AND NOW FOR OUR MCMAHONS

Dear Jude

I hope someone with a connection to the Curtis/McMahon family will be in touch. In the meantime please feel free to add your ancestor's details to our XO Chronicles Project. You can learn more about it HERE. It might be another avenue through which others can learn more about the family and open it up to a wider audience. As an aside, this is an interesting tutorial on chain migration you might find interesting. You might also be interested in this wider McMahon site, even though it does reference Co. Monaghan. 

Best wishes

Clare Doyle

Genealogy Support 

Clare: Do you want to move the post off to another section?  That would be your choice absolutely.  J

Hi Jude, not at all - you can leave the message here and also add to the Chronicles if you wish! 

All the best

Clare

Genealogy Support 

Dear Jude,

I don't know what Irish records you've searched, so I may be telling you something you already know. Have you looked at the Catholic parish records on the National Library of Ireland site (www.nli.ie) ? The records for Killinaboy/Rath go back quite early in the 19th century. Now that you have a parish, if you have a guess about when a person was born, you can look through a few years before and after. I've been through a lot of the records and I do remember noticing McMahons. They're not indexed, so you have to read through them; some pages are in better condition than others. The Co. Clare library also has lots of good information on its website, if you're not familiar with that - www.clarelibrary.ie.

The Catholic records were a goldmine for me. I had found my great-great grandparents' civil marriage record on ancestry.com, which gave me the specific townlands they lived in when they were married; Griffith's confirmed this and the Tithe Applotment books suggested nearby towns where they might have lived before. I believe the civil marriage records for Catholics started in 1876, lucky for me the year they married. But ancestry has also indexed some of the church records as well. Having the townlands helped when I searched the Catholic parish records, as the townland is frequently noted. In my case, it also helped that the parents and two sons stayed in Ireland while all the daughters left, and that happened fairly late in the 19th century. So the family could still be found in the same place in the 1901 and 1911 censuses. I also found my great-grandfather's mother and brother living fairly close by. With all this I eventually found all the surnames of the previous generation, and even earlier in one case. 

If you find any Guilligan, McGan, Hogan, Neylon, or Fitzpatrick in your line, we might find some common names. I haven't gotten around to a dna test yet. 

Another branch of my family settled in Newark, NJ before 1850, and there was a very large Irish population there. More from Ulster than Connacht, I think. So if you're not sure where in New Jersey your Nell was born, you might look into Newark as well. 

Hope that's helpful. Good luck.

Ellen

Ellen:  Thank you so much for all the suggestions and I'm so glad you have had so much good fortune hunting.  I think that the lack of records, with all detailed ones later than the 1820s to 1850/1 that I'm searching, makes a big difference in success. Sorry for my delay responding but had medical issues in house that took all focus.  Back now!  What I wanted to ask you about was a possible connection with your surname Neylan.   Is Noland an anglicized version?  My brother's dna from FT did not locate any one closer than genetic distance of 5 generations.  But among the only six individuals in this 5 generation distance were three men named Noland (and one named Curtin whom we know were located in the wider Munster area as well.)  One ancestor was named: Pierce Noland b abt 1654 Tipperary.  Any chance we overlap even if way back?  Did you ever do dna?  We have various amounts of data on ancestry, 23 and me, and FT.   My mtdna is in process with FT as well.  Let me know if we can look each other up.  Jude

Dear Jude,

I'm sorry to be slow in replying. I've been pretty busy with work recently. I still haven't done a DNA test. I'm doubtful about Neylon being changed into Noland, but I guess it's possible. There are several sites I've come across that give background and permutations on Irish names; the one that comes to mind now is the Irish Times genealogy site. 

I've seen the name Curtin multiple times in parish records for Clare -- whether Killinaboy or Rath or another close by I don't remember. 

I have to run now but will come back later and look again at your last message. None of my Clare people went to New Jersey or Ontario, but I do have a little experience with records from both of those places with other branches of the family.

Ellen

Made a discovery that just might help searching for Irish records.   I didn't lose John and Ellen Curtis' first born son after the U.S. Federal Census of 1860.  He in fact was a substitute for a doctor in the civil war.  And he became an apparently succfull businessman, but under the name Joseph P. Curtis.  Really makes sense in terms of family structure.  So would Joseph be the Curtis or the McMahon grandfather's name if they followed Irish naming patterns?  Since James Francis is the name that was given their first born American son, and it continued until ended by an early accidental death of # IV, without children,  I've hypothosized that this might have been the name of the Curtis grandfather.  Any thoughts?