Hi Michael
Just to explain a bit more about Griffiths - it only relates to people who were responsible for paying rents on land that they were leasing ie farmers.
As you have said that your family were labourers and dock workers in London, it's likely they were also from this tradition in Ireland and therefore would not be on Griffiths Valuation.
While it's not impossible that those from Roscarberry on Griffiths were related, with such a common surname like Donovan in Cork this would be near on impossible to prove.
Also you need to prove 100% that your ancestor (whom I am presuming is Patrick NOT Denis) was actually from Roscarberry.
Sorry to be sounding like a profit of doom - and as I said on last message, please let me know if I am wrong.
Tara
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I would agree with the statement that it's dangerous to build family trees based on Griffiths. As far as I understand Griffiths though it relates to more than farmers who were leasing land. The intro page to Griffiths on the Ask About Ireland website says that it pertains to agricultural and built property and there are plenty of instances where only houses are listed with no accompanying land. I think it's a generalisation to say that if a family in London were labourers and dock workers they likely brought these traditions from Ireland. Labourer seems to be a catch-all term that can cover a multitude of things. Whatever of the certainty of the Rosscarbery connection of all three men, it is unlikely that those who were from there brought the occupation of dock labourer from Rosscarbery. I'm open to correction here but I doubt that Rosscarbery was ever much of a port requiring dock labourers. Michael, I think you're going to have a problem if you need Michael to be a stevedore while living in Rosscarbery.
In relation to nicknames, where surnames were common, nicknames were sometimes adopted to tell different families with the same surnames apart. So for the west Cork area, you will often see various nicknames for Donovan, Sullivan, Driscoll and McCarthy for example. Depending on how they are used, they can either be a help or a hindrance. I don't know much about Donovan nicknames but I haven't seen Franky used before.
When I posted this morning, I assumed that it was definite that the younger men were brothers. Obviously Tara is correct in saying it would be valuable to track down something that definitely shows a Rosscarbery link for Patrick. On the other hand though, I have people in my tree who I have no doc evidence about but know I am related to because of verbal info. I guess in the absence of documentation it depends how reliable other info is.
