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Looking for Great grandfather and grand fathers home site

RoscommonBallintober (Roscommon)

From their tombstone in eastern, Connecticut, USA, it shows that my G GF and GF came from Ballintobber, county Roscommon.

HIGGINS, Thomas Francis Sr was born in Ireland 1836, Died in USA 1905

HIGGINS, Thomas Francis Jr was born in Ireland 1871, died in USA 1934

also, I was told that my G GF came to the USA alone.  He sent for his wife and only child once he was ready for them to join him.  My GF was about 7 years old when he left for the USA about 1878 with his mother, Mary who was origionally from Armagh, Northern, Ireland.

Brian Higgins

1 reply

Hello Brian,

 

I went to www.rootsireland.ie and put in thomas higgen junior 1870.  There are many higgens in that part of the world so try to refine yur search by putting the fathers name in also.

I got 8 hits and i think you'll just maybe have to view each record to see if its your ancestor.

From experience, please take the dates on the tombstone with a large grain of salt as most people didn't actually know what age they were or their birth dates.  

You'll see from the 1901 and the 1911 census of ireland that people had aged 15 or more years when they should have only aged 10.

This is because the oldage pension came into being in 1909 and people had to go back to churches to get baptismal certs to find out what age they were.  Most were much much older that they thought.

Hope this help a little,

Kind regards,

Anne k Dennehy

IrelandXO member

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