Thomas McManus married to Caitolin Curraby (Creaby)

Brian:

Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out!

We have a parish liaison in Killedan civil parish. I will alert her to your message. Let me know if you have not heard back in ten days or so.

Roger McDonnell

I believe that Catherine Curraby was the sister of my great-great-grandmother Margaret Curraby King.  Catherine married Thomas McManus before 1849, and they had at least two children whom I have located thus far, Patrick (baptized 1849) and John (baptized 1850).  The Curraby family lived in the townland of Treanfohanaun in the Parish of Bohola, which is next to the Parish of Killedan (where I also have relatives).  I believe their father's name was John Curraby, and he was listed in the 1873-1875 "Return of Owners of Land In Ireland: A Summary for each Province & For All Ireland" as "Curraby, John (senior)" as a tenant at Treanfohanaun, along with what appear to be some of his sons.  I have not yet located their mother's name.

 I've created a family tree on the (free) Family Search database (https://familysearch.org), and if you go to it and put in Catherine's ID number there, which is LTDG-RTS ​, you can see her, her husband, and other family members.  Oddly enough, just yesterday I downloaded a number pf pages from the online parish registers, and am going through them right now, so I may be adding additional info to the family tree.

The surname Curraby is a less common variant of the surname Corboy, which is Ó Corrbuidhe in irish, possibly from the words corr ("crane") and buidhe ("yellow"). The variant Creaby was also sometimes used in this family, and was sometimes misread by transcribers as Creary. Online records at roots.ie indicate that Curraby is a rare variant of the surname, apparently found in this form only in Mayo and not widespread there.

The parish name Bohola comes from the Irish Both Chomhla, likely meaning “hut of shelter” (and not “Comhla’s hut” as local lore sometimes maintains).  The townland name Treanfohanaun may come from the Irish tréan, one meaning of which is “plenty”, and fothannán or fóthannán, which are dialectical variants of feochadán, meaning “thistle”. Since the genitive plural of fothannán would stay as fothannán, the expression tréan fothannán could thus mean “plenty of thistles”, but I'm not certain of the derivation.

Wow!! Kevin are you in Ireland? Do Patrick and John have decendents in Mayo? Your dates are spot on and yes her name was Catherine. I'll check the family tree as well. Any info on the McManus family of Mayo would be great! 

R/

Brian

I found land ownership in Ayo under the following names, it seems all in the same area

Curraby James 308 Mayo
Curraby John 308 Mayo
Curraby John 308 Mayo
Curraby Michael 308 Mayo
Curraby Richard 308 Mayo

I live in San Francisco, in the US, Brian.  If you look at that family tree I mentioned you'll see that Margaret Curraby married a man named Nicholas King, in Claremoris, in the Parish of Kilcolman, which is on the other side of Killedan from Bohola.  Their daughter Bridget King married my great-grandfather, Peter Gallagher.  The Gallaghers raised their family in Killedan (townland of Carrownteeaun) and most of their children emigrated to the US, including my grandfather, James Peter Galagher.

Looking back at the info I have in the family tree, I noticed that Catherine and Thomas McManus's son, John, was baptized in Claremorris, in the same year that my great-grandmother, Bridget King, was baptized there (editing this to add that I just noticed that Catherine and Thomas McManus were actually the sponsors at Bridget King's baptism!).  That may indicate that the McManus family came from Claremorris, like the King family, so that might be a good place to look for them.  I've been through the online pages from the Claremorris baptismal register before, but at the time I wasn't looking for any McManus's.  I downloaded all those pages, so if I get a chance sometime soon, I'll go through them again and see whether there are more McManus's listed.  As I mentioned, I'm looking at the Bohola records right now.

Kevin,

The land lot numbers above for Curraby family (1800's) are located right in Treanfohanaun, I assume the Patriarch is John Curraby since 2 are listed which usually denotes father and son Jr. they are brothers or cousins of Margaret & Catherine, interesting enough my mothers name is Margaret Catherine Madden, name was chosen by my Great Grandmother strange coincidence.

Brian

Yes, I think you're right about the senior John being the father of Catherine, Margaret, and the younger John, and the other men listed were either their brothers or their cousins (I noted all of that in the records on Family Search). If I find anything more definitive in the records from Bohola or Claremorris, I'll add it here.

I've also been searching records in the nearby parishes of Killasser, Swinford, Toomore, Killedan, and Kilcolman, a few of which go back nearly to 1800 (I have relatives from al of those parishes), and I've noticed that there were comparatively few Curraby's or Creaby's, at least as compared with some of the more common names in the area, and tthey seem to have been concentrated in Bohola and Killedan (with a few outliers), so I suspect anyone we find with the name there is a relative.  As I pointed out earlier, the Curraby form of the name may actually have originated there in Bohola (where it alternated with Creaby).

I've been exchanging info with a younger relative who recently moved to the US from Ireland, whose Gallagher line and mine are from a townland halfway between Kiltimagh and Bohola, and whose mother still owns the house in which my grandfather grew up.  He asked his mother about the Curraby's, and even though she is also descended from Nicholas King and Margaret Curraby, she'd never heard the surname, so there may not be any left in the area.  I just realized, though, that I forgot to ask about Creaby's, so I'll have to do that.
 

Not a relative but tt seems my family, McDonaghs, farmed on McManus land in Killedan.   A  January 2,1907 letter from Maria McDonagh (b. 1881) to her sister abroad said, "Mrs McManus of Killeadan our Landlady was buried 4 weeks since she died a Protestant And was buried in Killeadan with her Catholic husband."

Hi, Casey.  You might actually be a relative.  For one thing, the families in that area have been intermarrying for centuries, so the odds are very high of at least some connection.  More specifically, though, my grandfather, James Peter Gallagher (a descendant of the Curraby's mentioned above) had a sister, Honora Gallagher, who married a John McDonough from the same area (McDonagh and McDonough being variant spellings of the same name), and they had at least 5 children born in NYC in the 1910's, named John, Peter, William, Jack, and Eileen.  So, if any of them are in your family line, then you have the same Curraby/Creaby ancestors (as well as Gallagher's and King's)!

And for Brian as well, I have some newer Curraby/Creaby info.   I was reecntly contacted by some Creaby relatives in the UK who were able to confirm, but also correct, the info which I had posted.  It turns out that the father of Margaret and Catherine Curraby was actually Richard Curraby, not John, and his wife's name was Bridget (no one is sure of her maiden name).  The John whom we thought to be their father turns out to have been a brother.  Also, Margaret, Catherine, and at least some of their siblings appear to have been born in the townland of Pulronaghane, with the family thereafter moving to Treanfohanaun (which is nearby).  I've corrected that in the Family Search records, and have added more info about the family there as well (as have the UK Creaby's).

-- Kevin

Thanks, Kevin.  Sadly, none of those NYC-born McDonough/McDonagh names match folks about whom I know...which is not to say they won't pop up on the family tree as research continues.   Theirs was quite the time to be Irish in New York City!  (Just like in the movies.)  I will share your clues with a McDonough cousin to see if she can find Honara Gallagher and John.   

Hello folks,

I've just happened across this site and your conversation. My name is Mary Creaby and I come from Kiltimagh in the parish of Killedan. Hope you don't me joining in!

My branch of the Creabys come from a townland called Goulboy, and there were at least 4 Creaby families in Goulboy as I grew up, none of whom knew their degree of connection. They also knew of no connection to the Treenfohanane Creabys, although my guess is that they must have been related some generations ago. Likewise, my research suggests that the Yorkshire Creabys come from the Treenfohanane branch rather than the Goulboy branch. Nice to be able to confirm the facts though, so the info above was very interesting.

I have done a lot of work on my branch, and some on the Treenfohanane branch, searching for the missing link. I haven't found it yet, but I have had a DNA match on ancestry with a lady who is connected to them. Have any of you good people done DNA analysis?  I've just been able to confirm a link on the other side of my family using the combination of family trees and DNA matches.

Best wishes

Mary

Another thought.....the name Creaby translates to Irish as O' Craobhaigh. Craobh is a branch... the old people wondered if we were a branch of another family name? Often the English version was a phonetic translation of what the writer heard, as most of the people could not read or write to spell their own name. Curraby, with the emphasis on the A, is the way the old people pronounced the name in my father's village when I was growing up. Now it's pronounced more like Creeby.

Mary

Hi guys sorry to jump in but just reading through the conversation and noticed we've exchanged emails Kevin regarding our Creaby connection. Also Mary your comments are very interesting regarding the Yorkshire line as my gg grandmother Ann Walsh moved as a child with her parents Ann Curraby and Thomas Walsh from Kiltimagh to Knaresborough North Yorkshire. Later in life she was referred to as ganger Annie running a boarding house and organising gangs for the local farms. In the 1911 census she had a James Crabey, Walter Crabey and John Crabey boarding with her.
I'm not sure who Ann Curraby is connected to but have around 5 DNA matches all from the branch mentioned in this thread.
Andy

Glad to hear from you, Mary and Andy.  For a long time I didn't know of any other Curraby/Creaby relatives, but there seem to be a lot of us now.

First off, as to DNA, I have been tested and my results are posted at the GEDMATCH site.  So have several second and third cousins of mine, all with Curraby/Creaby ancestors.  My kit number is T780556.  Here's a link for that site, for anyone who hasn't posted their results there already and wants to do that:  https://www.gedmatch.com/login1.php

If you go there to check out a possible DNA match, also check out the top two people on my list of matches (Adams and Flanagan), because they are a second and third cousin with Curraby/Creaby ancestors.

That's very interesting about the Creaby's living at Goulboy, Mary.  I looked it up at Google Maps, and it appears to be just outside of Killtimagh to the southeast, although they spell it Gowelboy (the Irish for which is An Ghabhal Bhuí).  That's Killedan parish, and the parish records there go back to 1834, so I'm going to take some time over the holidays to go back and read through them again.  I downloaded all the pages from the internet a couple of years ago, but when I went through them the first time I wasn't looking for any Curraby or Creaby relatives, because I didn't know about the connection back then.   The records may not go back far enough to establish a link to the Pulronaghane/Treanfohanaun branch, but sometimes you can spot pepole from one branch as sponsors or witnesses at baptisms or weddings of another branch, and if I make any connections I'll post them here.  Another possibility may be to find the landlord's estate records.  I haven't made a serious attempt to do that thus far, but I've read that those records can go back for several centuries and often have a lot of useful genealogical info.  I know that some Mayo estate records are at the two genealogical centers in Mayo, but many are in archives all over, sometimes even in England if the landlord took them with him after leaving Ireland.

On the family name, Mary, I don't think it was actually O'Craobhaigh, though I'm no expert.  I can't remember now the source of my info, but I mentioned the origin of the name above.  The surname Curraby is supposedly a less common variant of the surname [Mac]Corboy, which is Mac Corrbuidhe in irish (I mistakenly said above that it was Ó Corrbuidhe).  In his Surnames of Ireland, MacLysaght says that the Mac Corrbuidhe surname originated further east, in what is now Leix and Offaly, though I've seen an online map which shows it as mosrt common in Tipperary.  I think the online map may be misleading, though, because it treats Corboy as a variant of Corbett in Tipperary.  It may be true that some Corbett's there ended up using Corboy, but I think from what MacLysaght says that Mac Corrbuidhe is a separate surname from from farther north.  He says that Corbett was originally an English name, although there were also some smaller Irish families named Ó Córbáin and  Ó Cóirbin who became Corbett's.

As I said above, I've read that Curraby is a variant of the Corboy surname which is apparently found only in Mayo.  As pronounced in Irish, Corrbuidhe could (depending on dialect) have an unwritten "uh" sound between the "r" and the "b" (the technical term is a "syncopated vowel"), which would explain the "a" in Curraby which you say used to be pronounced, Mary.  Exactly how it became Creaby is unclear, but both fomrs were often used in the same family, as the baptismal and other records make clear, with Creaby seeming to be a later spelling.

Anyway, I've run on long enough.  If I find anything more about connections, I'll post here again.

Brian please forgive my intrusion, but this is directed to MaryC and KevinJ.                                                     
Mary, my name is Jim Creaby and my father, James, was from the same township as yourself, Goulboy. His family of which he was the youngest was: father - Michael, mother - Mary (nee Brennan), and siblings: Kate, Annie, Matthew, Mary Ellen, and Michael. This information taken from the 1901 and 1911 Census. I know that Matthew kept the house and that Mary Ellen and my father emigrated to NYC in the States. Growing up, I used to spend a week during the summer with my Aunt and her husband John who was one of my mother's brothers! Unfortunately, I don't remember my Aunt or father ever discussing their family or ancestors. Mary, it would be wonderful if you could fill in some of the blanks. My email address is jjknm212@gmail.com.                                                                                                                                            Kevin, my GEDmatch  kit number is PH7069299. I did a one to one comparison and we had 2 shared segments. The most recent common relative is approximately 4.5 generations back. Since I'm having difficulty getting past one generation back, I think finding our common ancestor will be a bit of a test (at least for me)!

  JimC                                                                     

Hi, Jim.  I see that we've also connected in a more recent thread aout the Curraby/Creaby family.

Yes Kevin. I initiated that thread in hopes that I could find someone that knew my father's family. That could be a relative, neighbor, or friend that comes upon the message titled, Creaby. Again, thank you for the information you provided regarding the Creaby name. I didn't know that it and Curraby were derived from Corboy which was the anglicisation form of Mac Corrbuidhe. And you were correct about my mother's townland, Bohaun (which I spelled Bohans). It is listed under North Knock rather than Kiltimagh.                                                                                                                                                          

Regarding the result of our DNA data comparision, I wonder if your great great grandmother, Margaret Curraby, could be our common ancestor?

JimC

Howdy Jim, Kevin

I've inspected your match being ~27 cM in Total but do not concur with the GEDmatch estimate of 4.5 gens to the Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA). My experience says the Most Likely Event (MLE) will be 4C1R which is back 5.5 gens. Either way it's a long reach, i.e. not so good prospects of finding the MRCA.

Kevin, I've recently made contact with Jim with great interest as I have an Irish line that comes also from County Mayo on my maternal side:

Patrick Ganly (<1825 - 1865/1875) Killkeen, Aghamore Parish
Mary Kelly (~1830 IRE - 1884 NJ)

Jim matches all of my mother's siblings, all of their 1st Cousins on the Ganly side (that have tested) and a 3rd Cousin, a direct male descendant of Patrick Ganly. We're hoping, Jim and now perhaps yourself, might hold a key to cracking our 60 year brickwall with Patrick & Mary Ganly.

I wonder how it could be that Kevin's gg-granmaw Mag't Curraby (aka Creaby) could be the MRCA with Jim who is, ostensibly, a direct male descedant of a "Creaby."

Kevin, I've checked and found you to be matching (albeit only 9 cM) with two of Mom's 1st Cousins that are sisters:

1. Mary Mabel S. -   PU7821655
2. Helen Ann Paul -  LJ6311027​

Does Ganly or Kelly ring any bells for you?

Regan Lowrey
GEDmatch ZJ600190C1

I do have several Kelly DNA matches, Regan, including one to whom I appear to be very closely related.  Her name is Mary Jane Kelly, and I share a total of 96 cM of match with her, with a longest segment of 26 cM, which probably makes her a second or third cousin (that's the kind of match I have with several of my known second and third cousins).  My cousins and I have done a fair amount of triangulation of chromosome segment matches, and since two of my grandparents grew up in East Mayo, I can identify a number of segments which clearly point to a Mayo connection, and I share some of those with Mary Jane.  I don't know exactly what the connection is, though (she responded to me, but did not know herself where it might be).  Presumably, we share a great-great-grandparent, and I know who all of my Mayo great-great-grandparents were (bar one), but we don't know which one we share.  In my records concerning baptisms and marriages in my family lines in Mayo, I have records of several Kelly's being witnesses or sponsors at weddings or baptisms in the Curraby/Creaby line in the mid-1800's, but I don't know how they fit in (siblings, cousins, friends?).

Interestingly, I may also share a connection with Mary Jane on the other side of the family, from Tipperary or Cork, based on comparison with matches there.

I don't know of any Ganly matches, however.  I looked it up, and Ganly is, like the name Shanley, from the Irish surname Mac Seanlaoich, derived from the words sean ("old") and laoch ("hero").  The two anglicized forms don't look similar, but if one knows the pronunciation of the Irish original, one can see how both anglicized forms came into existence.

Kelly/Kelley is the anglicized form of the Irish surname Ó Ceallaigh (origin disputed, but possibly from the word ceallach, meaning "strife").  It has separate origins in various parts of Ireland, and is the  second most common name in Ireland.  One Kelly sept (tribe) originated in what is now Galway, so that's probably where most Mayo Kelly's come from, although some could be from families driven west in the 1600's.

So far as the DNA connections among the group of us are concerned, the amount of shared DNA does indicate a connection further back than Margaret Curraby.  Creaby matches in the UK have indicated that Margaret's father was named Richard Curraby, but there's some conflicting info indicating that his name may have been John, and that it was John's father who was named Richard.  There are no parish or civil records available to confirm any of that, however.  There are two research possibilities still open, though.

All of these ancestors were tenant farmers, and the landlords (or their agents) kept what are known as "estate records", dealing with the finances and other info for their estates.   Sometimes those records can be very detailed, and they can go back a long time.  When the great estates were broken up in the 19th and early 20th century, some landlords took their records back to England, some ended up in various archives in Ireland, and some were probably lost.  If we can locate the records for Killedan and nearby places, we might be able to find much more info.  For example, there could be records saying things like "Richard Curraby died on ___, and his tenancy is now being taken over by his son John Curraby" (although sometimes they just drew lines through people's names and wrote in the new name).

I haven't really searched to find the name(s) of the landlord(s) for the areas in question, but some of the info is in Griffith's Valuation and in some census records.  There are two genealogical societies or libraries in Mayo, and I know one of them holds some of the estate records in its collections, and they probably have info about where to find some of the other sets of records.  I've just never followed up on it, although I did notice once that there was a Dillon family which owned some of the land in the area.  That interested me, because I have Dillon ancestors on the other side of my family.

There are also things like court records and probate records which can provide info, but they're not systematically available, at least not online.  They may be in the future though, due to the other big research possibility (in the future).  There's a university in Ireland which) which has taken on the mission of locating, recreating, and arranging systematically all of the records relevant to genealogy (and history in general) which have ever existed in Ireland, including ones which have apparently been lost, and digitizing them all.  They're combing through archives and records all over the place, looking for copies of whatever is out there (including copies of lost census records), and ultimately it will all be available online.  They seem to believe that they can recreate nearly everything!  It wil make genealogy much simpler for everyone of Irish ancestry.