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Apologies if this is a little off-topic, but I hoped some readers of this thread might be able to help me.

I, too, am descended from Halpins of Co. Wicklow but unlike the families discussed here, my lot were Catholic peasant farmers in the hills of west Co. Wicklow, around Hollywood.
My direct ancestors were based at Granamore (7km south-east of Hollywood) and I can trace them back to William and Ann Halpin, who married in 1812 at the church of Blackditches, now Valleymount.  However, in the adjoining townland of Corragh, Darby (Dermot) and Elizabeth Halfpenny were baptising their children during the 1780s, while at Johnstown (2km east of Hollywood) two couples - Patrick and Anna Halfpenny and Darby (Dermot) Halfpenny and Brigid Nugent, were also baptising their children in the 1780s and 1790s.

Like their namesakes in Wicklow town, these families tend to be referred to as Halfpenny or Halpenny in the late 18th/early 19th centuries but as Halpin from the early 19th century onwards.  I am sure that the Granamore and Corragh Halpins are related (and probably also the Johnstown Halpins) but it seems the documentary proof of this does not survive.

Could these Catholic, peasant Halpins be related to the Protestant, middle-class Halpins of Wicklow town?  The socio-cultural distance between them may have been great but the physical distance was not.  If any reader of this thread could give me any information or advice on this, I would greatly appreciate it.

And finally, it may be entirely coincidental - but in view of some comments here about relations between the Halpins of Wicklow and the Beresfords, it may be worth mentioning that the Halpins of Granamore, Corragh and Johnstown were all tenants of the Beresford estate.