The Sargent family of Blessington, Wicklow, Ireland

I presume your Sargent family were Anglican/Church of England ?

The equivalent denomination here would have been the Church of Ireland, the historic baptism records for this parish go back to 1695, marriages to  1683, and death/burials to 1683. The original historic registers are held by the RCB Library in south county Dublin, and it appears that RootsIreland (pay-website) has some transcripts of this parish - according their source list these only seem to cover back to 1822 for baptisms, and 1841 for marriages, although when I checked on a search for Sargent (or variants) I located several probable matches for children of a William Sergeant, including Alice bapt. 28th June 1694, Robert 11th April 1897, Mary 11th September 1699 - and a second Mary bapt. 11th April 1699, and John bapt. 6th September 1702. All of these give address/residence as Blessington , not clear if this refers to the town or the parish, father’s firstname and surname is given, but no occupation or name of the children’s mother. The surname for these is recorded as either Sergant or Sergeant.

As far as I’m aware no other major website has any details of Blessington Church of Ireland records online at the moment.

Brian Cantwell’s headstone survey included St. Mary’s Church of Ireland in Blessington, and he noted details of one Sargent headstone (extract) : “...Erected by William Sargent of Blessington in memory of his beloved father Nicholas… [died] 28th October 1853…..[also] his mother Lydia [who died] 28th July 1839.”

I have some details of the parish of Blessington which give details of the Vicars back to the 1500s, Incumbents and Curates but unfortunately the names of Sextons are not included.

Just wondering if that "first Sargent"/William[?] might have been working at a Blacksmith School rather than ironmonger ? 
The Downshire estate had a school for poor boys and a directory from the 1820s mentions a Farming Society’ in the town….

The William Sargent family you found in Blessington Church records is that of the son of the original Sargent, and he must have been born in Ireland (1672-1734). Those were the names of his children you have listed. They were Church of Ireland.

The "first Sargent' may well have been working at a Blacksmith School, as this information was passed down orally. I'm interested to know where the records of the "Deed of Tenancy renewed 1 Jan 1701 as issued in 1668, and renewed in 1801 and 1901" were obtained from. I've never been able to trace records of these Deeds.

My branch of the Sargent family relocated to Rathmore Wicklow in aboout 1813.  He (another William), married a Martha Bingham of Rathmore and he shifted there. 

George27

I presumed from your references to the deeds that you had already looked into these - did whoever researched these for you provide any references ? 

The Registry of Deeds is a large collection of volumes with details going back to about 1708, so I would guess that someone connected to your family has an original or copy of the first record you mentioned - "Deed of Tenancy, renewed 1 Jan 1701 as issued in 1668".

There are three primary types of books :

Grantor Index, by surname,  covering all of Ireland, and a range of years (anywhere to 1 or 2 up to 10 or more), some times A-Z and other a range of surname letters - A-H, R-Z etc

Townland index, by townland, covering one of more counties, for a range of years

The volumes with the deed details - volume number and covering one of more years - the deeds are noted in the order they took place and each is given a sequence number - which are referenced along with the volume number in the index entries.

(note - the indexes are not sorted within letters for suernames or townlands - so in the surnames Clancy might appear before Caroll etc - although both would be listed in the pages for the letter  'C'.

Images of the various volumes are available on FamilySearch, an there is also an ongoing indexing project.

I'll have a look for the later records in the deeds, do you know the surname of the Grantor, i.e. the other party to the transaction ?

Hi,

All I have is information that "the first papers I have are a Deed of Tenancy renewed January 1, 1701, as issued in 1668, and renewed in 1801 and in 1901. We were the tenants on the Downshire Estate, the title of the Hill family.  The Downshires were the Hills of Hillsborough, County Down and married into the Iremonger family in the 17th century and had estates in Kildare, Kilkenny and County Donegal, with five surnames and seven titles.  The estate house in Blessington, known as The Mansion, was burnt years ago, but the estate office remains at Hillsborough."

This information is an extract from a book called "The Sargent Tribe" written by a William Gyves 1977, with contributions by Leonard Muymford. This book was typed and edited by Vera Mumford in 1982. I do not have access to the book and William Gyves died in 1980.  

One explanation could be that William Gyves had been handed down a copy of these Deeds and that is how he came to have information about them. 

george27

I've been going through the deed indexes, starting with the 'Land index: Wicklow, Waterford 1739-1810' and I have come across a number of references to Blessington townland, town and parish but nothing for Sargent, I've also been checking though the ‘Grantor index 1800-1809’ for Downshire and Hill, and double checking for any Sargent just in case…  I have seen a number of Downshire references, including one batch dated 1801 but none of these mentioned Sargant. I’ve a few more sections to check… if I spot anything I’ll post here

Pity that source provided no references, but if someone in that line has, or had at one time, the originals then that might be as far as it's possible to progress with that line of research. I'm not certain how renewals of deeds were handled, maybe they were not re registered, and that might account for seeing no sign of them in the later records. The sources I've seen relating to Deeds mention records from 1707/1709, which is around the time the date Registry of Deeds was established. Registration of deeds was not compulsory. My understanding is that earlier Agreements or Deeds were between individuals, presumably with witnesses, and only came to the attention of civil or ecclesisatical authorities if there was a dispute of some kind.

Thanks for that information - I appreciate the help.  Sometimes there comes a point in the research of our families that we just have to accept that what we have is all we are going to get.  If you do obtain any further info, I would welcome it.  Thanks

george27

Nothing promising from further searches of the deeds - but I will keep an eye out..

It's worth checking progress of the Registry of Deed indexing project, as these should be much easier to search.

Thank you Shane. I'll try that. I have a number of searches to do so may be some time. trouble is I'm trying to cover many familt ancestors!