All,
I just wanted to say thank you very much for your help. On the off chance that it might yield something I also made enquiries to a couple of parishes in Tralee, and got the below response.
"I failed to find a record of the marriage of Thomas Whelan and Nora Guiney in Tralee, but, for other reasons, I was in the General Register Office in Dublin and I found a record of their marriage in Cork in 1912 and I attach a copy of same. This shows that Nora was from Kanturk in Co. Cork, which is in the diocese of Cloyne.
The baptismal and marriage records of the diocese of Kerry, up to the year 1900, are now available free on the website
www.irishgenealogy.ie. The records of the diocese of Cloyne are on the website
www.irish-roots.ie, but you have to pay to view them. However, it may be worthwhile to do so if you want to research Nora’s ancestors.
Having said that, I failed to find a record of Thomas’s baptism in Kerry. The only record of a Thomas Whelan, son of Maurice Whelan, is from Lixnaw Parish (about 10 miles north of Tralee) and dates from 1840, which would put him over 70 when he got married.
Details of the Censuses of Ireland 1901 and 1911 are now available free on the website
www.census.nationalarchives.ie. I failed to find the Whelans in the 1911 census, but they are in the 1901 census. To find them, enter the following in the search engine:
Census Year: 1901
Surname: Whelan
County: Kerry
Townland/Street: Manor West
DED: Tralee
The census gives Thomas (Tom)’s age as 26, which means he was born about 1875 and tells us that his mother’s name was Hannah, and he had a brother Charley, born about 1881 and a sister Mary, born about 1890.
Armed with this information, I went back to the irishgenealogy website and found a family at Manor where the parents were Maurice Whelan and Johanna Foley. They had six children, Jeremiah, born 19th September 1871, Honora mary, born 11th March 1873, Catherine Mary, born 22nd August 1876, John, born 5th February 1878, Charles, born 1st March 1880 and Mary, born 21st November 1889.
Charles and Mary match the census. The others may have left home before 1901 or, sadly, may have died young. The mystery is that there is no Thomas.
Nora’s family are in the 1911 census. To find them, enter 1911/Guiney/Cork/Gurteenard/ Castlemagner in the search engine. This shows that Nora was 31, so was born about 1880. Her father, Timothy, was 71, so was born about 1840, and her mother was dead.
The family are also in the 1901 census and the mother, Ellen, was still alive and was the same age as her husband.
I found records of the baptisms of Thomas and Nora’s four children.
Joseph Anthony, born 7th March 1913, married Margaret Knibbs on 15th January 1942 at St. Joseph’s, Portland Crescent, Manchester 13.
Eleanor Mary was born on 11th January 1917.
Jeremiah was born on 21st August 1918, as you know.
Timothy Thomas was born on 3rd April 1921 and married Edna Rose Yearling on 4th July 1945 at Holy Cross, Plymouth.
All four were baptised in the chapel of St. Catherine’s Hospital, Tralee, which was near to where they lived at Manor."
Thanks again
Charlie
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