Dwyer and Kelly Ancestors

 

Thank you very much, Roger and Tim!  I thought the same about Ballintubber based on there being both Dwyers and Kellys there.  I also checked the historicgraves.com website to see what I could find.  I did find some Dwyers, and fewer Kellys.

Can either of you tell me which registration district would have been most likely for residents of the parish to use in the 1880s?  My grandma has an estimated 3rd cousin DNA match with Noonan and Fox ancestors in their tree. I noticed both of those surnames were well represented everywhere I looked, and I have found paper trails for both the Noonan and Fox that lead to Limerick, but no exact parish as of yet.  Since I have birthdates for both in the 1880s, Ibhave looked at the indexes and identified some possibilities but I don't know which registration district was closest or most likely to have been used.  Limerick, Cork, Clonmel, Clogheen, Kilmallock, Macroom, Croom, Lismore, Rathkeale, and Mitchelstown are all returned in the list of most likely entries.

Thanks again!  It is really hard to make that kind of a judgement call without having a good working knowledge of the area!

Tim - Funny that you mention the railway.  My grandma's father, a Sullivan from Knocklong, Limerick, also worked in the railway industry here in Chicago.

Megan

Thanks again for the helpful information.

Roger, yes, I am very familiar with Gedmatch.  It was in trying to triangulate a completely different match that I spun off on this tangent.  I tested my family at Ancestry, then uploaded to Gedmatch, and have transferred to FTDNA as well.

And now it seems I am back to Darragh again.  I took out another month's subscription to rootsireland, as I didn't fancy my eyes bleeding from pouring through the registers, and it was a more expedient way to get some answers.  So, I found that the mother of the Noonan ancestor of my match, who I traced back to Ballynahinch and Ballinvreena, was a Kelly from Ruppulagh.  I am speculating that that Bridget Kelly might be a sister to my Catherine Kelly.  Given that the match is an estimated third cousin, their fathers' generation is where I might expect to see an MRCA.                          The only problem is, I have run out of paper trails to prove it.  Bridget Kelly (match's Ruppulagh ancestor) would have been born 1845 - 1850.  If my ancestor Catherine were her sister, she would have had to have been born even earlier, as her son was born in 1860.  And there is no marriage record that I could find for Catherine, as the register notes (at least it looks like it does) that her son was illegitimate.  I can't believe that wouldn't have caused her quite the problem back then.  But I have run out of places to look, at least that I know of.  If you have any other suggestions, I would truly appreciate them!

Megan

 

Oh wow!  Thank you, Tim!  That is incredible.  It does seem more and more likely that Bridget and Catherine were sisters.  

I would love to be able to test some of the descendants of the families that are still in the area today.  I will have to start setting aside for a DNA scholarship for them, if any would be willing.

I found entries on the 1901 and 1911 censuses for a Catherine Kelly that lived in Ballyvarra.

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai002738446/

I have no family story to tell me what became of her, or where her son was raised.  I only know that Michael came to America between 1875 and 1885.  I am still trying to pinpoint which arrival and naturalization records are his.  Since the Catherine Kelly in the census was an old age pensioner as well, would there be a file similar to the one for Bridget, to maybe confirm they were the same family?  It seems like an awful lot of long shots, but you never know. Is there a publicly searchable database for the extract information?

Thanks again!

Megan