Hi all,
My mother grew up in a Roman Catholic family in Manchester and her maternal grandfather had Irish origins. The family name eventually crystallised as McCreavey, but in earlier English documents the spelling could be variable.
The first members of this family to come over to England were Matthew McCreavey, my 2xgreat-grandfather (b. ca 1842), who is listed in censuses as coming from Castletown, Westmeath and being a shoe and boot maker/cordwainer, and his wife Catherine nee Fagan (b. ca. 1842), from Navan in Meath.
They had at least four children: Mary b. ca 1866, Bernard b. ca 1868, Patrick Joseph b. ca 1870, and Annie b. ca 1874, while in Ireland (probably born in Navan). My great-grandfather John William was born in 1878 when the family was already in England. (Family legend says that he was one of twins and was born 'on the boat' but we now think that if this is true, it was probably a canal boat travelling through Yorkshire rather than the boat across from Ireland, because his birth certificate says that he was born in Northowram near Halifax.)
I have found the marriage of Matthew and Catherine in Johnstown (I think - handwriting faint) in Navan in the Meath parish records. This gives Matthew's father's name as Bernard and his occupation as a shoemaker but no information about where he lived. On this certificate, the family name is listed as Creevey without the Mc. I haven't been able to get any further back than this with any certainty - there are some Creeveys in the records but I haven't been able to establish where the family originates from.
It seems that other people have been looking for various Creeveys on RootsChat but the threads are very old so I decided to start a new one.
I wonder whether anyone on here could shed some light on the following:
- Firstly, is there anyone else on here who is interested in people with this surname in Westmeath?
- Was it normal to drop the "Mc" in Ireland at this time? It seems strange that they should drop it in Ireland and then adopt it in England, since there would surely have been pressure to appear "less Irish" - my mother still remembers other Mancunians with Irish origins trying to downplay their Irishness back in the 40s and 50s. Could it have been used in speech but dropped in writing, perhaps?
- Is (Mc)Creevey or variants a common surname in Westmeath? If so, are there any known clusters around particular areas?
- What is the modern spelling of this name in Ireland (particularly Westmeath)? There seem to be other similar names such as McGreavey and McAreavey but I don't know whether they are variations of the same name or whether it just happened that Anglicisation of distinct Irish names ended up producing similar results.
- How likely would it be that a shoemaker born in the 1840s would be literate? Would the Church have provided widespread education even before this was compulsory?
Thank you so much in advance for any information!
