Search for family from Kerry?

mamagoose · 23-06-2015 11:39pm #1

Needing help with some research on family..I am in the US and not having alot of luck with the websites available.

Hermy · 24-06-2015 12:12am

Hi mamagoose.

If you'd like to give some more deatils of who, where and when you're researching some of us might be able to help you.

mamagoose · 24-06-2015 12:24am

I am helping someone with a birth family search. I know from experience that its very difficult to trace families from Ireland, I found mine but it was not easy. Anyway looking for any information on Patrick and Ellen Herlihy. They were born late 1890's and married approx. 1916. They had 5 children named Patrick, Cornelius, Timothy, Mary and Annie. We believe Mary was born 1929. Patrick and Cornelius were a little older. They were from the Kerry area and were believed to be farmers. The information is not accurate but a close guess. Mary left the family and moved to England approx 1950, then onto Montreal for approx 3 years, then to Toronto Canada.

shanew · 24-06-2015 7:26am

Your dates are a little too recent for several of the usual online sources - i.e. Census returns and parish records, so you will probably have to look to civil records.

Do you know Ellen's maiden name ?

Hermy · 24-06-2015 9:13am

shanew wrote: »

Do you know Ellen's maiden name ?

Might be O'Keeffe.
There's a Cornelius, Michael, Patrick and Timothy in the indexes born to a Herlihy/ O'Keeffe couple.

https://familysearch.org/search/collection/results?count=20&query=%2Bsurname%3Aherlihy~%20%2Bmother_surname%3Ao%27keeffe~&collection_id=1408347

shanew · 24-06-2015 9:24am

I think I'd start by following up details for Mary - e.g. where did she marry etc. Maybe look for marriage and or death cert to see if these show parents names. Recent Certs can be difficult to obtain due to privacy laws in parts of Canada. A headstone or obit/death notice for her might show a more detailed place of origin or details of her family.

lottpaul · 24-06-2015 10:01am

http://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/details-civil/c7bcf46428439

Patrick married an Ellen O'Keeffe in 1916 in Listowel district - 3 of the children are registered in Killarney but the family could easily have moved around

Hermy · 24-06-2015 10:15am

There is also a marriage of a Patrick Herlihy and Mary O'Keeffe in 1923 so you would need to rule that one out before assuming the 1916 marriage is yours.

mamagoose · 24-06-2015 2:51pm

shanew wrote: »

Your dates are a little too recent for several of the usual online sources - i.e. Census returns and parish records, so you will probably have to look to civil records.

Do you know Ellen's maiden name ?

I dont have her maiden name..found cornelius, patrick, timothy and annie birth indexes with mothers maiden name OKeeffe..but nothing on mary

mamagoose · 24-06-2015 2:55pm

shanew wrote: »

I think I'd start by following up details for Mary - e.g. where did she marry etc. Maybe look for marriage and or death cert to see if these show parents names. Recent Certs can be difficult to obtain due to privacy laws in parts of Canada. A headstone or obit/death notice for her might show a more detailed place of origin or details of her family.

We have looked everywhere for Mary which is really who we are looking for but thought if we could find other family members it would lead us to her. Did a marriage search for her in Canada and the General Registers office found nothing. According to paperwork the birth father was a Michael Kelly from Ireland but we know even less about him.

shanew · 24-06-2015 4:04pm

Maybe Mary married in England, or even in Ireland before she left...do you know her husband's name ?

mamagoose · 24-06-2015 4:21pm

shanew wrote: »

Maybe Mary married in England, or even in Ireland before she left...do you know her husband's name ?

We dont know that she married..the birth cert for the person I am helping lists Marys name as Mary Theresa Herlihy. It just seems strange that she went to Canada by herself..she had to of known someone either in Montreal or Toronto.

shanew · 24-06-2015 4:52pm

a little more recent than you mentioned, but might be worth making a note of based on the matching middle initial :

Name: Mary T Herlihy
Event Type: Birth
Quarter and Year: Jan-Mar 1934
Registration District: Tralee
Mother's Maiden Name: O'Connor
Volume : 5 / Page : 393

shanew · 24-06-2015 5:01pm

mamagoose wrote: »

I dont have her maiden name..found cornelius, patrick, timothy and annie birth indexes with mothers maiden name OKeeffe..but nothing on mary

Mary may not have been registered or is indexed incorrectly, or missed off the FamilySearch transcription of the BMD Index, but if you are certain of the names of her siblings and the sequence, then that's the place to start - i.e. order a couple of birth certs to confirm parents names, and find out where they lived etc

p.s. another possibility is that she's a little older than she said, so appears on the index without mother's maiden name (the FS Index only includes this from the late 1920s)

mamagoose · 24-06-2015 5:02pm

shanew wrote: »

a little more recent than you mentioned, but might be worth making a note of based on the matching middle initial :

Name: Mary T Herlihy
Event Type: Birth
Quarter and Year: Jan-Mar 1934
Registration District: Tralee
Mother's Maiden Name: O'Connor
Volume : 5 / Page : 393

We have conflicting info on the dob. There is a ships record of a Mary coming to England 1950 that shows her age 27 which would put her year of birth at 1923. Her age on the birth cert says she was 26 at the time of birth in 1955 which means she was born in 1929. See the problem lol..

shanew · 24-06-2015 5:06pm

mamagoose wrote: »

We have conflicting info on the dob. There is a ships record of a Mary coming to England 1950 that shows her age 27 which would put her year of birth at 1923. ......

I'd trust the age given on the immigration record, more than on the child's birth

spurious · 24-06-2015 5:11pm

Sometimes babies were registered as 'Male' or 'Female' Surname if they had not been named yet.

shanew · 24-06-2015 5:12pm

There are a number of possible matches closer to 1923 in various parts of Co. Kerry - one in 1924 Tralee, 1923 Killarney, 1921 Tralee, 1921 Kenmare, etc... see here

Her middle name may not be included in the civil registration.

The districts that covered Co. Kerry or parts of, included : Cahersiveen, Dingle, Glin *, Kenmare, Killarney, Listowel *, Tralee (* inc. parts of neighbouring counties)

shanew · 24-06-2015 5:16pm

mamagoose wrote: »

We have conflicting info on the dob. There is a ships record of a Mary coming to England 1950 that shows her age 27 which would put her year of birth at 1923. Her age on the birth cert says she was 26 at the time of birth in 1955 which means she was born in 1929. See the problem lol..

just a query on something you mentioned here... coming to England - from where ?
Passenger or immigration records were not kept for travel between Ireland and the UK

see it now, from Liverpool, Lancs., to Halifax dep. 24 May 1950

mamagoose · 25-06-2015 1:50am

My friend has sent for a copy of the birth certificate from 1923 so we will have to wait and see what that one says as far as parents names..in the meantime we will just have to dig some more. I was hoping to find something even on a sibling. I have been trying Cornelius since that name didnt seem to be as common as Patrick or Timothy.

shanew · 25-06-2015 7:36am

If the dates are pushed back then Cornelius could be one the ones born 1910s, or 1920s - e.g. Tralee 1915, Listowel 1927. There's also a Timothy in Tralee 1919, in Killarney 1917, Killarney 1921 etc.

A possible Mary is also listed in Tralee in 1924, another in Killarney in 1923 etc.

maybe I'm missing some detail here... but how can you be certain you are ordering the correct birth cert for your Mary without knowing a detailed location or parents names ?

mamagoose · 25-06-2015 10:39am

shanew wrote: »

If the dates are pushed back then Cornelius could be one the ones born 1910s, or 1920s - e.g. Tralee 1915, Listowel 1927. There's also a Timothy in Tralee 1919, in Killarney 1917, Killarney 1921 etc.

A possible Mary is also listed in Tralee in 1924, another in Killarney in 1923 etc.

maybe I'm missing some detail here... but how can you be certain you are ordering the correct birth cert for your Mary without knowing a detailed location or parents names ?

Cant be certain but we found all the indexes on the siblings with a mothers maiden name of O Keeffe. If this birth cert shows maiden name as the same then we might be on to something. We are trying anything at this point. There is a marriage record of a Patrick Herlihy and Ellen O Keeffe from 1916. Patrick and Ellen were the names listed on the paperwork we have. Its a shot in the dark.

shanew · 25-06-2015 10:53am

the problem is that for dates between about 1914 (GRO Index) and 1929 (FamilySearch) you cant see the mother's maiden name on an online index, so no way to tell mother's surname without ordering a cert. So those births I mentioned could be siblings...

mamagoose · 25-06-2015 11:03am

shanew wrote: »

the problem is that for dates between about 1914 (GRO Index) and 1929 (FamilySearch) you cant see the mother's maiden name on an online index, so no way to tell mother's surname without ordering a cert. So those births I mentioned could be siblings...

If we assume that Mary was born 1929 from the birth cert that my friend has on her birth cert, there are names of siblings born around the same time from Ancestry that have maiden names listed. We found OKeefe on all of them except Mary. There is a Mary Herlihy listed born 1929 with no maiden name, which we need to send for. I have also suggested to my friend that she registers with 23andme for DNA. At least we might find 3 or 4 th cousins and we would have something to go by.

Search for family from Kerry?

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