Thomas Murphy and Catherine Driscoll of rural Clonakilty, 1870s onwards

[Wexflyer]

The census records for 1901 and 1911 have given me something to think about.

I have to say that taken as a whole the records are unusually confusing, and point different ways!

[mattjreid]

I have a partial conclusion to the this thread - the Mayo part:

There is a record of a birth of Catherine Dixon in 1886; her parents are John Dixon and Bridget Collins:

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/birth_returns/births_1886/02610/1963610.pdf


I stopped looking for Kate Dixon on seeing her referred to as Catherine on the census record of 1911 - the Cork husband, and infant Mary were too strong to ignore - and her year of birth matches the death record.

I found this search really difficult - and it nearly put me off finding ancestors in Ireland: the names and dates were similar, with slight variations - with so many potential candidates. Fortunately there are a lot of searchable records for free.

A post-script to this search: my initial candidate for Kate's father - Darby Dixon - was probably her uncle or first cousin once-removed; John and Bridget had a son called Darby Dixon; John Dixon's father is another Darby Dixon (d. 1875), who in turn was the son of another Darby Dixon (d. 1896). I am under the impression that this elder Darby Dixon is responsible for single-handedly populating Belmullet with Dixons - many of who were called Darby - for at least fifty years after his death.

[Wexflyer]

I have a partial conclusion to the this thread - the Mayo part:

I stopped looking for Kate Dixon on seeing her referred to as Catherine on the census record of 1911 - the Cork husband, and infant Mary were too strong to ignore - and her year of birth matches the death record.

Kate is just a nickname. Catherine is the "primary" name, and should always be checked in addition to Kate.

Just to increase your joy, Darby is a nickname for Diarmaid/Dermot and is often anglicized as Jeremiah. They should be considered interchangeable also.

[mattjreid]

I think I have a full conclusion to this thread.

I'll write my methods so that others can either double-check, and/or learn from my difficulties.

My objective was to find the names, dates of birth, and dates of death of my maternal grandfather's grandparents (my 2nd great-grandparents).

I started with my maternal grandfather's parents. Details was sparse, due to estrangement of the grandfather and his parents - but I had their names, dates of death, and location of birth for the great-grandfather.

Unfortunately, I could not find the marriage records of my great-parents - which I now know to be 1910 - so there was always going to be some guesswork involved.

I got the date of birth for the great-grandmother - based on her death record - however, I identified the wrong individual (see my previous post). I eventually found the correct person and got the names of the maternal set of 2nd great-grandparents (I haven't got their dates yet, but that's another story).

I traced the paternal set of 2nd great-grandparents to Clonakilty, based on references from distant cousins; I got their names from a well-informed tree on ancestry. The great-grandfather's birth record connects them, at this location, and I found a number of other children born to this couple - then the trail went cold - as outlined in my original post.

I returned to civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie in the hope that I could find something I had missed - and I found it: four additional children. They were not transcribed by parent name, and I found them by opening each birth record for Murphy in Clonakilty between 1880 and 1900.

Now I had a list of children - in date order - with the youngest having a relatively uncommon name: Julia. I entered these names into the 1901 census and found a household in Kilmaloda, Clonakilty  - less than 10km from their last known location (Ballinrougher):

https://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Cork/Kilmaloda/Ahaliskey/1097602/


The 1911 census followed:

https://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Cork/Kilmaloda_West/Ahalisky/381879/


I'm not sure why John is listed, given that I know he was in Belmullet in 1911 

Finally, I got their death records, matching the Ahalisky location, and the informant names as their children:

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_returns/deaths_1908/05475/4532823.pdf I previously thought Ellen had died early - but that was another Ellen Murphy

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_returns/deaths_1926/04992/4361740.pdf

I think the moral of the story is: don't rely on digital transcripts as 100% accurate, and be prepared to sift through if the records are available as scans.