Getting Situated

 

An ancestor's records may point us to her Irish origin in a particular county, and we foreigners get all excited. For someone living in North America, the designation of a county may sound fairly specific, but for those in Ireland, there is quite a way more to drill down before we hit the real answer about where that ancestor's home was actually situated. 

In her adopted new home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Johanna Falvey Kelly, my father-in-law's great-grandmother, was said to have been born in County Kerry. Admittedly, finding that information on her death certificate and in her obituary represents a great start. But researching Irish forebears, as the advice goes, requires us to drill down to the most specific local region, known as a townland.

Finding a townland can be challenging. Think of this: in County Kerry, there are a mere 2,756 townlands within its boundaries. Ready to start searching?

One way to divide and conquer this maze of possibilities is to seek for the correct civil parish. That approach will essentially whittle down the total of possible townlands to a more manageable number. If we look at the civil parish of Kilcummin, for instance, we now have only seventy six townlands to contend with.

Looking for Johanna—or any sign of other Falvey family members—in County Kerry is best accomplished by looking through government or church records. Fortunately for this particular month's research project, Johanna and her family were among the most recent of my father-in-law's migrating Irish ancestors, leaving Ireland long after the Great Famine—though not long enough afterwards to have made an appearance in the only preserved census records the country now possesses, those of 1901 and 1911. However, the more recent date of migration means we may find her name in better-preserved records than the crumbling, gap-ridden, or entirely missing documents of the years prior to 1850. 

Sure enough, I was able to find one promising marriage record for Johanna Falvey and John Kelly in the church parish of Kilcummin. On March 2, 1859, the Catholic priest noted that he married John Kelly and Johanna Falvey of Knockauncore, with witnesses' surnames Fitzgerald and Fleming.

That "Knockauncore" refers to Johanna's possible townland, a 266-acres package of rural farmland which the Falvey family and their neighbors likely called home. Let's take a closer look at what we can find about records in Knockauncore tomorrow.