Kyte/Mahoney/Flager/Shannahan Families

subythec:

Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out!

Below is a link to the present day parish of Killenaule and I think you will find some good info on the people of the area.

http://www.killenaule.net/

We do not have a parish liaison at this time for Killenaule parish. The RC records for the parish go way back to 1742 which is unusual. There is a gap between 1802-1814. http://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0275

If you belong to Find My Past or Ancestry, you should be able to search for all Kyte baptismal or marriage records in Co. Tipperary and see what records are available for your ancestors.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Roger McDonnell

Subythec

Some years ago, whilst researching my Mahony & Fitzgerald families from Killenaule I was allowed access to an index of Mahonys in the Killenaule Parish Registers & from that I set up my own database of births. 

I note that you said Ellen's father was Jacob but I have never come across a Jacob Mahony in Killenaule & wondered if you may have seen the name Jacobus as her father, which is in fact Latin for James. 

I have looked at the marriage entry  in the Killenaule Registers on Ancestry at Patrick & Ellen's marriage on 5th March 1821 & Laurence Mahony was one of the sponsors.  The place is given as Dunguib (Killenaule) though it has been mis-transcribed on Ancestry as Cuguile.

I have also looked at the baptism record for John on 1st May 1822 on Ancestry & see that Dunguib (Killenaule) is where the family were living & Anne Mahony (perhaps Ellen's sister) was one of the sponsors . 

I believe that my Mahonys of nearby Buffana were connected to the Mahonys of Dunguib. 

I'm not sure whether this information will help but it may.

Kind regards

Doreen Preston (nee Mahoney)

Doreen,

Thank you so much for responding.  Yes, I found my long sought Irish ancestors on Ancestry and I had a lot of difficulty reading the handwriting.  Plus I don't understand Latin.  I appreciate your help. 

Ancestry transcribed Helene/Ellen's father as Jacobo in her baptism record on 26 May 1793.  Looking at it, I think it is Jacobo followed by an &.  Do you have access to see what you think? 

There's a Jacob Mahony baptised 17 Jul 1780, son of Mathew Mahony and Anna Butler.  His record is very difiicult for me to read so I've relied on Ancestry's transcription.  I think he's too young to be Ellen's father.   

Thank you for translating Anne Mahony's role.  I agree she is probably Ellen's sister, but I haven't found a baptism record for her. 

I have a question...Is Dunguib a town or village or is it the name of a home or estate? 

Thank you again for your help.

Regards,

Susan

Hi Susan

Firstly I have looked at the Parish Register on Ancestry & if you look at it you will see that all the names are given in Latin.  Ellen is Helena, her father is Jacobus (James) & her mother is Margarita (Margaret).  Sponsors were Patrick Byrrane & Eliza Geyton

I can tell you that Ellen's father was James Mahony, her mother was Margaret Mahony (yes Mahony was her maiden name) & they were married in Killenaule on 7th March 1791. The witnesses at their marriage were Richard Mahony & Andrew Tully.

As I said earlier I was fortunate some years ago to have access to the Parish Registers Index which had been compiled about 1900/1901 by a bishop & from that I have the following three siblings for Ellen:

Brigid born 22 January 1792 - sponsors James Carew & Ellen Hanrahan

Laurence born 30.6.1795 - sponsors were Thomas Kelly & Margaret Carroll

Mary born 28.3.1801 - sponsors were Jeremiah Kenny &??

It is possible that there were further children born after 1801 but, as mentioned in an earlier post, there is a subsequent gap in the  Killenaule Registers

Dunguib is a townland on the edge of Killenaule & below is a link that will give you a little information about it.

https://www.townlands.ie/tipperary/slievardagh/killenaule/dunguib/

Below is my email address so that you can contact me direct & I will be able to give you a bit more information & send you a list of Latin names with their English equivalent.

sherlockpreston@gmail.com

Doreen

Hi again Susan

I have been having a look at the Killenaule Parish Registers.  I have a large computer screen &  I am fairly sure that the name of the woman whom your ancestor John Kyte married is Maria St.Ledger/Leger & that it has been mistranscribed as Mariam Flager, both on Ancestry & Find My Past.  I know I have come across the name St Ledger in Tipperary during my research but I have never encountered the name Flager.

Doreen

Susan; My grandmother was a daughter of John Kyte who emmigrated to Nova Scotia with his parents circa 1825. I was in Killenaule in September and located the church graveyard where some of the Kytes who did not leave are burried. Some family history suggests they came from Silvermines, but that is inaccurate as they originated in the parish of Killenaule. I note that a lot of the church records have a latin spelling, due to the latin studies of the parish priest.

I will share what I have, but suspect you have most of what I have also.

Jack Coffey

Hello Jack,

Thank you for responding to my post.  Yes, I've spent decades looking for my Kyte family in Silvermines.  I actually found some Kytes there, but there was a couple generation gap that I couldn't bridge to link the families.  I am so thrilled that I have finally found the correct location.  How lucky you are to have been able to visit Killenaule. 

My husband's mother is descended from John's first wife.  I believe you are descended from his second wife.  I have just your name.  I am also interested in sharing information.  Please contact me directly at suezlistz@gmail.com. 

Susan

Hi There:

I'm Lindsay Kyte, and am a descendant of Patrick Kyte and Mary Shannahan (I have also found her name listed as "Mariam.") Their son Johannes had a son Patrick who moved to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and here I am, many generations later, a Kyte who is a Cape Bretoner.

I have tried to find more information about Patrick Kyte, and his parents. I know that he came from Killenaule, but I don't know beyond that. My Grampie told me that the Kytes came from Norway originally (there is a place in Voss called "Kyte") and our family went to England. At some point, men from England were sent to Ireland to marry women and convert them to their religion (I don't know what religion that is). However, our Kyte ancestor went to Ireland, married a woman, and then he converted to HER religion. My Grampie said that is how the strong and determined Kyte woman genes began! Ha ha!

Anyway, I don't know how many generations back beyond Patrick (b. 1728) extend into Ireland before England and then Norway. All of my searches seem to stop at Patrick.

I would love to find out more, as my Kyte family looks very Norwegian in our facial features, as do I, even though it has been many generations since we left. I went to Norway a few years ago and it felt like home in a way I can't explain. And everyone there spoke Norwegian to me because of the way I look (they assumed I was Norwegian).

Does anyone have any info?

Hi Lindsay,

This is Susan/subythec from the first entry above.  I've been researching your family for a long time but have not any information further back than you've found.  The following is a summary I wrote a while ago about what I've found about the origins of the Kyte family.  (Father John Boyd Kyte is your second cousin 2x removed.  George William Kyte is your first cousin 3x removed.) 

The original home in Ireland and history of the Kyte ancestors before immigrating to North America is not yet documented to my knowledge; however, there are several different possibilities that have been raised by family members.  

Some say without a doubt the Kyte history dates back to Oliver Cromwell's conquest of Ireland between 1649 and 1653.  Cromwell subjugated and plundered the Irish and then made confiscated land available to his soldiers and supporters as payment or reward and as a way to keep the Irish in line.

The 1746 Battle of Culloden in Scotland was the last great battle before the English conquered Scotland.  There was a tomb with the name KYTE on it.  The Scots buried their dead according to clan.  Thus the Kyte name may be Scottish in origin.  Some family members say this would fit well with the appearance of an English soldier named Kyte in Silvermines, County Tipperary, Ireland.  They say it was the habit of the English to conscript Scots into their army after the conquest of their homeland.  Besides being good soldiers, it helped break up the clans.  Also the Kyte ancestor may have been an ordinary mercenary hired for service in a foreign army.  I don’t know the source of the information about the English soldier in Silvermines.  

Father John Boyd Kyte (1891-1977) is the first to my knowledge to document the family history from personal conversations with his grandfather who was one of the immigrants as a child, original church records in his native Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada and a visit to Ireland in 1950.  He states in his 1976 letter to American family members that the family originated in Silvermines, County Tipperary, Ireland.  

We visited County Tipperary and Silvermines in 2006 in search of family history.  There are documented Kyte family members living in Silvermines (historically known as Bellagowan) until the mid-1900s.  The Silvermines parish church and the Tipperary County history center did not have records back far enough to link those Kytes with our Kyte immigrants to Nova Scotia in about 1825, let alone back to the 1600s or 1700s.  The earliest Kyte birth that I found in the parish records was 1841. No one from the family was living in Silvermines when we visited.  Father Kyte may have talked to them during his visit in 1950.  I was put in contact with the widow of the last Kyte to live in Silvermines.  She provided me with the information that she knew but unfortunately it did not go back far enough either.  While in Silvermines, I did speak with a long-time resident who was acquainted with the Kyte family there.  He commented that the family may have come from The Netherlands.  The Kyte name does appear in Scandinavia and The Netherlands, but the majority is found in United Kingdom.  Kytes are also found in Modreeny and Dolla civil parishes in County Tipperary.  

In 2012, I was contacted by a researcher with the recently formed Silvermines Historical Society.  She was researching a Kyte family from Silvermines who had immigrated to Australia.  She was not able to find any documentation connecting our family with that family.  

Another belief on the origin of the Kyte family in Ireland comes from George William Kyte (1864-1940).  He is quoted in the Canadian Who's Who book about 1912 that his grandfather came from Templemore also in County Tipperary.  There are some historical facts that may support the Templemore roots.  The Carden Baronetcy was centered at Templemore beginning in 1787. A biography is given of each of the seven Cardens who held Barnane in succession until the last died in 1932.  Perhaps the most famous (or notorious) of these was John Rutter Carden (1811-1866), who evicted many of his tenants from the estate and was shot at on several occasions, earning the nickname "woodcock" because the bullets always missed him (though one of his stewards was murdered). The eviction time frame would correspond with the Kyte ancestors' departure from Ireland to Nova Scotia.  On the other hand, there was a Kyte family living on Templemore Road in the Modreeny area.  Unfortunately, I did not find George’s information until after our trip in 2006; so I wasn’t able to research his belief.  

In 2016, new Irish records were placed online that document the marriage of Patrick Kyte and Helen Mahoney in Killenaule, Co. Tipperary, Ireland.  In addition, the baptism of their son John is documented also in Killenaule.  The dates are different than information in Cape Breton, but within reason.  Patrick's father and grandfather are also documented in Killenaule.  This seems to resolve the question of the Kyte family to the early 1700's.  Killenaule is not far from Silvermines.  There are Kytes documented in Silvermines in the 1800's.  Possibly, Patrick Michael Kyte moved his family to Silvermines prior to emigrating to Nova Scotia.  
  

A number of the Kyte family members were born with a hereditary hearing ailment that caused degeneration of the audio nerve.  One particularly impacted family is John Anthony Kyte and his sons.  

The following excerpt from "The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Irish Catholics" by Mark G. Mcgowan provides some general historic background for Irish Catholics in Nova Scotia in the early 19th century:
Although Irish migrants, merchants, and fisherman also appeared in Newfoundland in the seventeenth century, and in Nova Scotia in the 1740s, the principal Irish Catholic migration to what was to become British North America took place between 1815 and 1845 and was directly tied to changes in Ireland itself. With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, agricultural prices fell and the Irish textile industry, which had enjoyed trading advantages in the disrupted wartime markets, faced stiff international competition. Industries shut down, unemployment rose dramatically, and capital investment and urban growth stagnated. Further, economic decline was exacerbated by developments in the Irish landholding system. Rural Ireland was characterized by a system of landholding dominated by Protestant owners of estates at the top and predominantly native Irish Catholic cottiers (tenant farmers with tiny patches of land for subsistence) and rural labourers at the bottom. In between were a group of middling and small tenant farmers, both Catholic and Protestant. Tenants unable to earn enough from their crops to pay their rents faced eviction, while landlords and small farmers looked to such alternatives as cattle and sheep to restore the economic viability of their lands. 

These stresses of agricultural life were complicated even more by a dramatic population explosion; between 1821 and 1841 the Irish population increased from 6.8 to 8.2 million. Larger families meant either smaller plots for farmers’ children or no land at all. While this rapid population growth applied pressure on tenants to subdivide, the crash of farm prices made it necessary that landlords combine smaller plots into larger holdings to accommodate herding and livestock breeding, a lucrative alternative to cereals, root crops, and flax. A final ingredient for agricultural disaster was the unwillingness of landlords and their “head tenants” to reduce rents. Landlords still had to make their own contributions to the ever-increasing taxes needed to help the poor, and evicting tenants for non-payment of rents provided an opportunity to merge the smaller holdings into pasture lands. Thus, the combination after 1815 of falling prices, population pressures, the inability of tenants to pay rent, the movement to “enclose” lands for pasture, and increased evictions and subsequent landlessness convinced many Irish that there was little future for themselves and their children in rural Ireland. Migration appeared to be a possible solution to the economic decline, poverty, and growing violence. 

Protestants and Catholics responded differently to the lure of migration. Protestants were better able than their Catholic neighbors to pay the expensive fares to North America. They also had added incentive to leave, including a fear of the rural violence often perpetrated against them by Catholic secret societies and a general feeling that their status as the religious minority made them exiles in their own land. Attracted by offers of land grants in British North America, some of the most enterprising young Protestants left Ireland. Irish Catholics, generally from among the middling and small tenant farmers, also increased their levels of emigration by the early 1820s, when fares between British North America and British ports dropped substantially. Destitute Catholics from the cottier and laborer groups, however, tended either to stay put in Ireland or to take advantage of the low fares to Great Britain. 

Irish Catholic migration to Canada after 1815 is notable for its regional character and the complex relationship between the state of economic hopelessness left behind in Ireland and the “pulls” of forestry, fishing, and farming in the British North American colonies. Each colony was settled by Irish from different regions of Ireland and for different economic and social reasons. 

Nova Scotia 
The earliest Catholic migrants to Nova Scotia sojourned and settled in Cape Breton and in Halifax County. Many Irish Catholic immigrants to Cape Breton Island were actually “two boaters,” Irish Catholics who settled initially in Newfoundland but then left for Nova Scotia to improve their economic and social standing. Cape Breton was increasingly attractive to such people after 1815, when Newfoundland was mired in a post-war economic depression made even worse by reduced fish stocks. Cape Breton also attracted those interested in farming, mining, and the merchant trade in the port of Sydney. By the mid-nineteenth century Irish Catholic migrants, both “two boaters” and those directly from southeastern Ireland, had settled in the Sydney area, along the north shore of Cape Breton between Margaree and Port Hood, and in the southeast near St Peter’s and Arichat. By mid-century, however, the heavy migration of Acadians and Scottish Highland Catholics to eastern Nova Scotia ensured that the Irish Catholic population constituted a small minority on Cape Breton Island. 

In sharp contrast to Cape Breton, the Irish Catholic population in Halifax was a numerically large minority from the middle of the eighteenth century. Founded in 1749 as a counterweight to France’s Louisbourg on Île-Royale (Cape Breton), Halifax attracted many Irish Catholics in search of employment, particularly on construction projects. Though they were not encouraged to come, because of their religion and ethnicity, by 1767 there may have been 467 Irish Catholics in the area, constituting perhaps as much as 16 percent of the population. Not surprisingly, given the commercial ties between Halifax and Waterford, many of these Irish Catholic migrants hailed from Kilkenny, Waterford, south Tipperary, and east Cork. Irish Catholics continued to constitute about one-sixth of Halifax’s population until the significant increase in migration after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. From 1815 to 1838 nearly 11,000 Irish, mostly Catholics, arrived in Halifax, creating an invigorated minority that, by 1837, constituted more than one-third (35 percent) of the town’s population. The mere trickle of Irish Catholic migrants after 1838 was only briefly interrupted by the arrival of 1,200 famine refugees in 1847. By 1851 the Catholic population of Halifax stood at 8,800, or 42 percent of the total population. Representing 85 percent of the Catholic population as a whole, Irish Catholics were clearly the dominant minority group in the colonial capital. Province-wide, the Irish made up approximately one-third of Nova Scotia’s population by 1838. The vast majority of these Nova Scotia Irish were Catholic, with the notable exception of settlers in the Cumberland County-Truro area and the Anglo-Irish elite in Halifax. 

I'm not sure that there is any documentation in County Tipperary about the family prior to what you've found.  I was told on our visit there that records were destroyed during The Troubles. 

I have quite a bit of information about the family in North America.  I might be able to help if you have other questions. 

Susan