Greetings from Australia,
After some 20 years of traditional research looking for the origins of our JORDON (great)-grandfather, we resorted to DNA with six descendants of Patrick Francis JORDON taking tests – three grandchildren (97,89 and 83) and three great-grandchildren (78,73 and 63). Our cluster of DNA testers matches with two other clusters who have proven trees tracing back to Dromcolligher, Limerick in the early 1800s.
Cluster One has Mary Jorden married James Canty in Dromcolligher in 1834. They emigrated to Australia in 1844, settling near Geelong, Victoria. Two of their daughters married two O’Connor sons from a family that migrated from Count Wicklow. Mary’s death record in Victoria gives a birth year of about 1809 with father Joseph Jorden, no mother named.
Cluster Two has Ellen Jourdan born about 1832, sailed to Australia in 1850 and married Thomas Denis O’Sullivan in 1851. Although no baptism record could be found for Ellen, there are baptism records in Dromcolligher for sister Mary (1834) and brother Edmund (1836) with same parents, William Jourdan and Judith Feeheny. Interesting to note that Thomas O’Sullivan is a sponsor on one of the baptism records and the age difference between he and Ellen Jourdan may mean that the two families were known to each other in Dromcolligher.
Cluster Three is our group of six DNA testers mentioned above. We connect in varying degrees to people in both clusters One and Two. The only knowledge we have of our Patrick Francis Jordon is from his marriage record in 1879, in Sandhurst (now Bendigo), in the goldfields of Victoria. The record shows Patrick as 28 years old (thus born ~1851), born in Westminster, London and names his parents as John Jordon and Mary O’Connor. The closest we have found is a Patrick John Jordan born 1848 in Westminster (GRO Index and 1851 census) to father John Jordan and mother Bridget Sullivan (not O’Connor). This family disappears after the 1851 census. Back to Dromcolligher, there is a marriage for a John Jordan to a Bridget Sullivan in 1842 with a daughter born in 1844 then no further records found – could this be the same family on the 1851 census? Family lore (via the oldest grandchild of Patrick who remembers his staying in her home when she was a child) has it that his parents originated from County Cork, but we have no evidence noting that Dromcolligher is very close to the border of Limerick and Cork. There are no arrival records for Patrick or his family to Australia and no records/history prior to his marriage in 1879. The only information we have is that he provided for his marriage record.
In summary, Cluster One and Two are connected in varying degrees by DNA but no link has been found – the most likely scenario is that Mary Jorden (born ~1809) and Ellen Jourdan (born ~1832) are related. We in Cluster Three are related in varying degrees to both clusters with the only common name found so far being JORDAN or variants with a hot spot around Dromcolligher. We also match fairly strongly (3rd to 4th cousin range) with another family who don’t have Jordan in their tree but have a paper trail back to Newcastle West, Limerick so this general area seems to be the most likely area for our common ancestors.
Resources exhausted to date: Ancestry, FindMyPast, FamilySearch, RootsIreland, some professional genealogy reports in London (re Westminster birth) and lots of correspondence with various DNA matches.
If there is anyone with knowledge of the Jordan surname in the Dromcolligher area, please jump in and help us crash this genealogy brick wall. If we can link clusters One and Two, that would be an excellent start and possibly help link our cluster Three to them.
Thanks in advance, Alan Denham
Victoria, Australia