Some time back I wrote a post detailing the search for my great-great grandmother Adelia's family. With more than a little luck o' the Irish (and even more perseverance) I was able to trace her parents in Ireland.
Adelia's father, Laurence O'Reilly, was born around 1820, possibly in County Meath. What I have been able to establish is that he had some sort of connection to three brothers who came from Meath a generation before, although I have not yet figured out the precise relationship. The eldest of these brothers (and the only one I have not yet ruled out as my Laurence's father) was another Laurence, who was born about 1794 and was a medical doctor who received his qualifications in Scotland in 1817 before returning to Ireland and becoming the Dunshaughlin district medical officer at Ratoath, Meath. Another brother, Bernard, became a priest and theology professor in Sarlat, France, so would not have been my Laurence's father. The youngest I have on record, James, was a gentleman-farmer at Clooney, Meath, before retiring to Dublin to a house called variously Mount Albion or Montalbin Lodge or House. This James was stated in the Dublin newspaper reports on the probate of his will (which his eldest brother Dr. Laurence O'Reilly contested due to some dispute with the executors) as having been a lifelong bachelor and thus also an unlikely candidate to be my Laurence's father. What is known is that this James did provide railroad and bank stocks for a minor named Charles O'Reilly (my Laurence had a son named Charles under the age of ten at the time of the will's execution in 1873; this Charles was baptized in Aghamore, Mayo, in 1865 with a James O'Reilly as godfather and on the 1901 and 1911 census appears in Dublin with his income source given as stock annuities) and that James's former home, Mount Albion House, was home to my Laurence's family from at least 1874 until about 1877. It is, of course, also possible that Laurence's father could have been another brother entirely who has not yet been linked to these three, but the connections to James seem likely to me that he was probably my Laurence's uncle.
I know virtually nothing about Laurence's early life, only that he married Bridget Treston, a Mayo native, sometime before 1852. The earliest baptism date found for one of their children on record is 1854, when their son James Thomas O'Reilly was baptised at Bekan, Mayo, although the oldest children, Laurence and Anne, have not been found in the baptism records. 1868 seems to mark the last of their Mayo-born children, Francis, and in 1875 their youngest son, John Joseph, was born and baptized in Dublin.
In 1874 the O'Reillys were certainly resident at Mount Albion House. It is from that address that Laurence registered a dog, a brown terrier, while his son Laurence registered a brindle greyhound from the same address. In December of 1876 a notice was published of Laurence's bankruptcy (unfortunately, the newspaper provided no details of how he arrived at this situation) and announced a sale of his property, although six months later the obituary of his daughter Kate still gave Montalbin House as the O'Reilly address. Laurence and family left the house sometime before 1880, by which point his obituary in July of that year gives his residence as Joanna Cottage, Crumlin Road. He was buried in the St. Bridget's section of Glasnevin Cemetery.
No comments:
Post a Comment