RootsChat.Com

I have an ancestor supposedly from Leamington.   Two people, Robert Meeker and William Meaker, both born early in the 1620s, went to New England.  Both were born in "Leamington".  One of the histories of Leamington Spa says its name, and it had an earlier name of Leamington Priors, was originally to distinguish it from the other place named Leamington that was also in Warwickshire.

Where/ what was this other Leamington?   Google can't find it, and neither can Google Earth.   

and what I really need to know is which place these Meekers came from.  There is a popularly circulating tale that their parents were Albert Nicholas Meeker and Lady Margarite Rosie Bennie, but it frankly sounds made up.   The people existed but the only records of them are elsewhere.  Records of Leamington Spa apparently begin in 1700.   Descendants of William and Robert have different Y DNA, but they clearly came from a tiny village whatever else was true, and that would take only a single nonpaternity event.   

If I can't learn which Leamington these two came from, then I need the histories of both Leamingtons.  I'm betting both histories reveal places where two people with the same surname from that place are necessarily related to each other about ten thousand times.

Thanks!

Yours,
Dora Smith

http://www.buildingsofireland.ie/niah/search.jsp?type=record&county=WM&regno=15403801

Church of Ireland burial site in Newtownlow, not sure of the township but next to Cornaher.   It was the place of residence of William Low, my ancestor.   This graveyard is next to a ruined church, ca 1700, and the Low residence, in ruins, is nearby.   

Now, the church and yard are supposed to have been Anglican, there is evidence of use by Catholics, William Low and his infamous son Barry were strict, deep end Anabaptists who fell out with the Cromwells over who had the right to be called "Lord Protector" (only God), and they also literally ate Catholics for dinner.  Well, almost literally.   I doubt they used this churchyard - but some of the family may have, and this one gravestone may hold a piece of information everyone has sought on in a church graveyard near Dublin, where, it now comes to mind, we actually know that most of the early Lows were buried. 

There is a crypt in the graveyard.  Relatively recent; God know who could be buried there, but it is very interesting.

 "The crypt also bears a decorative coat of arms with scrolls, leaf and animal motifs, requiring a high level of craftsmanship. This coat of arms could well be that of the Low Family, who resided in a highly unusual circular tower house (WM038-015---) (originally in the possession of the Madden Family), now in ruins, a short distance to the northeast of this site"

What I'd like is to see the coat of arms.   Most Lowes used some version of a wolf's head or three wolf's heads.   Noone has seen the actual crest the Lowes used.  Allegedly it was on the family tomb near Dublin.   Several people have recently searched that churchyard, and while large family tombs are there, and the markings can't be read, none that are recognizably the Low tomb can be found.   The Low tomb once had a genealogy of the 1st generations of the Westmeath family, and a coat of arms.

These Lows were Cromwellian gentry, and priest hunters, and atleast by the third generation most of them were silversmiths and jewelers in Dublin.   They appear to have been of a modestly prosperous, merchant and craftsman class, family in a town adjacent to Kidderminster, Worcestershire.   This seems to have been an old and large family group, though the name is Saxon for hill.   "Atta Lawe", "De la Lawe", and Hill was a common name in hte area as well.   In time an aristocratic family of that name arose in that vicinity, and they used the standard wolf's head motif.   My own 3x great grandfather, or his half crazy wife, got ahold of tin stamps and such in a bucket shop, bearing the Lowe family crest of a family in eastern England, and handed it down through their childrens' lines.   My great grandfather was the last in my line to have it; it was lost to a bigamous marriage that my grandfather hadn't known about.   But a cousin provided it to me.   LOL, I have my rendition of it in that Lowe blarney gene page.   But my mother, who was convinced it was for real, longed to have it "redrawn", and much of the family still wonder what the ACTUAL coat of arms that this family had on their original tomb, looked like.   How they might have been entitled to it, I cannot say; I just want to see it.

The founder, John Low, the first to be buried in the family tomb, is a mystery.   There were two large aristocratic houses in this community, and ten peasant huts, and a communal bake oven.   Later the place was a playground for members of Parliament.   I wonder if John was a silversmith and jeweler.   His sons fought under Cromwell, two of them as officers, and were given huge pieces of land in southern County Westmeath.

Dora

I find what you found.   I must have mistyped it, or miscopied it, or something, because when I previously tried I got nothing.   

Tobber and Tubber are evidently Kilmanaghan, where I already knew they lived.   But they didn't own the whole parish - or two parishes, or three, depending on which definition you believe. 

Thanks!

Now for Beechmount, which is in Mucklagh, somewhere; Google claims it exists, has a manor house, won't tell me where it is.   And Gargan.   

I found out where Lurgan is a long time ago.

My ancestor, Robert Lowe of Lurgan, Offaly, owned 105 acres in "Attysheogue, Tobber, Offaly", and owned 62 acres in "Tubber".  He acquired them in 1860 and sold them in 1863.   

Inquiring minds are dying to know.  What is Attysheogue?   Griffiths thinks Tobber/ Tubber is a townland named Tober.   But Attysheogue has the appearance of a townland.   

Google has never heard of Attysheogue.   

I imagine the name is spelled roughly phonetically correctly, in English phonetics or else Gaelic phonetics, which probably leaves a large number of possibilities.

I also need to find "Gargan", and "Beechmount".  Beechmount is spelled more than one way. 

Most of the places where these people lived were along the Westmeath/ Offaly border, and for instance there is real confusion about where the townland Lurgan is, and indeed the maps leave me wondering if the county line moved.   So this place could conceivably be in County Westmeath.

For some unaccountable reason, Robert's spinster daughters lived at High St in Tullamore in 1905.  Their family seemed to be living in Tyrellspass (Cornaher) and Lurgan.   

Robert is described as "of Lurgan" in both deeds - very peculiar.   He and his son held land in Raheenduff, Geashill, Offaly, in the 1890's, south of Tullamore, and in Cornaher, County Westmeath, 6 miles to the east, in the 1890's.   Very peculiar.   Unless the family were more widespread than can be proven with available evidence, or else based elsewhere than immediately around Lurgan, they didn't hold much at all in the 1820's through 1850's.   Yet I get the idea the family was very pretentious.  A son was forced to emigrate to Canada for marrying the daughter of the chief tenant who lived on the other side of the barnyard.  The family were descended from Cromwellian gentry, and Cornaher was one of the original core Low estates.   My 3x great grandfather, a "laborer" at age 22 in the 1830's, joined the RIC, never returned home, and I have the idea he didn't care, and his descendants forgot where they were from except that his brother had lived in Cornaher, and the RIC record identified his county of birth and his landlord, and also this is the Lowe line that carries a story about Lowes more than six feet tall.  (Samuel the seven foot giant)

Thanks!

Dora

Richard Allen, the mystery burial of allegedly Tuam, was registered by "John Faulkner P.R.".   Does anyone know who or WHAT this was?   (I spelled his name right this time.)

One other thing.  These dates are goofy.   He died 3/9/1844, was buried 4/9/1844, and the death was registered 5/9/1844.

    Why did each event occur exactly a month apart, and why was he buried a month after he died, or are the month and day reversed?   

Dora