D - David Hall

I have a bit of a conundrum with my great great great grandfather David Hall. He was born about 1800 most likely in Cavan, or Monaghan, Ireland. He married about 1820 to Margaret Pritchard and they had about thirteen children.

But who were his parents? 

There are a few challenges unravelling this.

·         There is at least one other David Hall born around the same time and in the general area.

·         The family is likely an Ulster Plantation family – because let’s face it, Hall is not a very Irish surname. They lived in the same area for generations, went to the same Presbyterian churches and intermarried A LOT.

·         David’s daughter Anne, my great great grandmother, married another Hall. Just a coincidence? A cousin or second cousin?

William Hall, Anne’s husband was the son of Samuel Hall and Sarah Bailey. We knew this, as well as who Anne’s parents were from their death certificates in New Zealand. For a long time that was the extent of our knowledge.

Then along came DNA and the discovery that other branches of Samuel’s tree had also come to New Zealand. Surely people at the time knew one another and the family connection – but overtime the knowledge was lost.

Contacting other DNA testers in an endeavour to unravel the Irish branch of our tree, research all seemed to point to Samuel’s parents being William Hall 1769-1833 and Arabella Reilly.

Certainly, there are a lot of DNA matches where you can see the connections to each other through Samuel’s siblings. Researchers had found records for the children of William and Arabella – at least seven – including a David.

We have DNA matches to William’s family including descendants of his aunts and uncles (Samuel’s siblings), so it seemed quite resolved there. We also had good matches with Anne’s family going back into the past a little further and following her mother’s maternal line. For most of the descendants of William and Anne everything made sense, they should have matches to both families. But then some of Anne’s siblings’ descendants appeared to have matches to William's family!

The only way I can see this being possible is if “my” David Hall born about 1800 and died on 26 February 1883 at Coppenagh Mills is the son of William and Arabella Hall, born in 1797 at Lattacapple. This would mean that my great great grandparents William and Anne were first cousins. Or is it just an endogamy effect living in the same community for so long?

What do you think? Do you have a David Hall in your tree too? Is he this guy, or another one altogether? Please contact me if you think you can help.

 

 

R - Richard

Richard Gibson was born in Corraderran in the parish of Killeshandra, Cavan in Ireland in about February 1841. He appears with his family on a surviving piece of the Irish census taken on the night of 6 June 1841. It was a great census, with so much more information collected than the English census which was taken that same night.

He was the 12^th and youngest child in his family. By the time of his birth four of his elder siblings had died. George aged 16 in 1839, Margaret age 13 in 1838, William aged 1 month (a visitation of God) in 1836 and William Henry in 1840 aged less than 1 year. His 2^nd eldest sister Hester had already emigrated to America and was employed there as a servant.

This census recorded the population of Ireland as being 8, 175, 124 million. By the time the next census was taken in 1851 the population had dropped over 1.5 million. This was because of the Famine which was responsible for approximately 1 million deaths and the great migration which saw about a million people leave Ireland to start new lives in England and in the colonies.

Not a lot more is known about Richard's siblings and how they fared through the Famine. A brother James emigrated to New South Wales in the late 1850’s marrying in 1860. His bride has been born in Fermanagh, Ireland and emigrated as a baby with her parents and siblings in 1839. Another brother Ephraim emigrated to New York with his wife in the early 1860s.

Richard too, packed his bags and left Ireland, arriving at Twofold Bay, (Eden) New South Wales on 21 May 1867 as a passenger on the Lighthorse Brigade. Just over a year later he married the younger sister of his brother’s wife and settled into farming in the south coast hinterland; Kiama, Berrima, Burrawang, Jamberoo, Robertson before moving to Unanderra in his later years.

Richard and Harriett raised a family of seven children. They lost their eldest grandson at Pozieres in July 1916 and saw many other grandchildren grow and marry in their lifetime. They were great grandparents by the time of their deaths.

Richard was my daughters 3 x great grandfather. She has four 3 x great grandparents born in Ireland who emigrated to Australia and New Zealand and three of them are from County Cavan - but from completely opposite sides of the county.

How’s that for a Random fact – to round out this letter of the alphabet !

I - Ireland

We all have some Irish in our families don’t we ? It certainly seems that way. The Famine was certainly a catalyst, but not the only reason. They left their native country in droves and went to every corner of the world.

My great-great-grandfather Edward Vose and at least two of his siblings were born in Ireland. His father was with the Royal Sappers and Miners and posted to Ireland to carry out the Ordinance Survey of Ireland. As was often the way then, the entire family travelled with the Army – even the families of Privates. Apparently though the topic of being born in Ireland was a touchy one, his grand-daughter in a letter to my parents said that although it was true that he was born there – he made sure everyone knew that he wasn’t actually Irish.

But there are Irish in my family on my Dad’s side.

Dad’s grandmother Sarah Hall came to New Zealand with her parents and siblings in 1877. They were from near Cootehill in Cavan. One of Sarah’s aunts, a sister of her mother Anne, also emigrated to New Zealand in the 1880s. Another of her mother’s sisters emigrated to New York in the 1850’s and a brother and some their cousins followed in the 1870’s and 1880’s. One of Sarah’s cousins founded the Californian Perfume Company which would later become Avon.

Sarah’s mother was a Hall too – coincidence ? I used to think so. Then along came DNA.

Some years ago, I had made contact with a cousin in New York and he sent me a lot of research from a fellow cousin in New Zealand. None of which I had seen before, but when a DNA match appeared in our lists of matches for the mother of the author of the research, I reasoned I could attribute our match (and shared matches) to Sarah’s mother’s family.

There were many other matches though who appeared to be in Ireland, or to have roots there. None of the names in their trees were familiar to me, but I did notice commonalities across some of their trees. I put it in the too hard basket for quite a while.

Then one day, I decided that I need to make a start to try to unravel it all and so I messaged a few of the larger matches. Some replied and were as baffled as me, but one was the key to it all. It seemed most of these people were connected through Sarah’s father William. My new DNA matched cousins had the names of a couple who turned out to be the likely great-grandparents of Sarah. They had had a large family and as with Sarah’s mother’s family, many of her father’s had also emigrated to the US and even New Zealand.

A lot of information was shared across the interweb. They had some children in their tree who they didn’t know too much about, so it seemed that Sarah’s paternal grandfather fitted in there. What a surprise to learn that Sarah had relatives on her father’s side who had also emigrated to New Zealand, this time settling in Canterbury, rather than Auckland and the Waikato. All of the common names I had seen in the trees for the mystery DNA matches fell into place amongst the descendants of siblings of Sarah’s grandfather.

Solved, I thought.

But then, my original DNA match, the one I had been using as a control for Sarah’s mother’s side of the family appeared to have shared matches to Sarah’s father’s side of the tree too.  As I see it the only way that can be, is if Sarah’s parents were related… I went back and looked at the new tree from those new Irish relatives and what did I see ? Another son in the family they had pieced together where they didn’t have information going forward – and his name ? David…the same as Sarah’s grandfather.

From email discussions with a couple of others it seems that it is highly likely that Anne and William Hall were first cousins. The community they came from was a close one, they were Presbyterian and there seems to have been a lot of intermarriage between local families through the generations.

Being Presbyterian as well seems to point back to Scotland; perhaps it is true that these families were part of the Ulster Plantation settlement in Ireland in the 17^th century. They all do seem to have more Anglo sounding surnames than what are normally thought of as being typically Irish. (Bailey, Hall, Pritchard, Reilly, Moncrieff, Livingstone, Montgomery et. al.,)

There is still a lot of unravelling to do, and it still seems quite overwhelming. But I will get there in the end.

5 Generations of migration and location

Well, my feed has been full of these amazing pedigree charts from fellow genealogists, so I just had to join in. In fact I've done four - my parents, my own and my daughters, to see the differences a generation makes in both directions. 

No wonder that DNA puzzle is hard to solve.

This was all initiated by J Paul Hawthorne. What a great idea.

ME

DAD

MUM

LAUREN

There you go - not as pretty as they could be, but you get the general idea. You might need to enlarge them to read closely.

A new branch to explore

So, opportunity presented itself to me last night in the form of a tweet about new editions of various newspapers having been digitised and made available on Trove . 

A lot of the titles were from New South Wales, and some even from the South Coast and Illawarra area. Too tempting, I couldn't help myself

Here is one of the gems I discovered, about a branch I don't know too much of. But I will be finding out more now that I have been re-inspired - watch this space.

The Kiama Independent and Shoalhaven Advertiser (NSW 1863 - 1947) Saturday 20 April 1912 page 2 article102131970-3-001

John was part of a large Irish family which had arrived in the Illawarra in 1840. His sisters, the Mesdames James and R Gibson were married to brothers who had also emigrated separately, from Ireland in the 1860's. Mrs R Gibson is my daughter's 3 x great grandmother. And how great to get the married names of two other sisters - since this family seems to be indexed as IRVINE, IRVIN, and IRWIN on the bdms I have studied. Maybe soon I will be able to pinpoint some of the other family members.

From my little search just now on Trove, I think there may have been other members of the wider family who emigrated at the same time as John's parents, eldest sister and grandparents.

Check back soon, I'm saving some awesome ANZAC tidbits which mention the Gibson family for another post. Have to say that Trove is in my top ten favourite sites list, and getting pretty close to the top position.

This post forms part of Trove Tuesday as suggested by Amy, from Branches, Leaves & Pollen .