Mummery and Trumpery ~ John Crosbie, Lucan, 1834

Further to last week’s post, I came up with another possible reason why my ancestors, Darby Keogh and Jane Crosbie, may have obtained a marriage licence in 1833. Perhaps, Jane was Protestant or 'known' within the Protestant community. Perhaps, a marriage licence, issued by a Church of Ireland bishop, was deemed the best insurance policy to ensure the validity of a potential 'mixed' marriage, scheduled to take place in the Roman Catholic parish of Lucan, Co. Dublin. 

You see, prior to 1870, marriages between Catholics and Protestants were invalid under Irish civil law, unless celebrated by a Church of Ireland minister. So, if Darby or Jane was a practising Protestant, a second ceremony probably took place in the Church of Ireland. Unfortunately, though, as far as testing my theory goes, we’re at a loss – Church of Ireland records for Lucan seemingly only survive post-1845.

There is little basis for this theory, it must be said. The priest made no such notation beside their marriage in the register and there was no hint of it in subsequent records relating to their lives. Still, it makes for interesting speculation when you hear the story of John Crosbie, a man who posthumously created pandemonium in Lucan, the following year.

First, bear in mind, Crosbie was an uncommon surname in Ireland and, at the time, as few as seventeen hundred people lived in Lucan.[1] There’s a good chance everyone in the town bearing the Crosbie name was related. And, remember also, a John Crosbie witnessed Darby and Jane’s marriage. He could have been Jane’s father. 

Anyway, according to this story, John Crosbie, a practising Protestant, married a Catholic woman. And, on his deathbed, much to the chagrin of his Protestant minister, he 'converted' to Catholicism. The minister delivered a mighty sermon in Lucan Church afterwards. The intolerance he expressed towards his Catholic neighbours may border on paranoia, but, don’t forget, it occurred just five years after Catholic Emancipation, an alarming time for any Protestant minister in Ireland. 

The question that may never be answered is, was Rev. Ould talking about my GGGG-grandfather?

Cork Constitution, 19 February 1835, p. 3

The full text of Rev. Ould’s sermon:-[2] 

The True Nature of the Church of Rome and the Duty of Protestants towards her

'There is no parish minister but must expect, there is no faithful one that will not be prepared against, such conversions as have given risen to this Sermon. The truly useful, pious and devoted clergyman who now comes before the public, has never been afraid, and never, under God’s blessing, will be ashamed to show himself watchful in his great Master’s cause; and however liberals and latitudinarians may sneer and say, he need not have thrown away voice or type in making such a pother about an old besotted pensioner, whose soul might have gone to purgatory, and his carcase might have been bandied about by the Papists, with all their mummery and trumpery, without a minister troubling himself about the matter; 

yet we deem that Mr Ould was called on to make this exposure of the mean arts – the stern bigotry – the untired persecution with which such a poor Protestant, stupified by illness, was besieged, when married to a Popish wife, and when surrounded by none but those who think that all who do not confess to a priest must inevitably go to hell – that these poor ignorant creatures that surround a dying Protestant’s bed, should thus unite in giving him no rest until he consents to surrender to their good intentions, is most natural, and we would be almost inclined to place it to the account of their good nature, were we not assured that it is more to gain a triumph for their cause, more to confound their Protestant neighbours with the sight of a living Protestant being turned into a dead Papist, than any concern whatsoever for the state of the departing soul. 

But that a priest, an educated man, should be found lending himself to all this bigotry and delusion that he should administer to this malignant triumph of his flock, and dare to bolster up the hope of the dying man, by putting him through the exercise of a momentary confession, and the anointing with a bit of grease. We say this is monstrous, and we announce that the man who practiced such delusions must, indeed, be part and parcel of that mystical Babylon and mother of abomination, which, for all her harlotry with which she has deceived the nations, the Lord will destroy with the breath of his mouth in the brightness of his coming, - Mr. Ould, in this discourse, in a very animated and feeling way warns his young Protestant hearers, of the ruinous consequences of marriages with Roman Catholics.' 

Rev. Fielding Ould, A.B. Perpetual Curate of Lucan. 
  

[1] Comparative Extract of the population of Ireland, 1821 and 1831, p. 4, HC, 1833, accessed on EPPI. 

[2] ‘The true Nature of the Church of Rome...', a sermon by Rev. Fielding Ould, A.B. Perpetual Curate of Lucan, published in The Christian examiner and Church of Ireland magazine for 1834, v.iii, p. 938, by William Curry, Jun. and Co., Dublin, 1834, accessed on Google Books.

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© Black Raven Genealogy

Jeremiah Keogh & Jane Crosby - Married by Licence in 1833

My biggest genealogical discovery this week was the baptism record for Mary Anne Keogh, my great-great-grandmother. Her parents, Darby and Jane Keogh, organised her baptism on 9 February 1834, in the Roman Catholic Parish of Lucan, in Co. Dublin. Her christening took place six years earlier than might be expected based on her reported age at death, but that’s nothing unusual. 

Baptism of Mary Anne Keogh, 9 February 1834, Lucan, Co. Dublin.

When Mary Anne later married John Devine in Dublin in 1859, her parents were named as Darby Keogh and Jane Crosby, so this baptism fits nicely. Especially since Darby Keogh and Jane Crosbie married in the same church in Lucan on 26 April 1833, not ten months before Mary Anne's birth.

Curiously, Darby and Jane applied for a marriage licence prior to their wedding. The copy of the licence itself perished during the Irish civil war, but an index record survives and clearly shows Jeremiah (a common variant of Darby) Keogh and Jane Crosby applying for a licence in 1833.

To obtain a marriage licence a couple provided a sworn declaration confirming there was no legal obstacle to their marriage. The alternative was marriage Banns, where the proposed marriage was announced in advance at Mass on three consecutive Sundays. As a result, the licence was beneficial to those who wished to marry quickly or without public notice.

But, it was relatively expensive to get a marriage licence. Most people could not justify this cost without good reason. So, I did a bit of digging to see why Darby and Jane might have needed a licence, in 1833 and here's what I found out:-

• Members of the gentry class were far more likely to obtain a marriage licence than the rest of the Irish population. And, for the most part, they were wealthier, but it even became a status symbol of sorts. This did not apply in the case of my ancestors.

• Often, a couple applied for a licence if the intended groom was home on leave for a short period only, say like a soldier or a seaman. Such a couple might wish to marry in a hurry before he returned to work. However, all records indicate our Darby was a stone mason, equivalent to a modern-day bricklayer, so this did not apply either.

• They may also have required privacy if Darby and Jane were from different social classes, though there is no evidence to support this scenario and it seems unlikely.

• If their families opposed the marriage, they might not have wished to draw attention to their impending nuptials.  But, this was unlikely too. John Crosbie and Mary Anne Keogh, presumably representatives from both families, stood as witnesses to their marriage.

Marriage of Darby Keogh and Jane Crosbie, 1833, Lucan

So, after much researching, the most obvious reason for their prompt marriage was that Jane discovered she was pregnant. And now, while it appears Mary Anne was a honeymoon baby, she was born more than nine months after her parent’s marriage. 

And, I don’t know what to think. 

Update: a new hypothesis regarding their need for a marriage licence - See  Mummery and Trumpery ~ John Crosbie, Lucan, 1834.

Granny’s path to Darby and Jane Keogh

Source: Catholic Parish Registers, NLI; An index to the act or grant books and original wills of the diocese of Dublin from 1800 to 1858, H.C. 1900 (Cd. 4), xliv, 1, pp 238, 589, National Archives.

More about Mary Anne (Keogh) Devine: Child Mortality, the Devine family of Dublin. 

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© Black Raven Genealogy

Child mortality, the Devine family of Dublin

Something that often strikes me in my research is the high child mortality rate in the nineteenth century. In the era before vaccinations and antibiotics, overcrowding, disease and poor sanitation all impacted on the death rate of young children, as well as adult children.

My great-great-grandparents, John and Maryanne Devine, had more than their fair share of sorrow, burying five of their seven children. All seven survived their first birthdays, but three died as toddlers and two predeceased them as adults. This must have been a very heavy cross for my great-great-grandparents to bear.

John Devine and Maryanne Keogh were married in St Lawrence O’Toole’s church, Seville Place, Dublin, on 18 September 1859. Their seven children were born in quick succession, all during the 1860s. This was in the aftermath of the Great Famine, which saw Dublin’s population soar. John Divine was a labourer, an unskilled worker in a city then full of unskilled workers. He most probably worked in the Dublin Dockyards, close to where they lived. Likely, he was a day-labourer and had to get up very early every day to look for work to keep the roof over their heads. Times were surely hard.

Their first and only recorded son, Jeremiah (Darby) Devine, a honeymoon baby it would seem, was born on 12 June 1860. Jeremiah was named for Maryanne’s father, Jeremiah Keogh. Anne their eldest daughter was born on 22 July 1861 and then Jane on 18 January 1863. Jane was named after Maryanne’s mother, Jane Crosby. Kate christened Catherine, was born on 22 July 1864 and Mary Jane was born on 2 December 1865. My great-grandmother Christina arrived on 19 December 1867, in time for Christmas, and, finally, baby Margaret was born on 21 September 1869. They were all were baptised in St Lawrence O’Toole’s church.

Jane was the first of Maryanne’s babies to die. She succumbed to bronchitis on 25 October 1864, aged one year and nine months. Her little sister Mary Jane died on 23 February 1867. She was only one year and three months old. Baby Margaret then died on 31 October 1872, aged just three years. She died of pneumonia, having caught the measles. All three tots were buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Mary Jane and Margaret in the same grave.

These three babies, Jane, Mary Jane and Margaret died so young they were probably not spoken about afterwards. Such were the customs of the time. Christina may never have even known of Jane and Mary Jane, although she probably remembered her little sister Margaret.

Jeremiah died of an abscess, following a seven-day illness, on 14 July 1888 in the Richmond Lunatic Asylum. He was twenty-eight years old and a labourer by occupation. His father organised his burial in Glasnevin cemetery, listing his cause of death as ‘insanity’. I don’t know how long he was in the hospital or the nature of his illness. The records of the RDL Asylum are temporarily unavailable, while they are being cleaned and catalogued by professionals in the National Archives. The hospital admission records are being ‘computerised’. Jeremiah may be included in these records, which I have heard often even contain photographs of patients.

John and Maryanne buried their eldest daughter, Anne, just two months before Maryanne herself died. Anne caught typhoid fever and died on 13 March 1893, aged thirty-one years. Kate lived until she was fifty-two, sharing a house with my great-grandparents for many years. She died of an ‘ulcerated stomach’ on 1 July 1917. Both Kate and Anne are buried with their parents in the Garden section of Glasnevin Cemetery.

My great-grandmother, Christina, outlived them all. She christened one of her sons Jeremiah (Jerry) after her elder brother and named two of her daughters after her elder sisters, Anne and Kate. Thus, the names Jeremiah, Anne and Kate are still remembered today, while Jane, Mary Jane and Margaret can now be remembered here now.

Sources include: St Laurence O'Toole's church records on Irishgenealogy.ie; BMD registrations, General Register Office; Glasnevin Trust online burial records.

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© 2014 Black Raven Genealogy

Daughter of Eve…

Well ok, I have not traced my matrilineal ancestors back to Eve. I have only traced it back about 200 years, but without the assistance of DNA testing.

My grandmother, Annie Byrne, was born on 26 August 1910, the youngest in her family. 

Her mother was Christina Devine, born on 19 December 1867, at 2 St. Laurence Place, North Strand, Dublin. Christina was the sixth child of John Devine and Maryanne Keogh. She married James Byrne, a carter, on 29 August 1897, in their local church, St. Lawrence O’Toole’s, North Strand. James and Christina had eight children, two of which died as infants. On 16 May 1947, aged seventy-nine years, Christina passed away, having had a stroke the previous month. Her husband James died the following year. Both are interred in the St. Patrick’s section of Glasnevin Cemetery, with their son Frank and their daughter Kathleen.

Christina’s mother was Maryanne Keogh. Maryanne married John Devine in September 1859, in St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin. They also lived in the North Strand area of Dublin city. John Devine was a labourer. He worked in the Dublin’s docks, situated close to their home. They had seven children that I know of, but three died as infants and only one, my great-grandmother, lived to old age. Maryanne died of jaundice in May 1893, aged about fifty-three years. She was buried in the Garden section of Glasnevin Cemetery, with her husband and their two daughters, Catherine and Anne.

Maryanne’s mother was Jane Crosby (Crosbie). Jane married Jeremiah Keogh on 26 April 1833, at Lucan, Co. Dublin.  Jeremiah was a bricklayer. He probably died fairly young as Jane had to work in her later years. Her occupation was given as a room-keeper on her death certificate. Jeremiah had died by 1866, according to the marriage certificate of their son Thomas. Jane died of old age in March 1891, aged eighty-six years, putting her birth at about 1806. At the time of her death, she lived with her daughter, Maryanne Devine. Jane’s son Thomas Keogh organised her burial, in the Garden section of the Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.  Jane’s origins remain obscure.

Unfortunately, Jane’s parents are not recorded on her 1833 marriage record and it is proving difficult to identify any further documentary sources that might help establish the name of Jane’s mother. For Christmas, Santa Clause brought me two DNA test packs (Family Tree DNA’s Autosomal Family Finder) and both Mam and Dad have promised to take the tests. DNA testing may be just the tool to help extend my matrilineage back in time.  

Results to follow! 

Update: Not yet traced back to Eve, but traced back about 20,000 years ago, to Isha.

Sources available.