Looking for birth records of Mary Clark(e) and/or Laurence Dunbar (both married in 1825 in Balrothery Parish Catholic Church)

Hello JudeyR, this is tricky as there are about 20 Mary Clark and variants born in Dublin from 1790 to 1810 and without the parents names we cannot isolate then, I did not seperate them to see if there were any in Balbriggan but according to a book written about 20 years ago Clark is a name found in Balbriggan. https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0461 Balbriggan and Balrothery are side by side geographically and both names are in the parish name. 

I found a Mary Ann Clarke born in 1798 in Balrothery to a Patrick Clarke and a Catherine Mullen

BAPTISM AGE:0 EVENT TYPE: Baptism BIRTH DATE:1798 BAPTISM DATE: 27/03/1798 BAPTISM PLACE:  Balbriggan Dublin Ireland PARISH VARIANTS: Balrothery, Balrothery and Balscadden, Balscadden DIOCESE: Dublin

FATHER: Patrick Clarke  MOTHER: Catherine Mullen HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS: Name Catherine Mullen

You should be able to see the entry in the parishes register link above.

No luck with Laurence Dunbar anywhere in Ireland, Dunbars not too plentiful but in Dublin and other counties, there is an interesting thing to the marriage in 1825 the male witness is a Dr, Reilly so assume a medical man and the lady witness is a Mrs Huston which is an unusual name. 

Balrothery was a place where knights met from about the year 1200 and developed as a linen centre in the 1700s, however in 1780 a new mill was built in Balbriggan, then just a very small fishing port, the instigator of this was a Baron Hamilton. This led to an influx of workers probably from what is now Northern Ireland (this is what happened in Drogheda where I live anyway)

After this Balbriggan developed an international reputation for its woollens and the word is now in the English language in the US as so many went there taking their skills and I understand a unit of wool is known as a Balbriggan.

I only add this as background and the Dunbar family may have arrived following this influx or the marriage may have just taken place in her parish as per the norms.

From the fact of the witness being a doctor maybe seeing what records of the medical profession exist or how the Huston name fits in.

Good Luck,

Pat

Thanks very much for this information, Pat. It has helped provide me with some direction for further research. I have only recently discovered that Mary Clarke’s daughter and grand daughter later on ended up in a workhouse around 1865 following the death of the father from cholera. They must have been living in very hard times in the wake of the famine and also the effects of the penal laws against Catholics in Ireland to have fallen on such hard times. The granddaughter appears to have married out of Catholicism and into a non conformist Covenanter family but seems they eloped to Scotland to do it as I found their marriage certificate (probably as the non conformists were penalized too). I am interested to research this time of Irish history in greater detail. Thanks again and regards.