Looking for info on Moses Redmond and wife, Rebecca Dunn Redmond

Researching in Ireland in the 1700s is very hard going due to the general lack of records. If you don’t know where the Redmonds and Dunns lived (other than Northern Ireland) it’s a needle in a haystack. Ideally you need to know the person’s exact denomination and the townland or parish they lived in to have any chance of finding them, and even then there may not be any records for that location.

The majority of people who left Ireland, and in particular Ulster, in the 1700s tended to be Presbyterian but obviously that’s not universally true.

Check all the Canadian records (census, birth, death & marriage records) you can to see if any give a specific place of birth in Ireland.

Possibly DNA testing may be a way of matching with others who have additional information about where the family originate. Family Tree DNA reportedly has more people with Ulster roots than any other company. That obviously increases the chances of finding a match. You might want to try them or, if you have already tested, you can transfer your results to them for no fee.

The North of Ireland Family History Society is running an Ulster DNA project and can offer FTDNA testing kits at a reduced price.  http://www.nifhs.org (Go to DNA project on the website).

Thank you. 

They were born around 1770 in Ballymena, Antrim, Province of Ulster, Northern Ireland. 

peppermintcarol,

There are no statutory birth or marriage records for the late 1700s and early 1800s as they hadn’t been introduced at that time. (1845 for marriages and 1864 for births & deaths). Prior to that period you need to rely on church records. You haven’t said what denomination the families were. Ballymena is in the parish of Kirkinriola. The earliest church records for that parish are the Church of Ireland’s whicb start in 1789. Next is Ballymena 1st Presbyterian church in 1812. RC start in 1848.

So you won't find any baptism records for someone born in that area c 1770. You might find a marriage if they married in the Church of Ireland. The Ballymena Church of Ireland records are on the rootsireland site. I checked them but there is no trace of the marriage so it seems unlikely they married there.  In short therefore there may not be any record of this couple’s baptisms or marriage to find as no records exist in the Ballymena parish area for that era.

I had a look at the tithe applotment records for the area around Ballymena in the late 1820s. I noted the following:

Henry, John & Mr Redmond with 3 separate farms in Lisnevenagh; Joseph in Tannaghmore; Miss Redmond in Eskylane & John in Creevery. The tithes indicate that someone had land and so was normally a farmer. There may have been other Redmonds in the area but they wouldn’t make it into the tithes. There were no Dunn families listed in the Ballymena area at all.

I am sorry but I have no other suggestions on how you might trace precisely where they came from. As I said in my original post, researching folk in the 1700s in Ireland is very hard.