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You have this query under Co. Clare. There’s more than one place named Mountchannon in Ireland. the village where Obadiah Brady lived appears to me to be in Inishcaltra parish, Co Galway.

Can't see a marriage in Ireland for Obadiah. Some Brady marriages which do appear to relate to your broad family:

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1858/09559/5465585.pdf

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1848/09358/5388690.pdf

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1846/09318/5374205.pdf

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1849/09378/5396532.pdf

Earliest baptism records for Inishcaltra only start in 1851.

Methodism took a lot longer to become established in Ireland as a separate denomination than in England. In Ireland there was considerable resistance to separating from the Church of Ireland. In 1816 the main body of Irish Methodists (the Wesleyans) took the decision to allow baptisms in their preaching houses or chapels, but it was a practice which was only gradually introduced so that it wasn’t until the 1830s and 1840s that it became fairly standard. Because of continuing loyalty and other factors, many – including Primitive Wesleyans - continued to use the Church of Ireland for baptisms for years after this and it was 1871 before all Methodists routinely performed their own.

For Methodist marriages, the earliest that I am aware of, date from 1835 (Belfast Donegall Square, the first Methodist church in Ireland). However in the mid 1800s there were only a few Methodist Ministers (Methodism relied heavily on lay preachers). So that shortage led to the continuing practice of marrying in the Church of Ireland. In addition, in the early years, many Methodist Meeting Houses were not licensed for marriages so that too contributed to couples marrying in the Church of Ireland.

So to summarise, you are unlikely to find many Methodist baptisms before 1820. Few marriages before the 1840s and only a handful for many years after that. If there are no Methodist records in the location you are researching, I would search Church of Ireland records instead, as that’s the most likely place to find the relevant event.

Not many Methodist Meeting Houses have graveyards and so they may be buried in public or Church of Ireland graveyards (which are open to all denominations).

Edgehill Theological College in Belfast has a Methodist historical section which may be able to tell you a little more about your ancestors connection with the Methodist church.

www.edgehillcollege.org

I don’t see Obadiah Brady in the list of Methodist Ministers in Ireland so suspect he may have been a lay preacher rather than an ordained Minister.

https://methodisthistoryireland.org/people/ministers/#1506674326964-b8ea81b0-4bf1

Isabel,

I think you either need to take out a subscription to rootsireland or get a Dublin based researcher to look at the church records in the RCB library to see if you can find a baptism in the Kilkenny records.

Soldiers marrying someone they met whilst on duty, and then taking them home was fairly common. I have a copy of the 1841 census for Handa (quite close to Sango where your family lived) and I know that one the island's residents then was a married woman born in Ireland. I also know from speaking to one of her descendants that they had met whilst he was serving there.

The only thing I would say is that the surname Banton is almost unknown in Ireland. In the 1901 census there are only 3 in the whole country, and 2 of those were born in England. One was serving in the army incidentally.  Benton is a little more common (51) but none in Co. Kilkenny. So I’d wonder if the lady did come from Ireland. Was she the daughter of another soldier perhaps?

I wouldn’t rely too heavily on the DNA ethnicity test as firm proof of Irish connections. Those tests are based on averages and are not very accurate.  There has been so much movement within the British Isles over the past 5 thousand years that there’s not really much difference between the DNA of anyone in these islands. They do say ethnicity testing is as about as reliable as a horoscope.

You have someone applying for an old age pension in 1916. He thinks he’s over 70 but doesn’t have a baptism certificate or other acceptable document to show his age.  Obviously if he was 5 or over in the 1851 census, he would be 70 in 1916 and therefore eligible. So he claims to be born c 1846.

The form asked him to say where he was living in 1851, for the census look up clerk to check. He put down Miltown Row. So that’s his recollection of where he was living 65 years previously, when he was reportedly 5. Plenty of scope for error there. My guess is that he probably did live at Milltown Rd at some point in his life but it must have been later, as it was apparently not built in 1851. In the 1800s people in Ireland didn’t normally celebrate birthdays and often had little accurate idea of how old they were. Ages on censuses and other documents were often just guesses. In this case my suggestion is that he’s mistaken about where he was in 1851. Indeed he may not even have been born. Milltown Rd was where he lived some time later.

Alexander Irvine was born in 1863 in Antrim town and became a Minister living in the US. This extract from his book “The Chimney Corner revisited” perhaps explains why people often had to guess their ages:

“My mother kept a mental record of the twelve births. None of us ever knew, or cared to know, when we were born. When I heard of anybody in the more fortunate class celebrating a birthday I considered it a foolish imitation of the Queen’s birthday, which rankled in our little minds with 25th December or 12th July. In manhood there were times when I had to prove I was born somewhere, somewhen, and then it was that I discovered that I also had a birthday. The clerk of the parish informed me.”

Where there's a father and son of the same name in the same townland Griffiths normally put senior and junior to distinguish them.

There was no mention of dependants in Griffiths. Like a modern lease or conveyance, the focus was on who was the householder. Others who lived there weren't relevant as they were not responsible for the rates etc.