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I am trying to track down my great-grandparents.  Tradition says they were both from Donegal.

I have been unable to find any documentation for either prior to the 1880 U.S. Census.  Cornelius “Neal” McGowan (born 1850?) and Susan Mowen (born 1856) had 13 children all born in New York City, U.S.A.   Susan’s death certificate says her mother was Mary Mc Aloon.  No parental information on Neal’s death certificate. 

At one time, Neal lived with a Michael McGowan – perhaps a brother.  Baptismal records for one of Neal and Susan’s children list a Mary and Bryan McGowan as the God parents.  Neal and Susan were Catholics.

I located a Cornelius “Neal” McGowan in the 1901 Ireland Census (age 72) which would put him at the right age to be my GGP’s father.  This Neal was married to Margaret Reynolds and they had a daughter Mary Ann living with them at the time.  I have been able to locate a birth record for Mary Anne which says she was born in Dunkineely 12/29/1867.   I am trying to determine this if Cornelius and Margaret had any additional children – before or after Mary Anne.

Movick

Friday 1st Mar 2013, 01:13AM

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    Births/Baptisms/Marriages/Deaths ? pre1790-1800 ? The reality of finding documentationpertaining to births/baptisms/marriages/deaths in Ireland prior to 1800 ? particularly in rural areas? is that they simply may not exist. Some registers for urban areas pre-dating 1800 may exist ?though often these can be fragmented- as there was an increased need in cities or larger towns todocument the population. Please also note that the Church of Ireland was the official church of thecountry and therefore the bulk of information that does survive for earlier periods is often fromthese registers. ROMAN CATHOLIC: Most Catholic records are held locally - One site which might be of use is -http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/browse/ - where you can ?browse? an overview of availablerecords per county. If you have any difficulty, you could try writing to the parish priest for possibleassistance. The next thing you could do is find the counties and places in Ireland your family names are mostprevalent. Look at the website http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/surname/ and perhapssomething will match some other clue you may have found elsewhere? If nothing turnsup ? it is advisable to try different variations of the spellings of the names. If you have a possiblefirst name you could try the Irish Census 1901, 1911 at www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ or the landvaluation record called Griffiths Valuationhttp://askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml

     

    Thursday 18th Apr 2013, 12:28PM

  • Hi 

    Here are another few websites you can check.

    Donegal Genealogy Resources - http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~donegal/

    Donegal Library Service - http://www.donegallibrary.ie/

    I wish you all the best with your research.

    Kind regards,

    Eimer Shea

    Thursday 18th Apr 2013, 07:56PM

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