Trying to trace the parents of a John Pentland, father James, who married an Anne Pentland in 1886. Both bride and groom came from Drumnakelly in Co. Armagh so rather presume that they were cousins.
One of the witnesses at the wedding was a Thomas George Pentland and as his father was called James, presume that he was John’s brother.
John Pentland was a soldier so perhaps it is not surprising that I can find no trace of him or his family in the census of 1901 and 1911. He may well have been stationed abroad.
Ann’s father was called George and I thought perhaps that she was the child of a George Pentland married to an Anne Miller in 1852, Mullavilly in County Armagh.
Another Pentland soldier also had a father called George, mother also called Ann.
Although his death at the age of 45 in 1916 (see below) would rather indicate that he was a son of George and Ann O’Hara because there is a record of them having a son called William who was born in 1871.
See this record,
“Private William Henry Pentland (Married Mary Anne Whitten, (see Carrowbrack 1911 Irish census) 17982, 9th Bn., Royal Irish Fusiliers, who was killed in action during an attack on the village of Beaumont-Hamel on 1 July 1916, aged 45, on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. He was born in Aldershot, Hants, the son of George and Ann Pentland, Ballylisk, and he lived at Mary Street, Portadown.
He is buried in Ancre British Cemetery, Beaumont-Hamel, the Somme, and his name is remembered on a headstone in Mullavilly Parish Churchyard, and on the Portadown War Memorial and on the Tandragee War Memorial.”
Rather interesdingly if you search the 1881 census for England you will find more than one Irish born Pentland who had military connections.
