Hi,
I have been browsing through the posts for the past few months and one of the causes of "brick walls" seems to be the confusion between Civil Parishes and Roman Catholic Parishes. Sorting this out can be daunting task but eventually it will come together.
The Civil Parishes are mostly associated with Church of Ireland and Government administration. The Roman Catholic parishes are made up of 2 or more Civil parishes joined. The names of these RC parishes can sound quite straightforward, but the danger is that not all Townlands in a Civil Parish are necessarily included in this Roman Catholic formation. It often depends on the time period.
The Leitrim-Roscommon website
www.leitrim-roscommon.com has maps of the Civil and RC divisions in Roscommon.
For example: the
current Roman Catholic parish of Ballagh, Roscommon has been known over time by different names. There are 3 churches in the current RC parish located in the townlands of Ballagh, Ballyleague and Curraghroe. Historically (at one time) it was known as Cloontuskert, Kilgefin and Curraghroe.
Before 1860 the parishes of Kilgefin and Cloontuskert were joined with Kilbride. In Griffith's Valuation (published 1857) it is noted that a RC chapel is under construction in Ballyleague village (also known as Lanesborough) on land donated by the landlord, Sir. Christopher Bellew. When the chapel was eventually finished, Cloontuskert was established as its own parish. There is quite a history about the building of this chapel and the gathering of funds to complete the roof, which was noted in the
The Belfast News-Letter (Belfast, Ireland), Friday, January 27, 1860; Issue 13607.
In 1875 Kilgefin was separated from Kilbride and joined with Cloontuskert.
This is only a very brief history of this RC parish, but the important thing is to establish a reasonable date range for your ancestor and then research the history of the chapel (church).
www.familysearch.org have extracted some of these records, particularly Kilbride register.
The National Library of Ireland - Parish register catalogue will list the date range of BMD's available for each location, as does John Grenhams
Tracing Your Irish Ancestors among others.
The early registers for Ballagh are lost.
Hope this helps.
Nufarr
