Unexpected grandmothers' surnames - expecting Swiney/Keys, got Foley/Lyons !?

[kob3203]

I was also going to suggest reversion to maiden names, or no marriage had happened, but lack knowledge of how unusual that was in Ireland.  It definitely happened to some people I was looking at in Scotland.

From my limited experience of Irish civil certificates the surname used for a widow who dies or remarries has always been her married name. But I've seen some cases where a married woman acting as informant appears to have given her maiden name.

[Wexflyer]

The Edward in 1882.
He was baptized in April 1882 as Edmond, with father Bartholomew.
Mother Margaret Keys.
Make of that what you will.

Where did you find that ? The Mitchelstown RC Parish baptism registers at the NLI only go up to May 1881.

RootsIreland.

Their coverage for Mitchelstown goes to 1899.

[Wexflyer]

The Edward in 1882.
He was baptized in April 1882 as Edmond, with father Bartholomew.
Mother Margaret Keys.
Make of that what you will.

Bartholomew sounds like maybe a (bad) clerical error ?

Surely no more or no less than Foley as the name of the grandmother. You can't have it both ways!

[Wexflyer]

Grandmothers have remarried?

Remarriage is definitely a possibilty since both grandfathers were deceased at the 1868 marriage. However, I've had no luck in tracking down such a remarriage in either the civil or RC parish records - I've searched for Keys or Sweeney civil/RC marriages to Foley or Lyons, including various spellings, anywhere in Ireland, between 1845  and 1868, but found nothing.

Another possibility that I'd considered was that the grandmothers may have reverted to using their  maiden names after the deaths of their husbands, but I think this would have been very unusal in those days. And I can find no RC parish marriages between Patrick Sweeney or John Keys and Margaret Lyons or Margaret Foley before 1845 anywhere in Ireland.

These are precisely the reasons for the suggestion I made earlier - illegitimate.

[kob3203]

The Edward in 1882.
He was baptized in April 1882 as Edmond, with father Bartholomew.
Mother Margaret Keys.
Make of that what you will.

Bartholomew sounds like maybe a (bad) clerical error ?

Surely no more or no less than Foley as the name of the grandmother. You can't have it both ways!

Touché !

[kob3203]

The Edward in 1882.
He was baptized in April 1882 as Edmond, with father Bartholomew.
Mother Margaret Keys.
Make of that what you will.

Where did you find that ? The Mitchelstown RC Parish baptism registers at the NLI only go up to May 1881.

RootsIreland.

Their coverage for Mitchelstown goes to 1899.

Do IFHF/RootsIreland have scans of the parish registers or is it just transcriptions ?

[Wexflyer]

The Edward in 1882.
He was baptized in April 1882 as Edmond, with father Bartholomew.
Mother Margaret Keys.
Make of that what you will.

Where did you find that ? The Mitchelstown RC Parish baptism registers at the NLI only go up to May 1881.

RootsIreland.

Their coverage for Mitchelstown goes to 1899.

Do IFHF/RootsIreland have scans of the parish registers or is it just transcriptions ?

Transcriptions. With links to the NLI copies, if available.

[Wexflyer]

The RootsIreland transcriptions are, in my experience, pretty accurate. Not infallible, but better than any of the others I have seen. IMHO this is for two reasons:
- The transcriptions are from the original registers, rather than the NLI microfilms, which are of variable quality, and
- The transcriptions were done by Irish people, as opposed to Americans, Indians, etc. who have done transcriptions for others. Meaning that they were familiar with Irish family names and place names.

[kob3203]

The RootsIreland transcriptions are, in my experience, pretty accurate. Not infallible, but better than any of the others I have seen. IMHO this is for two reasons:
- The transcriptions are from the original registers, rather than the NLI microfilms, which are of variable quality, and
- The transcriptions were done by Irish people, as opposed to Americans, Indians, etc. who have done transcriptions for others. Meaning that they were familiar with Irish family names and place names.

That's good to know. I have to say that the few IFHF transcriptions I paid for when I started my research around 15 years ago turned out to be accurate when I was later able to double-check against the scanned parish registers at the NLI. The Irish RC parish register transcriptions at Ancestry and FamilySearch on the other hand need to be taken with a grain of salt.