Bessie Cooke, Elizabeth Cooke born 12-15-1877 County Mayo

Tony:

Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out!

A quick check of the civil birth records does not show an Elizabeth Cooke birth record in Mayo. Do you know her parents names?

Roger McDonnell

according to marriage record, parents to Bessie were Lawrence Cook and Hanah Regan.

(see related topic on Patrick Towey)

Thanks Shane!

Tony:

I used the names provided by Shane and found seven records for one family in East Mayo in Carracastle. The father was Laurence Cooke and the mother was Margaret Regan. The records located were for Catherine 1877 Mary 1878  Michael 1880 John 1872 Laurence 1874 Bridget 1876 Winifred 1878. Maybe Mary was Bessie?

Any possibility that this family is connected

Roger McDonnell

Name:Mary CookeDate of Birth:
Date of Baptism:05-Sep-1868Address:PalmfieldParish/District:CARRACASTLEGender:FemaleCountyMAYO
Denomination:Roman Catholic
Father:Laurence CookeMother:Margaret ReganOccupation:
Sponsor 1 /
Informant 1:Michl Towey Sponsor 2 /
Informant 2:Bridget Regan 

Laurence Cooke died 9.4.1880 at Palmfield, aged 50. His wife Margaret was the informant;

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_retu…

Since Michael Towey is shown as a sponsor for that baptism, and since the parish of Carracastle is just to the northwest of the parish of Ballaghaderreen/Castlemore/Kilcolman, I assume that this inquiry is related to the one just before it for Patrick Towey,  Here's a link to the online parish records for Carracastle:  https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0125

And here's a link directly to the page with the baptismal record for Winifred Cooke (with the parents and sponsors as Roger indicated above):  https://registers.nli.ie/pages/vtls000632315_102

The name Winifred, by the way, was a traditional anglicization of the Irish name Úna, but I don't know of Bessie being used as an equiivalent.  One possibility is that her middle name was Elizabeth.  Middle names were traditionally more common among Protestants.  They started to become more common among Catholics in the 19th century, but they were not always put into the parish register by the priest when children were baptized.

Interestingly, although Carracastle is shown as a current Catholic parish on the NLI site, neither Carracastle nor Palmfield are to be found on the townlands.ie site, which lists most of the baronies, election districts, parishes, townlands (and even some subtownlands) in Ireland.  I checked Wikipedia, and it indicates that there's an overlap with the parish of Kilbeagh next door in County Mayo, saying that Carracastle is roughly halfway between the Mayo town of Charlestown and the Roscommon town of Ballaghaderreeen, and that Ballaghaderreeen (Bealach an Doirín, meaning "the way of the little oak grove”), while it is technically in County Roscommon, is traditionally considered to be a part of County Mayo,

Thank you all so much, I will pursue each of your suggestions. Some additional information, my mother's birth certificate lists her parents names as Bessie Cooke and Pat J. Towey. So I don't know if that affects the record search. Also, my mother always pronounced her maiden name as Tao -we, yet I hear some pronounce the same spelling at To - ee. Don't know if that makes a regional difference.

As Roger indicated in his response to your Patrick Towey inquiry, the Towey's are very numerous in that corner of Roscommon, and across the border in Mayo (the boundary having moved, too, as Roger explained).  According to MacLysaght's Surnames of Ireland, the surname Towey originated in that area, and  is an anglicization of the Irish name Ó Toghdha, which is based on the word togha  ("choice"), giving a meaning of "descendant of the chosen one".

The pronunciation of the word toghdha ("chosen") can vary from dialect to dialect, but in both Connacht and Western Ulster (Donegal) the pronunciation today is more or less "TOW-ghuh", with the first part rhyming with the word "how" and the "gh" being a guttural sound, like a "g" gargled in your throat.  The Northeast Mayo/Sligo/Roscommon dialect (which my grandparents spoke) no longer really exists as a separate dialect, but it was somewhere in between that of Connacht and Western Ulster, so "TOW-ghuh" is a good guess for how people were saying the name back in the 19th century, and that would fit well with your mother's pronunciation of it as "TAO-weh" (unstressed syllables often became very short and indistinguishable, so the "gh" sound could have become a simple "h" sound and then disappeared in the local speech, or just not been easy for English speakers to hear).  The pronunciation of the name as "TOH-ee" probaby came later, perhaps among English speakers who had lost touch with its origins and were just going by the anglicized spelling of Towey.

The surname [O']Towey also exists in souith Galway and Clare, but there it's usually a variant of the unrelated name O'Tuohy.

Kevin/Tony:

Carracastle is actually a very small village on the old N5 road which was bypassed about ten years ago. Carracastle is in Mayo but only a half mile to the east is the border with Roscommon and further east is Ballaghaderreen. A number of townlands and Ballaghaderreen were moved from Mayo to Roscommon in the Local Government Act of 1898. Arkill was one of those townlands. Another townland was Derrynanaff where my grandfather Patrick McDonnell was born in 1886. 

The offical name for Palmfield is Gortanure. It is a fairly large townland east of Carracastle and another townland transferred in 1898. Palmfield was the home of one of the famous Irish politicians in the late 19th century and early 20th century-- Sir Anthony McDonnell   http://www.mayolibrary.ie/en/LocalStudies/MayoPeople/SirAnthonyMcDonnell/   No relation to me.

Kilbeagh civil parish (which is better know today as Charlestown/Carracastle parish) includes a large area including Charlestown town, Carracastle and 74 townlands.

Roger

Hi all. so much great info, thank you all - sorry for the delay been dealing with family health issues.