Johnston/Johnson/ Byrne/Burns families Kilcoo

Regarding the question about the marriage information being added, you enquire whether Michael would have visited the church. The answer would be no. The priest conducting the marriage in Liverpool would have written to the priest in Bryansford to confirm the personal details, and he would have added this information then.

Statutory birth registration started in Ireland in 1864. I looked up the statutory birth certs for Patrick David J. His date of birth is 1.11.1867. Family lived at Drumena, and his father was a basket maker. Mary was born 2.6.1870 & Catherine 31.10.1872. Again at Drumena. Father was a labourer. If you are observant, you’ll notice that two of those births apparently occurred 6 weeks after the child was baptised.  The explanation for that apparent miracle is that the dates of birth are wrong. People didn’t hurry to register a birth if the registrar lived some distance away. They waited till they were in the area on some other business and did it then. There was a penalty for late registration though, so when they did eventually get around to the task, they just moved the date of birth to one that wouldn’t incur any late registration penalty. No-one cared when you were actually born, so it really didn’t matter.

Robert Johnston appears in the valuation revision records for Drumena until 1876 when his name is deleted. He is replaced by Catherine, suggesting Robert had died around that time. In addition to Catherine, Ellen, Patrick and John Johnson all shared plot 9 in Drumena.

http://apps.proni.gov.uk/Val12B/ImageResult.aspx

The 1901 census for Drumena appears to be missing.

This looks to be John Johnson, basket maker & farmer, in the 1911 census :

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Down/Fofanny/Drumena/242945/ 

Plot 9 in Drumena is on the shore of the Lough Island Reavy reservoir. The A25 Dublin Rd runs through the bottom of the land.