather, who must have been slipping in the
head, wrote my grandfather two letters with much mangled
information. Some of it confused family members with each
other, other information confused for instance his Allen family
with a completely unrelated but prominent Allen family from
someplace totally different with similar place names. Like
Galway and Galloway. I've not been able to learn where
Richard Allen came from, though there are a couple of viable
theories.
This Berry family of Tuam were wealthy merchants and
marrying extremely well in the 1750s. Thomas Berry was
sovereign of tuam. Their marriages involved very large
amounts of money.
So, my 3x great grandfather, Nathaniel Allen, was born about
1811 in County Westmeath, to a family that were Cromwellian
gentry but had sunk to very snobbish tenant farmers. (a
brother or nephew of Nathaniel was forced to migrate to
Canada for marrying their chief tenant's daughter.)
Nathaniel joined the Royal Irish Constabulary at age 22,
served wtih them all his adult life at locations all over Ireland,
and eventually retired as a constable or police officer to
Belfast, where he died, attended by a daughter and his most
rascally son in law, also in the Royal Irish Constabulary, who
married twice, don't know about a divorce, and is called a
bigamist by some of the family. Nathaniel, age 53, died of
asthma lasting one month ... it wasn't asthma. (I have
asthma, it's lifelong.) Smoking, perhaps. Or heart failure. I
figure Nathaniel was probably rascally as well. oh well...
While serving in Tuam, he married Catherine Allen, in 1837.
He then served in Oughterard, on the other side of Lough
Corrib. I have DNA matches all along the western side of
that lake, whether because Nathaniel slept around
or because I have Allen or Berry ancestry there, I do not
know.
Richard Allen was possibly of an Allen family north of
County Galway that like to pretend they were Cromwellian
gentry and weren't. Catherine Allen Lowe, who I gather was
half crazy, got seven or eight tin Lowe family crests from a
bucket shop and convinced her children that they belonged to
an aristocratic Lowe family from Suffolk in England, which
they never did. Their family actually descend from a family of
silversmiths and Anabaptists with bipolar I, from Kidderminster,
Worcestershire, who were granted land in County Westmeath
for fighting in his army, by Richard Cromwell, who knew them,
and thought they were crazy. Most of the first two generations
died insane, and one of them, a raving bigot and priest hunter
named Barry Lowe, managed to give rise to a single line of
people who gave rise to Nathaniel. In time that morphed by
marriages into bipolar II, in my line. The New Zealand line still
carries bipolar I. Given that bipolar people usually marry
each other, and my pedigree is certainly full of that, Richard
Allen's family were probably crazy as well, and, it sounds like,
so was Catherine Berry Allen.
My great grandfather wrote of a single Catherine Allen, who
he both grew up with and heard stories about as a child.
He understood that Nathaniel was a personal secretary for
Lord Loftus Tottentram. While he was in Galway on
business, he met and married self-willed 16 year old
Catherine Allen. He settled in Manor Hamilton, County
Leitrim... (he actually served there for a time). He eventually
died in Belfast.
Of the Allens, he wrote that, "Now the Allens from which we
descend were freeholders and most respected people who
owned lands and rights on the coast of Galway. They were
originally of French extraction (the name spelled Alleyne)
and Grandma often told me went to Ireland at the time of the
Papist persecution in the time of Mary or some of the James
dynasty. The Allens were of the first families of Galway and
from them sprung the famous Allan steamship organization
throught Hugh and Andrew who left Ireland and settled in
Glasgow in Scotland."
If Richard was of the Allen family from the county north of
County Galway, then he served in the army, and was
stationed all over, and never spent much time with his family.
Otherwise I cannot determine who he was. There was a
family of prosperous farmers named Allen at Oughterard, but
Allen is a very common name. This was most decidedly NOT
the Allan steamship line, and I don't know if that was my
great grandfather's astounding work of imagination, or that of
his grandmother Catherine Allen Lowe.
The thing is, half of what my great grandfather related about
the Allens really describes the Berry family of Tuam. They
were prosperous merchants, not one of the first families of
Galway, but for a time they were among the first families of
Tuam. They were freeholders, and did have land on the coast
of Galway, though not fantastic amounts of it. They
participated in the governming group that governed Tuam,
and one of them was its mayor in the mid 18th century.
Catherine Allen the self willed 16 year old was actually
Catherine Berry who became Catherine Allen on marriage.
They regularly used the names James and Alexander, leaving
me to wonder if they could have been Scottish.
I've assumed they were Protestant, because allegedly they
could not have governed Tuam if they weren't, and,
Richard Allen and Catholic Catherine Berry, age 16, were
married by a Church of Ireland military chaplain who then
baptized their daughter a year later.
But it seems that at least by 1800, according to Ancestry, they
were regularly marrying Catholics. It is not clear where they
or their name came from. It is the Anglicized form of a Gaelic
name that was allegedly first found in County Galway and
another county. It is also the Anglicized form of a French
name.
I am wondering if there is any chance that they came to
ireland at the time of the Papist persecution under the Stuart
kings of England.
I also wonder if Richard Allen might have actually worked for
either Lord Loftus Tottenham, or someone with a similar name
who was located closer to Tuam. At the time Tuam was a
military place.
I have added two photos of Berrys of Tuam from their obituaries, and three of my mother and my grandfather. I have always wondered where they got their Irish looks. Lowes often tell me how little my grandfather looked like a Lowe. They are dead ringers for the Berrys of Tuam!
Thanks!
Yours,
Dora Smith