Catherine (maiden name not known) Wheelan

Hello Molly,

The RootsIreland subscription website has Clonbroney, Longford Catholic Parish registers of baptisms and marriages that go back to the year 1828. From the information you provided, four of Catherine Wheelen’s children, Edward, Thomas, Catherine, and Elizabeth, were born after the year 1828. Their birth years in U.S. census records or obituaries may not be accurate, but it may be worth the expense to see if you can find their individual baptisms at RootsIreland.

See the RootsIreland availability for the Clonbroney Catholic registers at the following link: https://i2.paste.pics/O8P84.png

If your Wheelen ancestors belonged to the Church of Ireland, RootsIreland has Clonbroney Church of Ireland parish registers of baptisms from 1821, marriages from 1823, and deaths from 1822. See: https://i2.paste.pics/O8PAV.png

Church records at RootsIreland are transcriptions, not copies of originals.

There are four subscription packages available at RootsIreland, including a one day subscription for $18. For more information, go to: https://rootsireland.ie/ifhf/subscribe.php

Neither the Catholic Church, or Church of Ireland parish registers of marriages, go back far enough in time to have recorded Catherine’s marriage if she had married before 1820.

Church of Ireland baptism traditionally do not record the maiden name of the child’s mother, though I’ve seen exceptions to this in some Church of Ireland baptisms.

THE TITHE APPLOTMENT BOOKS

An Irish agricultural land record known as the Tithe Applotment Books shows that an Edward “Wheelan” was a farmer in the townland of Glenoughill, Civil Parish of Clonbroney, County Longford. The date of the tithe record is 1825. See the Tithe Applotment Book index for Edward Wheelan at: https://tinyurl.com/nhzjunm3

Another spelling for the name of the townland where Edward Wheelan farmed is “Glenoghill,” according to the IreAtlas Townland Data Base: https://tinyurl.com/43kzxfch

Under the Tithe Applotment Books famers in the 32 counties of Ireland were required to pay a portion of their income toward the upkeep of the established Church of Ireland. Needless to say, Catholic famers, who made up the majority of farmers in Ireland, were not happy to pay hard-earned money to a religious denomination that had persecuted Catholics in the past, especially under the infamous Penal Laws. See the Wikipedia article at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_laws_(Ireland)

I accessed the Tithe Applotment Books search engine for free at the National Archives of Ireland website link at: http://titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie/search/tab/home.jsp

I don’t know if Edward Wheelan was Catherine’s husband, but your information shows that Catherine had a son named Edward born in 1830, five years after the Tithe Applotment Books recorded farmers in the townland of Glenoghill, Civil Parish of Clonbroney.

If your Wheelens were Catholic, baptism records for Catherine’s children (if found at RootsIreland), may possibly tell you what her maiden name was. With her maiden name we could then look for farmers in the Clonbroney Civil Parish recorded in the Tithe Applotment Books with the same last name as Catherine.

If you decide to tie into one of the RootsIreland subscriptions and think you’ve uncovered any information about your Wheelen/Wheelan ancestors, please send a reply with the records you discovered.

With Best Wishes,

Dave Boylan

Molly,

Catherine Wheelan's son at 106 Bergen Street was Edward Wheelan. See attached 1861 Directory of Bergan Street, Jersey City. I also note a William Wheelan recorded at 103 Bergen, probably his brother.

I see the following recorded in the 7th September 1850 Census of Jersey City, Hudson, New Jersey, U.S.:

William Welan, aged 28, born in Ireland

Catherine Welan, aged 25, born in Ireland

William Welan, aged 10 months, born in New Jersey

Edward Welan, aged 22, born in Ireland

Thomas Welan, aged 19, Born in Ireland

As Dave Boylan says, the Edward Wheelan recorded at Glenoghil Townland, Clonbroney Civil Parish, County Longford in the 1825 Tithe Applotment Books certainly looks interesting, particularly as he was the only Whelan recorded in Clonbroney Civil Parish at that time.

However, we do not know Catherine Wheelan's maiden name. It might be helpful if you could find the marriage certificates and death certificates of all of her children to see if any of them may contain her surname.

Hoping this helps,

Attachment (which did not go with my last post)::

JerseyCityDirectory1861-Edward&WilliamWheelan.png