Not Sure of my Facts

Michael,

Statutory registration of marriages started in Ireland in April 1845, save for RC marriages which were not registered till 1864. So if William Magee married Ann Irwin in 1858, or thereabouts, and it was not an RC ceremony, the marriage should appear in the statutory records. I can?t find it.

You wonder if they married in Clogher in December 1858. I can find no marriage for an Ann Irwin to anyone in 1858 in Clogher. Nor a marriage for William Magee in Clogher to anyone either. Could it have been an RC ceremony? If not, what denomination do you think it was? And what?s the source for the belief that they married in Clogher?

Tradition was to marry in the bride?s church. If Ann lived in Brigh, then that is in the parish of Ballyclog. So you might expect her marriage to have been there, rather than 40 miles away in the parish of Clogher, unless of course the family had moved. (For RC and Church of Ireland marriages, at least one of the couple must reside in the parish where the ceremony takes place). There is a townland of Carnteel as well as a parish of Carnteel, and so when you say William came from there, it isn?t clear which is meant. But obviously if neither he nor his bride lived in Clogher, I would question why they apparently married there.

Births weren?t registered in the statutory records till 1864 so the only way to find the births of the 2 Irish born children is again through church records, looking for their baptisms. There is no comprehensive on-line database of baptisms and to trace them we need to know the church and denomination that they were baptised into. So to do that we need to know where the family were living c1860. Do you know?

That the family were buried in an Anglican church in Canada would point to their being Church of Ireland, in Ireland. So probably the 2 Irish born children were baptised in that denomination, but it doesn?t necessarily mean the marriage was Church of Ireland. Ann may have been of a different denomination, prior to her marriage.

If you can answer some of my queries above, I may be able to suggest where to search next (or when you are in Ireland).

Elwyn

Michael,

I suppose the obvious thing to do is to start by investigating the 1858 marriage. As I say there is no trace of it in the civil records and so if the information is correct, that points ot it being an RC ceremony. So you could look up Clogher RC records and see if there was such a marriage.

The Roots Ireland site does have a record of an Anne Jane Irwin who married a William in Co Tyrone in 1858 but he doesn?t appear to have had the surname Magee. You might want to investigate that partial match (pay to view). Be aware that Rootsireland doesn?t have all Co Tyrone church records on its site, and so this is not an exhaustive search of all possible records.

http://ifhf.brsgenealogy.com/index.php

You might also want to try Ballyclog (which is in the RC parish of Donaghenry) and Carnteel (which is in the RC parish of Aghaloo). Copies of all the relevant RC records for these 3 parishes are in PRONI, where you can view them free. They also have most of the other denominations records, in case you want to widen your search.

You can try writing to the relevant priests and ministers but they do get a lot of genealogical requests, and so you don?t always get a prompt reply. Indeed sometimes you don?t get a reply at all. Doing your own research in PRONI might be the most convenient way of progressing this.

The only snag with RC marriage records from the mid 1800s is that they don?t contain a lot of information. Often all you get is the couple?s names and their 2 witnesses. No addresses, occupations or parents names. So you might find the marriage but still not know whether it?s the right couple. But as I mentioned previously, for RC and Church of Ireland marriages, at least one party had to live in the parish. Tradition was to marry in the bride?s church so I?d be looking for her family in that parish. You might find them under baptisms (which do sometimes have addresses/townlands). But if you know that Ann was from Brigh, what was she doing in Clogher? It may not be the same person. (Ann Irwin would be a fairly common name).

Elwyn

PRONI is the public record office in Belfast. Unfortunately their church records are not on-line. They are mainly on microfilm and some are in paper format. You normally need either to go in person or get a researcher to look them up for you.