Downpatrick Montgomery

Vince, 

You don?t say exactly what the family denomination was. From John?s involvement with the Orange Order that indicates a protestant background but that contains a number of possibilities.

You might be able to find James & Mary?s marriage in church records as well as the baptisms of their children. 

You say the family lived in Downpatrick. The Church of Ireland in Downpatrick has baptism and marriage records for 1750 ? 1815 and 1818 to 1899. The Presbyterian church has baptism and marriage records from 1827 onwards. The non-subscribing Presbyterian church only has records from 1837. (There may have been earlier records, but if there were, they have been lost).

The Church of Ireland records are on-line on the rootsireland site but neither of the 2 Presbyterian churches is. For them you would need to go to PRONI in Belfast to look them up.

I had a look in the street directories for Downpatrick but did not see a James Montgomery sawyer listed. I did note a John & James Montgomery, both sawyers, at 27 Catherine St North, Belfast in 1835.

http://www.proni.gov.uk/index/search_the_archives/street_directories.htm

Elwyn

Thank you, Elwyn

I did some homework on the denomination. John Reid Montgomery was a Warden of the Anglican Church in Echuca.
However, I drew a blank again with RootsIreland. I will explore PRONI. I didn't realise how much information was there.

Thanks again

Vince

Vince,

So the Montogomery family may have been Church of Ireland.

There are 70 parishes in Co Down. If you go through the rootsireland site and see which ones they have (there's alist for each county), you can delete them, and focus on the others which are not on-line. Probably a couple of days work going through them at PRONI. Here?s a link to a list of all the parishes in Co Down:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rosdavies/MAPS/CoDown…

Be aware that a lot of early Church of Ireland records were destroyed in the 1922 fire in Dublin, during the civil war. Ironically they had been sent there for safe keeping. So there are quite a few parishes with no records before about 1880.

Elwyn

Thanks Elwyn. Let us know how your research is progressing Vince!

Best wishes

Clare Doyle

Genealogy Support 

Just a thought, which may be wrong direction, but there are Reid and Montgomery families in grangewalls and ballylig town lands close to downpatrick. I know they are much later, but It might be worth exploring griffiths valuations for these 2 town lands to see if there are other family connections. Also ballee, bright and killough gravestone inscriptions. Finally, the freeholders records for these surnames might help if you think there is a townland connection.