Molyneaux/Newell families

Luke:

Just two pieces of information. Don't know if you checked the 1901 and 1911 census records. The family lived in Ballygowan townland. There were three Molyneaus/Molynaux families in the townland in both censuses. This record shows the Hugh that you mentioned. Looks like he was married in 1910 or early 1911.

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Down/Greencastle/Bally…

His wife was a Boyd.

Roger McDonnell

First name(s)HughLast nameMolyneuxRegistration year1910Registered Quarter/YearJul - Sep 1910Registration districtKilkeelVolume1Page741County-MarriageFinder™Hugh Molyneux married one of these people
Christina Maria Norris, Annie Elizabeth Boyd

Luke

in case you have not come across these sites you may find them interesting as they deal with County Down and the Moure area which includes Kilkeel. The first site lists both names including a marriage in 1900 in Kilkeel. See http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rosdavies/ Look under surnames and there a a few in your area of interest.

Also try http://countydown.x10.mx/html/index2.htm

Not sure if there is a volunteer in the area you ask about but if so they may have more information. The Church of Ireland (Anglican) are alsoputting their records online but slowly but you might be lucky See http://ireland.anglican.org/information/63 however this was the established church and not all Presbyterian churches may be included.

Pat

Luke,

There are some Presbyterian church records on-line on the rootsireland site (subscription) but many are not. PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast and the Presbyterian Historical Society in Belfast have fairly comprehensive sets of Presbyterian records but in both cases a personal visit is required. Neither will do extensive research for you.

Many Thanks for all replies

I am evenly grateful and impressed for the several replies and the speed to which they appeared on this message board, well done Ireland.  As to the suggestions, yes , I have been through all the censuses ( thanks Roger) and just about all the all the information that is available online through the excellent websites of Ros Davis and Raymond’s, (thanks Pat).   I had a look at the Church of Ireland website, but it doesn’t seem to cover the Kilkeel region, but I guess that is the next step in searching through church registers and other records held at government registries.  Unfortunately I cannot do this from Australia.

I would be interested in contacting local historians/genealogical researchers who do this for a fee, my email is lukejmx@bigpond.com.

 I am interested to know what sort of information is on death/marriage certificates, on ones I’ve seen here in Australia, it lists mother/father, and children on death cert.  I have seen that there are records that reside in the “General Registry Office”, which could be usefu to my searchl .  Any help would be grateful.

Thanks

Luke Molyneaux

Luke:

A civil death record will have the date of death, where the deceased lived, cause of death, informants name and sometimes the relationship of the informant to the deceased. A civil marriage record will show date of marriage, where the bride and groom were living when married and the names of the father's of the bride and groom. Usually, if one or both fathers were deceased, the record will show that information. Ages are not usually shown. 

I would contact one of the library branches in Co. Down and see if they can suggest a genealogy researcher who works for a fee.

Roger

Hello Luke!  I was wondering how you got on with this?  I am Michelle Molyneaux and in May I am going to Ireland with my dad to try to find the farm where Hugh and his brother Matthew worked.  From what I can establish, Matthew left Ireland and moved to Scotland because the farm could not keep them both.  Hugh stayed in Kilkeel while Matthew moved to Scotland where he had a son (my grandad, Hugh, named after his uncle in Ireland!) who then had my dad.  I have only been looking since Sunday and I don't have much time so if you have any info that may help me track down either the farm, or a grave then I would be very grateful indeed! 

Incidentally, I have a copy of The Belfast News Letter from 13 January 1843 showing a Hugh Molyneaux marrying Mary Wilson, second daughter of John Wilson

Hi Luke,I have traced the Newell  family which in my case is linked to the Jordan's back a long way using Ancestry . com. My mother was a Newell from Kilkeel.I have many relations still in Kilkeel and am especially keen to get more information about my grandfather a fisherman Robert Newell who was drowned out of Kilkeel in 1904.Alex Newell a well known local skipper,my first cousin has helped a little but I am keen to know more. Robert Perkin,bob@perkin.org.uk.  Thank you

Luke

in case you haven't noticed, many scans of births, marriages and deaths are now available on irishgenealogy.ie

I put together some Newell history a while back for someone, a copy is here, it has a Molyneaux in there
https://1drv.ms/b/s!AjooUIUtx9j5hIZxfgQSwwy6sH-Mkw

Here are the Molyneaux BMDs you will find there, I have included all the different spellings

Birth Date Surname First Maiden
1911-05-31 Molyneaux Norah Boyd
1877 Molynaux Hugh N/R
1873 Molyneaux Matthew N/R
1872 Molyneux Arthur N/R
1870 Molyneux Eliza N/R
1868 Molneux Robert N/R
1865 Molneux William N/R

and marriages
Year Date/index Surname First Name Spouse
1846 1846-1-6-302 Mollyneaux Hugh Margaret Edgar, Jane Hanna
1860 1860-1-6-290 Mollyneux John Margaret Cousins, Ann Newell, Elisabeth Newell, Margaret Sloan, Margaret Wightman
1864 1864-01-11-675 Molyneaux Jane John Ferran
1900 1900-01-18 Molyneaux Elizabeth Joseph Newell
1910 1910-09-06 Molyneux Hugh Annie Boyd

and deaths (sorted by year of birth)

Year Surname First name Age Born
1870 Molyneux Alexander 67 1803
1883 Moleneux Hugh 79 1804
1887 Molyenix Margaret 65 1822
1905 Molyneaux Sarah 82 1823
1895 Molyneux John 62 1833
1895 Moleneux John 62 1833
1921 Molyneux Elizabeth 80 1841
1901 Molyneaux James 51 1850
1914 Moleneux John 64 1850
1875 Molynaex William 23 1852
1876 Molyneux Mary 22 1854
1912 Moleneux Catherine 50 1862
1911 Molyneaux William 46 1865
1910 Moleneux William 43 1867
1913 Moleneux Annie 23 1890
1911 Molyneux Norah 0 1911

regards

dermot

Hi 

Thanks for all the replies in regards to the Molyneaux/Newell connections, taking this one step further I am planning on visiting Kilkeel in August of this year (2017) and hope to meet up with some distant relatives.  I cannot express how wonderful the contributors to this website are, thankyou very much.

Regards

Luke Molyneaux

Luke

I am also from Australia and just visited Kilkeel for the first time. It was a great experience.

You may not have seen some of these births, they come from the Mourne Presbyterian records and are still being transcribed.

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AjooUIUtx9j5hKJQIwl96nQ_eTqP8w

regards

dermot

This is for Michell, who wrote about Hugh and William Molyneaux

I think I can tell you where their farm was, if you haven't found it yet

dermot

While we're talking about Molyneaux, I found this on a 2005 Ancestry discussion, from Molly Schultz

"My grandfather was Alexander Molyneaux of Ballygowan, Kilkeel, County Down.
That is in North Ireland where the Catholics and the Protestants have been at odds since Oliver Cromwell.

He was born on Paddy's Day. He lived in Bay City Michigan and would wear an Orange bow tie while visiting the bars on his birthday. He got into a lot of fights and my mother was not proud of him. My German father, however, thought grandpa had a rare comic genius and a real way with words. Dad assumed that the Molyneauxs were Hougenauts from France. but I believe that he was wrong and that our Molyneaux family were vikings in Ireland.
Dad wrote a letter to the Postmaster of Kilkeel which was answered by a man named Newell, a second cousin to my mother. He said a lot in the letter including that Alexander's mother, Saragh Hanna was Catholic and the girls were raised Catholic and the boys Prysbeterian.

A Mullenix from the Minneapolis International Irish Gen Soc. told me that this was because the English would not let any Catholics own land. So the cagy Irish men converted to protestant religions.  "

Dermotb,

I wouldn’t entirely agree with Molly’s analysis of the family history.

Molyneux is not a native Irish name. It’s French (some suggest Norman French) and is associated with Huguenots refugees who came to England & Ireland in large numbers when the French King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in October 1685. That edict had offered protection to Protestants in France and with its revocation they faced persecution. So a lot fled. One estimate says about 5000 Huguenots settled in Ireland. Their particular religious convictions were Calvinist and so more in line with Presbyterian theology than with the Church of Ireland (Episcopalian protestant) and obviously there weren’t aligned to RC beliefs at all, so many joined the Presbyterian church in Ireland. They brought lace making, textile and glove making skills with them and this partially explains why those products are now associated with the parts of Ireland were they settled eg Ulster. If your Molyneux were of Viking origins (ie 7th to 9th century settlers), you might expect them to be RC and to have a native Irish surname. (Vikings didn’t have surnames. Surnames emerged in Ireland in the 13th & 14th century so you would expect any Viking descendants to have acquired an Irish surname by then). To me, a French name, their presence in a part of Ireland where Huguenots settled plus their Presbyterianism points to comparatively recent incomer origins. Probably late 1600s.

Regarding the bringing up of the children in 2 different denominations, I don’t see any connection with land ownership restrictions (most of which had been repealed in the mid 1700s anyway) in this case. It was just common practice to bring up children in 2 denominations in mixed marriages. You’ll find it to this day. In some families one of the parents may not have very strong religious views, in which case all the children tend to be brought up in the denomination of the parent who has the stronger religious belief. However where both parents held firm religious beliefs, the common solution was for the boys to follow the father’s faith and the girls the mother’s. If you search the 1901 & 1911 censuses you can see that regularly.

It is true that when the principal Papal Laws were in force (1650 -175), they theoretically precluded Catholics from owning land, renting it for more than 30 years (plus other draconian restrictions). Exactly how firmly the laws were enforced is subject for much discussion. It’s clear that in many cases people just ignored them. For example, the Earl of Antrim at one time owned a quarter of Co Antrim, yet was Catholic (until the mid 1700s). He also had lots of Catholic tenants to whom he granted leases well in excess of 30 years. What big landowners did then was sometimes join the Church of Ireland, and attend church there once a year to show they were loyal to the Crown (to prevent having land confiscated) whilst continuing to attend the local Catholic church the rest of the time. But that practice only applied to big landowners. People with little or no land were unaffected. And they wouldn’t have joined the Presbyterian church because it wasn’t the state church. There was no benefit in joining it. They had to be members of the Church of Ireland.  But this was all obsolete by the 1800s. So land ownership isn’t the explanation here. It’s just the father was Presbyterian and his wife RC.

Luke noticed your reference to NEWELL families of the Kilkeel area. My interest in the NEWELL family - 2 sisters, ELIZABETH MCNEILLY, married to Wm. COFFEY and her sister SARAH MCNEILLY, married to ALEXANDER NEWELL, came to Canada from Kilkeel area together in 1846-7. Two sons of Wm. COFFEY and Eliz. left Canada as adults, travelled to Australia where GEORGE COFFEY married Martha Elizabeth ENGLAND in NSW. These 3 people came to Canada. 

My grandfather Wm. COFFEY, born Nov.1842, was baptised in the Mourne Presbyt. Ch.

My question - why did the COFFEYs go to Australia - were they going where MCNEILLY or NEWELL relatives were living? i do have additional info' re place/date of the aforementioned marriage.

Any suggestion or info' re: Newell family from Cranfield, Greencastle area would be appreciated. Donna

Donna,

I can probably help you as I specialise in Kilkeel and have a large collection of records. I also know a Coffey descendant who may be a cousin.

If you contact me on dermot.balson@hotmail.com with all the details you have, I'll see if I can help.

dermot

We think that some of the Kilkeel Newells came to Andrew County Missouri  USA and married in to the McKee and Blue and Brown families. The McKees and Blues left Kilkeel/Lisnacree in 1826. We have found most of our Northern Ireland relatives by securing local genealogists and historians and attending PRONI workshops to help navigate the records offices. Most of these ancestors were from Down County but there are only scarce records. We only guess the Newells are from Down because of the tight Andrew County group. We would love to find DNA relatives relating to the Kilkeel McKees. 

I forgot to add, and thank Elwyn (above) who has done much of my McKee research in County Down! 

grey,

if you post your GEDmatch DNA kit number, I'll check it against my Kilkeel collection

and if you tell me what you know about your Kilkeel McKees, there's a possibility I can add to it - although the timeframe precedes official records. Nonetheless, it's often possible to trace relatives who remained behind, and I have a full set of Kilkeel records of all descriptions to work with.

As far as heading to Australia, County Down residents' reasons for going that way were varied. We had two relatives sent there in 1827 and 1832 for seven years each for "larceny" and another two brothers who headed together to Victoria for the gold rush around 1858. Neither appear to have found anything so they split up, one headed to San Francisco and the other to New Zealand. While Hugh who headed to SF had a family he found no gold, while Andrew had no descendants but did find gold in 1864. He shipped some home and his brother, a minister, built 3 churches in County Down. Andrew was joined by his nephew in 1881. Of course, some County Down residents headed off shore during the great hunger of 1845-1850, a period of ethnic cleansing by the English on Ireland. However County Down was somewhat spared as they were able to retain food supplies rather than have it stolen by the English.

Michael,

I would take issue with your remark that the English stole food from Ireland and that they practiced “ethnic cleansing.” I don't think you’ll find any evidence to support that. I see quite a lot of inaccurate information about Irish history and sometimes the record needs to be set straight.

Irish farmers grew crops all through the famine years. After they were harvested they sold them as they did in other years. Merchants bought them and some will undoubtedly have gone to England. But they did so as part of normal commercial arrangements. Many medium to larger farmers in Ireland were reasonably comfortably off during the famine years. Though their potatoes may have failed, their other crops were fine and indeed sometimes commanded higher prices.  Perhaps instead of selling their produce to England they should have given it away free to local Irish people. What do you think?

The people who were most badly affected in the famine years were labourers. Because land was in such short supply, most only had a few perches. With large families to feed they just grew potatoes. Potatoes are high yield and low maintenance. So you could plant them and then forget about them. But of course if they failed and you were one crop dependent you mostly had nothing to fall back on and so faced starvation, especially after they failed several years in a row as happened in the late 1840s and the labourers had had to eat their seed potatoes.

The reason that Co Down was less affected than other parts of Ireland was not because the English didn’t bother stealing their food. It was because labourers there and in other Ulster counties usually had linen money to fall back on. (Most Irish linen was made in the counties of Ulster). People made it at home on hand loom weaving machines (such as are still used in the Outer Hebrides to make Harris Tweed).  It provided work and some money in the winter months when there was little labouring work about, and gave them a slightly better standard of living than elsewhere in Ireland. The income protected folk in Ulster from the worst of the starvation. Some people died in Co. Down but not in the numbers found elsewhere.

The underlying social issue at this time was a huge population explosion. Ireland’s population had grown from 3 million in 1741 to 8 million in 1841. (It’s only 6 million today). There just weren’t the jobs for that number of people, especially in a land with few natural resources. There’s no coal, oil, precious metals etc and the industrial revolution largely passed it by. People had to leave, and had been pouring out of Ireland all through the 1800s. All the famine did was speed things up a bit.

The English did many disgraceful things in Ireland and also neglected it when they should have been much more supportive. They saw the famine as a local problem to be sorted locally when that was manifestly impossible due to the size of the catastrophe. They should have stepped in and provided much more free food and medical support. But it was indifference rather than ethnic cleansing and they didn’t steal food. Indeed far from having it stolen, some Irish farmers did quite well during the famine years because they were able to sell their produce to the English.

Elwyn, Michael

I largely agree with Elwyn on this. My reading of the primary sources at the time (including the several poor inquiries that preceded the great famine) shows that the English authorities wanted to solve the poverty problem from the early 1800s - because potato failures were occurring every few years (especially 1816 and 1830); starvation posed a major security threat; and also because an increasing number of Irish were coming to England, undercutting English wages, and asking for relief there. (As an aside, I've been surprised by how tolerant local English parishes were of this).

But they kept coming up against the same problem - there was not enough work to occupy the huge population, which had been able to grow far beyond normal limits because of the amazing potato which could support large families on small plots. The land was also highly fragmented with multiple layers of middlemen, making it almost impossible to consolidate land to profitable sizes and introduce farming efficiencies. It was a very unique situation where so much of the population had little or no work.
One solution was draining, to create more land, but I'm guessing they thought this would only buy a short period before the overcrowding reappeared. Another solution was emigration, but that was fairly costly and could not be done in the number required to make a difference. 

When the famine hit, the official records suggest that the main concern of the authorities was to avoid turning Ireland into a basket case, where the vast majority of the population depended on relief, and that it was this which caused them to restrict aid fairly early on. I'm not defending their actions - it's unforgivable that so many people died in appalling circumstances - but I think there is no case for calling it genocide. If it had been genocide, then the English would not have put so much effort into earlier inquiries, they would have tried to prevent the growing of potatoes, without which the population could not be sustained,  they would have restricted the subdivision of land, and they would have prevented Irish people from going to England for work. They didn't do any of those things.

When it comes to county Down, I'm not quite in agreement with Elwyn, at least in respect of my research area of Mourne, which I've studied in depth. Certainly, fewer died there than in the south, but I don't think linen had much to do with it. The evidence to the 1836 poor inquiry was that the collapse of the home spinning industry (due to mechanisation, chiefly) was the chief factor in impoverishing many who had been managing well in 1815. So for the poor, linen didn't provide much of a safety net by 1845. In Mourne, the poor were small farmers and fishermen (and both). Fishing at least provided an alternative food source, but it wasn't free and fisherfolk were among the poorest to start with. There are stories of many people starving in Mourne. I think the main reason fewer people died in Mourne was that there were fewer poor people to begin with.

in any event, I think we need to avoid emotive language when discussing this. 

My comments about the linen industry protecting people in Co Down from the worst effects of the famine came, in part, from some research undertaken by the Co. Down museum in Downpatrick. Here’s a link that gives a bit more background:

http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~rosdavies/genealogy/WORDS/Famine.htm

However I have heard other experts such as Dr William Roulston mention it too.

Read "A Short History of Ireland's Famine" by Ruan O'Donnell. Ten years after the ethnic cleansing of Ireland the British did it again in India in exactly the same format, death toll: one million. The question is if the potato crop had failed in England would they have said it was a "local" problem? The population of Ireland was 8 million, what was it in England? And what would you say of the armed guards, absentee landlords? In New Zealand the Waitangi Tribunal is resolving the theft of land by the English. When will we start repatriating Ireland's lost generations and decolonize. The indigenous Māori are asserting their rights and corecting the wrongs. Indigenous Irish will do the same to the penal laws and the plantation, Brexit will do it all for us. Most British have said they are happy to sacrifice Ireland to get out of Europe. History has a way of self-correcting.

I guess it's true that those working in linen factories would not have been affected as badly as those depending on potatoes - although food prices rocketed, and working conditions and pay for weavers were appalling.

My research area of Mourne was one of the worst affected areas in Down, because it didn't have factories.

Michael,

I find your term “ethic cleansing” both emotive and offensive, as well as being inaccurate. I think you need to take a more balanced approach to this.

The potato famine did hit England (and Scotland) but the difference in England was there weren’t so many poor labourers with tiny plots of land (there was no spare land in Ireland due to the population explosion) growing only one crop. So the impact wasn’t so severe there.

The potato famine was a natural catastrophe. The English didn’t inflict it on Ireland. Their response to it should have been much much more than it was, but to call it ethnic cleansing is just silly and inaccurate.

The landlords weren’t all absentee, and they weren’t all English either. A third of all landlords in Ireland were native Irish and many of them treated their tenants disgracefully too. Read Asenath Nicholson’s book “Ireland’s Welcome to the stranger”.  An American who visited Ireland for about 18 months, it describes in great detail a journey she made through 31 of the 32 counties in 1844 and 1845, and she has a lot to say about good and bad landlords. Not all the bad landlords were English and not all the good ones were Irish. She noted a tendency for wealthier Irish to treat the poorer classes disgracefully and it reminded her of the way slaves were treated in the US.

Dermot,

Re weaving, I think in southern Co Down most of the weaving was home based using portable looms, rather than factory based. Water powered factories started to come in in the 1830s, and gradually made home weaving uneconomic. The factories could make it quicker and often to a better quality. The other snag with factories was that they tended to employ women and children (being nimbler and cheaper) and so there wasn’t always work for men who had formerly woven at home. And at the same time, mechanisation in farming started to reduce the amount of labouring work needed, and so that too reduced the work for weavers/labourers.  Labourers tended to do weaving in the winter when there was no labouring needed. So they often lost both sources of income as the 1800s progressed. An additional factor driving emigration.

Elwyn, Mourne may have been a little different because it never mechanised its farming and had no factories, so the home spinning really suffered after 1815, when linen prices fell and factories grew. But I'm not disputing what may have happened elsewhere.

And I agree entirely that there's no need for emotive language, and with your view on the English response, based on my reading of many original contemporary documents. I've built up a large collection of hundreds of them, which I'm happy to share if you'd like to see if there's anything you haven't seen already.

Grey

i have quite a bit of newell info taken from the hugh irvine collection in bagnel castle( newry museum. My grandmotger was a newell my mother a coffey and my aunt a mckee. You may already be in possession of enough?

My grt  grt grandfather henry coffeys sisters both emigrated to Australia around 1850s we think. When he was drowned in 1866 we beleive they sent back money for his grave. William coffeys daughter martied mcneily and went to canada ( aran county) it seems their sins went to aus and lm not sure but may have met up with my grt grandfather  frank Newell who was there in the late 1800's. 
 

Just a point on emotive language. I was raised jn uk though my mother raised in kilkeel. My cousins rightly point put to me that though we lived through the 'troubles' it was not the same as being there. It has been and continues to be a long hard road back for communities to live together more peacefully. We are all entitled to our views of history but even recent lived experiences are not everyones truths. I prefer the policy of  day in a life of kilkeel page where any form of sectarian remarks are struck out.

Dermot,

Yes I would be very interested to know what you have. You can e-mail me on Ahoghill@irelandxo.com

Anni,

I am with you on the need for avoiding emotive language. It’s not wanted on a civilised discussion board. Information that is wildly inaccurate or unbalanced bothers me too. I am not an apologist for what the English did or didn’t do.  Far from it. But I see a lot of sentimental and wildly inaccurate accounts of Irish history and that’s not helpful either.  We are doing no favours if we allow that sort of view of history to be reinforced. That the English stole all the Irish’s food during the famine is a chestnut that is trotted out regularly. (I challenge anyone to find an example of someone in Ireland having their food stolen by the English authorities). All the evidence I have seen is that farmers in Ireland sold them their crops and did quite nicely out of it. That may not be as palatable in some quarters as believing it was stolen, but it appears to be the truth of the matter. History is always a bit more nuanced than we expect. Indeed that makes it all the more interesting.

I have lived in Co Antrim all through most of the Troubles so well know how agitated people can get about Irish history. (There’s the old cliché here that the English never remember Irish history and the Irish can’t forget it.)

Anni

Very interested in your comments. You indicate that the father of Wm COFFEY who married McNEILLY was known as Wm COFFEY also. Correct? How were these 2 Williams connected to your Henry?  My COFFEY/McNEILLY couple did settle in 'Aran' in Canada. Arran is actually the township, NOT equivalent to Irish townlands.Would like to have more direct communication with you to learn more of your info' sources -  family lore and/or documents. Are you located in Co. Down?

cheers

annHi owen

It is my belleif thst the older william was eitger a brother or a cousin of henry. They were born within 15 years of each other and l have four suspects as parents dating from arpund 1780s. There are no/ very few birth or death records for this time but l have pieced together what l can. Tgey all lived very closely together in cranfield though the mcneilys lived further up toward the mountains. My familt still live tgere today and we are undoubtedly about 4th cousins. Very very few local okder people will have done dna though. You can reach me on annmunro@nhs.net. I live between kilkeel where l have a house and south east england