Hello there OP, our ancestors would have known each other for certain!
I descend from the Sheridans of Moneydurtlow, and Doyles of Tombrack and Ballamon.
I have to say though that you may to be on a wrong track with your present approach to where Patrick Fenlon and wife originated.
I suspect you are making two mistakes that all too many US researchers make. The first is that is you are failing to take account of geography (that is distance), and social class, and the second is that you appear to be ignoring the fact that records simply don't exist for some of your most probable locations of origin.
Looking at your list of family members, I could tell immediately that Patrick must have been a laborer. That is shown by the fact that the baptism/birth locations keep changing. If he were a farmer, the location would not vary so much, or at all. Interesting that the first few birth registrations say he was a farmer, but later ones, and later marriage registration says laborer. What do US marriage records, for his children, say?
There is no sign of a Fenlon farm in the vicinity of Ferns in Griffith's Valuation (1853).
Assuming that Patrick was either a laborer or cottier, then we can say:
- That he probably lived and died in the same or adjacent parish to where he was born.
- Similarly, he probably married a woman from the same parish where he lived, or adjacent.
Distances further than that become more and more unlikely the further you go. Remember, any travel he did would have been on foot! Mobility for a farm laborer was very low, and many marriages were from the same or adjacent townlands, let alone parishes!
Hence most, probably all, of the possible births you list for Patrick can be rejected as unlikely.
Similarly, how would a laborer from rural Wexford meet and marry a woman from Cork? Almost impossible, unless she was somehow working in the vicinity as a servant of a family who might have brought her there. And indeed, Heywood has pointed out that Catherine appears to have been residing in Ballingale in 1863, which is very close to the locations where they later lived.
The other big pitfall you are making is that you are considering births at improbable distances, while ignoring the fact that the local records, where they were probably born, simply aren't extant. The most probable parishes of origin for both Patrick and Catherine are Kilrush, followed by Ferns and Marshalstown. Relevant records are available for Ferns, but not Kilrush or Marshalstown.
