Edger Families

Can you give us a bit more detail please? The 1901 Irish census has 907 people named Edgar/Edger.  Give us the name(s) and rough ages of ancestors who you know lived in Ireland. When did they leave, who did they marry, what denomination were they? What were their occupations? That sort of information.

The surname is found in Antrim but there are more in Co. Down, and others all over Ireland.

My great great grandfathers name was William Edger born in 1814 in Kentucky. The census states that his mother and father were from Ireland. He married a woman named Sarah George. After her death, he married a woman with the name of Amanda Sipple. Since William was born in Ky in 1814, His family would have been here before then and from what I understand may have landed in Maryland and then moved to Virginia which parts of later became Kentucky. I believe he had an uncle with the name Robert. 

As for their occupation, I know when they were in the U.S. they owned farm land. 

Ladywolf,

I looked at the 1901 Irish census. There were 64 people named William Edgar/Edger. Not your immediate ancestors obviously but there would have been just as many around in the early 1800s. I mention it to explain how common the name is in Ireland. So your first problem is that without your William’s parents names from some source in the US, there’s no obvious way of identifying the correct family in Ireland.

The majority of the William Edgers in the 1901 Irish census lived in Ulster (mainly Counties Antrim, Down, Tyrone, & Armagh). All were Protestant and the majority Presbyterian (often indicative of Scottish roots) though there were some who were Church of Ireland and might be of English origins. MacLysaght’s “The Surnames of Ireland” says Edgar is an English name, “now numerous in Ulster” and were “well established to be classed as ‘principal names” in the so-called census of 1659”. So MacLysaght says it’s an incomers name, probably of English origins. Probably arrived in the early 1600s because that’s when the main plantation of Ireland took place.