Robinson, George, cooper,(occupation) Templemore, L;ondonderry (?-?) and Robinson nee McCombe (?-?) and family??

Good morning 

I've attached a guide we prepared for those researchering their Derry ancestors and some details on researching passenger lists.  If you have any other questions you can email our Genealogist at the Tower Museum Derry genealogy@derrystrabane.com who has a breadth of knowedlge on genealogical records for the region.

best wishes

Bernadette

Bernadette Walsh

Tower Museum, Archivist

IrelandXO Volunteer Partner NI

timoteo,

Creevey in the 1831 census is more commonly called Creevagh. There are townlands of Creevagh Upper & Lower. In the 1830s that was an agricultural area and it still is today (more or less). The tithe applotment records for the parish list all the farmers c 1830. 

http://www.irishgenealogyhub.com/derry/tithe-applotments/templemore-par…

There are no Robinsons in the townland then so you can infer that George was probably an agricultural labourer. Certainly he was someone who did not have much land. He is not listed there in Griffiths Valuation c 1860, so had either died or moved by that year.

That family was Presbyterian. The only Presbyterian church in Derry with records for the period you need is 1stDerry. They start in 1815 for baptism & marriages. They also have deaths 1857 – 1886 (which is unusual as most Presbyterian churches don’t bother to keep burial records). There’s a copy of 1st Derry’s records in PRONI in Belfast but obviously they don’t go back far enough for Daniel’s birth.  He doesn’t appear in the census as a head of household so was possibly still at home. Assuming that’s the right family and denomination you may struggle to find any record of him.

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 in conjunction with FTDNA and can offer testing kits at a reduced price.  http://www.nifhs.org (Go to DNA project on the website).

I did notice this marriage in 1850 for Jane Robinson, daughter of George Robinson, Cooper. If she were a sister to your ancestor, she’d have been quite old but all the same the father’s name and occupation fit. I notice she married in the Cathedral, so she was apparently Church of Ireland. 

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_re…

Have you searched the Church of Ireland records for Templemore, for the family? There’s a copy in PRONI in Belfast plus rootsireland has some coverage (subscription).

Elwyn,

Thank you very much as I'm so at an impasse. I am not in a financial position to afford any subscription as I've lost my long term uni employment due to Covid19.

In the 1831 census , the only George Robinson, who would have been around 45-50 at that time, I managed to find puts himself down as Presbyterian. Is that the same as the Church of Ireland?

In his household at 11, Creevagh/Creevey St, Templemore, he states the are 4 males and 6 females.

I do not know if the family employed any servants but as George was a cooper by trade, I doubt very much they had any paid help.

Jane may well be one of Daniel's sisters. How do you spell Jane's married surname, Seoll?

I'm aslo curious about the only document I found about the death of a Mary Robinson, widow of a cooper, in 1873, aged 86 yo at 4 Dark Lane , Londonderry which cesaed to exist in 1952.

Ongoing work , methinks??

Cheers,  once again.

TM

Bernadette,

I thank you most kindly for all the work and links you have provided me with. George Robinson is a cooper by trade as noted on the death certificate of his son,Daniel Robinson (1809-1892) in Melbourne Australia.Daniel's mother is Mary Robinson nee McCOmbe again as state don the afore-mentioned death certifcate.

All I know about Daniel is that 'Dan served his time in a hunting and training stable in the north of Ireland, and can talk ''a bit of horse'' with a good many'.

and 'Mr Dan Robinson  has had a most extensive experience on the Engliash and Australian turf....'

Any tips about locating stables in the north of Ireland operative  between 1820 and 1850 as Dan left for Australia in 1852.?

As for locating Dan Robinson as either trainer or jockey  at any race course in England between 1820-1850, I do not even know where to begin???

yours disconsonsonately,

TM

Bernadette,

I thank you most kindly for all the work and links you have provided me with. George Robinson is a cooper by trade as noted on the death certificate of his son,Daniel Robinson (1809-1892) in Melbourne Australia.Daniel's mother is Mary Robinson nee McCOmbe again as state don the afore-mentioned death certifcate.

All I know about Daniel is that 'Dan served his time in a hunting and training stable in the north of Ireland, and can talk ''a bit of horse'' with a good many'.

and 'Mr Dan Robinson  has had a most extensive experience on the Engliash and Australian turf....'

Any tips about locating stables in the north of Ireland operative  between 1820 and 1850 as Dan left for Australia in 1852.?

As for locating Dan Robinson as either trainer or jockey  at any race course in England between 1820-1850, I do not even know where to begin???

yours disconsonsonately,

TM

Bernadette,

I thank you most kindly for all the work and links you have provided me with. George Robinson is a cooper by trade as noted on the death certificate of his son,Daniel Robinson (1809-1892) in Melbourne Australia.Daniel's mother is Mary Robinson nee McCOmbe again as state don the afore-mentioned death certifcate.

All I know about Daniel is that 'Dan served his time in a hunting and training stable in the north of Ireland, and can talk ''a bit of horse'' with a good many'.

and 'Mr Dan Robinson  has had a most extensive experience on the Engliash and Australian turf....'

Any tips about locating stables in the north of Ireland operative  between 1820 and 1850 as Dan left for Australia in 1852.?

As for locating Dan Robinson as either trainer or jockey  at any race course in England between 1820-1850, I do not even know where to begin???

yours disconsonsonately,

TM

Bernadette,

I thank you most kindly for all the work and links you have provided me with. George Robinson is a cooper by trade as noted on the death certificate of his son,Daniel Robinson (1809-1892) in Melbourne Australia.Daniel's mother is Mary Robinson nee McCOmbe again as state don the afore-mentioned death certifcate.

All I know about Daniel is that 'Dan served his time in a hunting and training stable in the north of Ireland, and can talk ''a bit of horse'' with a good many'.

and 'Mr Dan Robinson  has had a most extensive experience on the Engliash and Australian turf....'

Any tips about locating stables in the north of Ireland operative  between 1820 and 1850 as Dan left for Australia in 1852.?

As for locating Dan Robinson as either trainer or jockey  at any race course in England between 1820-1850, I do not even know where to begin???

yours disconsonsonately,

TM

timoteo,

I would say that the age of the Mary who died in 1873 is the right age for someone whose son was born c 1809. A cooper was a fairly unusual trade, so the chances of there being 2 Mary Robinsons, both wives of a cooper in or around Derry seem fairly small. I’d say that’s likely to be your family. The informant was  an Isabella Robinson of the same address, so presumably a daughter or daughter in law. I can’t find anything that definitely identifies her. I don’t see a death for George Robinson. Death registration only started in 1864 so my guess is that he died before that (and so there  probably won’t be a record). 

Church of Ireland is not the same as Presbyterian. Church of Ireland is Anglican.

Jane’s husband was Alexander Scott.

I am not sure how you would go about finding where Daniel got his horse skills. I am not sure whether that’s the sort of thing that would be documented

Cheers, Elwyn.

I;ll keep on delving and digging!! So ther's not much joy for me ascertaining George;s; exact DoB, DoM & DoD, is Templemore a suburb or separate form Londonderry? Is Creevey/Creevagh a street or homeland or parish as it puts George et al. residing at 11. Creevey , Templemore. Londonderry in 1831 census?

If I am to take Mary Robinson (1786-1873) as definitive, how can I exploe where she might have been born and married- in Ireland and England they usually had two sponsors/.witnesses at a weeding in 18/19C - often parents of bride and groom? 

How can I establish where George and Mary resided in Londonderry? How long would Mary have lived at 4 Dark Lane , Lononderry where she died? How can I ascertain whether she was owner/ occupier or tenant?

Any further tips gratefully received??

Cheers!!

Tim Murphy

Tim,

Templemore is the parish that includes the city of Derry. So it’s a civil and religious administrative district.

Creevy is a townland within Templemore. A townland is a uniquely Irish administrative unit. Creevy (more commonly Creevagh) is split into Upper & Lower. Upper is 371 acres and Lower 351. It would all have been agricultural land in 1831 but today some of Creevagh Lower is an industrial estate, though most remains agricultural land. Link to a map here:

http://www.placenamesni.org/resultdetails.php?entry=681

Houses in rural Ireland did not have street names or house numbers until the 1950s, and even today some don’t. Your townland alone was enough to identify you or get a letter delivered. The number 11 in the 1831 census is not part of any postal address, it was just the enumerator’s private numbering system to help him identify each property in his records. (Records which have not survived). Combined population of both parts of Creevagh in the 1901 census was 98 people. Most engaged in farming plus some clerks, domestic servants, a barrister and folk working in shirt factories. (Derry was famous for making shirts in the late 1800s and 1900s).

The modern Heather Rd goes through the middle of Creevagh Lower and Creevagh Rd crosses Creevagh Upper. Creevagh Upper is perhaps 2 miles from the city centre. Not terrifically convenient for a cooper whose trade was presumably based in the city, where there were breweries, distilleries, warehouses and other industries which used lots of barrels. A move to live into the city itself wouldn’t have been surprising.

Finding Mary Robinson’s birth and marriage would involve searching the church records I mentioned previously. Tradition was to marry in the bride’s church, so it doesn’t always follow that a marriage and subsequent children’s baptisms were in the same church. The Creevy family was evidently Presbyterian, so 1st Derry Presbyterian’s records are an obvious starting point (they start in 1815), but with the apparent daughter Jane marrying in the Church of Ireland, I’d check those too. The Cathedral where she married has records back to 1642. Marriages in Ireland had 2 witnesses, same as in England. Not always the parents though, but often could be. For a marriage in the early 1800s, you rarely get more than the date, the couples names and the 2 witnesses.

Very few people in Ireland were able to own their homes in the 1800s, and your ancestors would undoubtedly have been renting. Looking at the 1901 census for Dark Lane, it appears that all the homes there were owned by the Honourable Irish Society.

From the Londonderry Sentinel of 25 November 1954: Dark Lane, Londonderry is to be re-named "Joyce Street" as from the start of next year, following a memorial from residents of Dark Lane seeking such an alteration which came before a meeting of Londonderry Corporation Planning and Housing Committee on Tuesday.

From what I can see on-line, Joyce St was demolished in 1972 in order to build a new road.

The song The Town I Loved So Well made famous by Phil Coulter mentions Dark Lane in the first verse-

In my memory, I will always see
The town that I have loved so well
Where our school played ball by the old gas-yard wall
And we laughed through the smoke and the smell
Going home in the rain, running up the dark lane
Past the jail and down behind the fountain
Those were happy days in so many, many ways
In the town I loved so well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAqOC5iJ5o8

You can see St Columb’s Cathedral where Jane married, in the early part of the youtube clip, and again in the background in the part where the young boy kicks a ball up a street.

Griffiths Valuation for c 1858 lists Mary Robinson in Dark Lane. So I think you can infer she was a widow by that year, and obviously she was living in the city. She had plot 12 which was a house and yard. Her landlord then was the Rev Maughan.

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

Elwyn, 

you are indeed a font and inspiration to budding family tree researchers such as yours truly. I'm now following your advice and will start painstakingly trawling through parish & church records records of both upper and lower Creevagh as well as1st Derry Presbyterian’s records are an obvious starting point (they start in 1815), not forgetting  those in tthe Church of Ireland  , searching for both Mary and George Robinson's DoM and the latter's DoD as well as any/ some/all their offspring.

So, I can now assume that Mary became a widow pre- 1858. As Mary was born in 1786, George may have been a few years older , say, c. 1780- < c.1857.( pre-Griffiths Valuation date)

Another quest is to establish the number of children they had: Daniel, Jane, Isabella et al.

Much obliged once again,

Cheers,

Tim Murphy

Tim,

Glad to have helped. If the family was Church of Ireland, they do keep burial records, so you might find George’s death there, but if they were Presbyterian they did not keep burial records, so your only hope would be a gravestone, if he has one. (Not everyone could afford one). Families did switch denomination, and it doesn’t have to be the whole family. It could be that Jane switched from Presbyterian to Church of Ireland. Or it could be that the Presbyterian church declined to marry her for some reason and so she used the Church of Ireland instead. It took a more relaxed attitude and would more or less marry anyone.

If Daniel was born c 1809 and Presbyterian you are not going to find his baptism, but you may get younger siblings born later eg Jane.

Meant to say that Phil Coulter was born around 1943 so he would have grown up near Dark Lane before it was renamed. Probably how it crept into the lyrics. It's what he'd have known it as, as a child.

Elwyn,

one of my wife's best friends here in Melbourne, Siobhan,  is Irish from  Bray Co. Wicklow and , lo and behold, Phil Coulter and his then? wife relocated to Bray in 1980s , and Siobhan and family happened to sit behind him in their local RC church. Six degrees of separation!!!

They say that the local residents wanted the name of Dark Lane changed in 1954 - Phil'd've been c. 12 yo, and it became Joyce St but in c. 1972 Joyce st disappeared as they were in the throes of building an overpass/ motorway.

Cheers once again-I'll keep delving. I hope to cross the border from Donegal on my upcoming Europe trip for 3 months but that'll depend on entrance/ exit PCR test fees.

Does Londonderry has its own BDM govt branch or will I have to go to Belfast? And parish records- again Belfast or  can I physically search for them in Londonderry in these Covid19 times???

TM

TM,

Bumping into Phil Coulter wouldn’t be surprising. I know someone who is very friendly with one of Phil’s daughter’s by his first marriage. Ireland is a small place and everyone knows someone who knows someone. 

There’s no motorway into Derry but there is an unusual 2 decked bridge that crosses the Foyle called the Craigavon bridge. I think vehicle access was improved in the 1970s and so suspect that the flyover work was connected to it in some way.  I don’t really know the full details.

Statutory births & deaths started in Ireland in 1864. RC marriages also were recorded from that year and non RC marriages were recorded from April 1845. All of those records have been gathered together and put on-line, on several websites. In general you can’t access the originals. You used to be able to till computers came along but they were being handled too much and getting damaged so they were scanned and then locked away in Belfast.

GRONI has the original images for what is now Northern Ireland, and there are copies (handwritten by GRO clerks) on the irishgenealogy site. GRONI’s website charges £2.50 (sterling) to view an image, irishgenealogy is free. If you want to see your ancestors original signatures etc, you need to view the GRONI version, but if all you want is the information on the certificate then the irishgenealogy site mostly has them. (irishgenealogy doesn’t have deaths 1864 – 1870 as they haven’t been scanned on yet, plus they don’t have any records for NI after 1921).

Prior to the above years, you need church records.  The particular records you need have all been copied and are available in PRONI in Belfast free. (Take photo id to get a readers ticket (takes 2 minutes), and – at the moment due to Covid – you need an appointment, though normally you don’t. Book via the PRONI website).

The original records for St Columb’s (Church of Ireland) are still held by the cathedral. You would need to make an appointment to see them and they normally charge something like £12 (sterling) an hour to view them. Check with them. Likewise Derry 1st Presbyterian has the originals of its records. Again an appointment is normally required. There may not be a fee there, but they might just re-direct you to the PRONI copies. (Some churches get rather more genealogical requests than they really want, so a request to view records can get mixed responses, though most are fairly helpful).

Bear in mind that both churches had/have big congregations and so if you are thinking of trawling through 70 or 100 years of records, you’ll need a fair bit of time.

In addition to the cathedral there are 3 other Church of Ireland churches in Derry. However none has any records before 1855. Christ Church’s records start in 1855, Culmore in 1867 and St Augustine’s were lost in the 1922 fire in Dublin (sent there for safe keeping!).

In the Republic of Ireland, each county tends to have it’s own records office, but in Northern Ireland, the records for all 6 counties have been gathered together in PRONI in Belfast. (There are other small repositories but it’s the main one).

A man well worth speaking to is Brian Mitchell who is Derry City Council’s genealogical expert. He specializes in genealogy in the surrounding area. As far as I am aware he doesn’t do individual research but can advise on how to pursue your own research. He does do public talks on themes like shipping records from Derry or local names etc. And he might be willing to answer any general questions you may have. If you are looking for old photos of Dark Lane, he might know where to find some. You might want to make an appointment with him. (He knows me). https://accreditedgenealogists.ie/brian-mitchell-m-a-g-i/

The Tower Museum where he is usually based is also worth a visit in itself. And the tourist office there has all the information you might need for that area.

The Covid related rules for entering Ireland and the UK keep changing all the time. (And there are slightly different rules for England & Wales, Scotland & for Northern Ireland). But there are normally no border controls between Donegal & Derry and so crossing there should not be an issue for you. At the moment you need a Covid passport to go into pubs and restaurants, in both jurisdictions, and in the Republic of Ireland they close at 8.00pm though that seems likely to be relaxed very soon from what the politicians have been saying this week. Check both Governments websites before you travel to get the up to date position.

Elwyn,

you should be spanned up for an executive  position in the corporate world. You are more than thorough and I'll take on y our advice on board. I have had replies from Brian Mitchell but closer to the date, I';ll email Brian and make an appointment once I know my exact dates I'll be in Ireland and then in Derry.

I will ask Brian Mitchell  for positions of Dark Lane in its hey day. 

Cheers, once  again.

TM