Seeking information about ancestors of Hugh Kennedy, listed as born in Antrim, 1763

Dear Karen

Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out!
I have passed your query to a volunteer who will be in touch shorty

Best wishes
Clare Doyle
Genealogy Support

Karen,

You have identified the problem that the name Antrim raises. In common with a number of other Irish counties, there is a town with the same name as the county. And no quick way of resolving which was meant. What you could do, is try the town?s records first, and then that may resolve whether that was where they originated.

You don?t say what denomination the Kennedy family were. Do you know? The good news is that Antrim town has some of the oldest records in this part of Ireland. The Presbyterian church?s records start in 1677 and the Church of Ireland?s in 1700. RC start in 1825 (parish of Drummaul).

The Presbyterian records are not on-line. The Church of Ireland are (on rootsireland, which is a subscription site). But only for the years 1824 onwards. Not sure about RC but they are probably too late for you anyway. There?s copies of the Presbyterian & Church of Ireland records in PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast but a personal visit is required to view them.

Other than checking church records, at this stage it?s hard to suggest anything else that may trace this family. There are very few records from the 1700s and without more definite information on their place of origin, it wouldn?t be worth trawling the various records that do exist at this point.

If the family aren?t in the Antrim town records then, it would seem to follow they came from somewhere else in the county, but finding them will be the proverbial needle in a haystack. And only a very small number of churches in Co Antrim have records for the 1700s.

You may need to get a researcher to go to PRONI for you to look at the Antrim town records.

Elwyn

Hello Elwyn

Thank you so much for your support! I had a sneaking suspicion that the ability to continue tracing our ancestors chronologically much further back would start to get a lot more interesting... I think we are very grateful for the wonderful details that have been unearthed so far.

It may be a little while before we can pursue this meaningfully but I do hope to try and get my mother to Ireland in the next couple of years as we have Irish heritage in many branches of our collective families. She would love to 'touch base' so to speak.

If at any time seekers connected to our particular branch of the Kennedys are seeking to trace what happened to convicts headed to Australia - we are very happy to share the histories we have stretching to the present day.

Many, many thanks!
Karen van Harskamp
:o)

KAren,

If you come to Co Antrim, let me know and I'll be very happy to meet you. If you want any advice on finding local records or on what to see, I'll be happy to help.

Elwyn

Dear Elwyn

I just realised I never did confirm the Kennedy family's religious persuasion - they were Roman Catholic and remained so right up until the last two generations in our branch of the family - they steadfastly married Irish RC partners (Reillys and O'Neills) until my partner's father married Protestant and then their children were raised Anglican.

Many thanks,

Karen van Harskamp

Karen,

Sadly there isn’t a single RC parish in Co Antrim with baptism records for as far back as 1763. (Most start in the 1820s or later).  So there aren’t any paper records that you can usefully research. DNA testing is probably the only way of tracing your roots.

Hi Karen, I am in Beechworth Australia, my brother Arthur is in Antrim as I write trying to follow up on Hugh.

I will let you know if he turns up with anything.

Kind Regards

Brian Kennedy

http://www.genealogy.com/ftm/b/o/y/Barbara-Boyce/GENE1-0001.html

Hello Brian

Thank you for the update on your family history directions!  I hope your brother Arthur has a wonderful (and historically productive) journey through Antrim in particular and Ireland in general.  I do realise (our collective family tree is more anchored in Ireland than any other country) how challenging seeking records from Ireland's tumultuous past can be...  We have not pursued the DNA options yet but sometime in the future it may be a consideration with the silences we've encountered with family with very, very 'shared' monikers...  If you don't mind me asking, which branch from Hugh Kennedy (b. 1763) are you descended from?  Despite being in far-flung North Queensland, my partner's family are descended from Hugh's convict son John.  Two of his boys - Hugh (again!) and Henry, born in Dapto, NSW headed for the goldfields of the North in the late 1800s and ended up in Normanton in Gulf Country, seemingly able to keep their noses clean this time...  Have a good week, Karen

Hello Elwyn and Brian (and also Arthur) -

I have spent a little more time really looking at the names/occupations mentioned in John Kennedy's 1815 trial around sheep stealing, located specifically in Belfast and reported in The Belfast Newsletter.  Using the Belfast Directory of several years from the 1800s - it mentions Simon McAnally (butcher - Hercules Lane/Street - now Royal Avenue) and James Dugan (also on Hercules Lane/Street) - there were some 57 butchers on Hercules Lane/Street and interestingly it bordered onto the factory areas/quite poor residential areas associated with the textile industry which is interesting considering Hugh Kennedy's occupation as a weaver.  Simon McAnally and James Dugan were the two butchers who John Kennedy attempted to off-load the sheep he was convicted of stealing to. 

I don't know if this is helpful but at least with John Kennedy (the son) - this may narrow down at least where he lived at the time of his crime/trial in County Antrim even if it does not necessarily help with his birth as such - there may be some chance his family could be associated with Belfast - (may be wishing!) - I have attached the word document with the court case, the Belfast directory entries and maps and accounts of the area that help support this bit of a theory.  I have highlighted in yellow/red the specific details that may be of help or support this possible direction. 

Much luck to everyone, Karen van Harskamp (partner of descendant of Hugh/John Kennedy -  Peter Kennedy)

Karen,

In the 1700s, Belfast was a fairly small town. In 1750 the population was 8000 (nearly all Protestant) and by 1800 it had grown to 20,000. In the next century there was a huge influx from the countryside and by 1901 it was 349,000.

A census in 1782 records that there were just 365 Catholics in Belfast. The first RC church (St Mary’s) was built in 1784 (paid for in part by the local Presbyterians and members of the Church of Ireland). That church is still open today. It’s very close to Hercules Street (now Royal Avenue) which is the main street in Belfast city centre.

So the picture, in the late 1700s and early 1800s (when your family were in Belfast) was of a small town growing very rapidly as people poured in from the countryside, from all over Ulster. They were drawn by the emerging industries ie ship building, cotton spinning and so on. Later the big linen mills would be built and that created thousands more new jobs. Your Kennedy family were almost certainly part of the influx of new arrivals.

However tracing them and finding out where they lived etc is very difficult. The earliest RC records for the city are St Patrick’s, which start in 1798. (St Mary’s early records are lost and they have nothing before 1867.). You can search St Pat’s to see if your family attended there.  The RC parish records are on-line free on the National Library site:

http://registers.nli.ie/parishes

But even if you locate them, the records rarely contain an address or other identification. They don’t really advance your research much. However it might at least confirm the town of birth, as that’s obviously not fully certain yet.

You mention that Hugh Kennedy was a weaver. That was a skill that most of the working class had in the Ulster counties. A bit like having a driving licence or riding a bike today, most people could do it, and it’s what you fell back on if no other better paid work was available. For many, especially in rural areas, it was the main source of employment in winter months when there was no agricultural or labouring work available.

The newspaper report states that the sheep were stolen from James White’s property, and that he was able to follow their tracks into Belfast. So John appears to have lived in Belfast and nipped out of town a few miles and then driven the 6 sheep into a butchers in town. There are sheep and goats on the hills to the west of Belfast today. You could probably still rustle a few nowadays.

But the house that the Kennedys lived in might be very difficult to find. The earliest Belfast street directory I know of is Bradshaws 1819. That’s on-line on the PRONI website. There are 12 Kennedys listed. (It’s a very common name). Most appear to be tradesmen or professionals. The average labourer or weaver wasn’t listed in those early directories. They mostly lived their lived beneath officialdom’s radar.

Hello Elwyn,

Thank you so much for your reply and your qualifications of records/evidence!  Several branches of my partner and my Irish ancestors were possessed of very wide-spread names (with even more wide-spread Christian names!), poor and Roman Catholic - and I think we really have come to accept that we may know the bulk of what we may get to know specifically.  The most we can do after this is probably to understand the social/political/geographic spaces they lived in at the time which I suppose the above bit of legwork through the court case was an effort to achieve :o)

I think I was most excited to be able to pin down the geographic patterns of occupations with the butchers' row and to see where the textile industries were in relation to this to get an idea of where the Kennedys could potentially have roamed in their daily lives.  In researching my mother's family from Tipperary and torturing ourselves with more distinctive names like 'Mary Burke' and 'Bridget Hayes' it has been interesting to notice there were also quite a few Kennedys Tipperary way and similar to what you mentioned above - I know mobility for survival/work adds another layer of challenge to locating families.  I wonder how many Irish family researchers have wandered down the DNA path to try and narrow things down a degree?  I wonder how Arthur above went with his on the ground efforts?  Hopefully I'll get to hear about that one day...

Huge thanks as always!!

Karen

Karen,

Regarding DNA, a snag is that most people doing DNA samples are in the USA or Australia or Canada. In Ireland there wouldn’t be quite the same level of interest (after all, we mostly know where our ancestors came from) so people aren’t quite as enthusiastic.  So if you go down the DNA route you’ll get matches with people in the countries I mentioned, but possibly none in Ireland! However if the matches know where their ancestors originated, it may help you that way. So I would still definitely consider it, but just be aware that far fewer people in Ireland are contributing to the DNA databases, and this will skew the results slightly.