McGivern and Larkin

There are 2 RC parishes of Creggan – Upper & Lower. The Lower parish has no records before 1845, so if that is where the couple are from unfortunately you won’t find any record of their baptisms. The Upper parish has records as follows:

Upper Creggan (Crossmaglen) (Armagh diocese)

Baptisms and marriages, 1796-1803, 1812-29 and

1845-81.

The RC parish records are on-line free on the National Library site:

https://www.nli.ie/en/family-history-introduction.aspx

I had a look at the Upper Creggan records for the dates you believe Arthur & Bridget may have been born. I did not find either. However people in Ireland in the 1800s didn’t always know when they were born, and so when officialdom needed a date of birth they sometimes just made one up. It’s common to find that someone birth date in the parish records was a year or two out from the one they used in North America. So you might want to search around those years to see if you can find the 2 events.

Really though you need to try and get the parents names from marriage or death certificates in the US. These are fairly common surnames in the Armagh area and you need to be sure you have the right family. (There’s about 7 Bridget McGovern/McGiverns in the 1901 census of Co Armagh so easy to latch on to the wrong family).

Possibly DNA testing may be a way of matching with others who have additional information about where the family originate. Family Tree DNA reportedly has more people with Ulster roots than any other company. That obviously increases the chances of finding a match. You might want to try them or, if you have already tested, you can transfer your results to them for no fee.

The North of Ireland Family History Society is running an Ulster DNA project and can offer FTDNA testing kits at a reduced price.  http://www.nifhs.org (Go to DNA project on the website).