Daniel Sullivan : Short Biography

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Searching irishgenealogy.ie for Daniel Sullivan births in Mallow there are 48 results from 1868 to 1917. I opened all births from 1868 to 1898 but found no births to mother Mary Fitzpatrick.

THere are no marriages for David Sullivan to Mary Fitzpatrick on irishgenealogy.ie in any county so they probably married before civil reg began circa 1865. There is a marriage of Denis Sullivan to Mary Fitzpatrick in 1875  plus other Sullivan/Fitzpatrick unions in Caherciveen. familysearch.org has a christening of Daniel SUllivan 20 Jun 1847 to parents Daniel Sullivan and Mary Fitzpatrick in Boherbue, Cork, which is near Kanturk. Not too far west from Mallow.  

Do you have any dates beyond 1820 for your family?  To whom was Daniel Sullivan married? His father should be on marriage civil reg. Often priest handwriting Daniel and a David appear quite similar.  Consider searching both names.

Other links:  http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/  http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie  Catholic registers: http://registers.nli.ie

stignaz

Thursday 19th November 2020 04:44PM

Hi Stignaz.....Thank you so much for your research and interest in my posts and ancestors. I put more information on here related to Daniel. There was always a question regarding his birth due to information in census documents and information from a newspaper obiturary that gave 1839 and 1847 as birth dates. However, as I've researched this past year it looks like 1847 makes more sense. However, in several census documents from Iowa he lists his age to coincide with a birth date of 1850; it is believed that he was fairly illiterate so guessing regarding actural birthdates may have been taking place. He married my grandmother, Mary Agnes Danahy, in 1877 in Iowa. They had both emigrated there but grandpa in 1869 and grandma in 1875. My Danahy's were from Glantane. 

I believe that David and Mary Fitzpatrick Sullivan married before 1843. We have been able to find five baptismal records for David and Mary beginning in 1843 with the birth of a daughter, Mary. 

Much of this information comes from cousins with whom I've connected on Ancestry and other sites. One cousin has said that David was from Gortearagh. It is also believed that Mary died in 1855 and that David remarried in 1857 to Ellen Murphy and that they had an additional four or five children. 

So, as of right now, this is what I have. Again, thank you for all of your helpful information and I welcome anything else you find.

Be Well.....

Patty Sullivan

Patty129

Thursday 19th November 2020 08:01PM

No doubt your Daniel was being creative each time he reported his age. My GGGF "aged" 16 years from 1901 to 1911 per his reporting to the census. It is said the law had changed allowing for old age pensions so folks were trying to get paid by claiming to be older. Folks often "lied" about their regardless of what the cost would be on Sunday. This genealogical research reminds me that spelling changes for names were common due to politics and priests, the Irish love of nicknames, and I can't be too choosey about how to pronounce or spell my family name. Names and dates contain some historical fluidity. It makes it difficult to feel "certain" about your ancestors, however, and historians make mistakes all the time.

Hmm. Gortearagh is near Kanturk and Boherbue too. While I am not a historian, it has been written that people long ago came Southeast from Kerry to Cork. There is a natural route from greater Kerry to Kanturk to Glantane to Mallow. I have not really scratched the surface for Sullivan in the area you're searching because Glantane and Mallow are my "Kelleher" territory. My Denahy family from Donoughmore then moved to Richill, Aghadillane, closer to Mallow, who married Sullivans from nearer Blarney and Whitechurch. If I find any nuggets in my spreadsheets of names and records I will pass them along. 

In the meantime, dig through irishgenealogy.ie and try to find more descendent cousins. Make a list of all the places around Gortearagh, Kanturk and Boherbue you find your surnames on the 1901 census and use them as the next level of dive. Don't have much from Griffith's Valuation other than one Jeremiah O'Sullivan in Laharan East, Kilmeen, Kanturk from 1852.

stignaz

Friday 20th November 2020 03:58AM

Hi again....You are helping so much. I am so unfamiliar with all of the small towns/townships/parishes etc. in Co Cork and Ireland and all of your good information is piquing my interest to become a lot more familar with all of this interesting geography. Also, your info about the pensions and folks maybe taking liberty with birth dates makes total sense. 

I'm on Ancestry.com with a fairly large tree and I've had my DNA analyzed also. Many of the Ancestry cousins, mostly fairly distant, who have trees posted, show that somewhere in my history I have Kelleher's too. My Danahy's and McCarthy's have been much easier to trace than my Sullivan's and I'm just not sure why that is. With the Danahy's I've found many of them, even the ones who stayed in Ireland, changed the spelling of their names. So, I have had that to contend with also. My O'Keeffe's have also had several differnt spellings of their name. 

I have been on Irishgenealogy.ie with a little bit of luck and I use Rootsof Ireland.com....I need to join their site to get access to more records and I hesitate to do that because what started out as a retirement hobby is turning into an expensive passion. 

Again thanks so much.....

Patty Sullivan

Patty129

Saturday 21st November 2020 01:36AM

Patty, Let me suggest a no-fee but time sinking way for you to possibly find your folks' home townland. Townland is the key to unlocking what you can of your searches in Irish records. If you have names of siblings and general locations of Daniel Sullivan and Mary Agness Danahy, search on irishgenealogy.ie (IG) for them. The civil registers have address or townland for births, deaths and marriages. Births have both parents and mother's maiden name. Marriage has father and sometimes townland of both the couple and their fathers (as well as occupation). Civil reg is pretty consistent from 1865 onwards but irishgenealogy has some earlier documents.  Once you are confident in townland, you can search the census records, Tithe Aplotments and Griffiths Valuation. National Archives also has estate records http://www.willcalendars.nationalarchives.ie/search/cwa/home.jsp  "calendar of WIlls" that can be super helpful. That is more complicated to search, so save that ferlater.

When searching IG.ie you may get 13000000 Daniel SUllivan results so you can filter by births, deaths or marriages, then by PARISH. "Mary Danahy" returns 43 results in Mallow and the search includes phonetic spellllinngs. It appears your people run along the Blackwater River from Kanturk to Mallow so you want to look at these parishes mainly. You can open up each "image" and scroll through it to find the person(s) of interest. This is time consuming and lots of pigs get kissed before you find keepers. Marriage records only have father's names so towns help you "confirm" the celebrants are your people. Death records have a "reported by" person and address that sometimes do not match your ancestor on paper, but may actually be a match. Sometimes a death is reported by a daughter with a married surname offering another clue for searching.

1820 is far enough in the past that finding convincing records may be impossible. This region is known as a kind of "dark area" in terms of record retention. But the intrepid and vigilant researcher can dive into the Catholic registers on NLI.ie and search by parish. This will destroy your eyes and suck up all of your time but you will find records for David Sullivan and Mary Danahy in there as parents, therefore you may find they really loved one another and had 12 children. That's a lot of cousins to follow up on when you go back to IG!

Once you have townlands kinda nailed down, dig into the 1901 and 1911 censi at www.census.nationalarchives.ie searching by name and townland first, then by name and DED. DED is like civil parish. Spellings are weird here too but you can use a wildcard search such as "Mall*" for Mallow. Example: Glantane does not exist on 1901 census for Kilshanning. In 1911 the DED was spelled "Kilshannig" so searching under County: Cork and DED: "Kils*" would return all DEDs with "Kils" as the first four letters.  "Glantane" exists in Kilshannig on the 1911 census. Click on a family name then you can click on the DEDs to see all Townlands therein or click Townlands to find all surnames listed therein. So it's less forgiving for search terms but the records are there somewhere. Records are downloadable.

I paid the Mallow Heritage Center to search for family before IG and NLI posted their millions of records. Your family also likely emigrated from Cobh so the Queenstown Emigration Museum may be able to help.

https://www.nli.ie/en/griffiths-valuation.aspx there are a few links here. www.nationalarchives.ie www.census.nationalarchives.ie www.irishgenealogy.ie http://www.willcalendars.nationalarchives.ie/search/cwa/home.jsp  http://www.willcalendars.nationalarchives.ie/search/cwa/  www.registers.nli.ie

Doing a test search on willcalendars I just found a Sullivan ancestor of mine from Knockacorbally, Blarney, Cork from 1899. Serendipitous. Now I have to plug that record into my Sullivans of Courtbrack tab on the spreadsheet!

I record all people and places that may fit in with my extended family. I plug every hit or near miss in a spreadsheet. Later I scour the data points for patterns like spelling changes for names and places then group them together. You know the local priest or census taker likely had the most education, speaking Gaelic, English and Latin, so their ears and experience would lead to recorded names based on their bias/knowledge of the family or place. The census records can allow you to track down living cousins in Ireland using the eircom phone directory and sending letters to the parish priest or local mail hub. I found some still living on the ancestral lands that are award winning dairy farmers along the Butter Road. It can't get better than that, in my book! I wrote to a Sullivan from Mallow area living near Blarney who may even be one of your cousins but Sullivan is one of the most prevalent names in Cork

Can you tell I normally work in a library? 

Craigk

stignaz

Monday 23rd November 2020 05:40PM

Hi Craig.....All I can say, is thank you, thank you, thank you.  You are teaching me a lot and I am hoping to have the time over the next week or so to begin following all of your suggestions. I feel as though I am in a graduate class for genealogy!!!!  And, I'm not surprised that you work in a library, your suggestions for researching are wonderful.  I'm a retired social worker and if I wouldn't have chosen social work, library science was another huge interest. Years ago when computers were first becoming accessible to the public and we all began working with them I felt as though I finally had all the libraries in the world at my fingertips, and I loved that idea. 

I will get back to you soon and let you know what I've learned. If you live in the USA, Happy Thanksgiving....if not, have a wonderful rest of your week. 

Patty

Patty129

Wednesday 25th November 2020 07:01PM

Hi Craig.....Well, finally news. This past sprin I found a cousin on Ancestry. He was awesome and shared photos of some folks with the name Sullivan from Mallow that his father had taken back in 1963 on a trip to Mallow. One of my Irish Facebook groups allowed me to post the photos and sure enough someone recognized them and helped me make contact with them. So, all of my researching paid off and I'm a very happy Irish descendent. Hope to get over there to see them/meet them soon.

Again, thank you for all of your help.

Patty

Patty129

Thursday 17th June 2021 03:19PM