Fitzgerald & Brown (Glenmore to New Brunswick & Back)
A tale of how a Glenmore couple emigrated to New Brunswick, Canada, in the middle 1800s and how their descendents eventually discovered their roots. Also how a mutual interest in genealogy and family history led to discovering valuable family history and friendship. By Ann Fitzgerald and Patty Brown.
My introduction into family history started after speaking to my mother Kate Fitzgerald nee Hoynes of Aylwardstown, Glenmore, who knew very little about her own family. Her mother had died when she was a baby, however she did have some memories of her father John Hoynes. She knew very little of her maternal grandparents. She knew her grandmother’s name was Maryanne Rigby and so Maryanne was the starting point of my journey into family history.
I collected information from different sources, including graveyards, and spoke to older relations. I remember as a child when adults would have long discussions about family history and relations but nothing ever got written down. My father had an interest in what locals called ‘tracing people’ by means of conversations and swapping stories with other families. As an adult I still remember some of those stories and conversations. My father had died by the time I developed my family history interest. Kitty Irish nee Fitzgerald, my father’s first cousin, is one of my greatest sources of information and I appreciate and treasure every visit with her.
I began to really appreciate the value of Danny Dowling’s life work at this point in my family history journey. I made some visits to him for information and have special memories of sitting on that couch beside him in his cluttered living room. He always made me feel very welcome and we would talk for hours. It was lovely surrounded by his old filing cabinets, lots of books, boxes of information, stacks of files and notes everywhere in the room. I would ask him a question about a family member and he would direct me to a place in the room or the next room where I might find what I was looking for.
A Christmas gift from my daughter Cynthia of an Ancestry DNA kit advanced how I researched and documented information. However, it took me a long time to figure out how to navigate the website. I inputted all the information I had collected and just let it sit there. About a year later I began to receive some messages about DNA matches and one of the first messages I received was from a lovely woman in Texas called Patty Brown. It turned out myself and Patty were fifth cousins. Patty was researching the Rigby, McCarthy and Freyne families at the time. I was able to find a record that she was searching for that linked her relatives to Glenmore. Since then, we have been in regular contact and have become really good friends. I have greatly benefited from Patty’s genealogy expertise. Patty and her husband Don came to Ireland in September 2019 and we spent a day visiting the old Rigby homestead in Slieverue Co. Kilkenny and the graveyard in Glenmore.
Our Covid lockdown project was working and researching together on the Rigby family and many other Glenmore families through Ancestry.com. We discovered a lot of information about my Fitzgerald, Hoyne Walsh, and Donovan family lines in the process and how they are connected to many other families in the area. We really enjoyed this work and made great progress; the research continues as a work-in-progress.
We started off in the beginning researching as many of the Glenmore/Slieverue Rigby families as possible and this led us on to researching other families associated with the Rigbys. This love of genealogy grew to choosing families from Kathleen’s blog and researching them extensively, linking them through marriages and other connections.
Through Ancestry DNA matches we found many distant relatives all over the world and lots of information about our ancestors. With our combined research work we discovered some interesting variations of names, for example; Aide, Freeman, Croke, Daneffe, Gaffney, Merry, Hicks and Bergin, and lots of Denns, some of these families names no longer live in Glenmore.
Researching family history, especially with another motivated person, is very fulfilling and fun. Having someone to check out information, debate difficult facts and discover and share new leads gives a sense of achieving worthwhile facts and information that otherwise may have been lost. Often our ancestors can be forgotten in time: they were born, some lived long or short, often difficult lives, and it’s important to honour and remember them. They are part of the fabric of our lives now, and of the family members coming after us.
Ann Fitzgerald.
Finding my way to Kilkenny all started with a DNA test, so many of my matches had County Kilkenny ties and that’s how I met my cousin and dear friend Ann Fitzgerald. The rest is history and I now know that I am a KILKENNY GIRL and proud of it!
In the beginning I searched and searched Ancestry.com, ‘Find My Past’ and Irish Catholic parish records for my second great-grandmother Margaret McCarthy’s family, her parents Michael McCarthy and Jony Freney, their marriage record and her siblings’ baptism records in Kilkenny and Waterford, but didn’t find anything. Since my family had many DNA with Kilkenny ties, expanded my search for Michael’s and Jony’s baptism records in Kilkenny and found a Michael McCarthy born 1797 in Haggard, Glenmore to Patrick McCarthy and Catherine Rigby. Now, searching your DNA match list for McCarthy is daunting, but Rigby is a unusual surname. I then did a surname search in my DNA match list for Rigby. and there were lots of matches with the Rigby surname in their trees.
I started messaging any DNA cousin who had family from Kilkenny and that’s how I made my first contact with Ann. On April 24th 2019, I asked Ann about her mother’s family and if they were from Kilkenny. If so, did she have any Rigby ancestors, yes, her mother was from Kilkenny and she did have Rigby family! My family also had DNA matches from Rigby descendants from Massachusetts, Illinois, Iowa, New York and Nova Scotia.
Ann was able to find Michael’s and Jony’s marriage record on rootsireland.ie: they married 12th August 1821 in Glenmore and Jony was from Kilbride. You have no idea how I felt! I had been hunting for years and really thought I would never find where they were from. Ann was able to find their marriage record when I wasn’t, because the early Glenmore Parish records were not digitized, just transcribed, and are only online through rootsireland.ie.
In Feb 2019, I finally decided to make my first trip to Ireland. I had been putting it off, hoping to find the townland of my relation second great grandfather Patrick Roach. By May 2019, with the help of Ann, I found his wife Margaret’s family in Kilkenny and added two extra days to my trip so I could meet Ann and see Glenmore and Kilkenny.
Ann graciously offered to meet my husband Don and I at the Rhu Glenn Hotel to bring us to the Glenmore area in September. She invited along Bernie Moloney, whose great-uncle Nicholas Roach’s descendants showed up in my family’s DNA match list. Ann even made contact with Michael Freyne, who she didn’t know, to show us around the area and to meet his father Seamus from Kilbride. Not only did the Rigbys show up in my family’s DNA, so did the Freynes of Kilbride!
After my visit to Glenmore, Ann and I added all her and Roisin Daly’s research of the Rigbys of the Glenmore area to our Ancestry.com trees and then we found more Rigbys. We were able to link the families together, we did this to honour them so they would not be forgotten and hopefully help other people whose family emigrated from the area.
Once Covid hit, Ann and I needed something to occupy our minds, so we started researching all Glenmore families using Danny Dowling notes from Kathleen Walsh’s Glenmore blog and rootsireland.ie. Danny’s notes led us to other Glenmore families who are no longer in the area.
Through our combined research we have found some really interesting stories and names. For example one name we researched was Aide often written on records as Eade, Ead, Eads, Eyde, Head, Heade, and Hedy. We have at least 30 families or more by this name in the Glenmore/Slieverue area with the earliest being Edmund Aide, born in 1753, who was married to Agnes Kehoe, Rathpatrick. This name is mostly located in Galway and Donegal on RootsIreland.ie. Townlands that we found the name Aide are Rathanure, Davidstown and Ballyhobuck. Many of the Ballyhobuck family emigrated to Massuchusetts and Newfoundland.
I am very much looking forward to a return trip to visit Ann and Glenmore on the 2nd of November 2021. Ann and I are both looking forward to meeting Kathleen Moore Walsh during my visit. We would like to thank Kathleen for doing such a great job with the Glenmore History Blog. It is such a valuable reference point and for makes the work of Danny Dowling accessible to so many people.
Patty Brown.
Further Information on Patty’s family history and connection with Glenmore (for history lovers):
My fifth great grandparents Patrick Carty from Haggard, Glenmore and Catherine Rigby from Ballyevere, Glenmore married 1783. Children: [1] John (1783) married Catherine Hanlon from Farnogue in 1814; [2] Richard (1786); [3] Mary (1788) married Mark Walsh; [4] Philip (1794) married Catherine Cody from Ballyconey in 1826. I believe the last Carty in Glenmore was Mary Carty (abt 1829) daughter of Philip and Catherine Cody. She married Peter Cahill in 1856 and they lived in Ballycroney. [5] Michael (1797) married Johanna Freney from Kilbride in 1821. They might have lived in Farnogue, Glenmore and Waterford for a while before emigrating to New Brunswick Canada.
My fourth great grandparents Michael McCarthy and Johanna (Jony) Freney had six children, including: [1] Patrick (abt 1824) married Mary McLaughlin abt 1846. They had nine children. [2] Catherine (abt 1828) married Thomas Rigby in 1853. They had five children. [3] James (abt 1829) married Catherine Lennon in 1868. They didn’t have children. [4] Richard (abt 1834) married Mary Anne Lennon. They had three children. [5] John (abt 1835) married Mary Dowling. They had nine children. [6] Margaret (abt 1839) married Patrick Roach abt 1863. They had eight children.
Patrick McCarthy (abt 1824) was the first to arrive in Grand Falls, Victoria, New Brunswick, Canada. In the 1851 census he stated that he had immigrated in 1844. By 1851, Patrick and Mary had two children.
The rest of the family arrived sometime in the 1850s, probably early 1850s, because each son was well established with 100-acre farms and married in the 1861 census. Michael and Johanna aged 60 were living with their son James and wife Catherine.
In 1871, Johanne is still living with James and his wife Catherine. Michael died between 1861 and 1871. Johanna died between 1871 and 1881. They are buried in the old cemetery of Assumption Catholic Church, Chapel Rue, Grand Falls, The chapel and cemetery was established in 1852 and the church was built in 1868. If they had a headstone it didn’t survive. Two of their sons, Patrick and James are buried there and rest of the family are buried in the new Assumption cemetery. New Assumption Cemetery address Portage Rue, Grand Falls, Victoria County, New Brunswick, Canada.
The featured photo above is Grand Falls, New Brunswick, Canada.