Person talk:Mary Dwyer (14)

Identifying Mary's parents and birth family [25 January 2014]

Geographic Context: Mary Dwyer married James McMahon in St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Parish. Starting in 1845, the baptismal records of some of her children indicate the specific townland as Park or Upper Park. James McMahon's family traces to the townlands of Singland and Rebogue, also in St. Patrick's and adjacent to Park, going back to the 1820s. Tithe Applotment Books indicate there are three Dwyers living in close proximity to James McMahon senior in Singland/Rebogue: Thomas, Edmond, and Matthew. These names are bolded when found as the father in a parent pair for a Mary Dwyer baptism in the table below.

However, James McMahon's family traces further back to the parish of Cratloe in the 1810s, across the River Shannon in County Clare (although still in the Diocese of Limerick) and St. Patrick's terminates at the northern border of Limerick. Some adjacent parishes and townlands are in Co. Clare, which is not yet indexed in the IFHF rootsireland database (coming in 2014). It may be important to examine Clare records before reaching any conclusions.

Date context: Mary's husband James was about 18.5 years old when they married on 7 May 1842 (he was baptised 15 Nov 1823). While there are 61 Mary Dwyers in the IFHF index for Limerick, there are none born in St. Patrick's in the period 1820-1828 (giving an age at marriage range of 22 to 15). However, there are 5 Maria/Marians and one was baptized in St. Patrick's in 1820.

Name context: While traditional Irish naming convention would seem to indicate that her husband's father was called Michael and her own father was Thomas, her husband James is almost certainly the son of James (who also named his first son Michael) and therefore, naming convention may not have been followed in an easily decipherable way in this family. If Thomas and Mary or Michael and Mary prove to be her parents, it would not be surprising. It also appears that there are fewer Dwyer baptismal sponsors -- only Mary and Bridget -- and it is possible that this marriage was not sanctioned by one or both fathers-in-law. It should be noted that the couple appear to have married in May 1842 and baptized their first child two months later in July.

Possible Baptisms of Mary Dwyer [3 October 2014]

Methods: The rootsireland database was searched for County Limerick as follows:

1. "Mary Dwyer" baptisms for 1824 +/- 4 years (yielded 61 hits).
2. "Maria Dwyer" baptisms for 1824 +/- 4 years (yielded an additional 5 hits).
3. Each of the above sets was searched for each of the Roman Catholic parishes
   1. Year of baptism and parish information was tabled (below).
4. Each of the two main sets was searched, guessing father's name using a standard list of almost 60 names (arranged as best as possible in order of popularity: John, William, Michael, etc.). As rootsireland does not have a forename soundex or variant function, but does return on partial strings, partial strings were used as efficiently as possible.
   1. Once a subset associated with a particular father name was identified, the mother names were guessed using the same technique and with a list of about 40 names (partial string techniques were used as above). This yeilded full parent pairs in all but 7 of 66 cases.
   2. Once the parent pair was identified (or single parent in some cases), the year was cross-referenced against the table and each corresponding RC parish was searched until the record re-appeared.
   3. Finally, set number 1 was searched with only a first letter in the mother's name field, going through the alphabet, which identified that there should be names starting with certain letters as follows: 5 A, 7 B, 9 C, 11 E, 2 H,4 J, 22 M, and 1 W (running through the alphabet for each subsequent character identified this as "Winny", 1828, wife of Thomas in St. Michael's), allowing for the names contained in the second set, this enabled identification of the as yet unidentified wives names.
   4. The alphabetical process was repeated for husband names, also identifying the outstanding ones (mostly abbreviations and the name "Conor/Connor").

Results: Therefore, the two set yield 66 possibilities in Limerick for the period, although the most likely years of birth, given James' age, are 1823, 1824, and 1825, and there are baptisms which occurred in parishes adjacent to St. Patrick's or within one remove. In the table below, the more likely geographic possibilities are highlighted yellow.

--Artefacts 19:54, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Analysis of Mary's Documented Contacts

Unfortunately, there are no male Dwyers listed among the witnesses and godparents for James and Mary's children and several of the people listed trace back to James and may not represent Mary's own group of extended friends, family and acquaintances prior to her marriage.

--Artefacts 02:29, 8 January 2014 (UTC)