O'Reillys of Kilbeg, Co. Meath

The earliest I've so far managed to trace this particular family is to Charles Reilly of Robertstown, who lived at Robertstown Castle and operated a tannery on the grounds.  According to the local oral histories recorded in the National Folklore Collection, he also had four brothers, but their names were not mentioned.  Charles had a son, James, whose family group I was able to put together from the deed records in the Registry of Deeds Office.

• James Reilly of Kilbeg

1.  Charles Reilly of Kilbeg b. abt. 1792 d. 1870 Kilbeg, Co. Meath
2.  Dr. Laurence O'Reilly of Ratoath b. abt. 1796 d. 1878 at 11 Goldsmith Street, Dublin
3.  Rev. Bernard O'Reilly of Sarlat, France b. abt. 1803 
4.  James O'Reilly of Clooney and of Mount Albion, Dundrum b. abt. 1806 d. 1872
5.  Margaret Reilly
6.  Bridget O'Reilly d. 1879 at 11 Goldsmith Street, Dublin
7.  Frances O'Reilly m. Michael Grehan 1835, Castletown-Kilpatrick, Co. Meath

Charles Reilly of Kilbeg died in 1870, leaving behind three children whose names I have discovered so far: Fanny, Farrell, and John.  

Farrell O'Reilly, born abt. 1839, inherited the lands and house at Kilbeg upon his father's death in 1870.  He married Catherine Forde in 1879 in Lisdoonvarna, Co. Clare, and from this marriage came four children: Charles Farrell, John Valentine, James William, and Mary Kate.  Farrell O'Reilly was a good friend of a Dublin physician by the name of Dr. Henry Gogarty, whose son, the poet Oliver St. John Gogarty, would reminisce about Farrell in a poem published in November 1945 in The Bell, a Dublin literary magazine founded and edited by the writer Seán O'Faoláin, and again in May 1946 in the American literary journal Poetry.  Farrell died in 1908 at Kilbeg, and as far as I am aware descendants of his eldest son Charles Farrell O'Reilly continue to live at Kilbeg to this day.

Additional reading:
Gogarty, Oliver St. John. "Farrell O'Reilly." Poetry, May 1946, pp. 70-72.

Related posts:
Irish Deed Memorials, 1844: O'Reilly to O'Reilly
Robertstown Tannery

Robertstown Tannery

Lately I've been working on transcribing some of the Irish local accounts collected in the National Folklore Collection, UCD as part of the Meitheal Dúchas transcription project and came across this one involving one of the people named in an earlier post here.  A while back I wrote about a deed among members of the O'Reilly family of Kilbeg, County Meath.  The deed mentioned that all the parties to it were the grandchildren of a Charles Reilly or O'Reilly of Robertstown.  This Charles is the subject of the particular local history piece I came across, that of the Robertstown Tannery.

Robertstown Castle,
Photo © Mike Searle (cc-by-sa/2.0)

Evidently Charles O'Reilly owned a tannery in Robertstown, and lived at Robertstown Castle, a fortified early 17th century house originally built by the Barnwall family.

The story about Charles O'Reilly and his tannery recounts the story about his wooden false-bottomed tanning pits (supposedly to fool the tax assessors), something that was also corroborated in other stories collected in the area.  What also stands out to me about this particular version is that this story mentions the existence of four unnamed brothers of this Charles O'Reilly, any one of which could have been ancestors of my line of O'Reillys.  Due to a member of my O'Reilly family inheriting from one of the Kilbeg O'Reillys mentioned in the 1844 deed, moving into his house after he died, and sharing a large overlap in family names between their family group and the Kilbeg family, a fairly close kin relationship of some kind seems almost certain.

For those of you who know where in Ireland your people were from, I highly recommend taking a look through the stories collected on the website.  Many still require transcriptions, so you may find something relevant that hasn't yet been made searchable on the site just by perusing the images, as I did with this story of "Charley beag the currier" and his tannery and castle.

Beyond 2022 - Reconstructing an Archive

As I've written about before, Irish research can be difficult because gaps exist in the records due to the destruction (both intentional and accidental) of so many of them, including the catastrophic loss of most of the holdings of the General Record Office in 1922.  All is not lost, however!  A project launched last year, Beyond2022, aims to create a digital reconstruction of the holdings of the GRO using copies of records held by other sources.  The project, being carried out by Trinity College Dublin and several archival partners, is set to debut online on the 100th anniversary of the GRO fire, 30 June 2022.  As a genealogist, I'm particularly interested in how much of the missing wills can be reconstructed - I'm well aware most are probably gone forever, but I've personally managed to dig up a few abstracts myself in old British government publications as well as a few complete copies of wills that had been deposited in various archives in the UK and recorded in the deed memorial books of the Registry of Deeds in Dublin.  It'll really be something to see how much this project can uncover and restore with the partnership of so many major archives at their disposal.

Have a look at the project's trailer video below, and learn more and bookmark the project site at http://beyond2022.ie.