how and where do i find a birth ?

[behindthefrogs]

The best chance that you have is if you can find John's father in a census.  The 1851 census might tell you where in Ireland.  The 1841 census will contain an "i" in the born in county column for anyone born in Ireland.


David

[Maggie1895]

I just had a quick look in the Baptisms in London for around 1811.

Deptford is on the South Bank, very much one of the dockyard areas.  The nearest I can see is a family of Dorkin in Southwark, but I can't see any Dorgans as spelt at all I'm afraid.

In the 1851 census Dorgan is quite an unusual name, and there is a family spelt as Dorgan living in Stepney / Mile End Road area.  They are from Ireland but there isn't a John listed.     The parents are Thomas and Mary, 36 and 37, with their children, but Thomas' younger brother William is living with them and his birthplace is given as Cork, though theirs is just Ireland without any specific area.

As Dorgan is such an unusual name it might be worth looking at any Cork records to see if the wider family show up there?

[avm228]

I just had a quick look in the Baptisms in London for around 1811.

Can I ask whether the baptisms you looked at included Roman Catholic baptisms?  If not, I wonder whether that would be another avenue for Whitstable to pursue.

Anna

[WHITSTABLE]

hi, o thankyou for all this help,it is strange being deptford having a dock, as john dorgan worked as a rigger on the sheppy dock in kent so i think he must of been born in deptford then in betreen his birth and 1841 made his way to the isle of sheppy then married frances 1841, and worked on the sheppy dock in kent, allso his granddaughters surename was spelt dorkin rather than dorganeven in one of the census s i noticed johns surename was spelt dougan so i wonder if it is a spelling mistake,   but from my great grans married cert it is spelt for her as dorgan ,

[Maggie1895]

Anna, I didn't look at the RC registers - not sure where I would find them.
I just had a quick look at the London Baptism records recently released on line.

Whitstable, I do think it's possible that the spelling of the name has been recorded differently at different times and places: you probably need to be pretty open minded when searching and then see if one record links back to another.    Certainly there were Dorkins that might have been worth looking at

[Maggie1895]

,it is strange being deptford having a dock, as john dorgan worked as a rigger on the sheppy dock in kent so i think he must of been born in deptford then in betreen his birth and 1841 made his way to the isle of sheppy

Just picked up on this comment - Deptford . Greenwich, all the dock area of London on the south side of the river is not far from Kent and the Isle of Sheppey.    I think part of the south sided of the river was Kent, strictly speaking but boundaries move and others will know that better than I.
Perfectly reasonable for someone at that time to travel between the two, it's not very far, and people travelled a great deal farther in the 1800s - I think we tend to assume that it's only our and our parent's generation that moved around and everyone in early centuries was born, lived and died in one spot, but it's not true at all.
Good luck with it all, do let us know if you manage to get the line sorted out and if the Dorgans do turn out to have been recorded differently at different times.

[behindthefrogs]

The boundary between Surrey and Kent was the boundary between Rotherhithe and Deptford.  Thus from Deptford down stream the south bank of the Thames was Kent.

David

[Maggie1895]

Thanks David, geography has never been my strong point!

[warncoort]

Google docklands ancestors, has transcriptions of parish records