John Marshall and Mary Marshall

Your best bet of tracing the family is through church records. You don’t say what denomination the family were. If they were Church of Ireland, then Artrea has baptisms and marriages from 1811 onwards (with some gaps). Woods chapel (another Church of Ireland church in the parish) has records from 1807. The Moravian church at Gracefield has records from 1750, 1st Presbyterian at Moneymore from 1827, 2nd Presbyterian from 1845, Saltersland Presbyterian from 1848, RC from 1832.

The RC records are on-line on the NLI site, for the rest you may have to go to PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast and view them there. (I don’t think they are on-line anywhere).

Thanks Elwyn! I have not yet confirmed which church they belonged to. I suspect they were protestant, probably Presbyterian, but that's just a guess. So I guess I have to search in person at Proni?

Yes, or get a researcher to do it for you.

How would I go about contacting someone? Is there a website? I want to travel to Ireland someday anyway, but that's not in the budget for awhile. I have the other side of my Irish family that came from County Antrim, but I don't know the parish for them yet.

I really appreciate your quick response to my questions. Thanks.

The fact that the PRONI records are not digitized explains why I've come up empty when searching online for John and Mary Marshall. I guess that, in itself, is more evidence that they were Protestant. If they were Catholic, their records would be online!

You need to be wary of the myth that all genealogical records are on-line now. It’s not true. Enormous quantities of records remain in paper format and probably always will. Even the RC records are incomplete. There are quite a few RC parishes that have never had their records copied, and so are not on the NLI site. (The only copy still remains with the parish priest).

As for Church of Ireland records, some are on the pay to view/subscription sites or on irishgenealogy, but the vast majority are not. And like the RC church, quite a lot of small parishes have not had their records copied at all. The originals remain with the Vicar/Rector. So even PRONI doesn’t have them all. Some Presbyterian records are on-line, many are not. And when you get to the other common denominations in Ireland eg Baptist, Methodist, Non Subscribing Presbyterian, Reformed Presbyterian, Moravian, Quaker etc, practically nothing is on-line.

If your ancestors were non RC and lived in any of the 9 counties of Ulster, many of the church records are only in paper format or microfilm and a personal visit to PRONI or the local Minister is required to view them.

As I understand it, from hearing the PRONI Director speak, their policy is to make their records available free. She explained that the downside to that is they don’t have the money to digitize them, and what money they do have is going to be spent on conserving and adding to their existing collection.

You do know your ancestors came from Artrea, so that’s pretty good news. I looked in the 1831 census for Artrea and there were only about 6 Marshall households in the parish. Evenly split between Church of Ireland and RC. No Presbyterians. Obviously your family had left by 1831 but this snapshot points you to the possible choices for their denomination.

The RC records for Artrea don’t start till after your family left Ireland, so you aren’t going to find them there. You have to hope they were of a Protestant denomination. I’d start with the Artrea Church of Ireland records, then try Presbyterian. Probably an hour or two's work for a researcher. You probably won’t find John & Mary’s own baptisms (being before the start of the records) but you may find their marriage and their 2 children’s baptisms. Here's a link to some researchers in the local area: http://sgni.net

Thanks, Elwyn. This is very helpful information that you have shared with me. I feel like I should try to find a genealogist who could research my family because if records only exist on paper and in the hands of individual churches, then they could be destroyed by calamity at any time. I have found that has happened to several very important pieces of evidence here in the U.S., making my search much more difficult. I don't want to wait until I can afford the trip to Derry because if the records are one-of-a-kind, I don't want to lose out on finding them.

Thanks you, also, for checking the 1831 census for me to help me narrow down which churches to check. That really helps, and gives me concrete evidence to give any genealogist I find. I will have to communicate with one or two people on the list that you shared with me and go from there.

The other side of my family came from County Antrim, but I have not found which parish yet. That will be much harder to track down.

Again, I really appreciate your help.

Elwyn,

I am planning a trip to Ireland in September of this year! I have a bit of updated information for the Marshall family through a DNA match! I have italicized the new information.

John Marshall, born 1777 in Artrea, Derry married Mary Shields. I have confirmed the names of three of their children:

Matilda Marshall, born 6 May 1806

William Marshall born 1807

Jane Marshall born 25 May 1818 (my great-great-grandmother)

Matilda Marshall, my great-great-great aunt, married Thomas Herron 27 July 1824. Thomas Herron was the son of John Herron and Martha Huston. Matilda Marshall and Thomas Herron immigrated to the US in 1827.

John Marshall and wife Mary Shields and daughter Jane and son William immigrated in 1829, two years after Matilda.

I hired a professional genealogist in Ulster, but he was unable to provide any conclusive evidence of the Marshall, Shields, Herron or Huston families. He searched PRONI for baptism, marriage and death records. He found several Marshall's but cannot definitely say whether they are my Marshall ancestors.

He found a baptism record for Sarah Marshall for 26 March 1808, the daughter of John and Mary Marshall of Moneymore. She is the only baptism they found referenced. He searched records in Artrea and Desertlyn for the marriage of Matilda and Thomas Herron but found nothing.

His suggestion is to search the cemeteries at those Church of Ireland churches, Artrea, Desertlyn and Woods Chapel for headstones which might belong to my ancestors. I want to contact those churches prior to my visit to make arrangements to look at the records. I can't just wander around the cemeteries looking at headstones!

Do you have suggestions as to where I can find contact information for these churches online? Any other recommendations would be very welcome. Thanks in advance.

Margaret Caldwell Dutkowski

Margaret,

Contact details for the churches below. A couple of comments though. In most cases there are probably no other burial records apart from those you have already had searched in PRONI. Also, due to the volume of requests they get, the Church of Ireland usually charges for assisting with genealogical research, so expect to pay if any assistance is offered.

Bear in mind that only wealthier folk could afford a gravestone in the  1700s & 1800s. The majority of the population were buried without one, and in those cases there is often no record of where they were buried. (The family would have known but obviously that information would be lost if they died out locally or moved away).

Another item to be aware of is that people were not always buried in the graveyard of the church they attended. If there was a family plot elsewhere, then they may have used that. Plus some churches don’t have graveyards. Presbyterians, for example, often didn’t have their own graveyards at one time and so used the Church of Ireland instead. However those burials don’t appear in the Church of Ireland burial records.

Artrea:

Rev David Bell - Incumbent

Tullyhogue Rectory, 50 Lower Grange Road, Cookstown, BT80 8SL

Co Tyrone

028 8676 1163

Desertlyn:

Rev Adrian Stringer - Incumbent

The Rectory

24 Cookstown Road, Moneymore Magherafelt, Co Derry, BT45 7QF

028 8674 8200

Woodschapel:

Rev Ruth Murray - Incumbent

The Rectory

140 Ballyronan Road, Magherafelt, Co Londonderry, BT45 6HU

028 7941 8311

Some graveyards have had their legible gravestones transcribed and are on-line. Desertlyn old graveyard is on this site:

https://www.discovereverafter.com

No Marshalls listed in it.

I looked at the 1901 census for the 4 names you have mentioned (Herron, Huston, Marshall & Shields) in counties Tyrone & Londonderry. Heron/Herron were a mix of RC & Church of Ireland with a small number of Presbyterians. The majority were RC. Marshall were a fairly even split between Presbyterian and Church of Ireland, with a few RC. Huston/Houston & Shields were almost all Presbyterian.

So for the Huston & Shields families you probably ought to be focusing on Presbyterian churches & records, except that none of the Presbyterian churches in Artrea has any records for the period you are interested in.  With the other two surnames it’s worth bearing in mind that, if you aren't finding the families where records exist, they might not be Church of Ireland.

Although I know you don’t want to have to wander around graveyards, that may be just what you have to do. There’s a list of graveyards in Ulster on this link:

https://www.ancestryireland.com/family-records/graveyards-in-ulster/

Elwyn, Thank you once again for your helpful advice. I really appreciate the contacts. Also thank you for looking for the Marshall family at the Desertlyn Old Graveyard. It seemed like this was the most likely place that any Marshall ancestors were buried, so either the headstones are not legible or they didn't have headstones, or they may have been buried elsewhere. It also helps to know that, for the period I'm searching, none of the Presbyterian churches would have records. It's not that I dont want to wander around graveyards in Ulster, its more that we are visiting only for a week and this doesnt seem like a very productive use of our time. I actually like wandering around graveyards if I have some idea that I may find what I'm looking for! I will contact the churches and just ask whether records I'm looking for exist, and pursue it from there. Maybe I can make arrangements to stop by when we are in Artrea if there's a possibility. Again, thank you for your help.             Margaret Caldwell Dutkowski

Margaret,

By all means get in touch if you are in the area. I live in Randalstown which is about 10 miles from Moneymore. If you are looking for accommodation in the area I can recommend Laurel Villa in Magherafelt. www.laurel-villa.com

You can e-mail me on Ahoghill@irelandxo.com

Thanks, Elwyn. I will be emailing you for sure to give you details about our visit. It would be nice to meet up for coffee or tea. Thanks for the referral for accommodations, but one of my traveling partners has already booked us in Belfast for this part of our trip. If that doesn't work out for some reason, I'll definitely contact laurel-villa.