Searching for Lormar or Lormer

Pat,

The name is most likely to appear in Irish records as Lorimer or Larimer.

You don?t say what denomination your family were. Statistically they were probably Presbyterian (since they form the majority of the population in Ahoghill, and it?s a Scottish  surname). If so, then the bad news is there are no church records that cover a birth in the period 1816 ? 1820. There are 3 Presbyterian churches in Ahoghill, but all have lost their early records and none has any before 1835. If the family were Church of Ireland then their records start in 1811 so that?s possible. RC records for the parish don?t start till 1833.

I looked at the 1766 religious census for Ahoghill, and there was a Fran(cis) Lorimer and a  William Lorimer listed as dissenters (Presbyterians), and another Francis Lorimer as RC. Can't say whether they are connected to your family but at least you know there were some Lorimer families there at that time.

There are very few records you can consult for this period. Do you know what your Lorimer family did? Were they farmers? If so, you might find them in the tithe applotment records (1825). The records for Co Antrim are not on-line and you need to look them up in PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast.

I searched Griffiths Valuation for Ahoghill (1862) but there are no Lorimer households listed then. (That doesn?t mean none lived there just that none were farmers or people who held land).

No Lorimers in the 1901 census for the Ahoghill electoral area.

Elwyn

Elwyn, Thank you very much for your comments. I believe the family to be Protestant but do not know beyond that. Interestingly,. Alexander's army records show him as Lorimer but I know the name to be Lormar/Lormer because my grandmther spoke of it and some records show it to be Lormar. The boys who emigrated to the USA are listed as Lormer in several census. Alexander married a Margaret Davidson from Gracehill or Ballymena depending which census you read. I do not know what the family did and have only Alexander's army record to go on. Thanks again, Pat.

Spelling varied according to the whim of the person recording the information. The idea of a single ?correct" spelling is more of a 20^th century pre-occupation, and didn?t trouble our ancestors in Ireland much at all. It will vary. I mentioned the alternatives commonly used in Ireland because I think you will need to bear them in mind. If you search only on Lormar or Lormer you may not get many matches.

Tradition was to marry in the brides church. You say she might be from Ballymena or Gracehill. Someone from Gracehill would probably attend church in Ahoghill. But if she came from Ballymena, then there?s quite a few churches there too. The Church of Ireland and two of the Presbyterian churches in Ballymena do have records going back to the early 1800s, so it is possible to check them out.  Some of those records are on-line (the Church of Ireland and one of the Presbyterian churches are on the rootsireland site) but they are not all on-line. For a comprehensive check you would need to look the record sup in PRONI in Belfast. 

Elwyn:  My sister visited the Brookside church convenor a few years ago, I believe his name was Livingstone (distantly related to us), and came away with the impression there were still gravedigger records that had not been obtained at that time from the gravedigger's family.  If these records are indeed available, is it possible to obtain them now?

As we are overseas and finding difficulty locating burial records, would be great if we could research from that aspect.

My own family the Coulters, (William John Coulter & Mary Jane Mark) and that of my late husband William Gerald Holmes (Holmes from Three Castles, Killkenny), have deep ancestoral connections with that area.  Interestingly, one of the first ministers of Brookside Church was a William Holmes.  As I was born in Scotland and my husband in Canada, when we married in Canada, we did not know of those connections.  It was somewhat eerie to find my Coulter ancestors had a close connection to the minister William Holmes and held him in such great regard that some who went to Australia, even named their children after him. 

You never know what you will discover.  Even my own property here in Uxbridge, Ontario, Canada where we built our home, was owned back in 1877 by a William Carruthers (his brothers Robert A. & James listed closeby) were from the same area.  My great grandmother was Mary Crothers Moles daughter of Thomas Crothers of Co Down.  I am yet to establish if there is a close connection to the Carruthers here in Ontario.  I have neighbours to this day named Meek, Moore, Mustard still on the original farms in Uxbridge, Ontario.  All of those names were from the Antrim, Down location early records.

I know from shipping records at PRONI some of the Coulters were shipping agents arranging passage to the Colonies, and from what I learned of the good minister William Holmes, he had been in the US and returned to Ireland to take up his postings in that area.

Thank-you for all of your kind assistance.  Thought you may be able to get the grave records.

Anne Coulter Holmes

Anne,

Brookside?s gravestone inscriptions are on-line on the Braid site:

http://thebraid.com/genealogy.aspx

There are no Lormar (and variations). There are only 3 gravestones beginning with the letter L. I checked them before I responded to you previously. However only a fraction of the population could afford a gravestone so there are many more people buried there without any gravestone.

My general experience of searching graveyard records in this part of Ireland is that they won?t have any records for the 1800s. Most start in the mid 1900s. Often later (even though the graveyard may have been in use for a long time. In this case, since the church was established in the 1770s). People knew where their family plot was and pointed it out to the grave digger. In general, no records were kept (most of them couldn?t read or write anyway so that just wasn?t going to happen). So I?ll be surprised if there are records for the era you are interested in. But I?ll give the church a ring to see what they have got.

Re the various familiar names you have come across, you probably know Ahoghill was effectively created by Scots settlers and so what you get there (and in Co Antrim generally) is a snapshot of all the names that were/are prevalent in Ayrshire and Wigtownshire, which is where most of the families came from, in the late 1600s. So you get the same surnames appearing  and re-appearing regularly.

A Presbyterian Minister brought up in Aghadowey, Co Derry (about 15 miles north of Ahoghill) wrote this of his childhood in the 1820s: ?Aghadowey had originally been settled by a Scotch immigration and I found that my new neighbours spoke as pure Scotch as a man might hear in any part of Ayrshire.?[1] Ahoghill would have been the same. To some extent it still is. Folk here still go for messages, steep their dishes and celebrate Burns Night with haggis, neeps and tatties. And a dram of course. My local butcher sells huge quantities of square sausage, and you can get morning rolls. Home from home, for any Scot.

Elwyn

Pat,

I have been in touch with Ken Livingstone, who keeps the burial records for Brookside church in Ahoghill. This is what he told me:

?Elwyn,

There are no burials or registrations in Brookside linked to the name/s your in search of. I have took a wee peep through 1901 national archives around the townlands from Portglenone / Galgorm/ Ballyconnelly most likely to have attached families to Brookside. A very very long shot in the dark but if you search the archives 1901 Antrim- Galgorm- Crankill you will find an Agnes Lourmer  in the home of a Matthew Harbison. Now I have not a clue as to whether this is a wild goose chase or not.

Feel free to keep in touch and if anything more positive turns up I will keep you informed. I was speaking to a very alert 91 year old reared in Ahoghill but she didn?t recall any Lorimer's in the area. 

Kenneth?