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Quote from: xpress4 on Tuesday 08 February 22 20:01 GMT (UK)

Quote from: Maiden Stone on Tuesday 08 February 22 17:01 GMT (UK)

Have you checked existence of Catholic registers in/near places/counties where Bridget Law may have lived? Consider counties Carlow and Wexford, too.
Was Dennis in the army or was he a civilian working on the Ordnance survey project?

Hi, I did a broad search on Ancestry based on an approximate birth year of 1820 but the results were in Wicklow and Kilkenny and about six years early. Names of parents don't seem to align.

Denis was an Office Messenger for the Survey, so civilian staff.

Catholic Registers at National Library of Ireland
https://registers.nli.ie/about
Enter name of a parish in search box. Parish will be shown on a map + other parishes nearby. Click on a parish for list of registers with years. N.B. A parish may have more than 1 register for a sequence of years. Also there may be missing registers or gaps in surviving registers. Also "disordered" registers, e.g. out-of-sequence dates.  Also incorrect transcriptions & illegible writing.
Most likely thing is that the marriage register for the year Dennis and Bridget married doesn't exist.

But perhaps some host of COI or Presbyterian record if I dig hard enough right?

Presbyterian records, in general, tend not to be online and many pre-1870 Church of Ireland registers were lost in Dublin in the 1920s. However, I still think that Bridget was Catholic- perhaps her father was Protestant and her own mother was Catholic. Mixed marriages did happen and not all children would have been raised in the same denominations (I've seen quite a few instances were the girls were raised in the mother's church and any sons followed the father's religion).

Thank you! So confusing and hard to figure out 

Just a note to thank all of you for your wonderful input. So much information!

All I can do is assume Bridget Law was simply Bridget Law and there are no records online OR I have to figure out COI/Presbyterian record sources to try to find her and her kin

Not sure where to start but I'm not giving up....ever. I tried to locate family of Patrick Law who showedine up in Walkinslough (is that a great name or what?) but nothing to be found from what I an see now.

Those irish naming patterns haunt me but I may just have to wait until more goes online....patience.

Again, thanks so much for your time
Brenda

All the children seem to have been baptisted in Catholilc churches.

On the other information, so supposing she was a Presbyterian and married Denis, a Catholic. From what you say below, is it conceivable she changed her first name to marry him and become catholic? So she could have been born a Presbyterian Law with another first name? Not sure if I'm understanding correctly.

As a sidenote, I always thought it strange that they, nor their children, named anyone Bridget......

" I was wondering if Bridget had turned RC at some stage and this may have been a baptismal name. "

I know, in theory, in the Christian church you can be baptised once, 'all churches are God's churches' (this is an Anglican view)  but I do know that the RC church did baptise over the top as this did happen in my g'mother  in the early days of their marriage.  (In NZ, late 1890s.)

My oldest Aunt & Uncle (2 & 3) were at home with a neighbour looking after them while my g'mother was out helping my g'father when a priest sent by the paternal mother came to the house and baptised these two.  My g'mother was the daughter  of a fierce Irish Presbyterian, and  my g'father who was a lapsed Catholic who had left his studies to be a priest at a NZ seminary to apprentice as a saddler was not pleased either. The aunt had been christened already but my younger uncle had not. He used to tease my g'mother about it but never went to a Catholic church. 

Anyway it did used to happen and she may have been blessed with a saints name  and took this from then....would be made easier by a move to England where no-one would have known the earlier name.

OP which church did the family go to in Scotland?  Are there any female names that you cannot place from the father's family?  You have said you have a Mary Anne?
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No worries Monica!
I think he must be related...maybe brother to my Denis?

Not sure if just a co incidence on names/locations...

Could this Fenton be connected? https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C8761036

I did see an entry for a Denis:

Denis Moore
Age: 21
Birth Date: abt 1817
Birth Place: Clonend, Queens
Military Date: 1 Jan 1838
Unit: 57th Foot Soldiers, 1st Battalion

Couldn't make out his birth place from original image: