Hi all,
I am seeking information about these people and their families. The Tipperary Clans Archive has Dennis Brennan Esq buried in Coolbane, County Kerry on 24 Apr 1844. We have a Maybury family history (
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~mabry/kerry2.html) which says "Catherine (c.1817-1862), married Denis Brennan, a Catholic, and, after his death, the brother of David Moriarty, the Catholic bishop of Kerry".
From online trees (unconfirmed) we have Brennan born at Coolbane about 1810 and marrying Catherine Maybury on 27 Jan 1842. Their daughter Bridget was born at Coolbane in 1843. She married James Doyle in 1881 and they emigrated to New York, where she died in 1916.
(Online trees have Catherine Maybury b 22 April 1819 in Cleady, Kerry, marrying Samuel Geary after Dennis Brennan dies -- not the brother of David Moriarty. But they also have Catherine dying in 1899, which is based on a reference to a woman named Catherine Maybury, but of course that would not have been this Catherine's surname when she died.)
Meanwhile, in Country Westmeath, my great grandmother Catherine Brennan was born. At the time of Catherine's marriage in Australia in 1876 she said she had been born at Mullingar about 1854 with her parents Dennis Brennan, a schoolmaster, and Catherine Newman. When she emigrated to Australia in 1875 the Kapunda ship list has her birth year as 1850, and her death certificate has her birth year as 1848. (She may well have wanted to make herself appear younger to her new husband, and to qualify for free passage on the ship to Australia.)
However, those of my family who have had their DNA tested have a cousin or half-cousin relationship with descendants of Bridget Brennan, making us think the Dennis Brennan in Coolbane and the Dennis Brennan in Westmeath might be the same man. He may have been a Kerry native who got a job at the Mullingar school.
We have found a marriage between Dennis Brennan and Catherine Talt on 22 May 1835 at Rochfortbridge, near Mullingar, and we think this might have been our Catherine's parents. We have a baptism on 14 May 1844 at Rochfortbridge for Catherine Brennan, daughter of Dennis and Catherine. If that is our great grandmother, that would make her 44 when the last of her five sons was born.
The obvious conclusion is that these were two different Dennis Brennans. It is a common name. But that does not explain our DNA link to Bridget's family.
If the two Dennis Brennans are the same man, he died in Coolbane about the same time that Catherine Talt was having my great grandmother in Westmeath. For this to work, he would have to be born in Kerry, take a job in Westmeath, marry Catherine Talt, perhaps start a family, go home to Kerry for some (perhaps family) reason, meet Catherine Maybury and get her pregnant with Bridget and marry her (bigamously), then go back to Westmeath, get Catherine Talt pregnant with my great grandmother, then shoot through back to Kerry where he dies, a suspiciously young man (perhaps the Maybury family caught up with him!).
At the time of her own marriage in Australia to my great grandfather William Turner, Catherine Brennan said her mother was Catherine Newman, not Talt, so I'm not sure how that fits in (but my great grandfather got his mother's maiden name wrong, too!). I suppose it's possible Catherine Talt married a man named Newman after her first husband died, but we haven't found that.
I tried posting in the Westmeath section in the hope that would bear fruit, but while I got some helpful responses, the puzzle remains, so I thought I might have more luck approaching the problem from the Coolbane end.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Geoff Turner
(in Australia)
