Michael Joseph Ginty (b. 22 Aug 1866 - Townland of Kilgellia) - Possible churches for his family?

Amy:

Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out!

Unfortunately the RC parish records for Attymass start in 1874 which will restrict your progress in finding records for your Gintys. Civil registration started in 1864 and Roots Ireland showed at least three siblings for Michael: Ellen 1864 Margaret 1868 John 1870.

The 1855/1856 Griffiths Valuation head of household listing for Attymass civil parish shows a John Ginty and also a Michael Ginty in Kilgellia townland. Possibly, the Michael Ginty is your 1837 Michael. If he was born before 1837 then it is more likely that this is your great-great grandfather. http://www.failteromhat.com/griffiths/mayo/attymass.htm

Possibly the Howleys were from Creggaun townland in Killasser civil parish just to the southeast of Attymass parish.

The Gintys in Kilcommon civil parish are a different family.

Here is a link to the RC church in Attymass (St. Joseph and Mary)    http://achonrydiocese.org/parishes/mayo/attymass/  This church is a more modern facility so likely the 19th century church no longer stands. This link shows that there was an RC chapel in Attymass as far back as 1837.  https://www.johngrenham.com/records/lewis.php?civilparishid=1734&civilp…

The local church will likely not have any records that are not now online.

I will look for death records for Michael and Catherine later. The site www.irishgenealogy.ie  is currently down.

Roger McDonnell

Amy:

I did not see a civil death record for Michael or Catherine. Did the entire family emigrate to the States?

Roger

Hi there,

The original Attymass church was in Bonnifinglas but this fell into disuse during the 18th Century as the parish had no priest because the Catholic church was not allowed to run seminaries in Ireland. At that time the nearest parish was Kilgarvin.

In 1830 the parish was re-established with the curate from Kilgarvin becoming the parish priest. A local land owner gave the parish land in Kilgellia to build a new church in 1835.

That same land owners family apparently evicted half the families in Kilgellia during the famine a few years later.

If you look at the Griffiths survey for Kilgellia you'll see that most of them share Plot 1 in common, probably a runrig system where the all the families were collectively responsible. I suspect that I am related to the Loftus families listed there, my gg grandmother was a Loftus and my gg grandfather moved there in 1858 when he married her.

In the Tithe Applotments of 1834 Kilgellia is part of Criggella. The only Ginty family is that of "Michl Ginty" - http://titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie/reels/tab//004587400/004587400_00196.pdf

Next steps might be seeing if there are any rent rolls available for the lands rented out by the Moores.

Happy Hunting

John

My grandmother, Anne McNulty,  grew up in Killasser parish (townland of Callow), which is next to Attymass, as mentioned above.  There were several McGinty families there, in the townland of Carrick (that may be a sub-townland, since it is not on modern townland lists).  They spelled the name McGenty, but that sort of variation is common.  Several McGenty women married McNulty's in that parish who are probably not-too-distant relatives of mine, so we might be related (I have my DNA results on GEDMatch, if you want to compare our kits).

The records in Killasser go back to 1847 (both marriages and baptsms), so you might check there, and in the parish of Toomore, which also adjoins Attymass, the marriage records go back to 1833 (though the baptismal records start later).  Marriages usually took place in the bride's parish, but the groom might be from an adjoining parish, or even from several parishes away (that is commmon in my family).  In the parish of Swinford, which is on the other side of Killasser from Attymass, the marriage records go back to 1808 and baptsms to 1822.  The church there was one of the older ones in the area, so people from other parishes were sometimes married or baptized in Swinford.

Thanks to Roger McDonnell, John F. and Kevin45sfl for your hints, information and help! I will definitely look around using your hints.

Roger, there are no death records in Ireland for my GGgrandparents (Michael Ginty and Catherine Howley Ginty).  They both died outside of Ireland. My 1837 MIchael Ginty  (GG grandfather) died in a train accident in Keighley, Yorkshire England in 1877. My Ggrandfather (Michael Joseph Ginty), his mom and 7 siblings were living there at the time, and he (MJG) left for the States in 1885. All of his siblings and his mom eventually ended up in Pennsylvania and Maryland (USA) and his mom is buried in Philadelphia, PA.  Thanks for the idea to check death records nonetheless.

Kevin45sfl, what is your GEDMatch kit number?  Mine is A595683.

JohnF, I have a person with an alias of PLoftus as a DNA match on GEDMatch. Perhaps our Mayo people are common to both of our family trees?

Again, my thanks for your help, gentlemen!

Amy

Amy:

Thanks for letting me know that the Gintys died outside of Ireland. I grew up in Philadelphia and currently live in Maryland.

Roger

Amy, my GEDMatch kit number is T780556.  I ran our kits together and we are definitely related.  It was very interesting:  if you leave the minimum segment length at the default of 7 cm, we show no match, but if you lower the minimum to 3 cm, we have matching segments on 9 different chromosomes (one of them just below the 7 cm threshold), for a total match of 35.3 cm, which is fairly significant.  In fact, you're the first person whom I've matched on that many chromosomes in that branch of my family (although most of them have not taken DNA tests).

There are a number of families in the area to which I am related (McNulty, McDonnell, McAndrew, Loftus, Gill, Gallagher, King, Curraby/Creaby, Durkin, and McNicholas, among others), and there have been many intermarriages among those families, so I suspect that we are related several times over, through various lines (thus the large number of chromosomes involved).  I have family trees posted at FamilySearch (the most detailed one), FTDNA, Wikitree, GEDMatch, MyHeriatge, and GENi, in case you want to check them out, and I'd be happy to exchange other info.

In the meantime, here's the info I have for the two families I mentioned, and their children.  I do not seem to have noted the parents' marriages down, but they should be in the register somewhere, given the dates involved.  I see now that the name was given as just Genty, rather than McGenty, but it would be the same family, and parish priests were notoriously sloppy and inconsistent with things like that (the priest often decided what to write, and the parishioners may not have been able to speak English).

That was the period of time when people started dropping the "Mac" and "Ó" portion of their name, at least in public records.  Everyone in the area would still have been Irish speaking at the time (many in the area still spoke Irish at home into the 20th century, like my grandparents), so they would have used the Irish name Mag Fhinneachta ("son of Finneacht") among themselves (the "fh" letter combination becomes silent in Irish,, which is how the "g" sound became so prominent in the anglicized version of the name).  I checked MacLysaght's "Surnames of Ireland", and it appears that, while the surname originated in Donegal, it is now most common in northern Mayo, anglicized as both Ginty and Genty.  There are other Ulster names which are now common in the area (like McNulty), as a result of migrations during the Plantation of Ulster (and earlier migrations, as with the McDonnell's, who came from Antrim in the Middle Ages, and ultimately from Scotland))  Some people are now re-assuming the "Mc" form of their name, or the Irish form, but that has happened more widely in other families.

Note that some other Genty's are mentioned as sponsors at some of these baptisms.  The two wives are both named Mary Genty, so I suspect that they were cousins, because some of the sponsors for their children seem to be the same people.

Also, when I went through the parish registers, I noted down families with the surnames I was looking for, and I knew of no McGenty connection at the time, so there are probably other McGenty marriages or baptisms in the Killasser parish register which I did not note down.  These are all drawn from Microfilm 04223/06 for Killasser, and the image numbers are (i) for the frst family:  52, 68, & 56; (ii) for the second family:  55, 82, 96, 108, 120, 131, & 142.  I'm mentioning that, because sometimes related families got together to take recently born children to church together to have them baptised, especially if the church was not close by.  In Killasser, there was a church in the tiny hamlet of Killasser, and later also a sub-church over the hill to the west, in the townland of Callow, on the road running alongside the Callow Lakes (that road runs through Attymass as well).

Date                 Child              Parents                                                     Sponsors                                              Residence

16 Jul 1859       James              Bartholomew McNulty / Mary Genty      Bartholomew McNulty / Bridget Genty   Carrick

30 Sep 1860      Bridget?          Bartholomew McNulty / Mary Genty      John Genty / Mary McNulty                    Carrick

29 Mar 1862     Patrick            Bartholomew McNulty / Mary Genty        John McNulty / Mary Genty                   Carrick

Date                   Child              Parents                                                Sponsors                                        Residence

3 Mar 1860         Patrick            John McNulty / Mary Genty                John Genty / Mary Callaghan              Carrick

17 Sep 1865      Mary Ann       John McNulty / Mary Genty                 Henry Hughes / Mary McNulty             Carrick

4 Apr 1868        John               John McNulty / Mary Genty                 Pat Hughes / Mary McNulty                 Carrick

23 Apr 1870      Michael           John McNulty / Mary Genty                 James Genty / Anne Higgins               Carrick

9 May 1872       Martin            John McNulty / Mary Genty                 Martin McNulty / Margaret McNulty       Carrick

23 Apr 1874      Catherine        John McNulty / Mary Genty                 Michael Hughes / Bridget Hughes       Carrick

4 Jun 1876        John               John McNulty / Mary Genty                 Michael Vigand? / Bridget Durkan             Carrick