Mark,
You ask about finding birth, baptism and emigration records. The short answer is that probably none exist.
Birth and RC marriage registration didn’t start in Ireland till 1864. Prior to that we rely on church records, where they exist. I assume your family was RC. Cushendall is in the RC parish of Layde. Unfortunately their records don’t start till 1838, so very simply there are no records for someone born or married there before that.
The news on emigration isn’t very good either. The authorities in Ireland had no interest in who left and so there are no comprehensive departure records. Such records as do exist for emigrants are usually compiled for the authorities in the destination country. However Canada does not appear to have routinely required any before around 1850, so if there are no records in Canada then there are no records.
For information on life in the Layd area in the 1830s, a good source is the Ordnance Survey memoirs which for the civil parish of Layd were compiled in 1832. I have a copy and if you provide an e-mail address I can send it to you. (About 20 pages of information). On emigration & migration it says:
“About a dozen (on average) annually emigrate in spring to Canada. A few have lately returned, not finding the country to answer their expectations concerning it. A very few men go annually to the English and Scottish harvests and return when they are over.”
Another source you may find helpful is Brian S Turner’s recent book: "Family names in the Glens of Antrim.” The book goes into considerable detail about the origins of all the main names in the Glens including McAuley and McNeill. (McAuley and variant spellings gets 10 pages). It’s the most common surname in the Glens. In the 1963 electoral roll there were a few Macaulays but most folk in the Glens spelled it McAuley then. However going back a bit all sorts of spellings were used eg McAla. Turner states that the McAuleys probably originated in Scotland and there is evidence to support that eg a grave in Layd churchyard mentioning Macaulays who originated in Ardincaple, Dunbartonshire. Turner isn’t total certain of where the majority originate, nor of when they first arrived in the Glens area. He points out that whilst many of the surnames in the Glens such as McNeill are common names in Kintyre and adjacent islands in Scotland, McAulay is not common there. So he thinks their origins are not as clear-cut as is the case for many of those other Scottish surnames in the Glens.
Turner quotes a source named Boyle: “Boyle remarks on the “trifling anecdotes” that are told about the McAuleys in Layd parish and that by “universal opinion” they were recalled as having been “the terror and nuisance of the country.” Another paragraph of the survey memoir makes an interesting reference to the connections between politics and the decline of the clan fights in which the McAulays were leading participants. Is it possible that we are seeing here a remnant and resentful memory of those who were displaced by the incoming Scots?”
McNeill gets about 4 pages. Turner is fairly confident they originated in Gigha with some coming from Kintyre. (Gigha’s about 15 miles north of Cushendall) just off the Kintyre coast. It’s low lying but you can see it on a good day from Tor Head in Antrim. There’s a gravestone in Layd for an Edmund McNeil, originally of Macrihanish, which is across the water on the west side of Kintyre. There’s quite a few McNeills in Keil cemetery at Southend, Kintyre too. That’s about 10 miles from Cushendall so seems a pretty likely connection to me.
You mention Jenny speaking Gaelic. The Gaelic spoken in the Glens is/was a different dialect to that spoken in other parts of Ireland but pretty well identical to Scottish Gaelic. That’s obviously a result of the common heritage. According to “Antrim and Argyll: Gaelic Connections” edited by Wm Roulston (page 2): “Gaelic links between Antrim & Argyll lasted well into the modern period. As late as 1881, 65% of the population of Argyll was Gaelic speaking, and clusters of native speakers of Argyll Gaelic survived into the twenty first century. Gaelic faded from Antrim somewhat earlier, but the Ordnance Survey memoirs show a vibrant Gaelic culture in the Glens of Antrim before the Famine, 43% of Rathlin Islanders were Gaelic speaking in 1901, and there were still native speakers of Antrim Gaelic in the second half of the twentieth century. The Antrim & Argyll dialects of Gaelic were linguistically very close.”
Elwyn
Ireland Reaching Out Volunteer
