Family Tree brick wall - Moloney / MacNamara Clare

Rmulvany

Hi all,
Please bear with me as I try and explain where I currently am with regards my brick wall.

I am trying to find out information on my 2 x great-grandparents Denis and Bridget Moloney.
An obvious start point would be a marriage cert, this would give parents etc so help narrow down birth certs.

My great-grandmother was born Bridget Moloney in Caherhurley, Tuamgraney, Scariff, Co. Clare.
I have found her birth cert in IrishGenealogy under Scariff on 17th June 1901.
She was born to Denis Moloney and Bridget MacNamara.

Census 1901:
House 7, Caherhurley
- Denis Moloney, 36, Head
- Bridget Moloney, 28, Wife

Census 1911: [Note the ages seem to be incorrect when compared to 1901 ages.]
- Denis Moloney, 48, Head, Married for 14 years, Children born & living: 1
- Bridget Moloney, 48, Wife
- Bridget Moloney, 9, Daughter

Death certs:
Bridget Moloney, 30th June 1914, aged 50
Denis Moloney, 19th Dec 1944, aged 82

Estimated birth years based off census dates and death cert:
Bridget MacNamara: 1863 - 1873
Denis Moloney: 1862 - 1865

From a quick chat with my grandmother, she mentioned that Bridget MacNamara was from Crusheen and that Denis and Bridget may have met in the US.
Hopefully when this isolation period is over she will be able to call out to her brother who may know more... fingers crossed!

Rmulvany

On IrishGenealogy.ie, Crusheen comes under the Ennis group.
When I searched Ennis for Bridget MacNamara's birth in the range 1863 - 1873 I got 5 possibilities.

As in the main post, Census 1911 shows that Denis and Bridget married in c. 1897. I have not found any results as of yet

pinkypinky

Ok, we'll get going on this.

Ages are very variable and you continue with the approach of a range of dates.


Side point: can your grandmother not call him now?! Doesn't she know this is crucial!

Rmulvany

pinkypinky wrote: »

Ok, we'll get going on this.

Ages are very variable and you continue with the approach of a range of dates.


Side point: can your grandmother not call him now?! Doesn't she know this is crucial!

I wish she could, he's a couple of years older than her and doesn't seem to do phone conversations.
It's amazing how some people don't seem to get genealogy. I was asking my grandmother about this and she was resigned that she didn't know about them... and then she mentioned that my grandparents had met in the US, and then that there's a strong Crusheen link, and then that there was a branch of "Macks" from Crusheen who were cousins. This is all golden information

pinkypinky

That's a shame about your grand-uncle.
People often think they know nothing useful but it's all about asking the right questions.

I looked at ancestry but haven't thrown up anything obvious for them in the census, marriage records or passenger lists so far.

Census links for reference:
http://census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Clare/Caherhurley/Caherhurley/1084157/

http://census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Clare/Caherhurly/Caherhurly/367412/

Rmulvany

Slight progress with this... I think!
I decided to sign up briefly to IrishRoots as I thought they might have the missing marriage cert.
So I searched for Denis Moloney c. 1900 and got a possible marriage cert (attached)
Just my luck that this record doesn't have any parents named! Just two witnesses.

Is there anywhere I can go to find maybe a microfilm of this record to double check, where do IrishRoots get there info from? Thanks

pinkypinky

They will have gone to the church directly for that transcription.
It's definitely worth contacting the church when it's open again to see if there's more.
It's a very bare bones transcription.

Rmulvany

pinkypinky wrote: »

They will have gone to the church directly for that transcription.
It's definitely worth contacting the church when it's open again to see if there's more.
It's a very bare bones transcription.

Thanks I hadn't thought of that, I'll look into the church's record.
This could be them, Beagh wouldn't be a million miles away from Crusheen where I believe Bridget to be from. So this makes me more hopeful that the civil marriage registration might be out there... Somewhere

pinkypinky

:rolleyes: The only case I've found of a marriage not be registered, i.e. there's a church entry but no civil, is from Galway...

Rmulvany

A brief update on this... nothing has changed

So through RootsIreland I managed to find a possible church record for the church in Beagh in Co. Galway. Turns out the Beagh church is in Shanaglish which is close to Crusheen where I am told Bridget MacNamare came from. Unfortunately the only information on the cert is the names of the husband, wife, and 2 witnesses.
In search of more information and hopefully the matching Civil Cert I contacted the East Galway Family History Society who gave this record to Roots but they were unable to find anything further. I was forwarded to Civil Registration Office for Galway and they weren't able to find anything. Could be due to the location of Shanaglish on the Galway / Clare border that the records are in Clare and not Galway... I'll try that next!
The woman in the records office said that there should be a civil record, especially for a 1897 marriage!

crossman47

There is a Denis Maloney (spelling can often be an issue) born on 5 July 1865 and baptised in Mountshannon. Parents are John Maloney and Martha Flanigan (sic). Is that a possibility? Found via familysearch.

tedheavenly

Hi rmulvany. I am from Beagh myself and can inform you the priest did not register a large number of marriages during this time period (roughly from 18900s until 19111/12), so unfortunately, it could be that your marriage is one of those not registered with the registrar in Gort

Rmulvany

Quick question regarding X-matches in my DNA results. I have seem this on family tree DNA (ftDNA).
Am I correct in assuming that anyone with an "x-match" to me would be related to me on my maternal line?

If this is true then this would be helpful in this research as the brick wall is my mother's maternal grandmother?

pinkypinky

No, you're confusing X DNA with mitochondrial DNA.

There's an excellent talk on YouTube from Belfast's Genetic Genealogy Conference this year, which I recommend watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lXeAkxiajs

Rmulvany

pinkypinky wrote: »

No, you're confusing X DNA with mitochondrial DNA.

There's an excellent talk on YouTube from Belfast's Genetic Genealogy Conference this year, which I recommend watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lXeAkxiajs

Pinkypinky thank you for that link, I had seen it in passing a few times but didn't watch it because "it's long and I know what X is"
How wrong I was!

Yes I had been mixing up X and mt.

I'm helping my grandfather (maternal) process his DNA results so we added them to ftDNA and that's what made me look further into my X-matches.
Unfortunately they are all pretty small, none are > 10 cM
Even on mine and my grandfather's results we only match 16.09 cM on X.

I bought a kit for my grandmother recently so I am really looking forward to those results.

I expect to have a larger X match with her as it looks like my mother passed down majority her mothers X DNA

But thankfully even now I can look at my X matches and filter out those I now know to be my grandfathers and they should be my grandmothers.

pinkypinky

Small matches (of any kind) can be identical by accident as well but with the help of a friend, I recently confirmed a sibling relationship, partially based on a small X match between descendants of the 2 people.