Shadwell families in Dunshaughlin, Meath:
2 Aug 1801 LAURENCE SHADWELL marries
Silley Mooney (SALLY MOONEY)
Dunshaughlin parish, Meath diocese, County Meath
1st Witness Alice Coffy
2nd Witness John Plunkett
3rd Witness George Plunkett
Note who the witnesses are. In Galway and Cork there are Shadwells who sometimes marry into the lower echelons of the Anglo Irish gentry, usually the newer ranks and occasionally the earlier Norman Irish. Some of these Shadwells are in the professions, e.g. doctors, lawyers, Church of Ireland vicars, etc. One or two families are Roman Catholic, but the others seem to be Church of Ireland. The Shadwell name arose in various locations in the UK, usually where there is or was a well or spring named for St Chad. Hence there were the Shadwells from Leeds in Yorkshire, the Shadwells in Norfolk (though Poet Laureate's family of Norfolk claimed to be descended from the Staffordshire Shadwells), There were Shadwell families in Berkshire, in Wiltshire, in Sussex and lots of other places. It is difficult to work out which of the Shadwell families in Ireland came from where in the UK originally. It is known that the father of Thomas Shadwell, Poet Laureate, was in Galway for a while, as he was Attorney General there, and was elected Collector of Galway in 1666.
The names of many of his children are unknown, and one or some of them could have made their homes in Ireland. His son Edward was in Ireland - he settled in Dublin and estabished the first family insurance company there. His nephew Charles Shadwell worked with him or took over this business.
There were Shadwells in Galway - Josiah Shadwell was a collector, married twice and had a number of children. He was probably the same Josiah Shadwell who was at West Meath, an excise officer, and either he or a Josiah Shadwell who was born earlier surveyed in 1713, in County Cavan, the estate of Ms Jane Culme : "(2): A list of the estate of Ms Jane Culme with ‘the number of acres, there quality on every pole, tate and townland according to Irish Plantation, surveyed in 1713 by Josiah Shadwell’. 1 item. This is in the NI national archives holdings, in the Maxwell estate documents. Josiah Shadwell of Eyreville, Kiltomer, Galway had a relative who was a Thomas Shadwell, living in Galway. One of Josiah Shadwell's daughters mentions a cousin Elizabeth Shadwell in Cork. Honoria, another of Josiah's daughters marries a Donellan,an Irish landed family, and then a Browne - early Anglo-Irish. Josiah Shadwell owned land in Limerick.
Other Galway Shadwells are sadlers in Loughrea, some are doctors there. One Galway Shadwell was a goldsmith.
There were Shadwells in Cork, two of whom if not more were merchants. One of these married Isabella Mitchel of Aghada, Cork, whose family also leased an estate in Gloucestershire, near Bristol, from the Archdiocese. These Mitchells, originally Quaker merchants of Bristol, settled in Cork in the 17th century, and acquired land in Watergrasshill, north of Cork City.
The problem is to work out which Shadwell families in Ireland were related, and how, and which were not.
