Hi Alex,
I may be connected to you through John Pegum!
My 4x great grandfather was Thomas Pegum born c1802 in Limerick. He married Anne Quinlan c1822 and they had 3 children:
Mary Anne 1823
Alicia 1825
John 1827
Thomas was part of the 86th Regiment.
I am connected through his second marriage to Bridget Keane.
They had a daughter Ellen before coming to New Zealand as part of the Fencibles in 1847.
I have John in my tree as father to Emily on her Liverpool marriage certificate.
I look forward to hearing from you
Kind regards
Belinda
Hi Belinda,
Thanks for your message! I think we were briefly in touch on Ancestry.com a few years ago, but it's nice to hear from you again in any case. I certainly remember looking into your Thomas Peagum/Pegum and reading about his interesting and eventful life.
I certainly believe our Peagum's join up at some point, given the places they lived and the scarceness of the surname, though beyond that requires a bit of guesswork. Let me explain what I know, and excuse me if I already told you... The "John Pegum" listed on my Emily Peagum's marriage certificate (as you rightly pointed out) was a source of confusion to me for a long time. I found evidence of a single John Peagum in Limerick, but he lived a bit too early. It turns out that Emily was born out of wedlock, and hence was given her mother's surname. Her father was indeed named John, but John Casey, while her mother was Elizabeth Peagum who came from the parish of Cahernarry a.ka. Knockea, and was working as a servant in Kilmallock where she met John Casey. I can imagine that the registrar in Liverpool asked her the name of her father, and she answered simply "John", hence the mistake.
Although neither a civil birth record for Emily exists (she was surely born right around the start of it in 1864) nor a baptism (I'm can only guess why), the situation was eventually clarified by finding a marriage record in Kilmallock, July 1864, between John Casey of Kilfinane and Eliza Pegum, living in Kilmallock. Some very strong DNA matches of Casey descendants in Australia were also important in this conclusion. In fact, their ancestor John Casey emigrated from Kilfinane to Ballarat, Victoria in the 1860s, but I still can't figure out if this is my ancestor (doing a runner) or his half-brother!
Anyway, I know now that Emily's mother Elizabeth Peagum was born in Cahernarry in 1827 to George Peagum and his wife Catherine Brinn (also Burns/Byrnes), and baptised in nearby St Patrick's Church in Limerick city. Beyond that is where it gets really tricky due to the lack of records. A George Peagum was baptised in Limerick city in 1796, the son of Stephen Peagum and Mary Heffernan, though I can't be sure whether he's mine. The question is whether my Stephen Peagum and your Thomas Peagum (the name was often spelt either way) were brothers or first cousins. I'm confident the relationship is no more distant. As you're surely aware, there's another Thomas Peagum born around the same time as yours (maybe a year later) who worked a farm in Cahernarry and died there in 1865. I think it very likely this Thomas Peagum was your first cousin – did you ever look into it? I heard that the Peagum's still run a farm there, or at least did until a few decades ago!
I'd be very glad to hear from you if you have any more information about your Pegum ancestors, especially if we can establish with certitude the relation of Thomas and George and their parentage. Of course, researching Irish Catholics in the 1700s is extremely difficult, but I'd still love to make a breakthrough. Based on my research, all I can really say about the earliest Peagum's in Ireland is that the surname is very rare there, entirely confined to Co. Limerick in the early years, and without mention before the second half of the 1700s. I strongly suspect all Limerick/Irish Peagum's (Pegum's, Pegam's) descend from a single man who made his way over from England in the 1700s. I say England because the name Peagum, originally Peagham, is well attested as a surname there, where it is rare but less rare than in Ireland. It seems to have originated in Devon. In fact, I also have some good DNA evidence of distant roots in Devon (probably on the western side near Cornwall), and would be curious if you've seen anything similar in your results. I don't recall whether we matched on AncestryDNA, but my father certainly has DNA matches who are cousins of yours in New Zealand. Anyway, my suspicion is that the first Peagum to come over to Co. Limerick was a Methodist. (Methodism had a very strong presence in Cornwall and parts of Devon from the earliest years.) If so, the Peagum's would have "gone native" quite quickly in Ireland. Of course, it's possible they were Catholics even back in Devon, although there weren't many at the time.
Kind regards,
Alex
