Search for Kinnevire near Cranford/Carmoney/Milford

WHunter:

Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out!

Most likely the townland is Kinnegar in Killygarvan civil parish. Kinnegar is about 15 kilometers from Milford on the western shore of Lough Swilly. See Google Maps. 

Roger McDonnell

I donot think that  Kinnegar is correct. From other sources, I believe the Fanad registers mention Kinnevire as a site.

The Bible page I have that mentions the date (1812) and location of my gggrandfather's birth corresponds to Kinnevire.

WHunter:

OK. Let me check with someone else who is more familiar with Co. Donegal.

Roger

Thanks Roger and welcome WHunter, 

I was born in Kerrykeel which is a village found on the eastern coast of Mulroy Bay in North Donegal. Growing up there  meant every day I could get up, look out my window and see Cranford directly across the Bay. Beautiful. 

The Townlands of Carmony, Milford and Cranford within the Parish of Kilmacrenn can be found on the western shore of Mulroy Bay. I have looked and looked and I am afraid I do not have any knowledge off, nor was I able to find any location called Kinnivire or any variation of the name anywhere near Cranford, Milford or Carmony. I even had a thorough look within the Parish of Clondavaddog which is Fanad, as which you mentioned above.  

May I make as suggestion that may make sense to this. I have often come across a lot of location entries in Birth Records referring to names of places within Clondavaddog that cannot seem to be found anywhere, especially when looking up Townlands or Parishes using google maps/search etc.. 

The reason for this I eventually found is that back in the early 1800's, these locations on Birth, Marriage and Death Registers would not be townlands but more often be small communities of families and neighboring family homes bunched together in large numbers, that have adapted a location names or a family name. Often refered to as Rundales there would be a huge amount of these dotted all over the place throughout Clondavaddog and surrounding Parishes.  

Visiting the Griffith Valuation maps from the 1850's, you will find the loads of these small Rundales recorded but I do not see Killivere which means that between the time when your gggrandfather was born in 1823 and when these Maps were put toether in 1850's and revised in the 1870's It is possible that Killievire was one of these Rundales that no longer existed and cannot be found as a result. 

I have attached a map of the Townland of Carmony, with Google map links to take you to the location present day. I have also Griffith Valuation Map links that will take you to the same locations, but referencing the different townlands, Parishes and old Rundale locations as I mentioned already.  

I may be stretching it a bit to say, but if your gggrandfathers name was Hunter (you never said above) then there may be a strong possibility that he may have been born in the Townland of Carmony in a Rundale location recorded as Mid Town or Termony Hunter. 

I will attach this slide to this message to see what you think.  

Seamus Callaghan 

Below is a short article put up on the Clondavaddog Parish page refering to Rundale Sytem. 

https://www.irelandxo.com/ireland-xo/history-and-genealogy/buildings-database/old-famine-village-ballywhoriskey-fanad 

For some unknown reason the links are not working within the slides so I attached them here instead along with the Griffith Valuation Pages: 

Google Maps – Townland of Carmony, in Parish of Kilmacrenan HERE 

Griffith Valuation Maps - Townland of Carmony, in Parish of Kilmacrenan HERE 

Names of Hunter families - www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/ 

Hyperlink to this Location on Google Maps: HERE 

Seamus:

Great work!

Roger

Seamus Callaghan

 I believe you are right in calling the location (Kinnevire or variations) a "Rundale" as I cannot find it on any Maps. You are also right in presuming my gggrandfather was a Hunter,

James Hunter to be exact. He was born in 1812, not 1823 and came to the USA about 1835. The 1901/1911 census's listing many Hunters in the Carmoney/Cranford/Milford

area along with DNA contacts to that area, lead my brother and I to conclude that this is where we would find the elusive Kinnevire. Are there any Hunter contacts that we could

e-mail with to see if they have any folklore on the subject?

   Bill Hunter

Thank you Roger, I really appreciate that. 

All the best, Seamus

Bill Hunter

I made a mistake when referancing 1823 as a birth year rather than 1812, I am sorry that was a simple typo error. I am afraid I wouldnt exactly know where to start as regards email addresses for Hunter families living in and around Cranford. The best advice I could recommend would be for you to edit the profile that you created for James Hunter in the Kilmacrenan Parish page, give it more of personnal touch and reach out and share it politely with Hunter families on facebook. Cranford Hunter is all you need enter in search persons facebook.

I hope this helps

Seamus

Seamus and Roger too

  Thank both of you very, very much. You both have been extremely helpful in our search. We will try to follow up on the Facebook suggestion.

       Bill Hunter

You are very welcome Bill.

I will see about moving this message and including it in the the Parish  message page for Kilmacrenan also.

All the best

Seamus

Hi Bill, you are correct. Kinnavire is an area above Cranford, county Donegal. It no longer exists as a placename. It appears in many different spellings in the church records of fannett meeting house. It comes from the ancient Irish name Ceann Maghair. The Hunters have lived in this area since the mid seventeenth century. My grandfather Robert Hunter was born there. I have records of a number of early Hunter families living at Kinnavire. I would be very interested in learning more about your Hunter family and would love to see a picture of the page from your family bible. Feel free to get in touch directly - clivehunter@hotmail.com

Hi All,

RHunter from Australia here.

Many thanks for the information posted on this page. Finding it, especially IrelandXO - Hunter Families from the Townland of Carmony (Parish of Kilmacrenan).pdf has been a great help in working out where my family have come from.

My grandparents (Andrew Hunter) moved from Ireland to Australia in the 1950s. He talked very little about his family, except that his father was James Hunter (b: 1892, d: 1962) who married 'Jeannie' Blair from Horn Head, Donegal. Milford was mentioned a few times, so I knew I had to search in this area - but there are so many recorded Hunters in this area that I couldn't make sense of it all.

I found the attached photo from my parents trip to Ireland a couple of years ago. Using the link to the document above I was able to identify the house/gateway on modern google maps, and using the Townland Map from the 1870s then identified this as Lot 10 Leased by Hugh Hunter from the Earl of Leitrum in Griffiths Valuations. This is the old 'family home' according to relatives still in Ireland - but I am not sure how to work out the link back to Hugh.

Any information would be amazing!

RHunter

RHunter of Australia

 Last October, my brother, my youngest son ,and myself traveled to Ireland to visit Kinnevire.

While there we took pictures of tombstones in the graveyards in Milford. I have a picture of

your grandfather's tombstone. Date of death 20 Jan !962 and your grandmother 17 Dec 1977.

Her name is spelled Jeannie on the tombstone. We cannot connect the to Clive's ancestry chart.

If you would like a copy, my e-mail address is whunter@peoplepc.com and I'll send it and a copy

of Clive's chart.

   Bill Hunter

Hi Bill,

Tried the email address whunter@peoplepc.com, but it has bounced back. Just wanted to double-check I have it right, or is there another address I should try?

RHunter

RHunter

Sorry, my bad. whunterjr@peoplepc.com should work.

    Bill Hunter

Hi RHunter

I'm Aaron, younger brother of Bill "WHunter".  I did a quick look at the trees Clive Hunter put together and didn't find your James Hunter in it but could have missed it.  Didn't search for Andrew, but noticed a few shown.  To me, it doesn't seem to be a common Hunter name.  Did you look in the 1901 and 11 census for the family?

Are you on Ancestry.com?  Be interesting to see if there is a DNA connection.  I do connect to 2 trees.  One in Ireland and the other in Florida, where her grandmother came from Carmoney.   Her grandmother's family was referred to as The Big Johnnies and came from "some place else".  But I think there had to be a connection for this family to end up in Carmoney.  David Hunter showed us the house you have pictured and also the one "The Big Johnnies" lived in. 

Regards

Aaron Hunter

ahunter01@comcast.net

Hello

I came across this conversation by accident so apologies for butting in.

I am currently the owner of a farmhouse in Cranford previously occupied by Bill and Roberta Hunter, both now deceased.

I believe it is very close to the location mentioned by RHunter  

https://www.google.com/maps/@55.1353273,-7.700515,3a,75y,174.68h,56.61t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9PfojFBCxUN9UQBWu8qkRg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

The link shows the house and the map suggests to me that is near to the location shown in RHunter's image.

There are still Hunters living nearby who would no doubt be able to provide some information on the family history in the area.

I hope this is of some interest to some of you.

Best Regards

Ian Donnelly

Hi Ian

Thank you for butting in.  I am Bill Hunter's brother, Aaron.  It took me a few minutes to navigate around your Google Maps, I use Google Earth and it's set up a little differently.  This link should be for the home we are both talking about.  

https://www.google.com/maps/@55.1352518,-7.7063642,3a,75y,210.05h,91.31t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMJea1I8OfMGZWSkEGEJ6Jw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

This was shown to us by David Hunter (lives in the old Barracks) as being our ancestral home.  David lived there until age 5.  I'm a bit skeptical as it belonged to Hugh Hunter in the Griffith's Valuation, if I read the maps correctly.  The name Hugh does not come down in our family tree. 

But David also showed us another home belonging to Bessie Hunter who died in 2000.  Bessie never married and lived there with her brother Bill who died in 1972.  Another sibling was Jennie who emmigrated to the States (as did most of the siblings).  I have a DNA connecton to her son, William "John" Hunter McGugan.

https://www.google.com/maps/@55.1356731,-7.7005833,3a,60y,317.77h,87.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sWQyBkhTCAcgeExwKKr0v0w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

The family was known as the Johnnie's as her parents were  John (Johnnie) Hunter & Eliza Jane McConnell.  "Johnnie's" parents were Joseph Hunter & Jane McElhenny.  This Joseph was said to come from "elsewhere", but Jennie's son "John" wrote he came from Letterkenny.  If I read the Griffith Valuation map correctly, this home belonged to David Hunter.

How did the Johnnie family end up in this home?  Did Johnnie take it over from his father Joseph and was Joseph a son of David?  The name David was given to the last son or our ancestor, James Hunter (1812-1892).  So was this David a brother, uncle or cousin to our James?  These are questions that I don't think we will ever find the answer to.  I was glad that after over 40 years of searching, we (my brother, his son and I) were able to narrow it down to the Carmoney area (Kinnevire) and visit with and be shown around by probable Hunter cousins.

Our ancestor James named his first 2 male sons John (first dying young).  Therefore James's father was probably named John.  A vague family note implies his mother's name was Nancy Russell.

Thanks for your interest.  I hope this all makes sense and the links work.

I almost forgot, we also met with Georgina McNutt Hunter, husband of Robert "Roy" Hunter (deceased).  She showed us a copy of the Hunter Tree that we already got from Clive Hunter in London.  Unfortunately, our ancestor James is either not on the tree or we are unable to definately find him.

Regards,

Aaron Hunter

ahunter01@comcast.net

Hi all, I am related to the Hunters you talk about in Cranford. In fact my great uncle James Hunter lives with my Dad now. He's 87. His father's name was Samuel Hunter and I'm not 100% sure but his grandfather's name may have been James. The pictures of the old house you have posted is where Samuels homeplace was. I visited it a few years back. As far as I know there were two different sets of Hunters in that area? Evelyn

Hi Evelyn. What Hunter family are you? My dad is a cousin of Hugo at Woodquarter. I've done a fair bit of research on the Hunters. It's tough fitting all the families together. Interested to hear more. Best wishes, Clive 

Hi Clive, I'm not 100% sure but my great grandfather Samuel came from Carnmoney. They might have been called the Jonnies? He married Susan Carr from Fanad.

Hi Evelyn,

Greetings from Australia

I can see 'Samuel Hunter, b. 1897, m. Susan Carr, Milford' in Clive's list.

According to the list, Samuel is the son of James Hunter (b. 1839, d. abt. 1911), the grandson of Hugh Hunter (b. 1805, d. 1968), and the great grandson of James Hunter (b. 1770, d. ?).

This links him back to the property leased by Hugh Hunter in the Griffith's Valuation (https://www.google.com/maps/@55.1352424,-7.7063316,3a,75y,210.05h,91.31…).

According to Clive's list, Samuel Hunter is the brother of my great grandfather James Hunter (b. 1885). James Hunter married Jeannie Blair from Horn Head. I have attached a photo of them below.

RHunter

Yes, I think you're right on that connection Rebecca ! 

What a lovely photo Rebecca. I can see the resemblance with my great uncle Jimmy. He's 87 now, not in great health but he's here! I guess we'd be distant cousins then?

I think Evelyn and Rebecca are third cousins, I'm a third cousin once removed !