James Murphy 1802- 1889

As far as I know Crosstown/St. Ibar's cemetery was opened in 1892 - I've seen a burial register covering October 1892 to about 1907 so it must have been available online at some point. I'll see if I can locate the file and check if Ellen is mentioned.

I dont know if you've already checked Wexford County Archives website - they have burial records for several of the graveyards in the town - see this link

No sign of Ellen or the two brothers that drowned at Crosstown unfortunately.

I also checked for possible newspaper death notices for James and Ellen, but no success, if there was a notice it would often mention the church and graveyard.,

The Catholic Churches in the town only had limited plots of land, so no graveyards attached, for the years before the 1850s the main Catholic Church was the Franciscan Friary, the later twin churches were built in the town at Bride Street and Rowe street. The graveyards in the town would all have been at Established Church grounds (Protestant/Church of Ireland) or the sites of former churches, but would generally be shared with all Christians in the parish. Catholic parishes rarely kept death/burial registers.

Bear in mind that many burials would not have had a headstone, sometimes just a wooden marker or Cross, so there may be no evidence today of who is buried in a particular plot unless it is in a laid out newer cemetery like Crosstown where coordinates and plot references are noted in the register.

I've included a small extract from the Crosstown burial register from 1896 as an example of the detailed records they have (the actual register entry is across the full book width)

Trinity Street was in St. Michael's civil parish, so I had a quick look for a possible entry for James in the St. Michael's burial ground register, but no luck...there are Catholic Burials for March 1889 but no sign of James - I'd suspect maybe a burial back where he seems to have come from near Lady's Island.

One possible line of research that might be worth a try would be to follow up on the Children, particularly any that stayed in or around Wexford town, and see if death certs and possible newspaper death notices might be found for them - some could be buried in the same graveyard as their parents.

Just to note some details on the terms and records - Burial grounds attached to churches or on former church sites are refereed to as Graveyards, burial grounds run by councils or charitable committees or even commercial bodies are called Cemeteries. Cemeteries generally kept good records with neatly laid out plots with a grid like arrangement. Church Graveyards, especially older ones, may be a little more disorganised - records kept vary, Church of Ireland church and parishes usually kept good death/burial records and in many cases have an attached graveyard, other denominations may be buried in these but not always recorded in the registers. Catholic parishes rarely kept death/burial registers and may not have an attached graveyard - in this case historic (i.e. pre-reformation) graveyards or Church of Ireland graveyards in the area could have been used. In some cases local authorities took old Graveyards into care and kept records for burials after that - this seems to be the case with the old Wexford Town burial grounds (St. Michael's, St. John's etc).

The other type of records of burial grounds are the Memorial Transcripts - e.g. Cantwell's, FindAGrave etc - these depend on there being a legible headstone or memorial of some kind. I've seen cases where Cantwell transcribed a headstone as part of his survey (1970s) which is no longer fully legible today... much of the inscription has weathered

Crosstown Cemetery was not covered by Cantwell, probably because it was considered too recent - he started his survey with an 1880 cut-off, although he revised this later..