Lisgorman Property, Bohola, Mayo - Patrick Kenny and Ann McNulty Kenny

Tricia:

I forwarded your message to a volunteer familiar with the Bohola area.

Roger McDonnell

Patrick and Anne's marriage info, taken from RootsIreland, gives the names of their fathers.  Patrick's was Michael Kenny, deceased, and Anne's was John McNulty.

Date of Marriage:10-Apr-1872  

District:Kiltimagh district

Co. Mayo

Husband   Wife

Name:  Patt  Kenny        AnneMcNulty

Address:Lisgorman     Lisgorman

Denomination:Civil ParishCivil Parish

Occupation:

Age: Full Age (Over 21)  M

Status: Bachelor (Previously unmarried)  Spinster (Previously unmarried)

Husband's Father      Wife's Father

Name:MichaelKenny   J ohnMcNulty

Address:

Denomination:

Occupation:TAILOR 

Witness 1Witness 2

Name:JohnMorally CeciliaMorally

Address:

Notes: BOHOLA CHAPEL  GROOMS FATHER DECEASED   BRIDES FATHER ALIVE

Note the occupation of "tailor" was for John McNulty.

I'm the person to whom Roger was referring as having some knowledge of Bohola.  I can provide some help, but unfortunately not all of the answers you want.  One of my grandmother's was also named Ann McNulty, and she grew up just a few miles from where your ancestors lived (in the parish of Killasser), but she was a generation younger than your Ann.  They would definitely have been related, as I will explain, though I'm not sure how closely.

First off, Lisgormin (the current anglicized spelling) is a townland within the civil parish of Bohola, located just a bit to the west of the hamlet of Bohola. Within each civil parish there are a number of townlands, in some cases as few as five, sometimes many more.  These were the smallest official districts, and are still used as addresses in many cases, since people in rural areas usually lack street addresses.  The Irish government has been trying to change this, but most people still use townland names when describing a rural location.

More info about the townland of Lisgormin is available at this link, along with an interactive map of the area:

https://www.townlands.ie/mayo/gallen/bohola/bohola/lisgormin/

At the page for each townland, there are further links to records for the townland from the 1901 and 1911 censuses, as well as Griffith’s Valuation (mid-1800’s), if they’re available.  The Griffith's records for Lisgormin show a John McNulty listed as a tenant, and also a Michael Kenny.  That John is probably the father of Ann mentioned above, since he is the only McNulty listed in the townland.  The Michael Kenny is also the only Kenny, so he is probably your Patrick Kenny's father.  Here is a direct link to the page listing both of them:

https://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml?action=doNa…

As you can see there, additional links are provided to maps and other info which were part of the Griffith's records, which can help to locate their actual tenancies more precisely.

If you follow the link to the 1901 census, you'll see that there was still one Kenny family and one McNulty family living in the townland at that time.  The heads of those families were probably siblings of your Patrick and Ann, respectively, who inherited the tenancies.  There are no Kenny's shown in the 1911 census, but there is an elderly Maria McNulty who was also shown in the 1901 census, and was apparently the surviving widow.  Ignore the age discrepancy.  In the 19th century, rural people in Ireland usually did not know exactly when they were born, and age discrepancies in records are extremely common (and also caused confusion in later death records and in census records in the places to which they emigrated).

Civil records of births, etc. did not start until 1864, and the parish register records for Bohola which are available online only go back to 1857, so that will make it hard to find info from further back.  However, if Patrick and Ann were born in the 1840's, you may find baptismal records for younger siblings in the parish register.  Note that (administrative) civil parishes and Catholic parishes do not always have the same boundaries, or even the same names.  Catholic parishes are often larger, and may encompass parts or all of several civil parishes.  For Lisgormon, though, the civil and Catholic parishes are both named Bohola.

The parish registers can be interesting to look at, in any case, and you can find them online for Bohola at this link:

https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0122

For the marriage described above, I've downloaded the relevant page from the register and am attaching it.  Note that the link I gave you for the Bohola registers also has an interactive map which allows you to move on to the registers for neighboring parishes, in case you want to look at them.  I mention this, because the neighboring parish of Swineford (also called Kilconduff) has registers going several decades further back.  I think the parish church in Bohola (Church of the Immaculate Conception and St. Joseph) was built in the 1850's, and people from Bohola may have been baptized or married in Swineford (or some other nearby parish) prior to that time.  I also have relatives who were born in Bohola, and just across the parish boundary in Killedan (Kiltimagh), and I know that to be the case in at least two instances in my family.

As for graveyards, there are at least three in Bohola.  If you google the words "bohola catholic graveyard", you'll get a page with a map showing all three, one of which is by the church.  I don't know what sort of burial records they have available, but you could contact the church about that.  People were often too poor to afford headstones in the mid-1800's, but some were erected later on, once there was money to do so, and by the late 1800's they became more common.

I mentioned that your Ann and my grandmother were probably related.  The East Mayo McNulty's only arrived there in the mid-1600's, so they're all not-too-distantly related.  The surname is not that common in Bohola, but is extremely common further to the northeast, where my grandmother grew up - some in Swineford but even more in Killasser and nearby parishes.  It's possible that your Patrick's family moved to Bohola from further northeast in the mid-1800's, when a tenancy became available after the many deaths and emigrations caused by the Famine.  I have my dna results posted at several genealogical sites, in case you want to check for the connection.

In case you want more info about the McNulty's, here's some more background:

In Irish, the surname McNulty is Mac an Ultaigh, which literally means “son of the Ulsterman” (Ultach = Ulsterman, and Ultaigh is the genitive case of the word), but it may simply refer to descent from the Ulaid, a people for whom Ulster is named (in ancient Ireland, the Uluti tribe), which in remote times ruled the entirety of the North of Ireland.  There are several stories about the origins of the surname, but according to MacLysaght in his “Surnames of Ireland”, the McNulty surname originated in County Donegal, and that is where the Mayo McNulty’s came from.  A family of McNulty’s migrated to the Callow Lakes area in East Mayo in the 1640’s (that's where my grandmother grew up), according to a history of the parish of Killasser.  That was most likely due to the Plantation of Ulster at the time.  In the course of time, McNulty’s became numerous in the area . There are also still McNulty’s in Donegal and nearby counties.  In Killasser, McNulty and Durkan were the most common surnames in 1911, each of them with double the number for any other surname.

The Kenny surname (in Irish, Ó Cionaith) also has a Donegal connection, although it is now found in Galway as well.  Your Kenny's may also have migrated to Mayo in the 17th century, due to the Plantation.

Hope some of that info proves interesting.