McCoy, thank you very much for this helpful information. The marriage record you've found for Valentine Ryan and Bridget Tobin is my ancestors' marriage record. Kilmacow parish records show that Valentine Ryan married Bridget Tobin 21 September 1836 at Mullinavat, with Edmund Hayden and Margaret Fitzgerald witnessing the marriage. The marriage record is also in the Ossory diocesan transcript of parish registers in County Kilkenny for 1801-1842, with the same information — National Library of Ireland microfilm 05028 / 04. But the transcript of the Kilmacow parish register in the parish formed at Mullinavat states that the couple married 1 February 1836, specifies that Val’s father was John Ryan, and says the marriage was at Buckstown. It also replaces Margaret Fitzgerald’s name with Anty Henneberry.
The child of Valentine and Bridget baptized on 3 August 1838, whose name appears as Valentine in the Kilbeacon record, was actually their daughter Margaret, whose name seems to have been mistranscribed by the Kilbeacon parish register. It appears as Margaret in the Kilmacow parish register, giveing her the same date of baptism. The record gives her parents' home as Buckstown, and says that the godparents were Michael McEvoy and Catherine Holden.
Val and Biddy did have a son Valentine born after Margaret, who was baptized in Kilbeacon parish on 3 December 1839. Margaret is one of the three children Val and Biddy brought to America when they emigrated. The other two were Patrick and Catherine, my great-grandmother. Four children whose baptisms appear in the parish register — Valentine, Ellen, William, and John — seem not to have lived up to the time of the family's emigration. I have a photo of Margaret taken not very long before her death.