DEVITT/DAVITT/MCDEVITT, WILLIAM

Hello again Pat!

I searched on Roots Ireland and did not find records for any of the younger siblings of William. Castlebar RC baptismal records start in 1838 and marriages a little earlier http://registers.nli.ie/parishes/1039   You mentioned Glenlara as the home place. There are two Glenlara townlands in Mayo. One in Burrishoole parish and the other in Kilmore parish. Both are a good deal to the west of Castlebar and church records are not availableback to the 1830s.

I enjoyed reading about your family. Have you added their stories to our XO Chronicles site?  http://www.irelandxo.com/ireland-xo/history-and-genealogy

Roger McDonnell

Roger,

Thank you once again for responding to my query.  The parish for the Devitt gang is Kilmore.  Only when I received a letter from the Dixon's now living in the ancestral home, they tell me Devitt is always spelled Davitt in the surrounding area and they weren't sure where the Davitt's originated.  It seems they don't have much knowledge of previous Devitt's living in the homsestead but there are letters between Sarah Davitt Sweeney in America and her nephew Roger Dixon while he was in the homestead and she was in the coal region of PA.  Roger even came to America for a spell, but went back to Ireland permenantly, to the home in Glenlara.  I am in the process of replying to the Dixon's and they said they would ask around if anyone knew more history of the family.

I wasn't aware of the Chronicles site; will take a look & see what I can add.  I have a lot of history on the US side with some really crazy stories as to how this all came to be.  I became interested in 1979 in the family history while my great-aunt was still amongst us.  She got me started with a very newsy letter that I keep as my foundation to venture out into regions of Ireland today.  She was right on in many instances.

I did wonder about the distance between Castlebar and Glenlara and how it could be that children from the same parents could be born in those 2 different places.  This is where possibly another parent comes into play and the widow, married & moved to another area?  All speculation.  But I also wonder when a place was put on a tombstone in America if the location was the place of birth or where the person had immigrated from, which could make a big difference as to which it is.  My William could have been born in Glenlara and as a young man got work in Castlebar & immigrted from there?  Again, all speculation. 

It would be nice for me to include my endeavors on the Chronicles and have a running collection of how things were uncovered & discovered and include the other surnames. Someone may just see something that rings a bell to them and get in touch with me.  Thanks for letting me know.

Did I post my inquiry on the wrong screen?  My notification of a reply was entitled Tipperary; Lonergan, Doherty, Jones & Crowley.  When I hit the link it took me to the Tipperary group of correspondence.  I went back to HOME & somehow happened upon the DEVITT inquiry & response.  I'm a bit green in navigating the Irelandxo site yet.

Don't know if I wished you a Happy New Year yet, so please do have a great 2017 and keep up the great work that you are doing for us lost souls across the Pond!  It is very appreciated.  Your knowledge of the years and places that records can be found is wonderful.  And, thanks for hooking me up with Pat Halloran.  We are still communicating about my Carroll family & Louth.

Wish I had more great-grandparents to find, but I think anyone else I'd be interested in finding are way too early before the record keeping starts.

Please take care,

Pat Carroll Bennett

Pat:

Happy New Year to you also!

Maybe William got his law degree in Ireland and worked in Castlebar.

I'm concerned about your getting a reply for the Lonergans in Tipperary. Maybe we have a systems problem. Can you send me the link that you received?

The best way to search is to use the search feature and enter the surname.

By the way, I live in Maryland although I grew up in Philadelphia.

Roger

Roger,

Where in Philly did you grow up?  I don't think you want to advertise this all over the internet, so feel free to email me at:  patricia_bennett@ntm.org

My mom's relatives are in MD.  There are quite a few of them.  A Jones married a DeLisle.  My great Uncle Rene' DeLisle's brother concocted the recipes for the Campbell Soup Company.  So many still eat his chicken noodle soup today among others.  His wife told him back in the 1880's, "What, are you crazy, who is going to buy canned soup?"   People made their own soups back then.  Kind of comical.

So you think Esq. and the J.P. could mean he had a law degree?  Interesting.  When I found his tombstone on the side of a hill in MInersville, PA, I ran back to the church, St. Vincent de Paul's & asked the clerk what that meant.  She wasn't sure, but said if anyone was a gentleman or had a little land, Esquire could be put behind their name.  I was thinking, then there'd be a lot more Esq.'s on tombstones if that was the case.

For some reason I can't copy & paste the Lonergan connect.  I will just forward the email sent to me, to you.  When you hit the highlighted link, it takes you to the Devitt message.

Doing this as soon as I hit post to this one,  Pat

Roger,

When I hit the link in the email that led me to a different message board, it now has corrected itself or I may have deleted it, as it is not happening now.  I feel like a fool, but I know that was what was happening, as I tried several times to go back & hit the link a few times & it wasn't what the new reply said it was.  I'll let you know if it should happen again.  It could be because I was posting several messages at one time and going back & forth from one message link to the other.  Also, I live on a college campus & we have several students & staff utilizing our networks, servers, equipment, etc.  Then add the clouds of the Great Lakes region & you can have messages really messed up or not work at all.  I hope that was all that was going on.  The day I was trying to link it up to the correct board, we were having a nice snow fall for 2 days.  I have to laugh, if we are watching t.v. & change to the weather channel to see if we are getting bad weather, clouds block the satelite signal and the t.v. goes black, so if a tornado would be coming, you have no real way of knowing if it's coming and where it is!  Only in Michigan. 

Thanks for asking about it.  If I would seem to find it again, I'll forward it.  It really has me stumped as to why it was the day I opened it and now it's not?  Sorry for the confusion.

How did a guy in Maryland become so informed of the places and records of Ireland?  It seems much harder in Ireland from the way the parishes, townlands, counties and so forth were set up.  Perhaps, our system here in the States is confusing to foreigners?  It's easy, once you are familiar with a place and its records.  Every trip my husband & I made a trip from MI to NJ, I planned a night over in one of my ancestral coal mining towns to snoop around.  It really paid off or I would still be at square one.  On one trip, I was determined to find where my Devitt's married.  My only link was my great-grandfather, their son.  The clerk at St. Pat's Pottsville pulled up a baptism record for Anthony William Devitt.  It was chronologically toward the early days of the church but numbered as if it was in the 1900's.  It dated his baptism 1956, but had his parents' names & I just knew something was wrong.  I asked her if there could be a typo as they had just transcribed all the records and put them onto the computer.  The mother's name was stated as Mary ?  The clerk said let me see if there is a marriage record.  When she looked in marriages, there was William Devitt & Mary Gallahar married in 1854 also near the beginning of the registry of the church in the 1800's.  She then agreed the transcriber made a typo.  Had I not been looking over her shoulder that day, I still would be in the dark as to where my great-great's married, lived & died.  Several written inquiries prior to that day in Pottsville replied saying no record of that sort in the church registries.  It's discoveries like that, that keep me going forward.  I then found William's tombstone on the side of a mountain on a scorching hot day with the sun beating down & then a quick thunder storm rose up.  As we ventured toward the side of the mt., there were cement coffins half slidden out of their burial sites.  With the dark sky & thundering & lightening, it was quite a scene.  Thankfully, my husband & I pressed on & when I saw 'itt' on the end of the name of a tombstone my heart stopped & I htought, could it really be.  I only read where people were in a cemetery and came upon an ancestor & it actually was happening to me.  It was so neat.  We watered down the tombstone to better read the lettering using my toothbrush.  I knew I'd be home that night & had others there.  I ran backinto the church tolet them know & she said their records didn't go back that far.  He died 1866.  The tombstone was broken in 3 places & each piece weighed a ton. We tried to put it back together.  I'm sorry now that we did, as we turned over the one piece that was preserved really well from being face-down in the soil.  Since then the wind & rain will have been beating on it. This is probably more of a story for the Chronicles & I did receive a reply with an invite to that site.

Thanks so much,

Pat

*attached a photo of the illustrious tombstone, what a day it was!

Pat:

I grew up in North Philadelphia near Roosevelt Boulevard (St. Ambrose parish).

I've been working on Irish genealogy for about 20 years. I have had a web site on the 1901 census for 18 years and I'm still adding records. I think that experience helped me to better understand the Irish system of townlands, civil parishes, RC parishes, registration districts etc. I've been retired for five years and have been volunteering for IRO for almost four years.

www.leitrim-roscommon.com/1901census

Roger

Roger,

Small world - my mom lived on the Blvd. in the block south of St. Martin de Tours.  She married there.  My grandpop moved them from South Philly to the Blvd. when the row homes were brand spanking new.  After both grandparents passed, my uncle, the only boy & baby of my mom's sibs, continued to live there with his wife.  My uncle was the frist one to pass away back in 1998 very unexpectedly.  His wife, still lives there today alone, but the neighborhood is falling down around her.  She's had somany problems with the neighbors.  My husband & I were up there twice last summer.  It's quite bad.  We'd love to get her out of there, but doubt she'd ever really leave.  I loved going up to the Roosevelt Blvd. as a kid.  My mom would pull me out of school & we'd take a bus & the El.  Just knowing I was going to see my grandmother was the highlight of my childhood.  She was a wonderful lady.  Not sure if you ever heard of Jimmy Jones?  He had several bands and at one time he had the Jimmy Jones Trio. He played for lots of weddings & special events in that area.  He would have been born in Nov. 1930.  Now that I think of it I'm not even sure where he went to grammar school or high school.  I should look into that.  Probably St. Martin's, if they had a grammar school?  And, maybe West Catholic for the guys?

My sister married a guy from around the corner of my grandmother's on Anchor St.  We went up there several times while they were dating & first married unti both of his parents passed & the home was sold.  Her in-laws did not trust banks.  They stuffed all their money they made inside the matress & in a box under the bed.  When the house was cleaned out after it was sold, my brother-in-law & his brother found enough cash to put their combined kids through college and to buy a summer home in Ocean City, NJ!

Hope your weekend's been good,

Pat

1)  Attached uncle's business card - remember the letters before the numbesr of the phone numbers?

2)  Unlce's wedding inside St. Martin de Tours on the Rooseelt Blvd.

Pat:

St. Martin's was a very big parish in the 1950s and the boys went to Father Judge and the girls St. Huberts. Our parish went to Cardinal Dougherty. I do remember the letters for phone numbers. DE was Deveraux? Our number was GL for Gladstone. 

Roger

Hi Everyone,

My great grandfather was Anthony Davitt (b..1950, d.1903) in Kilmoremoy Parish in County Mayo. He married my great grandmother Margaret Carroll (b. 1854-d.1918). We have found all of their immediate family. 

Anthony's father was Michael Davitt (b.1810-d.,1874 ) and his mother was Catharine Battle (b. 1816-d.1875). We do show a brother for our Anthony Davitt by the name of John but haven't found any other siblings.

We have not been able to find the siblings of the father Michael Davitt. We have found a Martin Davitt, who actually was a witness for my great aunts' wedding, in the area but are unsure of how he fits in.

Our research has shown that they lived and died in the Ballina, County Mayo area. Have you done DNA with ancestry? I have, and I'm finding all kinds of Davitts without finding the ancestry line. I would love to see if we are a match. It's frustrating. The name is spelled so many different ways. 

Many of our Davitts settled in the Philadelphia area. It seems because of the naming pattern that we could be a match somewhere. 

Appreciatively,

Teresa Maughan Emory

Santa Rosa Ca

Teresa Maughan Emory,

Hello and I am so sorry I am just seeing your reply now.  I've had several years of incidents & accidents & we even moved from MI to FL.  I'm still unpacking & trying to organize, sort & file all of my family history papers, photos, etc.

I agree with you totally that the Devitt surname has been spelled way too many ways, i.e., Devitt, Davitt, DeWitt, Debit, Devit, Divit and even more.  I look at them all so as not to miss anything.

What caught my eye with your reply was the fact that your great-grandfather is Anthony Davitt.  That is the same name as my great-grandfather.  Then you said he married Margaret Carroll; Carroll happens to be my maiden name.  In my Davitt family, the daughter (Mary Margaret Devitt) of my great-grandfather Anthony William Devitt, married William Joseph Carroll.  And, yes I have done a DNA test and like you I am swamped with matches & have not been able to sort them all out yet.  What if I make a list of my matches mentioning the connection if I know it & then we can see if you have any of the same matches?  We can do it here or via email?  My email address is:   patricia_bennett@ntm.org   

It's amazing that your Davitts settled in Philadelphia.  Mine did too, but previously they lived & work in the coal regions of PA then moved to Philly.  My great-grandmother Catharine Fahey Devitt had congested lungs from the coal dust so Anthony moved the family to Philly.  My grand-mother Mary M. Devitt Carroll was the first child to be born in Philly rather than Ashland, PA..  Recently, I'm learning that Anthony J. Devitt and his borther Philip Devitt lived in Shenandoah, PA.  I think Philip died before his wife Hanora or Hannah moved to Philly with their children around 1900. There was a Devitt family who lived in Philadelphia prior to my immediate family living there & who helped them settle.  I don't know who that family is or what their names are.  I'm still working on finding them.  There was also a Devitt family living in Wisconsin that my grand-mom's brother lived with while geting education after marrying & bringing his family with him. I'm looking for them, too.

Back in 2003 or so, some of my dad's cousins & my sister & I had a Devitt reunion just to the North of Philadlephia.  A woman crashed the reunion saying she was family & handed out her family history papers to everyone in attendance.  She & I tried to figure out our connection but couldn't at the time.  Whenever I get new info. I refer back to her paperwork to see if I am able to make a connection yet with no success.

My dad's youngest cousin on the Devitt side told me her mother told her, if we can find Suzie C. Sweeney, we'd find the family.  It took some time but I found the correct Sweeney family & I match up DNA-wise to many of them.  The story goes that Suzie's mom Sarah Davitt followed her brother John Davitt, the night he left for America.  Sarah was so besought with her brother leaving, she followed him & stowed away on the ship.  Mid-way across the Atlantic her borther discovered her & had to take up a collection to pay for her passage.  The homestead of these 2 siblings was in a very small town in County Mayo called Glenlara in the parish of Kilemore (seems so similar to your Kilmoremoy).  From that info. I have been able to link up several other siblings, i.e., William (my great-great), Winifred, Anne, Neil (Cornelius), Philip, James & a few others.  From Anthony J. Devitt in Shenandoah, I see he has a Martin Devitt as a son.  On Sarah Davitt Sweeney's death certificate, her dad is Michael Davitt, her mom is Susan Devitt.  

I realized it has been a while since I posted on this site and will wait for your response before I add anything else.  I do hope you'll see this & reply.  By then I should be able to put my hands on the Devitt History I was given by the CA Devitt's & hopefully, your line may be included.  Thank you so much for sharing & I do hope we can help each other out.

Sincereely,

Pat Carroll Bennett