Thanks for the crew list links, dathai. I've accumulated quite a few of those now, including some for Batholomew from the Liverpool crew lists on Ancestry and it turns out I have two great grandfathers who were merchant seaman, the other one being Manx. The McGuirk men all have the same occupation as far back as it seems possible to go. When they get older they are sometimes pilots on the Boyne and eventually revert to being fisherman, which seems to be how they start out as boys.
Marybeth, you need to make at least three posts before I can send you a personal message and send you my email address. There are two Thomas McGuirks in the Griffiths Valuation for Baltray. Fortunately, the names of both Bartholomew's parents were passed down the family from Bartholmew's daughter, my grandmother, so I am sure which one is mine. How long have you been tracing your family ? I started in the 1970s, in exasperation at all the stories with no dates and the questions the stories didn't answer. I have come to realise that Bartle didn't run away in quite the way the family story suggests ! He spends a good bit of his career working on ships sailing between Drogheda and Liverpool and he's not the only man from Drogheda /Baltray doing this. I suspect now that the version of the tale we had is a lot less than accuarate.
I'm hoping you'll post again when you see this. I'm in the north-west of England - not a million miles from Liverpool. Whereabouts are you based ?
Best wishes,
Joney
