PURDY in Magherafelt, early 1800s

Bill,

It’s correct that copies of the older church records for Magherafelt are held in PRONI. Take your passport or photo id with you for your first visit, to get your readers card. You can see what church records they hold from their catalogue:

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

Here’s what they have for 1st Magherafelt Presbyterian church:

1st Magherafelt
Baptisms, 1771-81(with index), and 1813-1964; marriages, 1769-82 (with index), 1819-28 and 1845- 1963; marriage notice books for Magherafelt Presbytery, 1845-1946; session minutes, 1703-82 and 1818-56; committee minutes, 1848, 1852-3 and1911- 45; list of elders in 1828; ministers’ visitation books, 1823-32 and 1841; ministers’ diaries, 1833-54; ministers’ account book, 1889-1904; history of the congregation prepared in 1853.
[Baptisms 1703-06 for Dawson's Bridge may include baptisms for 1st Magherafelt – see under
P. Castledawson above.]

Now you’ll see that there’s some Ministers Visitation books. You should look at those, as well as the baptism and marriage records. I looked at those books a couple of years back and the Minister has done a sort of census around the 1820s and 1830s of all the families in the congregation by townland. You might well get some useful material from that.

I looked in the tithe applotment records for Magherafelt and there are no Purdys listed in 1829:

http://www.irishgenealogyhub.com/derry/tithe-applotments/magherafelt-parish.php#.VtNo51J2ug0

What that tells me is that your ancestors didn’t have any land. So they were probably labourers/weavers or some similar trade.

The 1831 census lists 4 Purdy households, in the parish of Magherafelt, all in the townland of Killyfaddy.  All were Presbyterian. (So their ancestors were almost certainly Scots). Betty Purdy had a household consisting of 3 females; James 4 males and 2 females, John 1 + 1, and another John with 2 males and 1 female. Killyfaddy is about half a mile south of Magherafelt, on the modern Killyfaddy Rd.

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie

None listed in Magherafelt in Griffiths Valuation and none by the 1901 census for the area. So looks as though the families were completely gone by then.

If looking for gravestones check Magherafelt Church of Ireland as well as the Presbyterian church. Presbyterians were often buried in Church of Ireland graveyards. But if your family were labourers, chances are they wouldn’t be able to afford a gravestone. But you never know. There aren’t any burial records for those graveyards the 1800s so if there’s no gravestone, you’ll probably not find where they are buried.

Thanks Elwyn

There is a tradition in the Purdy family, that seems to persist to the present day with their descendents in the USA, to have the male children brought up Protestant and the females Catholic.  I am led to believe this had something to do with it being easier for Protestant boys to find employment with the English landowners.

Bill

Bill,

I’d take the explanation that you have about the boys being brought up Protestant to get jobs from English landowners with a pinch of salt. It didn’t work like that. Local landowners didn’t really provide much direct employment.  In Ireland mixed denomination children was usually sign of a mixed marriage where the couple have agreed the boys be brought up the father’s denomination and the girls the mother’s. But the Purdys in the Magherafelt area in the 1831 census were all Presbyterian. Boys and girls. So I see no evidence of mixed denominations in those families at that particular time.

The area around Magherafelt was owned by the Worshipful Company of Mercers. They were (and still are) one of the London livery companies. They were given land in the county by King James I, in return for putting up venture capital to pay for its development (roads, defensive fortifications, drainage works, and some public buildings).  They didn’t really employ anyone, apart from on construction projects, and even that that was probably contracted out. Like any modern landlord, they rented the land out, and it was then for the occupants to make the best of it, by farming it, working as a labourer, or as an artisan etc. There were some big landed estates but they too were just renting from the Mercers.

Judging by the information I can see at the present, I would infer that the Purdys in Killyfaddy were working as agricultural labourers & weavers. So they would have a cottage with a little land (typically 2 or 3 roods) on a farm and be renting from the farmer (not the Mercers). The rent could be paid in cash, and sometimes was, but usually it was paid by an agreed number of days work on the farm each year, after which the labourer was free to take any other work that might be available, eg on another farm or on government projects such as road building. In the winter months when there wasn’t much work needed on the farm, in Londonderry and the counties of Ulster, labourers would also make a bit of linen (from flax they had grown in land given to them by the farmer). They would do that at home on handloom weaving machines. They would sell this linen to salesmen at the local market, and that would give them a bit of cash (in a society where most transactions were by barter) and they could then use that to buy the things that couldn’t be got by barter eg a ticket to America. In general, linen money meant that the lot of a labourer in Ulster was slightly better than that elsewhere in Ireland where they didn’t make linen.

As the 1800s progressed, increased mechanisation on farms reduced the need for labourers, and mechanized water and steam powered linen mills made home weaving uneconomic, and so the labourers became increasingly redundant. In addition during the late 1840s there was the potato blight which led to famine so this was a further factor that caused many labourers and their families to leave Ireland.

Looking at Killyfaddy townland in the 1901 census, there were 54 homes there containing 187 people. Broken down by denomination there were 102 Presbyterians, 44 Church of Ireland & 35 RC. The farmers from whom the Killyfaddy Purdys would have been renting were of a mix of denominations. The majority were Presbyterian, generally indicating Scottish origins and reflecting the fact that the whole area was heavily settled by Scots in the 1600s. (There were also a lot of English settlers but not as many). And there were some RC farmers and labourers too.

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Londonderry/Ballymoghan/Killyfaddy/

So that’s a snapshot of rural life around Magherafelt in the mid 1800s.

Thanks again Elwyn - very interesting.