Still looking Fee/Mills Families in Drumgrole/Ballybay

Kathy:

Welcome back to Ireland Reaching Out!

You get an A+ for your sense of humor.

Unfortunately, I checked on Roots Ireland and could not find any good Fee records.

Have you considered autosomal DNA testing?

Roger McDonnell

Yes I have considered it. But not doing yet...
I am still scratching for news of them.
Here's a piece of communication with a 4th cousin in Newcastle..."My father told me a story when he was alive about how the Fees came to be in Manchester which may or may not be correct- something about having to flee Ireland because of trouble with a member of the family who was in the Royal Irish or Ulster Constabulary."

John Mills was a drunk, a profligate spender of money and drove his wife, Margaret Fee, to flee to New Zealand. He got in an argument on the 12th of July one year (1860s?) with his 2nd wife (he never divorced the first), a (Scouse) widow woman named Welch, a Catholic, and she stabbed him in the arm over an Orange issue ("He was being verry loyal") and he scarpered back to Ireland to be with his ma, at Drumgrole. Possibly mid 1860s.

In 1869 Michael Fee writes "I have to tell all about my father’s death, Uncle Tom & Uncle Wm & Aunt Margret McRees death. Aunt Bell & Betty is living, yet I did not see them. But I seen Aunt Nancy in Drumgrole. She has all the place herself. James Peery has Uncle Tom’s."
His father's death happened in 1861. They had no mail during the Civil War, not the English Fees, anyway.
The Fees were tied to the McClelland family who lived next to Cahan's meeting house somewhere near Ballybay on the Monaghan Road, one of Michael's daughter's married Robert McClelland in Manchester, and he went on to be a plain clothes detective for the old bill in Manchester.
If there were Methodists in Ireland, then that is where they might be worshiping. Some of them were Methodists and Wesleyans in Manchester, the ones who made to the states were Methodist Episcopalians and really stroppy abolitionists.

Could you find anything on the Mills family from Irish Roots? I am not related to them, but Hugh Mills and my GG Grandmother Elizabeth were married and had kids. I know that's a pretty common name, and all the kids get named after someone with the same last name. I don't know when Hugh was born, but I have her as being born in the late teens, 1817 or thereabouts...
John Mills was born around 1828, he married Margaret Fee. It could have happened in Ireland, I have searched the Manchester/Lancs site of banns and weddings and found nothing there for them.
The place names I have associated with the Mills and Fees are Corbyfin, Derevaley, Drumgrole and Newbliss. Tithe Applotment books show Alexander Mills and Michael Fee at Corbyfin in 1929. In 1870, Michael Fee (the son or grandson of the Applotment Fee?) thought George Mills might have Corbyfin, but he did not.

Michael Fee writes in 1871: "I told you that Ruth and me was in Ireland in September in 69 the railway runs into Ballybay in the middle of the cow fair & across the street & through where the gate of Ned Poulston's yard was & over the river & a long the hollow to the meeting houses at Derevaley & on to Newbliss & where else I don't know. There was nobody in the town hardly that I knew & nobody knew me. Thirty two years made a great change. There was Wm Taylor, the sexton of the church that I knew & James Grey, Jimmy Grey's son that I knew and that was all I seen none of the Mills while I was there the country looks the same I knew every pad through it. I went through Corbyfin & Drumgrole. Aunt Nancy lives there yet. She has a son & daughter. The son is about 16 & the girl a bout 13 or the may be older.

Uncle Wm is dead Eleven or twelve years he died of an abscess on the spine inwardly & not decline from consumption. Uncle Tom died between Christmas & New Years day in '64 of gastric fever."

They were also friends or associates of Isaac Gault, who was in Ireland and Manchester--textile guy, I think.

Thanks for looking like you did. If I didn't have the letters, I wouldn't know these people, Drumgrole or even Co Monaghan had ever existed. I still hold out hope for a family member, but the big rush of exiting new info and discoveries has waned here because of my great research :D, and all the people who have helped me make them. Drumgrole gets quite a few people wanting to look at it, I read on the internet. :D

Thanks again. I'll think of the DNA thing...

Hi, just joined today so need to get my notes together but I think we come from the same Fee/McClelland line....'my' McClelland, William from Drumlinny (Cahans), married Fanny Fee (father Michael) in Lancashire, UK.

Helen, that makes me very excited.  I really want to know more about these people.  Michael was my gran's great uncle, never met him, I don't even know if she knew about them.  Until now, with exception of some McKittricks in Manchester, who were more about the McKittrick side, I have not had much of a nibble...Oh and someone from the Gordon family of Newcastle, to whom Maria (Michael's younger sister) was married into--a big step up--the Gordon family owned a newspaper.  The person I spoke to said he believes they were thrown out of Monaghan because of some political agitation by one of the family members (probably one of the Mills, who a couple of the Fee daughters married).  Not confirmed.  Michael mentions William (from beside Cahan's meeting house) and Fanny in his letters to my 2x great gran Elizabeth, another sister.

So yay!

11 May 10:25 am PDT

Hi Kathy A . . .

Please contact me via jcoberg@shaw.ca

I have three comments of poss value to you in re FEE/MILLS Families.

Tks.

J

Hi Kathy A,

In your 22 Oct 2016 reply in this thread, you wrote, "The place names I have associated with the Mills and Fees are Corbyfin, Derevaley, Drumgrole and Newbliss."  At https://www.townlands.ie/monaghan/  I see a townland named DERRYVALLY immediately to the west of Ballybay and very close to at least one of the Cahans Meeting House locations. [ https://www.townlands.ie/monaghan/cremorne/ballybay/ballybay-rural/derr… ]  Derevaley and Derryvally could be one of the townlands you are looking for ... different spelling but phonetically virtually the same, while a lot of spelling in English in years past was not standardized.  Suggest you contact The Cahans Project online.  Could be helpful, in re your comment yesterday that "Michael mentions William (from beside Cahan's meeting house) and Fanny in his letters to my 2x great gran Elizabeth, another sister."

Oh Johnny Oh