Whelan

Do you know much about their emigration? The dates, the reasonwhy they left, who they may have travelled with?..etc..Generally more information was given atthe port of arrival rather than the port of departure. If you knew which city they arrived at (e.g.Liverpool, New York, etc.), this could be a good place to find more information. -And perhaps evenfind out an exact place of origin. Ellis Island: http://www.ellisisland.org/search/passSearch.asp Castlegarden: http://www.castlegarden.org/ US National Archives/Immigration info: http://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/ The Boston Pilot; From October 1831 through October 1921, the Boston Pilot newspaper printed a?Missing Friends? column with advertisements from people looking for ?lost? friends and relativeswho had emigrated from Ireland to the United States. This extraordinary collection of 40,743 recordsis available here as a searchable online database, which contains a text record for each ad thatappeared in the Pilot. http://infowanted.bc.edu/ 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.

I expect they emigrated because of the famine - I think they would have come through either Grosse-Ile in Quebec or Montreal.

Many Irish-Catholics in Toronto (and perhaps this was everywhere) at that time, did not register the births of their children - they only baptized them so the only proof of age - they did not trust the "ruling" English.  Usually the priests did register marriages but I can't find one in the official records for Johanna and James McAvay.

My Grandmother and her brothers, grandchildren of Johanna and James, were not registered - when it came time for them to collect their old age pensions, they had to scramble to get proof of their ages. 

FYI - http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/qc/grosseile/index.aspx

Looking for the marriage of James McAvay (or McEvay, etc) and Johanna Whelan, I've found a marriage in October 1853 in Toronto between James McEvay and Johanna Phelan. I'm wondering if the priest misheard - anyone know if this was a common mistake?