From Ballyboyle to Corglass... a Boyle family's story
Part 2 - Corglass
When did the Boyles come to Corglass?
In the ancient cemetery of Tobarpatrick stands a tall headstone commemorating the family of John2 Boyle who died in 1880 aged 75. Here is the evidence in hard marble that this family had been in the area for some time. But for how long? Was John the first to come here? Or did his parents and grandparents live here before him? The surname, as we have seen, originated in Donegal, about a hundred miles to the north-west. How and when did our forebears find their way to Corglass?
These were the questions I hoped to answer when I first started 'digging up the ancestors' nearly three decades ago. To date, I still can't answer them, but the search has been fascinating.
The absence of a network of relatives and the rarity of the name in County Longford strongly suggest that the Boyles were not long established in the area. When the results of Griffith's Valuation (a valuation of all the land and buildings of Ireland) were published in the 1850's John2 Boyle of Corglass was the only Boyle listed in Killoe Civil Parish, which covered a large part of north Longford. Only seven other Boyles were listed as occupiers of land or property, mainly in the south of the county. In the 1901 census, only six households in the county were Boyles, and of these, three of the heads of family were not born in Longford and four were in the southern part of the county. So our family were the only Boyles who had been living in north Longford for more than a generation.
In the Dromard RC parish records there are only three baptism entries for Boyle before 1890, none of which I can link with any certainty to this family, and only one burial, that of John2 himself in 1881. (There are large gaps and omissions in the church records, but even so, it is surprising that those births and deaths we know about from other sources are not mentioned in the surviving registers). Clearly John2 was not part of a large network of Boyles, so where might he have come from?
Though he lived a long life, from about 1805 to 1881, little or nothing is now known about John2 Boyle. There are no known photographs, and by one of those unfortunate combinations of events, there are no stories handed down in the family, and no continuity of memories or reminiscences. Of his five children that we know of, only one, John3, had any children of his own, but these were born long after the death of their grandfather.
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John3 died when only 38, therefore his four sons, all infants at the time of his death, had little opportunity to learn about their Boyle forebears. As far as I could discover, they did not have any first or second cousins on the Boyle side in the locality, which suggests that John2 Boyle, their grandfather, had no brothers or sisters who had descendants in Ireland. One would expect to find records of other Boyle family members acting as sponsors or godparents at baptisms and as witnesses at weddings, but this does not occur.
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However, John2 did have at least one brother, Terence2 and two sisters, Bridget2 and Ellen2, who emigrated to the US. Terence2 Boyle died in New York in 1864, and on his wife’s death in 1886 his estate was divided among his surviving relatives. The details of the administration of the estate confirm his relationship to John2 Boyle of Corglass, and give further information on that generation of the family.
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Terence2 was born about 1807 (his age is given as 43 in the 1850 New York Census, but as 55 on his death in 1864), and arrived in the US in 1832.
Furthermore, Terence2 had opened a number of bank accounts in 1851 with the newly founded Emigrants’ Savings Bank in New York. (Although the accounts are in the name of Thomas Boyle, it is clearly the same person as Terence2- it is either a transcription error, or he may have used the name Thomas). Account holders were asked to provide details of next-of-kin, and these records have been preserved. From this information we can piece together a picture of the family.
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His father was also called Terence, and his mother was Nelly McNamee, and by the time he opened the bank accounts in 1851, both were deceased. This Terence1 and Nelly1 were probably born about 1775-80 and are the earliest ancestors we can name with certainty. The reference to them in the Emigrant Savings Bank's document is the only record of their existence.
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Emigrant Savings Bank records http://www.genexchange.org (link no longer working)
Account Holder: Thomas Boyle
Account no. : 817
Date account opened: 06/30/1851
Place of birth Cloone, County Leitrim, Ireland
Residence: 36 Mott Street, Manhattan NY
Occupation: Auctioneer
Relatives: Terence (deceased)-Father. Nelly McNainee (sp?)(deceased) - Mother. 19 years in America, in June. 1 brother, John, in Ireland. 2 sisters in America: Bridget and Nelly. Married for 14 years to Mary Keagan, 1 child, Ellen, 3 years old on the 5th of April. This account holder opened 2 more consecutive accounts numbers: 818 and 819, one in trust for his wife, and one in trust for his daughter.
Cloone or Corglass?
Terence2 gives his place of birth in the Emigrant Savings Bank records as Cloone, County Leitrim (not Corglass, Co. Longford). Cloone is the name of a village and also a townland, and an extensive Civil Parish located just over the Longford-Leitrim county border, just a short distance from Corglass.
However, Terence2’s death notice in the New York Herald on May 11 1864, stated that he was ‘formerly of Corglass, County Longford’.
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​​​​​This raises a number of possibilities, none of which can be proved with any certainty. Describing him as 'of Corglass' strongly suggests that this was where he lived before leaving for the USA in 1832. Of course, he may not have been born there - it is possible that he was born in Cloone, and that the family moved to Corglass, sometime before 1832. The only records for this period do not help - there are no Boyles listed in either Cloone or Corglass in the Tithe Applotment Lists, compiled about 1830. ​​
An old photograph found among the family collection - could this be John Boyle2?
Equally possible is that Cloone was regarded as the local ‘centre’, the place where people would say they were from, in a general sense. In the notes compiled for the Ordnance Survey just around the time Terence was leaving for the USA, Cloone "consists of a Church, RC Chapel, the police station and two school houses, there are fairs held here, and a corn market every Friday; this is but a poor miserable village". Maybe so, but it was only a few miles from Corglass which had none of those institutions. So saying one was born in Cloone may have encompassed the nearby rural parts it served such as Corglass.
The Leitrim Connection
As we have seen, the Boyles originated in Donegal. We can only speculate how our ancestors came to be living in north Longford in the early 19th century. The most likely explanation is that at some time during the 17th or 18th century, probably as part of a general process of war, dispossession and population movement, Terence1 Boyle’s forebears moved away from their ancestral homeland in Donegal and came to occupy the then sparsely populated territory where we find them in the 1800s.
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The fact that there were several Boyle families in south Leitrim at this time suggests that they were established there for a few generations at least. Though not a very common name, it was not unusual either. However there were few if any Boyles in north Longford, which suggests that at some point an ancestor, either Terence1 or possibly an earlier one, moved from Leitrim to take up residence in Corglass.
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Unfortunately there is no documentary evidence of this, but some intriguing links with Leitrim come from the 1821 Census. This was the first full census of Ireland, but most of it has been lost. However in a few cases, local copies were made and survived, and one of these covered the Civil Parish of Carrigallen. This CP also contains a townland coincidentally named Corglass, just a few miles from both Cloone and 'our' Corglass, and there are four Boyle households located here. Also in the village of Carrigallen, the names recorded include John Boyle, aged 52 (therefore born about 1769) his son Andrew aged 24, daughter Margaret aged 21, and son John, aged 16. This John would therefore have been born in 1805, the same year as our John2 Boyle. Since we now know that ‘our’ John’s father’s name was Terence, this is clearly a different John, but they could be cousins.
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We can identify a few other Boyles living in the area. In 1825 it was noted that the catholic chapel of Aughavas Co. Leitrim (a few miles from Cloone and Corglass) also served as a schoolhouse, and the teacher was Patrick Boyle. Some 25 years later we find a Kate Boyle living close to Aughavas chapel in a house rented from Acheson O'Brien, of the same family as John2 Boyle's landlord.
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Griffiths' Valuation lists 17 Boyle households in south Leitrim in the 1850s, and t​​​​​​​​he 1901 Census lists 134 Boyles in Leitrim. Two-thirds of these are accounted for by twelve households located in the southern part of Leitrim, close to the border with Longford, and within 10 to 15 miles of Corglass.
But if our Boyles did come from Cloone or Carrigallen, there is no way of determining exactly where the may have lived, or who they were related to.
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Refugees?
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There are some other, less plausible possibilities that might explain how they got to Corglass. Though the region was largely uninhabited in the 1600s, by the 18th century the population began to rise rapidly, mainly due to migration from Ulster, and many of the surnames in the area up to the present day are of Ulster origin. There is some historical evidence of hundreds of families moving into south Leitrim/north Longford as a result of agrarian and sectarian strife in Ulster in the late 18th century. Accounts of the expulsions of Catholics from County Armagh in 1795 have survived.
"Any of us that are Catholics here are not sure going to bed that we shall get up with our lives, either by day or by night. It is not safe to go outside the doors here. The Orangemen go out uninterrupted and the gentlemen of the county ...encourage them in their wickedness. Mr James Verner...who lives near Armagh has...turned off his estate his poor Catholic families who were plundered of everything they had, even to their wearing apparel. The Orangemen go out in large bodies by day and night and plunder the poor Catholics of everything they have, even the webs of linen out of their looms...Any of the Catholics they do not wish to destroy they give two or three days notice to clear out of the place by pasting papers on their doors, on which is written 'Go to Hell or to Connaught. If you do not, we are all haters of the papists, and we will destroy you.'[Whelan, 1996]
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It has already been noted that there was a cluster of Boyles in south Armagh / north Louth since the mid-16th century. It is possible that some of them were subjected to the expulsions described above, though those events were mainly confined to north Armagh.
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Another possibility is that John1 Boyle married into the Corglass farm. John’s wife was Bridget Harte. The Tithe Lists, compiled about 1830, include a Bryan Hart in Corglass, but no Boyles. By the time of Griffith’s Valuation in the 1850’s there are no Hartes mentioned, but John1 Boyle is listed. The flaw in this possibility is that it would mean that Terence would not have lived here before emigrating to the USA, so why would his death notice say he was 'formerly of Corglass'?
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Considering these possibilities, I think that the most likely scenario is that at some point, probably in the late 1700s, one of the Boyles from a family already settled in south Leitrim obtained the farm in Corglass. The farm was rented from O'Briens of Mohill, who also rented out other farms in Leitrim, and who may already have rented some land there to Boyles, which might have smoothed the arrangements. If the O'Brien estate kept any records of their tenants these no longer exist, so it is not possible to discover from this source when the Boyles first came to Corglass. Whether the first Boyle to occupy the farm was Terence1, or one of his forbears we will never know. ​​​
The Tithe Applotment books were compiled between 1823 and 1837 in order to determine the amount which occupiers of agricultural holdings should pay in tithes to the Church of Ireland (the main Protestant church, and the church established by the State until its dis-establishment in 1871). The Tithe Lists are nowhere near a full census substitute, as many landholders were omitted. Tithes were assessed on farmers, but pastureland was exempt. Therefore, those growing wheat, oats or potatoes would likely be listed, but those raising only sheep would not. The type of agricultural produce that was taxed could vary from parish to parish, which complicates matters even more.
A Civil Parish was a local government administrative unit that did not always correspond with the Catholic Church parish. Corglass was in Killoe Civil Parish but in Dromard RC parish.
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[1] Lost: Along with many other irreplaceable documents, nearly all the records were destroyed in the burning of the Public Record Office during the Irish Civil War in 1922.
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[2]Married into: My uncle John5 Boyle (d.1995) told me that he thought that his grandfather had married into Corglass. This was not so, but maybe the story referred to his great-grandfather!