Hi Murf
Yes, the sending of telegrams and the listing of them in the paper was something I’d never encountered before, but it must have been the fashion around the 1950s.
Yes, I agree that the three Reverend Mothers are Catherine, Agnes and Lucy Bugler. If you are really intent on finding out which girl went into which order, you could write to the archivist of each order. I’ve written a couple of times to archivists of religious orders and on every occasion got a quick reply explaining who the person was. The address for The Good Shepherd Sisters (Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd) is on their web site:
https://www.goodshepherdsisters.com. The Presentation Sisters is a much larger organisation and have various provinces – I’m not sure if this Presentation Sisters Union, South West Province, Ireland, takes in Tipperary, but maybe the archivist would put you on the right track anyway:
http://presentationsisterssw.ie/about/contact// . The Archives of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy is at
http://sistersofmercy.ie/archives/.
Many girls in Clare were recruited to orders of nuns that had their mother houses in other countries. A relative of mine joined the Sisters of Charity of St. Martha and lived for the rest of her life in Bergerac, Bordeaux, France. I’ve discovered that other girls from Clare joined the same order, so I reckon one of those nuns was sent to Ireland, where she would have been given permission by the parish priests to visit the schools. I would never, ever, have found this relative if I hadn’t spoken to her brother. An old box of Christmas cards revealed another more distant relative, who had entered the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary in Limerick, and sent one of the Order’s own Christmas cards every year, signing it with her name in religion. There was nothing to show what her original name was, or which family she belonged to. I wrote to the archivist of the order and got a reply straightaway explaining who she was. I was a bit remiss myself when I was making my first family tree 50 years ago, and just wrote “nun” whenever one was mentioned. But later (40 years later) I got a bright idea and wrote to one nun who was still sending her Christmas card every year (all the way from Pennsylvania), and of course she was able to tell me exactly which order each of those “nuns” had entered.
In the 1950s, nuns were not allowed to go to funerals or weddings, and many of them were not allowed to visit home. I think this was to impress upon them that they were now in a new family. Later this rule was relaxed a bit. I remember two nuns from America were allowed to visit their home when their mother died, but when they came to our house, we had to take chairs outside and sit with them there. Later still, in the 1960s, that rule no longer applied, of course.
Once upon a time, religious orders expected to receive a “dowry” when a girl entered, probably the equivalent of what she would have received if she had married. I don’t know very much on this subject, but I think some orders expected a larger dowry than others, and I think some orders got a reputation for being posh. I think, for instance, that the Dominican Sisters would have been richer than some other orders. But the orders that the Bugler girls entered were not very posh, and I’m sure the Buglers had contributed large dowries when they entered, so I think well-off families did not confine themselves to well-off orders. Having said that, if the family continued to contribute handsomely to the religious order, I think that would have enhanced the status of the daughter within that order – that’s just my own suspicion, of course.
Murf, I was reading your family history:
http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... y/main.htm, and noted Catherine Murphy and her daughter Teresa McInerney – whose husband’s family (the Buglers) you have begun to research. I looked at Teresa in the 1911 census (Teresia) when she was aged 14 (living in Ennistimon) and I noticed that her father, John McInerney, obligingly gives his birthplace as Clenagh, which is in the civil parish of Kilmaleery. Had you noticed that there was a query by “moytura” in 2016, entitled “McInerneys from Clenagh, Co. Clare”:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6836. In his first posting, “Moytura” includes John (Ennistymon) in his list of the children of Patrick McInenery and Ellen Burke. If Moytura’s information in that posting is correct, those McInerneys from Clenagh really scattered themselves about.
About the non-registration of 4 Bugler births between 1895 – 1900: I noticed that births of the first two children (Christina Margaret (Gretta) in 1891, and Mary in 1892) were reported by the Nurse, Catherine Marshall (who gives her address as Mt Shannon?), and I wondered if the Buglers had continued to rely on the family nurse to report births, but no, I saw that Henry reported two other births, and Bridget reported the birth of Lucy in 1902. That put paid to that theory. Then I thought that the book for Annacotty district for those years might have been lost or misfiled, but no, I see that the birth of a William Mulqueen was registered in Annacotty in April 1895; also the birth of a John Lane, whose address is Rivers, was registerd in Annacotty in September 1895. So why not Patrick Bugler’s birth – it is a mystery.
Sheila