from 'Houses of Wexford'.
Johnstown Castle, Piercesrown, Wexford
Townland; Johnstown.
The Gill map 1811 gives the owner as " Mr Grogan". The ancestral seat of the Esmondes since the reign of Henry 11 in the late twelfth century, it was confiscated at the time of the Cromwellian suppression in 1649 and agian after Wexford rebellion of 1798.
It was granted to a Cromwellian soldier, Col, John Overstreet, and came by marriage into the possesssion of the Grogan family.
In the 1800's the Grogans were the largest untitled landlords in Ireland with estates of around 20,000 acres. (The estate, unlike many others always had a resident landlord) Cornelius Grogan became a leader of the rebels in 1798 and as a result was hanged on the bridge of Wexford, and the estate confiscated.
However, his brother John, who had fought on the British side, regained ownership in 1802.
Ownership passed to his son, Hamilton Knox Grogan-Morgan.
Clonegal 1798
Huntington Castle, Clonegal
(reference to Grogan)
Alexander Durdin, a Justice of the Peace, would not have been in sympathy with the Rising at any level. He and a famous, and very different contemporary, Cornelius Grogan (who alongside Bagnel Harvey and John Henry Colclough was executed on Wexford bridge) are both ancestors of the present generation at Huntington.
In 1938 during the commemorations in Clonegal, much reference was made to Cornelius Grogan by Canon Harvey Bradish, and Derry Durdin-Rebertson rode on horseback in the village pageant, carrying a pike in his memory.
