Hello everybody. I would like to join in with this discussion although it may take me a day or so to marshall my information - I'm setting up a new computer.
I think I may recognise a few of you from the extensive discusions of my Halpin families from Wicklow. This is not just an aside. One of these Halpins, my direct ancestor, married an Annie WATTERS, who was born at her father's farm in Tinryland. As I say, I am not fully set up just now but you can find the Watters farm in Griffiths. With the aid of Google maps laid over the historical maps, as far as I can reasonably tell, it equates with the farm identified on today's Google Maps as Tinryland Lodge. I have an early 1900s photo of the old farmhouse and it seems now to have been either replaced by or subsumed within the present modern-looking farmhouse.
Googling 'Tinryland Lodge', I came up with the farmer's name being George Collier, from a Carlow newspaper reporting the new motorway bisecting the farm a few years ago.
And then, a few posts ago here, George Collier comes up as the forenames of a Shirley buried in Staplestown churchyard along with Jeffers names. Staplestown COI was the parish church of my Watters family. Annie Watters' mother, Susannah (nee Burgess) and others of the family are buried there too.
Apart from the Collier name just found, all the above had been more or less known to me. The quandary comes in how my Watters family MAY be connected with the SHIRLEY family, mostly from around Clogrennan but also in neighbouring parts too. And now I see that the name Shirley is also brought into the posts above.
Until I get my facts more together, John Watters' father was Bartholomew Watters but I can get back no further. However there are strong indications of a link to a John Shirley Watters. And in researches into that Shirley family, the name Jeffers also appears.
I did not do this research myself but received it from another researcher I have not been in touch with for ages. But, from this research, we have Mary Jane Jeffers marrying Thomas Shirley at Staplestown 09 Sep 1868. To quote: "Info from Marriage entry at Registrars Offfice Dublin. Witnesses Thomas Jeffers and William Purser." Quoting a note to the entry for Mary Jane: "Believed to have Dutch parents, Jane is buried in the same grave as her husband inside the ruined walls of Clody church which we visited on 11 th AugH 1995 In the 1901 Census of Ireland, Jane lived in the Clogrenane Townland in the parish of Cloydah with Fred, Lizzie, Carrie, Lavinia and Augusta. The 6 roomed house is described as 2nd class, the farm had 12 outbuildings." (Re the Dutch mention, her first child is named Paul William NASSAU Shirley and the second Thomas Frederic (sic) Shirley.)
There is no further ancestral information supplied for Mary Jane but there is a list of 13 children born between 1869 and 1893 , all of course named Shirley.
I'd best leave it there but I will try to dig out more. I may have no more on Jeffers.
Best to all,
Bill (near Sydney, Aust.)
