Parish of O'Callaghan's Mills RC records newly transcribed

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smcarberry
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Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2007 4:31 pm
Location: USA

Parish of O'Callaghan's Mills RC records newly transcribed

Post by smcarberry » Tue Sep 22, 2015 12:00 pm

I am pleased to report that the first decade of baptism records for this parish are now online, thanks to the Clare County Library. Here is the link:

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... rberry.htm

If you have used a prior, limited database by a different transcriber, please check the records again. I found that there was a major date error at the start of the recorded baptisms. I also tried very hard to discern place names and surnames, for which I used my 20-year experience with this parish. There remains the issue of dark areas on the edges of pages, caused by poor filming. There is only one filming for this parish, so both the National Library's and LDS images are impacted. The only remedy is to obtain the actual parish book. This transcription is taken from the online images placed online by the National Library, Dublin.

Really appreciated is the second formatting of the database, by surname. This is where analysis can be done, to determine widowers who remarried, which couples moved around the parish, etc. For instance, I think I see why my family's Patrick Carberry was involved in two Driscoll baptisms: in Feb 1835 Patrick's apparent brother Peter Carberry and his wife Catherine Tynan had a child, and in the same month a Patrick Tynan and his wife Bridget Driscoll had a child, indicating that these Tynans had perhaps a sibling relationship. It also becomes apparent that the Driscoll families of this parish resided solely in the Kiluran area. Spellings become easier to check with this surname formatting. Many thanks to the Library staff who had to add approximate date information for those surname-format entries where the chronological listing has a question mark for unknown dates.

The surname formatting also reveals some families that otherwise are known as Protestant, such as Vandeleur. There are others that are associated with West Clare, such as Garry, Crowe, Bugler, and O'Shaughnessy. At some future time, estate records may show that men of those surnames were brought into the area for work purposes.

When reading the images for yourself, remember that I have had the benefit of becoming familiar with the priest's handwriting, which had a unique style for the beginning letters of a name and also for some endings. What appears in this new database is the best rendering of each name, after factoring in this handwriting style and surnames known to appear in other reliable East Clare records of this era.

Transcription continues for the remaining decades. The map that appears on the database online page shows the Parish of O'Callaghan Mills in this time period. It's outlined on the left, a rough crescent shape. The only village is Kilkishen, but the database shows clearly that the surrounding countryside held the majority of families living in the parish in this time period. This was a ruggedly rural area. There are several instances in which a number of baptisms occur on the same day, which runs counter to the practice of obtaining a baptism within a day or two of birth. Also, as time goes by, I think I saw more and more instances when the priest took time off from doing baptisms - whether he was ill or away on other business, I don't know. I do see times when someone else must be doing entries for a week or two, and a different handwriting style appears, often meaning less information on a line. I think it was the regular priest (Fr. Patrick Quaid) who tried using individual name spellings for his parishioners, so that Pat, Patt, and Patk. will all appear in the same week. A father will be shown as Rodger and his son will be noted as Rody.

I am happy to answer any questions that arise. The only wording not transcribed is where occasionally the priest noted that two children were twins; that fact is otherwise evident. It is my hope that more families can be knit together with this resource.

Sharon Carberry

smcarberry
Posts: 1281
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2007 4:31 pm
Location: USA

Re: Parish of O'Callaghan's Mills RC records newly transcrib

Post by smcarberry » Wed Sep 23, 2015 12:11 pm

Too late to edit the posting. Sorry for any confusion. Looking more closely at the map illustrating the records database, I see that it shows only part of the parish. If you click on the map image, you will be taken to a larger map section, showing that the depicted map image is that of the Clonlea portion of the Parish of O'Callaghan's Mills. The other part of the parish, a carryover from the early 1800s when this was known as a combined parish of Clonlea and Killuran, is labelled Killuran on this map and contains the village of O'Callaghan's Mills. This Killuran section completes the crescent shape of the entire parish.

The crescent shaping was an administrative construct, for actually the people of this area had extensive continual interaction with people living beyond the right edge of the crescent, in the parish of Kilseily which contains the other village of the area, Broadford. I expect that the same holds true of dealings on a daily basis with people living in the Parish of Tulla, as the village of that name is only about 5 miles from Kilkishen. There is not much chance that I will be doing a transcription of Tulla parish records, as those started before 1820 and it was always more populated that Clonlea parish.

SMC

smcarberry
Posts: 1281
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2007 4:31 pm
Location: USA

Re: Parish of O'Callaghan's Mills RC records newly transcrib

Post by smcarberry » Tue Oct 13, 2015 11:01 am

The Library has added a new portion of my transcriptions of O'Callaghan's Mills baptisms. Although an entire decade is involved, the number of records dropped to about 1200 as the birth rate decreased to less than 25% of the pre-Famine level. Many of the same surnames as before are there, with a few out-of-parish ones starting to show: Wall, Cody, Goodwin, Shaughnessy, Nihil, and Costelloe.

Work continues on the transcriptions. The current end online is Dec 1855. Many thanks to the Library for hosting the record database and providing the surname-sorted version.

Sharon Carberry

Lucille
Posts: 144
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2011 6:59 pm

Re: Parish of O'Callaghan's Mills RC records newly transcrib

Post by Lucille » Tue Oct 13, 2015 8:20 pm

Congratulations and thanks Sharon for that brilliant work.

Lucille

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