Another fragile structure

P. Breathnach · 03-06-2011 1:43pm #1

I have been struggling with a weak link in my great-grandfather's story. Now I ask people for views on weaknesses in my file on his wife.

Her name was Teresa Higgins, and I believe that she was born about 1850. On my first visit to the National Library I saw her marriage record, and got names for her parents: Thomas Higgins (which I already knew) and Anne Bennett (new information); I also got limited address information: Balbriggan. This was a surprise, and I found it difficult to accommodate. How could my great-grandfather, a man of humble origins from Arklow, link up with a labourer's daughter from a place so far away? Up to that point, I had been supposing that she also came from Co. Wicklow or perhaps from Dublin, as she was in service in Kingstown when they married.

The name combination is strong. Thomas Higgins + Anne Bennett + Teresa should not yield too many duplicates. And I had a location. But nothing came up in any of the online resources. There are not many Higginses or Bennetts in north county Dublin.

I did searches on irishgenealogy.ie. When I tried "Higgins" and combined with it with "Bennet" (non-standard spelling) I found a family, including Teresa. Not in Balbriggan, but in Dublin, in St. Mary's Parish. Most of the entries give her mother's name as Mc Bennet. That's a bit odd, because McBennett is very much an Ulster name, and even in 1901 there was very little leakage into other parts of Ireland: the only McBennett family in Dublin that year was the household of a Monaghan native. The year of birth for Teresa Higgins is a little earlier than I would have expected: it is 1846, and she had her last child in 1892. But the earlier birth date does reduce what looked like an improbably large age gap between her and her husband.

How might I improve my knowledge of this family? To me, the next step seemed to be to a look at the parish records to see if there was anything further to note. So yesterday I did that. And found nothing. Because I looked at the wrong St. Mary's Parish: I went for the Pro-Cathedral, when, it seems, I should have been looking at Haddington Road. And there is a small argument to make for accepting that as a place of origin: when, several years after their marriage, the couple re-located to Dublin, their first Dublin address was in the Haddington Road area.

Okay, I should go again to the NLI and inspect the records and I will do so, but it seems that they are not at all detailed (not even full dates) so I don't expect to advance my knowledge.

Balbriggan is still a problem. It is imaginable that by the time Teresa Higgins married, her parents had relocated to Balbriggan. Imaginable, but it doesn't seem very likely. I have even tried to think of addresses around Haddington Road that might have been misheard as Balbriggan, but I can't think of anything. So it's a very messy loose end.

On the basis of what I have told you so far, what do you think? Are these my people?

shanew · 03-06-2011 11:00pm

agree the definitive parents names should help establish a fairly definitive match - but the location discrepancy is a bit worrying..

many single women moved to Dublin for employment including so it's possible that she moved Dublin and then Dún Laoghaire and somehow met her future husband there. I've seen a number of cases of this including a gtgt-grandmother of mine from Co. Wicklow near Hacketstown who married a Dubliner in the pro-Cathedral. Luckily her parish marriage shows both her parents names and a rough address for them, as well as her own address.

What context is the Balbriggan clue ?

Might be worth trying the NLI records for Balbriggan - Film Pos. 9209 (baptisms go back to the 1770s)

Shane

shanew · 03-06-2011 11:13pm

there are also some RC records for the area listed in the parish of Balbriggan / Balrothery & Balscadden on Pos. 6617 These cover dates from about 1816, overlapping with the other records.

Shane

shanew · 03-06-2011 11:25pm

P. Breathnach wrote: »

.....
Thomas Higgins + Anne Bennett + Teresa should not yield too many duplicates. And I had a location. But nothing came up in any of the online resources. There are not many Higginses or Bennetts in north county Dublin.
....

forgot to mention - RC records for Balbriggan dont seem to be included anywhere online at the moment, so that's why I'd start with the NLI films

There are a number of Bennett families around North county Dublin in Griffiths , with a concentration near to Swords... also some Higgins in and around Balbriggan (dated 1847/48)

Shane

P. Breathnach · 04-06-2011 1:11am

The only place that Balbriggan crops up is in the church marriage register for my great-grandmother, where it is written beside her parents' names (it's not given as her address, as she got married from the house in Kingstown where she seems to have been employed as a servant).

Nothing else points me towards Balbriggan. [Neither, in fairness, do I have clear pointers to any other place.]

I see three possibilities for Balbriggan being there in the record:
1. My great-grandmother and her family were indeed from there;
2. Her parents had moved to Balbriggan by the time of her marriage, but she is the Teresa Higgins that I found in Dublin records;
3. The record is simply wrong, which could be due to some misunderstanding by the person making the entry, or misinformation given by the family for reasons that we cannot guess.

RootsIreland does not point me towards any record that seems consistent with her having origins in Balbriggan (or either of her parents having been born there).

I looked at the 1901 census to see if either Thomas Higgins or his wife Anne survived that long. It seems not. So I looked for death records between 1876 and 1901. None in Balrothery. Possible matches in Dublin South.

I find the names in the records that I have found highly persuasive. The first name Teresa was less used in the middle of C19th than in more recent times (the "Little Flower" had not yet popularised the name, and people were relying on St. Teresa of Avila, a less compelling figure). Bennett or McBennett is not a very common name, and there are none in north county Dublin in the 1901 census. Higgins is a bit more common, but there is only one couple in north county Dublin in 1901 (in Swords). Finding any Teresa Higgins born in the right timeframe with parents named Thomas Higgins and Anne (Mc) Bennett looks to me like satisfying a difficult brief. If I hadn't seen the word "Balbriggan" in the marriage record, I'd count myself as being home clear.

Am I trying too hard to stand my story up, or am I making a sufficient case to strike Balbriggan out?

[I have not dismissed the suggestion that I check the registers in the NLI, but I don't see myself as having the opportunity to do it for a couple of weeks, and I am sure you know what it is like when you try to deal with a question like this using online sources.]

P. Breathnach · 04-06-2011 1:59am

shanew wrote: »

forgot to mention - RC records for Balbriggan dont seem to be included anywhere online at the moment, so that's why I'd start with the NLI films

There are a number of Bennett families around North county Dublin in Griffiths , with a concentration near to Swords... also some Higgins in and around Balbriggan (dated 1847/48)

Shane

I took so long about preparing my last post (side-tracking to check stuff) that this arrived while I was still working on things.

Okay, your Griffiths suggestion re-opens the idea that Thomas Higgins might have come from Balbriggan, but it does not give us a Thomas Higgins there in 1847/8, which is close to the date of birth of my great-grandmother.

RootsIreland seems to have gone to sleep, so I cannot check anything on it now. It did offer me the opportunity to refine my searches by parish, including Balbriggan. Am I to understand that filtering any search on Balbriggan means that I am using an empty file, and am guaranteed zero matches?

If that is the case, then everything must be on hold until I get to the NLI again.

One possible way of reconciling all the bits is to suppose that Thomas Higgins came from Balbriggan, and met and married Anne Bennett in Dublin. When asked by the priest conducting the ceremony where he came from, he gave his place of origin rather than his current location.

P. Breathnach · 04-06-2011 2:34am

RootsIreland is back. It seems to have Balbriggan indices. I can find some Higgins there, but none that seem to match my family outline.

shanew · 04-06-2011 9:58am

RootsIreland dont mention any Balbriggan records on the list of sources, so I didn't think there would be any details - but maybe their list is incorrect ?

http://www.rootsireland.ie/ifhf/generic.php?filename=sources.tpl&selectedMenu=sources

My guess, based on the details you have mentioned is that Balbriggan refers to the parents address.. similar format to some marriage records I have from St. Mary's (the Marlborough Street one)

Shane

P. Breathnach · 04-06-2011 12:03pm

shanew wrote: »

RootsIreland dont mention any Balbriggan records on the list of sources, so I didn't think there would be any details - but maybe their list is incorrect ?

http://www.rootsireland.ie/ifhf/generic.php?filename=sources.tpl&selectedMenu=sources

There are some respects in which I find RootsIreland a bit clunky (and it has an annoying tendency to log me out). It does look as if their source list is out of date: I have found Balbriggan records between 1772 and, I think, about 1896 by doing some random searches using the parish filter.

My guess, based on the details you have mentioned is that Balbriggan refers to the parents address.. similar format to some marriage records I have from St. Mary's (the Marlborough Street one)

That is the natural interpretation of such an entry, and it should also be a good pointer to the bride's likely place of origin.

My problem is that there seems to be nothing to support the single mention of Balbriggan, yet there is a highly plausible family in Haddington Road parish.

The case for a Balbriggan connection is an entry in a marriage register. Against that, I can not find any Teresa Higgins in north County Dublin. Nor can I find Thomas Higgins born in Balbriggan in the right time frame, nor an Anne Bennett. I can't find either anywhere in north county Dublin. Nor can I find a marriage record, nor death records that might be theirs.

The case for Haddington Road parish is that I can find a plausible family (marriage of parents, birth of Teresa and 4 brothers, possibly a fifth brother) and I can find death records that might be those of her parents in Dublin South. Further, I have the fact that Anne and her husband relocated to the Haddington Road area about seven years after they married -- perhaps following the death of her father, while her mother was still living (that possible scenario emerges from Dublin South death records I found on the LDS site). The case against Haddington Road is the mention of Balbriggan in the marriage record.

Okay, I know that I seem to be selling a particular interpretation to myself. That's why I am posting this stuff: I might need a reality check.

shanew · 04-06-2011 7:09pm

I see the St. Mary's marriage and four baptisms that you mentioned - except for the Mc which consistent across all five records, they certainly do fit your original clues...other than the Balbriggan item..

details in case anyone wants to check them out :

marriage : http://churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/details/b7667b1396828
baptisms : http://churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/search.jsp?name=higgins&name2=benn*&location=&dd=&mm=&yy=&diocese=DUBLIN%20%28RC%29&parish=ST.%20MARY&century=&decade=&type=B&sort=date&pageSize=100&submit=Search

I've seen many O' prefixes appear and reappear over time, but have not come across the Mc prefix vanishing in my searches - although it did happen.

Do any of the sibling names mean anything ? They could appear as a witness on Teresa's marriage or as a godparent on a baptism - might be worth checking out, as that might help confirm the link (or vice versa - i.e. Teresa showing up on a record for one their events). Unfortunately all common names so may not be easy to trace.

If this is the correct family then there are two possibilities I can think of to explain the Balbriggan notation - it's a mistake or was misheard/misunderstood, or the parents had moved to Balbriggan by the time of Teresa's marriage. It's a little against the more usual trend of families moving to Dublin, for work etc.. and might make some sense if one or both of the parents had links to the area.

Shane

P. Breathnach · 04-06-2011 9:41pm

There seems to be one other child: http://churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/details/5617d41293985
Most of the names, as well as being fairly common, are also Walsh names, so it is no surprise that they were used in following generations.

On what I have found so far, Teresa seems to have been the only daughter in the family. The witnesses at her wedding were her husband's brother and a Winifred O'Brien. That does not help greatly except to the near-trivial extent that no unknown sister turned up.

No Higgins appears in the four Wicklow christenings. That's hardly surprising. I have seen the records of only two of the four Dublin ones, and the Higgins family didn't get into the act there, either.

I'm inclined to believe that the mention of Balbriggan in the records is simply incorrect. It's pushing things a bit, but could my g-g-grandparents have given their address as "Baggot lane" to a hard-of-hearing priest in Kingstown?

shanew · 04-06-2011 10:09pm

It's a pity the St. Mary's records are so lacking in details, no maiden name on that baptism... and no address or sponsors on any of them.

The St. Andrew's ones are bit like this also - I presume the transcripts are complete and there's no further detail that hasn't been transcribed for some reason ?

Baggot lane is very close to the church so could be a possibility ...

bottom line - I think most people would be quite happy to say this was a link, as it's seems quite unlikely that there would be another couple with such a close match to the names you have, plus a daughter born quite close to your estimated year of birth. The level of proof required is up to you - and in this case it's not quite a slam dunk case, but is a very good circumstantial one.

The slight quibbles being :

birth may be a little earlier than expected - could be explained away due to the usual discrepancies in ages given..

The mysterious Mc - again may not be unusual for this to vanish due to trends of the time (the O' prefix largely vanished, and reappeared later with the revival in all things 'celtic'

Balbriggan - may never know why that was on the record...

The one very slight disclaimer I would add is to remember that just because an online record for Teresa (or other Higgins, Bennet children) cannot be found in the Balbriggan area, does not necessarily prove that the baptism didn't take place there - remember the Walsh/Wicklow experience...

I'd say go for this family - but keep your eye's open in case any other details show up!

Shane

shanew · 04-06-2011 10:24pm

just wondering - have you found Teresa on the 1901 census (if still alive at that time..) ?

If her place of birth is 'Dublin' or 'Dublin City', rather than 'Co. Dublin' it pretty much rules out Balbriggan...

S.

shanew · 04-06-2011 10:48pm

I had a quick check through Thom's directories for the 1870s (I presume that's Teresa's marriage in 1876?) on the off chance that there might be some details of occupants of Baggot Lane... but no luck, the lane is not mentioned in either the street index or listings.

The lane is definitely there back to at least 1836, as I can see it on a map from that year, but is not named on the maps at least... It is shown as Baggot Lane on the 1890s map

Shane

P. Breathnach · 05-06-2011 12:05am

Wow! You are working hard on this one, Shane. Thank you.

Teresa Higgins Walsh died in 1894. Her burial record gives her age at death as 42. I had a suspicion, based on the photograph I posted some weeks ago, that she might have been a little older than that, which is why I fixed on about 1850 as the date of birth. I was mindful also that she had a child in 1892, so a date of birth much before 1850, while not impossible, might be pushing things a bit. If she was born in 1846, then she was about 46 when she had her last child, and that is pushing things to the very limit.

The marriage was in 1876, and the couple seem to have one remarkable success: they lost no children. Every other family that far back in my research lost children, and Herself finds the same among her ancestors.

I intend to look at the St Mary's records, but suppose that there will be no additional information in them -- but you never know until you look.

I imagine that you spotted that Anne (Mc) Bennett was almost certainly pregnant when she married.

I looked at Baggot Lane in Thom's Directory for 1862. It seemed to have a mix of occupants, and some properties were described as tenements. Thomas Higgins was a labourer, so if he was living there, I would guess that it was in a tenement. I remember Baggot Lane before the developers changed it irrevocably: many of the properties on it were mews for the houses on Upper Baggot Street.

The "Mc" bothers me. So far as I can see, very few McBennetts moved from Ulster back then. It is possible that Anne was born in Monaghan or Armagh and migrated to Dublin, but I don't think that I will be able to construct links to the previous generation.

At this stage I am almost convinced that I have found my people, but I do see reasons why I can not rate it as absolutely certain.

And that brings me to a problem that everybody doing genealogical research has to face. Other family members will be interested to learn what I have discovered. I intend to present things as truthfully as possible, using terms like "it looks as if..." or "the best guess is...". But human nature being what it is, the caution will be lost, and what I present as a likely version of things will be treated as if it were unquestionable fact.

shanew · 05-06-2011 11:07am

I think in this case you would be justified in saying that it's highly probable that this Thomas and Anne are 'yours'..

If you've a spare week or two, and a flair for statistics, you could try to work out the probability of there being two Thomas Higgins/Anne [Mc]Bennet couples, in Dublin, around the same time and with a child named Teresa. It may not be practicable to actually do this, but I suspect the numbers could end up reading a bit like a partial DNA match report ... i.e. 1 in 100s of thousands

It might be worth rechecking the IrishGenealogy results in a month or two after they add the next batch of RC records, to see if any further trace of Thomas and Ann can be found .... maybe they had more children in another parish ?

Shane

P. Breathnach · 05-06-2011 12:10pm

I intend to keep the file "live", and will continue digging. The thought that they might turn up later in another parish that kept more comprehensive records is an appealing one, and I'll certainly watch out for it.

The use of statistical methods sounds like a fascinating idea. I am sure that you don't mean it seriously, as it would be an enormous challenge. Even thinking fancifully about it, I can see objections that "proper" statisticians would raise. For example, the weightings that should be given to various things would be difficult to establish (e.g. With what level of probability do we accept a "Connors" as an "O'Connor"?).

Yet I am sure that many genealogical projects come down to making a judgement, and I know that some wrong calls are made. If some body with an interest in genealogy (the Mormons come to mind) were to develop a statistics package, it would be a wonderful resource.

If I could do a trace forward from one of Teresa Higgins's brothers, I might find third cousins and we could do DNA tests. But I might find myself related to people that I want nothing to do with!

I think I'll settle for "likely to be the family, but still checking".

shanew · 05-06-2011 12:22pm

after your mention of the 1862 listing for Baggot Lane, I went back to earlier directories (Thom's and also Pettigrew & Oulton) and found they had some details ... I wasn't expecting that since the directories from the 1870s didn't even mention the lane..

1858 it's all tenements, but earlier listings are much more mixed - no Higgins entries that I can see ... let me know if the details are of any interest and, if so, I'll can post them

lists I found were 1840, 1848, 1852 & 1858

Shane

P. Breathnach · 05-06-2011 1:07pm

Thanks, Shane, but at this point it might be chasing a wisp. I am speculating that "Balbriggan" might have been a mishearing of "Baggot Lane". The fact that Baggot Lane around that time contained tenements means that the speculation is not invalidated.

As a matter of interest, do you have any idea how much working class people moved around in those days? I have seven different locations for the Walshes between 1876 and 1899, four in Co. Wicklow, and three in Dublin. Herself, tracing another family in Dublin, also has about seven addresses. It's quite different from the other side of my family, where the people were farmers, and generally stayed put.

shanew · 05-06-2011 1:58pm

I've seen that - it seems that the higher up the 'wealth' scale people were the less they moved. I read somewhere that less well off people moved often to avail of slightly better accommodation, lower rents, or occasionally just walked out to dodge paying back rent.. People with some sort of business often had to stick to the same location

In rural areas I think people mostly had to stick to their small plot of land, and other than those that were migrant farm labourers, stayed put

Shane

P. Breathnach · 05-10-2011 12:22am

Returning to this discussion:

The release of further Dublin church records hits me with another fact that raises issues. I found a baptism record for Catherine, daughter of Thomas Higgins and Anne Bennett in 1837 in St Nicholas parish. Not improbably distant from Haddington Road where they married and had five children baptised.

The catch is that Catherine was baptised in September 1837, and "my" Thomas Higgins and Anne Bennett married in May 1839 (and she was pregnant at the time).

I still give weight to the Thomas Higgins & Anne Bennett name combination as being not very common, and lean towards thinking that Catherine is a sister of my great-grandmother.

What do people think?

slowburner · 05-10-2011 9:31am

Total long shot from this neck of the woods but there is a Paul Bennett of Ballanagh, Castlemacadam (p.95) in Griffiths Valuation and an Owen Walsh, Castlemacadam (p.100). These are the only relevant names in this parish.
There is a discussion here on the Higgins family of the same parish which might be of interest.
Might be off the radar, but you never know, if it is - at least you can eliminate this parish.

P. Breathnach · 05-10-2011 9:51am

slowburner wrote: »

...
Might be off the radar, but you never know, if it is - at least you can eliminate this parish.

Three-eighths of my genetic inheritance comes from Arkla and places nearby; is that not enough for you? Might I be disowned? [Disinherited isn't an issue, because there seems not to have been much to inherit.]

I did check out possibilities that my Higgins/Bennett one-eighth might also be associated with the area, but nothing stood up to scrutiny, whereas the case for fixing it in Dublin has a lot of support.

pinkypinky · 05-10-2011 10:48am

I agree it's not a very common name combination. If they were unmarried at the time, it's also not surprising that they would go to a different church for the baptism. I'd say you've a very good possibility of an extra child there. I don't suppose either's mother was handily called Catherine as well?

P. Breathnach · 05-10-2011 11:47am

pinkypinky wrote: »

I agree it's not a very common name combination. If they were unmarried at the time, it's also not surprising that they would go to a different church for the baptism. I'd say you've a very good possibility of an extra child there. I don't suppose either's mother was handily called Catherine as well?

One of the things I am attempting is to get back one generation further on this line. I don't know anything about the parents of either Thomas Higgins or Anne Bennett.

This is the first instance I have found in the family history of a child born outside marriage. Human nature being what it is, I imagine that there were others, but they have not shown up in my research. I wonder if they kept her, or if she was given up for adoption.

I have found only one Anne Bennett in Dublin of about the right age. She was baptised in 1823 in Arran Quay. That would make her 14 when Catherine was born, and 16 (and pregnant again) when she married the father of the child. It's a plausible scenario, but I am short of supporting evidence.

slowburner · 05-10-2011 6:37pm

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Three-eighths of my genetic inheritance comes from Arkla and places nearby; is that not enough for you? Might I be disowned? [Disinherited isn't an issue, because there seems not to have been much to inherit.]

I did check out possibilities that my Higgins/Bennett one-eighth might also be associated with the area, but nothing stood up to scrutiny, whereas the case for fixing it in Dublin has a lot of support.

Delighted that you are proud of your Arklow and environs heritage - a rare thing these days

.

Tmcnee · 06-12-2011 10:02pm

My Mother's maiden name was Teresa Sword. Her Mother's name was Teresa Higgins. My mother was born in 1913 she had 2 brothers Michael and James Sword.

uote=P. Breathnach;72565827]I have been struggling with a weak link in my great-grandfather's story. Now I ask people for views on weaknesses in my file on his wife.

Her name was Teresa Higgins, and I believe that she was born about 1850. On my first visit to the National Library I saw her marriage record, and got names for her parents: Thomas Higgins (which I already knew) and Anne Bennett (new information); I also got limited address information: Balbriggan. This was a surprise, and I found it difficult to accommodate. How could my great-grandfather, a man of humble origins from Arklow, link up with a labourer's daughter from a place so far away? Up to that point, I had been supposing that she also came from Co. Wicklow or perhaps from Dublin, as she was in service in Kingstown when they married.

The name combination is strong. Thomas Higgins + Anne Bennett + Teresa should not yield too many duplicates. And I had a location. But nothing came up in any of the online resources. There are not many Higginses or Bennetts in north county Dublin.

I did searches on irishgenealogy.ie. When I tried "Higgins" and combined with it with "Bennet" (non-standard spelling) I found a family, including Teresa. Not in Balbriggan, but in Dublin, in St. Mary's Parish. Most of the entries give her mother's name as Mc Bennet. That's a bit odd, because McBennett is very much an Ulster name, and even in 1901 there was very little leakage into other parts of Ireland: the only McBennett family in Dublin that year was the household of a Monaghan native. The year of birth for Teresa Higgins is a little earlier than I would have expected: it is 1846, and she had her last child in 1892. But the earlier birth date does reduce what looked like an improbably large age gap between her and her husband.

How might I improve my knowledge of this family? To me, the next step seemed to be to a look at the parish records to see if there was anything further to note. So yesterday I did that. And found nothing. Because I looked at the wrong St. Mary's Parish: I went for the Pro-Cathedral, when, it seems, I should have been looking at Haddington Road. And there is a small argument to make for accepting that as a place of origin: when, several years after their marriage, the couple re-located to Dublin, their first Dublin address was in the Haddington Road area.

Okay, I should go again to the NLI and inspect the records and I will do so, but it seems that they are not at all detailed (not even full dates) so I don't expect to advance my knowledge.

Balbriggan is still a problem. It is imaginable that by the time Teresa Higgins married, her parents had relocated to Balbriggan. Imaginable, but it doesn't seem very likely. I have even tried to think of addresses around Haddington Road that might have been misheard as Balbriggan, but I can't think of anything. So it's a very messy loose end.

On the basis of what I have told you so far, what do you think? Are these my people?[/Quote]

Another fragile structure

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