For almost 20 years, I have been looking for records for my Roman Catholic John McGarvey/Catherine McCluskey family who emigrated to Kingston, Ontario Canada sometime between 1823 (2nd to last son born in Ireland) and 1935 (last son born in Canada) from county Tyrone. Father was John McGarvey, wife was Bridget McCluskey, and children were at least, Mary (1810 - Ireland), Michael (1812 - Ireland), Terence (1814 - Ireland), John (my ancestor - 1818), Patrick (1823 - Ireland) and Joseph (1835 - Kingston, Ontario, Canada). There may be more. John (Sr.) McGarvey died in Canada in 1871. The timing is tricky because of the time of immigration - few Canadian immigration records exist for that time period, and this is before Griffith's. Even parish baptisms are not available (for the area where I think they lived) for when my family left Ireland.
But, thanks to the wonderful volunteers for the CoTyroneIreland.com website, I believe that I might have found my townland. I think it is Lurganboy. I needed to see a list for the tithe applotment books, (the Republic of Ireland generously tossed those over the border without indexing them for free searches) and your indexed transcriptions have been so very helpful! Based on the tithe records in Lurganboy, I have found McGarveys other than John (where the Christian names are the same as those for his children), so I'm thinking that this is a family unit in this townland), I was able to find through Griffith's Valuation that the land was owned by a Sir William Verner. And looking him up, and the name of the townland (that I think might be where my family lived), I found that PRONI has estate files that might include information on the inhabitants of this townland during the time period of interest! I'm trying not to get too excited by this (but I AM too excited by this). I am thinking that my next logical step would be to find out from PRONI how their estate file is organized and how easy it is to access records for the time period I'm interested in (the file stretches from 1641 to 1907) - which would be 1835 and earlier. I really don't want to pay for a general file search for 250+ years. Has anyone asked for searches from PRONI before? I am really hoping that these records will confirm that my family lived in Lurganboy township. Comments? Ideas? Other sources? And of course would be very happy to find any McGarveys or McCluskeys out there who are connected to my line. I have an ancestry DNA profile, but given that my nearest Tyrone ancestor for this line was 4-5 generations back ..) Also, given that this family immigrated before the great famine, what do you think might have made them want to leave? Was it the tithes? Were there any other local problems I might want to learn about? Thanks so much! Lori Herman North Vancouver, Canada
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