Alexander Mc Neill

Dear Lee

My apologies for the long delay in replying to your post. I think you were overlooked in the February posts. I have now forwarded your query to a volunteer. I hope you will be hearing from her soon.

Best wishes

Clare Doyle

Genealogy Support

Lee,

I?d be cautious about assuming that the family in the 1851 census in Ballyreagh are yours, based solely on the naming patterns. Ballyreagh is about 25 miles from Armoy. Griffiths Valuation for the 1860s has about 40 William McNeills farming in Co Antrim, so the name is pretty common. Families in the county tended to use the same names and there was a fairly narrow pool of Christian names so you will find names repeating all over the place. The weaver/farmer aspect is also an important potential conflict of evidence.

Only a small fragment of the 1851 census has survived and so the absence of any other matching families is not significant. The portion for Armoy was destroyed.

Griffiths has another William McNeill with farmland in Aghrunniaght, in the parish of Armoy, in 1861 (he ceased to be tenant some time between 1864 and 1878). So that might be your family. There was another McNeill family nearby in Bunshannacloney, so as I say, the name is common enough in the county (reflecting the Scottish origins of the majority of the people there).

I would be inclined to search the church records for the Armoy area to see if you can find your McNeill family. Do you know what denomination they were? (The McNeill family in Bunshannacloney appear to have been Church of Ireland so it would be worth checking those records). The other likely option is Presbyterian. There is also a Reformed Presbyterian church in the area.

None of the above records are on-line, so far as I am aware. However there are copies of the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian church records in PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast. The COI records start in 1826. The Presbyterian ones in 1842. Not sure whether any Reformed Presbyterian records exist for that church at that time. (The PRONI catalogue says: ?Lists of members, baptisms, marriages and deaths for Armoy may be included included in Dervock, Ballymoney and Kilraughts register, c.1809-c.1830 ? see CR/5/32?. So you may need to look those records up if you go to PRONI.

I had a look for the Ballyreagh McNeills in Griffiths but they are not listed. However that would not be unusual. Agricultural labourers and weavers cottages of very low value were often disregarded by Griffiths clerks. They often moved around every year or so, following the work, and certainly they are gone from that townland by the time of the 1901 census. There?s a couple of McNeill burials in Clough graveyard (adjacent to Ballyreagh) but none that definitely link to that family.

The absence of pension census checks don?t necessarily mean that someone wasn?t alive in 1909. The pension census search was generated when people didn?t have satisfactory proof of their births (there were no birth certs in Ireland before 1864), but many had baptismal certs or military discharge records both of which were acceptable. It was only those without such proof where a census check was sometimes undertaken. Now that could be done by the applicant themselves. (These are the records that are on-line) but they could also be undertaken by the pension officials themselves. These other checks are not on-line. (Those for what is now Northern Ireland are held in paper format in PRONI). And the pension was means tested when it was introduced in 1909, and you also had to be of good character, so not everybody qualified anyway. So there?s a variety of scenarios in which someone over 70 might be alive but not show up in the pension census extracts.

Births and deaths from 1864 onwards in the Armoy area would appear in the civil indexes registered in Ballycastle. I searched for William McNeill deaths, registered Ballycastle 1864 to 1901. I found 8. A similar search for Mary McNeill deaths found 33 in the same period. So tricky to narrow the search to those which might be your family. However it does demonstrate how common the se names were in that small area.

Elwyn

Elwyn

Thanks for taking the time to try and find out the information about the McNeills. I really appreciate your help and advice. Especially about the records that can and can't be seen on line and those that were destroyed. I did not know McNeill was such a common name in Ireland and that certainly makes things far more tricky. My Mcneills were Presbyterian, not sure about reformed Presbyterian.

I am visiting Belfast in July so I will use your suggestions on what to search at PRONI and hope that gives me a clue to follow up in Armoy and Ballycastle.

Thank you again for all your time and effort. I was feeling unsure of what to look at and where to start at PRONI. Now I know Iwould be lucky to find something but I do have a place to start.

Lee

Lee,

The Reformed Presbyterians has far fewer members than the main Presbyterian Church and so I would certainly start with it, rather than looking at RP records. However if you draw a blank, it?s worth knowing that there was another Presbyterian congregation in the area. RPs are often called Covenanters (because of their oaths to various covenants, going right back to the 1500s). They are pretty thin on the ground in Scotland nowadays but are still quite abundant in Ireland. If you ever heard your family refer to themselves a Covenanters, then that?s often a clue. If this means nothing then probably yours weren?t Reformed Presbyterians.

Elwyn

PS Your McNeills are likely to have originated somewhere like Ayrshire, Renfrewshire or Kintyre. They are not very likely to have been decedned from the Barra McNeills who were crofters and RC, and didn't generally move to Ireland at the time of the Plantation. (I say this because all Irish born McNeills I have come across seem to want to be linked to the Barra McNeills for some reason).

Hi Elwyn

I've been asking around the family I know but haven't found anyone who knew if they were reformed Presbyterians. I'll give both ago like you suggested. I didn't know much about the Barra McNeills so I looked them up and I agree I think my Mcneills were from Ayrshire, Renfrewshire or Kintyre.

My grandmother was the youngest of Alex McNeill's chn. There was 20 years between all of them and the family was split between the Eastern States and Western Australia so it is very hard to find out anything. Up until a few years ago I just assumed my McNeills were from Scotland and it was a nice surprise to discover they were infact from Ireland.

Thanks again for your help.

Lee