William LEECH

Welcome to ireland Reaching Out!

Our Ahoghill parish liaison appears to be away for a few days. I will alert him about this e-mail when he returns.

Roger McDonnell

Thanks Roger

Clare

Genealogy Support

Ireland XO

Statutory birth registration only started in Ireland in 1864, so for William’s birth you would need to rely in church records. Do you know what denomination he was?

There are a few Leech/Leitch gravestones in the Ballymena area, though if Matthew was a weaver he probably wouldn’t have had a gravestone. The denominations on the graves appear to include Presbyterian, Church of Ireland and Moravian.

I am not aware of his church denomination he was, although he did marry in a C of E in Bury St Edmunds Suffold, but that may because of it being his wife's church.  I believer that Matthew was the son of Thomas and with 2 brothers farmed on a property at Ahoghill, even though Matthew was a weaver on his son's army papers

William was in the Army for some years, travelling backwards and forwards between Ireland and England, a child in each country with every move!!

I would like to know if any more records can be found of the Ahoghill property. I have read the Ballymena parish records which are very scant, and I don't remember any mention of the family. If possible I would like to find out more about the family, as I do not know of Matthew and Mary's marriage or whether they had more children. Is there an Ahoghill register?

Hilary Thomas

Hilary,

Ballymena and Ahoghill are different parishes and so there are different sets of records for both. Ballymena Church of Ireland records start in 1789. There are also 6 Presbyterian churches in the town. The Non Subscribing Presbyterian church only has records from 1849, the 1st Presbyterian start in 1812, the 2nds in 1813, West St 1829. None of the others has records for the 1830s or earlier.

In Ahoghill, the Church of Ireland records start in 1811. Ahoghill 1st’s records start in 1841, the 2nd s in 1835 and the 3rds in 1859. IN addition there are several other Presbyterian churches in that general area eg Cullybackey (where there were 3 in the 1800s).

Few of the church records are on-line and so a trip to PRONI is normally required to view them all.

You say that William’s father Mathew was a weaver. If so, he’s not very likely to be a signatory to a lease. Most weavers live din small cottages and held short leases (often on an oral agreement) or no lease at all. They tended to move around to follow the work, and so liked to keep their options open. They are also generally pretty difficult to trace as they mostly passed their lives below officialdom’s radar.

If you give me details of the Mathew who lived in Ahoghill (ie where did you find the lease etc), I’ll see what more information I can find on him.

Hi Elwyn, Thank you for your reply.   I read the Ballymeena parish register on an LDS film of which there were just 12 pages.  I have not read any of the protestant registers.  I honestly cannot remember where I found a copy of the lease. I will search Ancestry and Findmypast in case it was one of those.  I can remember the ruled columns and the Ahoghill property being leased by a Thomas Leech and his 3 sons, he was then dec'd and 1 son also and that left 2 sons. I don't remember if I took a copy. I probably did but at the moment where it is, is anyones guess, which is a dreadful confession for someone who has done as mcuh research as I have!.  I suspect it could have been connected with the Leech's who were in the Griffiths Valuation, although I remember taking it further than there. I have not found any other Matthew Leech, and with the time span of the lease, and the time of Wm, b c 1836, son of Matthew, entering the army and signing up in Lisbon? poss c 1854 - anyone can move or change areas and occupations - and he does not state if his father is living or deceased at that time. He could have been a weaver all through the time that his family held an interst in that land.

Thank you for your help.

Hilary Thomas

Hilary,

I had a look at the 1901 census for Co. Antrim. There’s about 300 Leech/Leetch listed. Most were Presbyterian, some were Church of Ireland (ie Anglican) and a handful were Roman Catholic. Statistically therefore, he was most likely to have been a Presbyterian. So you probably need to look at those records for Ballymena in PRONI. (LDS haven’t got copies of those records, so you either need to go in person or get a researcher to look them up for you).

I had a look at the 1766 religious census for Ahoghill. There were 2 Leech households in the parish then. One was headed by Robert and the other by John. Both were Presbyterians. (The census doesn’t contain any other information). Most of the Presbyterians and Church of Ireland folk in the Ballymena area are descended from Scots who settled there in the 1600s. Ballymena was established by the Adair family from Kinhilt, near Stranraer who arrived around 1625 with a load of their tenants from their lands in Wigtownshire.

I had a look in Griffiths. I can see 4 Leech households in Ahoghill parish, when it was compiled in 1862, but none is held by a Mathew. So can’t help you with the lease information, unless you can direct me to the document somewhere.