CUNNINGHAM family of Ballymageogh - mid to late 19th cent.

Hi John,

Thanks for your message.  I hope that someone recognises the names and contacts you to share information.

In the meantime have you tried looking at church records for more information? Hopefully you may be able to find her baptism certificate. These records can also be useful as the names of sponsors and witnesses on baptism and marriage certs respectively are often those of people that are related to the family.

Most Catholic records are held locally so you may need to write to the local parish priest for possible assistance. One website that you may find useful is the Irish Times where they give an overview of what records are available in specific parishes. It also shows you where copies of the records are available. For Kilkeel parish, follow this link:

http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/fuses/rcparishmaps/index.cfm?fuseaction=showidrecords&CityCounty=Down&parish=Kilkeel&churchid=433

Some other websites that may be useful are:

The National Archives of Ireland http://www.nationalarchives.ie/genealogy1/genealogy-records/introduction/

The National Library of Ireland http://www.nli.ie/en/family-history-introduction.aspx

The National Archives UK ? genealogy search: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/looking-for-person/

The Public Records Office of Northern Ireland http://www.proni.gov.uk/index/family_history.htm

Genealogy Links: http://www.genealogylinks.net/uk/ireland/down/index.html

Irish Genealogy Tool kit: http://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/

From Ireland: www.from-ireland.net

Kind regards,

Genealogy Support

I know this is from 2 years ago and I hope you have had a wonderful search.  Finding family is an exciting journey.  I, am most definately your relative!  Henry Cunningham and Rose Sloan are my great great great grandparents.  I descend from John who lived in Pennsylvania and died in 1894.  

I wish I could answer your questions.  I can add that the children were baptised at St. Colman's Church in Kilkeel.  I have this record from the 1920's on the church letter head because my great great uncle John Cunningham (b. 1888) wrote to the parish for info.

Best wishes,

Sandra Washburn

Hello Sandra

Your message comes as a real surprise to me since I haven't had any luck with my research for a long time. I do it through Ancestry.com. If you have an account there, let me know and I will be happy to give you permission to view my tree.

Yes, we ARE related. I know all about John Cunningham, his two wives in Pennsylvania, and his two children, including your great, great uncle John. John Cunningham (Sr) died in Dover, NH in 1894 as the result of a freak industrial accident and his two children were then "adopted" by their aunt Susie; I have a LOT of information about them if you are interested, but I sustpect there are things -- mysteries I was never able to solve -- that you can help me with. I also discovered a lot about the relatives in Kilkeel, but there again, you may have valuable information unavailable to me. For instance, I have copies of all the Cunningham children's baptism abstracts thanks to RootsIreland (something I did not yet have when I wrote the post above.) 

Can you read my excitement between the lines here, Sandra?  Look, to speed matter up, could you write to me at my e-mail address? It is as follows:  jg2375@gmail.com

I am especially interested in what happened to your uncle John and his sister. Again, I only have part of their story. Same goes for John Sr's first wife who died in PA.  Please let's talk very soon and see what we can come up with if we pool our information!

Your cousin (I believe)r

John Grimes

Sandra

I forgot to include a specific question you may be able to answer. All your great great grandfather John Cunningham's siblings came to New England, Newburyport MA and later NH. (His sister Susan spent a short time in PA with John & his first wife but also came to NH soon after.) Why did John Cunningham choose to go to Connellsville, PA? And did you know that John's actual name was Henry after his father? Somehow it became John Henry & everntually the "Henry" disappeared entirely.

John

Thanks to Sandra Washburn, I now have a great deal more information about my g-grandmother's Cunningham relatives after they came to America. What I don't have is very much concerning those who stayed in Co Down, so I'd like to ask some kind soul there for help. I know a bit about my g-g-grandparents Henry Cunningham and Rose (Sloan) Cunningham of Ballymageough, and a bit more about their two children who remained in Ireland, daughter Mary and son Patrick; the latter two appear on the 1901 and 1911 census. I have some specific questions that perhaps a resident of Kilkeel can help answer:

1. Sandra tells me she knows all the family there are buried in St. Coleman's graveyard. I wonder if their grave markers tell us the birth dates of Henry Cunningham (d. 1878) and Rose (Sloan) Cunningham (d. 1888) as well as daughter Mary's exact birth and death dates (I have several possibles for both). 

2. Henry Cunningham appears on Griffith's as plot No. 21 in Ballymageough. Superimposing a modern map on the Ordinance map drawn up by Griffith & aides, I see that Island Road runs straight through the Cunningham land of the 1860s. In fact, I believe they lived where house number 29 is today. Would any resident have more information? (Patrick was given the land by his mother Rose Cunningham when she died in 1888 and, as far as I can determine, held it till around his death in 1913. Mary and he lived there for decades. 

3. Finally, are there any present residents in the Kilkeel area related in any way to Rose and Henry? Perhaps someone who knows something about either the Sloan or Cunningham branches they came from? (I know they were related to Margaret Cunningham (surname before & after marriage) and her husband James Cunningham, both from Kilkeel I believe. James died sometime around 1850 and Margaret then emigrated along with her sister Ellen and her young daughter Rose Ann to Newburyport, Massachusetts.)

I'd really appreciate any help readers could give me with this. Because of the paucity of extant records, doing Irish genealogy can be very discouraging at times.

John Grimes

John,

The baptism records for Kilkeel start in 1839. They are on-line free on the National Library site:

http://registers.nli.ie/parishes

You can go through them looking for Mary’s baptism. There are plenty of Cunningham baptisms in the records. I couldn’t see Mary’s but you might want to try a year or two either side of 1844 in case the year is not quite right. That parish didn’t record birth dates but with RC baptisms you can assume it was normally within a week of the baptism.

Mary died 9.1.1915 in Moyadd. She left a will (which should be in PRONI). Abstract:

Probate of the Will of Mary Cunningham late of Ballymageough County Down Spinster who died 7 January 1915 granted at Belfast to Elizabeth Sloan Spinster.

Her age on the death certificate is 82, but that was just the informant’s best guess and no great weight should be given to it. Death cert:

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_returns/deaths_1915/05284/4468133.pdf

Thank you very much, Elwyn, for taking the time and trouble to help me. This confirms one of the death dates I had for Mary. Elizabeth Sloan is probably her cousin on mother Rose's side. As you note, the registrar's guess about her age is wildly off, at least 7 or 8 years, but since she was very old, it was very hard to tell; most likely, neither she nor her cousin knew the actual date either.The date I use, 29 Nov 1841 seems to conform to my guess about the marriage date for her parents (lots of guessing going on here!). The parish registry offers at least two other Mary Cunninghams (20 Jan & 4 Feb 1840). 

John