Two Places at the Same Time

 

If Margaret Flannery Tully and her family migrated to that tiny town known as Paris in what is now Ontario, Canada, where did she come from? That question about the two places she once called home is not as hard to answer as it might seem, thanks to finding a handwritten letter confirming the baptism of their son, John Tully, kept over the decades in personal family papers. Not only was that document the key to discovering Margaret's maiden name, but it was how I learned the location the family called their home church back in Ireland.

That church location was in Ballina, part of what was once known geopolitically as the "North Riding" of County Tipperary. But as you probably have learned by now, the most important location for tracing an Irish ancestor is actually the land subdivision known as a townland. Finding that townland can be challenging. After all, County Tipperary has a mere 3,245 townlands—or 3,144 townlands, as one Irish website puts it, "that we know about."

Besides finding the handwritten note verifying Margaret's son John Tully's baptism, I've since been able to locate digitized copies of baptismal entries for the remainder of the Tully children born in Ireland. For instance, in finding that their oldest known son, Michael, was baptized on June 5, 1834, I could spot the priest's entry at the top of the register stating that the family came from Tountinna, the townland named for the highest point in the Arra Mountains.

I've been there myself, viewing the rugged terrain which once housed the Tully family before their departure for Canada. By all accounts, the Tullys arrived in Canada in time to be listed there in the "1851 census"—an anomaly in itself, as that census, due to other difficulties, was actually not enumerated until January 12, 1852. Still, the very document which led me to find the Tully residence in Tountinna, Griffith's Valuation, was said to not have been completed until June 29, 1853.

Yet, looking closely at the Valuation entries in Tountinna—transcribed, unfortunately, as "Fountinna" in currently-available typewritten records—it is quite clear that, despite the family's entry in the Canadian census in the previous year, there was an entry for Denis Tully, Margaret's husband, back in that Irish townland. It is only in looking closely at the details from the Tully entry in Griffith's that we see the evaluator's note, "Added to [entry] No. 1. House struck out of valuation."

It is sometimes only in the relentless pursuit of the tiny details that we learn more about our ancestors. In Margaret's case, it appears we will only—if at all—be able to learn more about her roots if we continue to follow suit.