Looking for birth records

Jasmine:

Welcome back to Ireland Reaching Out!

I searched on the subscription site Roots Ireland and although they had a number of Dougher baptismal records in Mayo in the 1840s, none of the records had a father Frank or Francis. Likely they were baptized in a parish that no longer has records back to 1840. I also did not find a Frank Dougher marriage record.

I did look at the 1855 Griffiths Valuation head of household listings to get a sense where the surname Dougher (and varints) was found. Primarily, they were in North Central Mayo where in fact many families emigrated to Pennsylvania.

You may want to add your ancestor stories to our XO Chronicles site and possibly someone will see a connection.

https://www.irelandxo.com/ireland-xo/history-and-genealogy/ancestor-dat…

Have you considered DNA testing?

Roger McDonnell

You may already be aware of this, Jasmine, but someone has already input a good bit of information about what appears to be your family at the FamilySearch site:  https://www.familysearch.org    It's run by the Mormon church and has the largest database of genealogical info in the world.  You have to register to use it, but it's entirely free.  If you look there, you'll find Anna Dougher at her unique ID number, which is LR3S-2CL.  They have her mother listed as Anna as well, which is sometimes found as an alternate to Honora or Nora in various records. The records show someone listed as "Dooherman" who input much of the info, so he might be a relative with whom you could compare notes (you can private message him at the site).  Unfortunately, there's no further info about their Irish origins, apart from Mayo being mentioned in some records, but the Pennsylvania records appear to be extensive..

My motther's parents grew up in a part of Mayo a bit more to the east of where your Dougher's may have come from (mentioned above), so I'm somewhat familiar with the parish registers in the area.  They are available online and you can download each page and study them at your leisure.  As an example, heres a link to the register for the parish of Kilmoremoy, where the records go back to 1823:    https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0753

Once there, you can use an interactive map to check neighboring parishes.  Since you have likely years of birth, it should not be too hard to locate baptismal records, at least if they occur in parishes with old enough records.  Some other nearby parishes with records going back far enough for what you want are Crossmolina (1831), Kilfian (1826), and Addergoole (1840).

Hi, Kevin and Roger! Wow, thank you so much for your replies- I was not aware someone had put anything into the Family Search site, I will definitely check it out. Thanks to you both for digging around and getting back to me...what a fantastic site this is with people like the both of you contributing your time and talents to helping those of us searching for info. I do have a LOT of info on the family tree once the Dougher’s landed in PA (circa 1847). My grandmother (Maryclaire McCauley) was Honor “Anne” Dougher O’Brien’s granddaughter, and I knew her well. She and her cousin, Anna Kirby, wrote down everything they knew, fortunately. It’s just that no one can seem to trace this line past Frank and Honora Dougher in Co. Mayo. I’m moving to Ireland in 2019 because I’m marrying a Galway man (like, he’s actually Irish), and so my curiosity has been recently piqued because we are getting married in Mayo. When I was chatting with my mom about the wedding venue being in Mayo, she told me that’s where a lot of my ancestors are from on her side, but they didn’t know anything beyond good auld Frank. She did say Frank was not Catholic! (a shocking fact, lol, as evvvveryone else was and is!), and thinks he was Presbyterian maybe? The family story goes that when Honor “Anne” Dougher, his daughter, married penniless, Catholic Bernard O’Brien (my great-great grandpa— a famine baby who was orphaned, and left on the doorstep of a church and raised by the monks in Ireland til he was 16, then came to US), he temporarily disowned her.  Honor and Bernard has EIGHTEEN children (bless those Irish baby makin genes), one of whom was my great grandma Ella O’Brien McCauley. Annnnyway, That’s enough of your time wasted! :-) I also have inte extensive information on the ancestors from my dad’s side (once everyone found out I was engaged and getting married in Ireland, they all felt the need to tell me about all of my Irish roots haha), who are all from Kerry and Cork, so I will probably post again in those parishes and see what I can find. Thanks again! :))

That's interesting, Jasmine.  I have two grandparents who grew up in eastern Mayo, and the O'Brien name is fairly common in the area.  When searching the parish records, I found at least three O'Brien's in the parish of Killasser (where my grandmother grew up) who were witnesses at weddings in my family, and thus were possibly cousins of the bride or groom.  I also have several O'Brien DNA matches who seem to be from Mayo.  One of those O'Brien matches has a family tree on Ancestry which I was able to look at (I'm not a member there, but people who are can invite you to view their trees).  We haven't been able to establish the exact connection thus far, though.  I have four second and third cousins in or from that area whom I've located so far through my DNA test results in that area (plus a few more who are probably third to fourth cousins, but who did not respond to my emails).

I can also match your Cork ancestry!  One of my grandmothers, Elizabeth Cronin, grew up in the parish of Dromtarriff, near the Kerry border, and I've had a number of DNA matches thus far in that part of Cork and across the border in Kerry and Limerick.  I also have a second cousin who has his DNA results and who shares Elizabeth with me as an ancestor .  If you want to comare DNA results sometime, let me know.

Hello Kevin,

We talked a while ago on this site about McNulty and Gallagher and other names in Mayo.  My McNultys were from Mayo then to Leeds, England.  They married into the Gallagher family and many left England for New York City.  I also match to Paullinbaby through The Patrick Foy/Munelly or Manely family in Mayo.  My email address is:  msdmsullivan@comcast.net.  You said you had some info about these families, places they moved to in the US.  Could you send me the info?  Thanks.