Looking for descendants of RIchard Moore early Methodist in County Cork

Methodism took a lot longer to become established in Ireland as a separate denomination than in England. In Ireland there was considerable resistance to separating from the Church of Ireland. It was 1815 before Methodists agreed to conduct their own baptisms. However because of continuing loyalty and other factors, many continued to use the Church of Ireland for sacraments for years after this and it was 1871 before all Methodists routinely performed their own baptisms.

For marriages, the earliest ceremonies conducted by a Methodist Minister in Ireland that I am aware of, date from 1835 (Belfast Donegall Square, the first Methodist church in Ireland). However in the mid 1800s there were only a few Methodist Ministers in Ireland (Methodism relied heavily on lay preachers). So the shortage of Ministers contributed to the continuing practice of marrying in the Church of Ireland. In addition, in the early years, many Methodist Meeting Houses were not licensed for marriages so that too contributed to couples marrying in the Church of Ireland.

So to summarise, you are unlikely to find many Methodist baptisms before 1820. Few marriages before the 1840s and only a handful for many years after that. If there are no Methodist records in the location you are interested in, I would search the Church of Ireland instead, as that’s the most likely place to find the relevant event.

Thanks Elwyn.  

My ancestor , Jeremiah Moore, was born between 1800 and 1810, if you can trust the one census he appears on, and left Ireland prior to 1838.  I have checked various sources civil, Methodist and Church of Ireland without any results.  I attended two of the British Institute classes on Irish Genealogy in Salt Lake City to get help and advice.  I even get copies of draft papers from an accademic who researches early Cork in hopes of finding my ancestors.  I have found quite a bit on genetic cousins, but both trees hit a wall about the same period.  When ever a new source comes on-line or to my attention, I also check on the Moher surname as one of those families is a  Y-DNA match.  The Mohers were and are Roman Catholic so I also check those records, just in case.  atDNA confirms  that my Jeremiah was associated with a group of Methodist families who live in an area from Schull in the south, Ballydehob, Skibbereen,  with a significant number in Clonakilty area, Kilgarriff Parish.    The same surnames and people keep appearing in these genetic cousins trees:  Ballard, Beamish, Bennett, Cole, Connell, Copithorne, Dickey, Evans, Fenwich, Gardiner, Hadden, Jermyn, Justice, Lanktree, Levis, Moore, Morgan, Newman, Richey, Ross, Roycroft/Raycraft/Reycraft, Skuce/Skuce, Swanton, Sweetnam/Sweetman, Vickery, Warner, Whittey, Willis, Wilson, Wolfe, Woods, Wright.  (the bolded ones are the most frequently occurring.) Because they married within their faith, the atDNA relationships are predicted at a closer level than is possible based on the paper trail. 

The Moher family is up near Kilworth, north of he City of Cork, and the connection is farther back.  So far there have been no atDNA links between the Moore family and the Moher family of Kilworth.

Joyce (Moore) Hodges