Looking for Flanagans in Town(lands)

 

Familiar Irish surnames sometimes cause me to struggle. I can't help but wonder whether I've found the right Flanagan, for instance, since the name is quite common. So I over-extend my search efforts, perhaps for no useful advantage.

Let's consider, for instance, William and James Flanagan, both of whom once lived in the Catholic parish of Ballyagran in County Limerick. The two possible townlands for their residence would be Cappananty and Cappanihane. The two townlands lie side by side just to the west of the modern road N20, exiting the road about halfway between Charleville and Croom.

Cappananty is the smaller of the two townlands, less than even one square mile in area. Cappanihane, which is just over one and a quarter square miles in size, is not much larger. Being rural areas, neither boasts a robust population. I'm hoping that would mean less of a chance of stumbling upon name twins in either place.

Taking my search to old valuation records of the time period when William and James might still be in the area, I did a basic search first for James, opening the search to all of County Limerick, just in case. Of the thirty two results in the valuation records collection at Ancestry.com, one James was in Cappananty Townland, another one was in Cappanihane Townland, and a third entry was noted as "Cappanchane."

Looking further, I realized the records were for different years. While James Flanagan appeared in Cappanihane in Griffith's Valuation—completed in County Limerick by 1853—in an earlier survey which was completed in September of 1849, there was an entry for a James Flanagan in Cappananty Townland, only a few lines away from the 7f entry we had previously found for William Flanagan. James likely moved away from the property neighboring William's, then when William relinquished his lease there, perhaps it was this same James Flanagan who moved back. Remember, after William left, Catherine Flanagan claimed the property until 1866, and sometime between then and 1868, James moved in. 

While I'm guessing the James Flanagan of the 1849 valuation and the James Flanagan of the Cappanihane entry as well as the later 1868 return to Cappananty are one and the same man, I must concede I don't have any paper trail upon which to rest my case—at least, not from property or tax records. There are, however, other places to look for any sign of who this James might have been.