What happened to our Ballyduff family at the time of and after the famine 1845-50? Generation Three: Ellen Donoghue and Daniel Costello/James Donoghue and Elizabeth Boyle

What happened to our Ballyduff family at the time of and after the famine 1845-50?

Generation Three
 

Ellen Donoghue and Daniel Costello

James Donoghue and Elizabeth Boyle

Recall

As there can be long intervals between my blogs, I recognise that I need to restate earlier information if you, members of the extended family, are to make sense of my latest article.  In my last blog I described what happened to Patrick and Catherine Dee and their son Patrick and his wife Anastasia Boyle.

James and his wife, Julia Boyle, had at least six children: Patrick, Ellen, James, Thomas, Mary, John.  They lived in Ballyduff, north Kerry.  It is their story and that of some of their children that I will tell in this article.

The main Donoghue players and their partners in this story are

James and Julia Boyle - ggggrandparents

            Patrick and Catherine Dee

                        Patrick and Anastasia Boyle

            Ellen and Daniel Costello

            James and Elizabeth Boyle

            Thomas and Ellen Connor – gggrandparents

            Mary and Thomas Ryle

            John and Joanna Boyle

Ellen and Daniel Costello(e)

Ellen, born sometime around 1805, married Daniel Costello in 1825 in Ballyduff.  

The only children I have found for an Ellen and a Daniel Costello are Catherine (b.1837), Brigid (1840), Daniel (b.1842), Ellen (b.1844) and Johanna (b.1848; this can be another variant of Julia) in Ballincrossig, a townland very close to Ballyduff.  For them to have been born some twelve to twenty years after marriage concerns me even though the sponsor at the baptism of the child Ellen was a Julia Boyle.  The answer to the long gap may be that the couple moved out of Kerry for the intervening years or they just didn’t get the children baptised – it happened.  

The other possibility is that Ellen Donoghue, the daughter of Bartholomew and Bridget Ferris born in 1823 (or from some other unrelated Donoghue family), married the Daniel Costello born in 1813 in Ballincrossig.

Looking at the land tenancies in the local area we can plot this couple’s progress.  There were no Costello tenants in Ballincrossig until Daniel in 1849 who was holding 13 acres of land with house and offices.  By 1853 this had risen to 26 acres.

It is clear that a Daniel and Ellen couple stayed in Ballincrossig well after the famine as he is sponsor at the 1869 marriage of a Mary Costello who was probably another of their children.

James and Elizabeth Boyle

I believe that James was older than his brother Thomas, my gggrandfather, as he was named after his father.  Elizabeth came from Ballincrossig, so would have known Ellen and Daniel Costello above well. 

 

Elizabeth was the daughter of William Boyle and Julia Connor (also known as Elizabeth) and the fifth of nine children born between 1809 and 1829.  In 1825, William (with a John Connor) was renting 30 acres in Ballincrossig.

Identified children of James and Elizabeth from parish records were: Juliana (b.1836), Ellen (b.1839), Honora (b.1842), Mary (b.1844) and Patrick (b.1847). 

From 1846, he was holding 3 acres of land on the east side of Ballyduff.  Next door was his brother Thomas who also had 3 acres.  By 1848 they had both given these tenancies up to a nephew-in-law of their mother’s, Simon Halloran.  We know that Thomas went to London, so I suspect James and his family left as well.  But where did they go?

As a best case, I have found a couple who fit  in 1870 and 1880 in New York on Long Island in Southold, Suffolk County and this says that he was born in 1805 or 1808 and was a day labourer.  In 1870 they have two sons living with them: Thomas (b.1843) and James (b.1848); what happened to the others I do not know.  In 1880 they have two grandsons living with them: James (b.1869) and John (b.1876).  The modern map below shows Southold right on the north-east end of Long Island and close to the water which seems to be a theme for our ancestors.

It will take a lot more work to make further progress, but it does mean that somewhere in the States today there are almost certainly new relatives.