Matthews, Robert and William

Jonica,

There isn’t anywhere in Co Down named Ballimore/Ballymore. Many place names begin with Bally (it just means town) but I can’t pinpoint nay that might be your family’s home.

Statutory birth registration only started in Ireland in 1864, so you won’t find a birth certificate for Robert. Prior to that you need to rely on church baptism records, where they exist.  You don’t say what denomination he was.

Looking at the 1901 census for Co Down there were 225 people named Matthews. About 100 were Presbyterian of one sort or another, another 50 were Church of Ireland /Methodist and the remainder RC.

The RC records are on-line free on the nli website. I searched on rootsireland but did not find a match.

If your family were Presbyterian or Church of Ireland or Methodist then the records may not be on-line anywhere. The churches usually hold the originals but there are also copies of many of the records in PRONI, the public record office, in Belfast. Their copies are not on-line and so a personal visit is required to access them. If you are unable to go there yourself, you may need to employ a researcher. However if you don’t know where in the county they lived, it’s a mammoth task to search all the available records. Probably 300 churches.

What was William Matthews occupation according to Robert’s marriage certificate?

Looking at Griffiths Valuation for 1864, there were William Mat(t)hews living in the parishes of Drumgath, Tullylish, Donaghcloney, Comber, Ballyhalbert and Greyabbey.  If you have no other leads, and you know the family denomination, you could get someone to search the baptism records for those parishes, for Robert’s.

http://www.proni.gov.uk/guide_to_church_records.pdf

Researchers in the PRONI area: http://sgni.net

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml?action=nameS…

Plenty of Matthews in Co Down on this site:

https://web.archive.org/web/20161025063755/http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com:80/~rosdavies/SURNAMES/M/Matthews.htm

You ask how the family might have got to Workington. There was a regular ferry from Donaghadee to Portpatrick till around the 1850s when it switched to Stranraer (being an easier port to dock at). But a lot of people from Co. Down got  a lift over on coastal cargo vessels that travelled between places like Dundrum to Workington or Barrow. Just a very short journey, even in the days of sail. No passenger records exist of course for what was just a short domestic voyage.

Thank you Elwyn. The denomination has not been mentioned anywhere.  Robert was an Inn Keeper/Publican from at least 1883 (city directory)  in Workington, right on the Harbour,  until he retired in 1911. When his son John (my great grandfather) came to the US, He married my great-grandmother who migrated from Galway so she would have been Catholic.  Evidently, he did not adhere to any religion from County Down.   I have a new source on Facebook who actually grew up next door to Robert's Grandsons in England and is related. She found me in a Facebook group called Old Workington.  She is the one who told me that all the sons in that family have the nickname of Ballie. She didn't respond when I asked about the religious background but she sent me a photo of a photo (sent online to her by someone else) that she believes may have been Robert soon after he arrived. He was wearing an army uniform.  She also believes the town was Ballywater. 

Robert's marriage record is indexed and so no occupation for William is listed. The BMD website allowed me to order a pdf copy of Robert's death record but marriages are not available electronically. I bet I could order a copy have it mailed to me here in the US. 

I will look into the links you have sent me. Thanks so much!

 - Jonica

Jonica,

The cheapest way of ordering the marriage certificate is from GRO Southport in England. It should cost you £9.25. That should include postage. (Some of the other sites charge considerably more).

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/

Bally is the English for the Irish word Bailie and means town. (That’s why so many place names in Ireland begin with Bally.

The famine may well have been a factor in your anctesor’s decision to leave Ireland but it may not have bene the only one. I am sure he left for the same reasons that 2 million others did. To find work, or better paid work than labouring on a farm. Ireland has very few natural resources (no oil, coal, iron ore etc) and so did not benefit from the industrial revolution in the 1800s, the way Scotland, England, the US, Canada & Australia did, which created hundreds of thousands of comparatively well-paid new jobs in new industries (coal mining, steel making, railways, ship building etc). So that was a big pull factor. There had also been a huge population explosion in Ireland going up from about 3 million people in 1750 to 8 million in 1830. There simply weren’t jobs for all those people. In much of Ireland the only employment was subsistence farming topped up in Ulster and one or two other areas with a bit of linen weaving. And then the straw that broke the camel’s back, along came the famine, numerous times throughout the 1800s. The worst period was when the potato crop failed almost completely 3 years in a row in the late 1840s, and then partially several more years after that.

Other factors led to the continued emigration too, eg early mechanisation on farms. With new machines to turn the soil and plant seed, farmers no longer needed an army of agricultural labourers to help on the farm. So those jobs were rapidly disappearing. Likewise mechanisation had led to linen factories being set up in places like Belfast. These made home weaving uneconomic and so also upset the labourer’s family economy. Agriculture was the biggest single employer in Ireland, but it was mostly a barter economy. Few people had any ready cash save what they could make from weaving or any government sponsored work such as building new roads. So when the opportunity arose to get jobs with a regular wage packet, as opposed to a few pence from your father each week, the decision to migrate wasn’t really all that hard to make. So it was as much about economic betterment as anything. The famine wreaked havoc in most of Ireland but in Co Down, a comparatively wealthy county, it wasn’t too severe (and most bigger farmers had not been one crop dependant) so I would say it was less of a reason for your particular ancestors leaving than it was for others elsewhere in Ireland.

There was a massive tide of migration all through that century, including long before the famine. Years after the worst of the famine it’s impact was still being felt across Ireland, and there were still plenty of much better job opportunities in Australia and the USA. (After Scotland and England, the USA was the most popular destination for emigrants with about 40 to 50% choosing it. Only about 5% of Irish emigrants chose Australia and New Zealand, possibly due to the costs and length of the voyage).

So to summarise, people had been pouring out of Ireland long before the worst of the famine. All the famine did was speed the tide up.

Here’s a link to an article on the famine in Co Down, which you may find interesting.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170329052724/http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com:80/~rosdavies/WORDS/Famine.htm

Thank you so much for taking the time to give me a better understanding!  I love learning the history! I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to live in Ireland during the famine.  My 13-year old daughter had to do an essay on discrimination for school. My husband and I (both have Irish ancestry) shared with her that the most poorly treated people in American in the 1800s were Irish immigrants. She surprised her teacher by talking about the Irish in American rather than the typical African American vs. White and she was the only one in her class who didn't have to rewrite her essay.  I was proud of her!!   

I have since talked to my source, she lived right next door to Robert's grandsons, right next to the Inn/Pub.  She sent me a photo of who they believe to be him soon after he arrived. She tells me she thinks the down was Ballywalter!

Thanks again, 

Jonica

Ballywalter certainly narrows the search. It’s only 100 miles from Ballywalter to Workington, so that fits very well. A simple journey. 10 hours sailing perhaps, less in a steamship.

If Robert was RC, then the records are in the RC parish of Ballygalget and they start in 1828. The records are on-line free on the National Library site:

https://www.nli.ie/en/family-history-introduction.aspx

If the family was Church of Ireland then the following records exist:

Ballywalter (Down diocese)

Baptisms, 1845-74; burials, 1844-78; vestry minutes, 1856-78; communicants’ list, 1883.

If the family was Presbyterian than there were 2 churches with records from that period:

1st Ballywalter

Baptisms, 1824-1923; marriages, 1803-18 and 1824- 1922; communion roll, 1873 and 1875; session minutes, 1864-73. Indexes to baptisms, 1824-1923, and to marriages,

1803-1922 (combined index with 2nd Ballywalter)

2nd Ballywalter

Baptisms, 1820-1942; marriages, 1845-1901; communion rolls, 1883-1949; stipend and other

accounts, 1829-95; receipt and expenditure books, 1818-73, including collections for the poor, and a list of new communicants, 1852. Indexes to baptisms, 1820-1923, and to

marriages,1845-1922 (combined index with 1st Ballywalter).

I don’t think that either the Church of Ireland or Presbyterian records are on-line anywhere, and so you would need to go to PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast (or get a researcher to do that for you) to access the records.

Researchers in the PRONI area: http://sgni.net

Thank you so much!!! 

Hi x a good lot of my Matthew's family where from ballywalter around that same time x there are alot of robert a and William's about too x get in touch if you can x

Hi, I currently reside in a town called Wagga Wagga in Australia. I recently come across a rough family history of my Matthews family which was put together in 1988. According to this document, my distant relative was William Matthews who was born in 1795. He was married to Margaret Matthews also born 1975. They emigrated to Australia in 1838. They emigrated with 7 children, James 23, Hugh 20, Jane 17, William 16, Sarah Anne 13, Andrew 10, Margaret 5. William was a Protestant whilst Margaret was a Presbyterian. They come from the County Down area, possibly Drumnavady. That is all I know from before emigration.

The surname Matthews is fairly common in Co Down. Here’s some data from Rosdavies site:

http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~rosdavies/genealogy/SURNAMES/M/Matthews…

Drumnavaddy is in the parish of Seapatrick. If you are looking for baptism or marriage records for your family, the Churhc of Ireland has records from 1802 onwards. There are several Presbyterian churches in the area (reflecting the fact that Co Down was heavily settled by Scots in the 1600s).  The only one with records for the period you need is 1st Banbridge NSP (Non Subscribing Presbyterian) which has records from 1756. Copies of these records are geld in PRONI in Belfast. I don’t think the NSP records are on-line anywhere but there’s some coverage of Seapatrick Church of Ireland on rootsireland (subscription).

Tradition was to marry in the bride’s church after which she’d usually attend her husband’s, so marriage and subsequent childrens’ baptisms are not necessarily going to be in the same church. Though they could be.

There were no Matthews households listed in Drumnavaddy in Griffiths Valuation for 1863.  None in the tithe applotment records for the parish in 1828. So if that’s where they lived it suggests they were labourers rather than farmers.

http://www.irishgenealogyhub.com/down/tithe-applotment-books/seapatrick…