May I extrapolate and speculate upon some other points about ages, dates, etc, from the recent material?
We have from these Wicklow gravestones new information about James Halpin and his mother Elizabeth, who is new to us; and we also learn of his sister, Margaret. (By the way, if Louisa Halpin came down to Wicklow from Dublin about 1830 to her uncle James, she also came down to her older aunt Margaret.)
Elizabeth’s age was stated as 75 when she died the same year, 1814, in which her son James married in Wicklow, he aged about 37 that year. So, Elizabeth would have been about 38 when James was born, around 1777.
These ages leave room for a few things (all speculative).
1. It is highly likely that Elizabeth had more, earlier, children than James, who was born when she was about 38. So, including Margaret (born about 1762), James more than likely had other siblings born in the 1760s and 1770s. (Was William one of them? And George?) We have to be awake for Halpins who may fit this timeframe.
2. If William Henry Halpin was also born in the 1760s, to Nicholas Halpin schoolmaster and Ann du Bois, it would possibly fit neatly that Elizabeth’s husband was a brother or cousin of Nicholas.
3. If so, did Elizabeth’s branch leave for Wicklow/Dublin as early as the 1760s from around Portarlington, or did perhaps the Portarlington lot come from Wicklow. As I have alleged before, the education boom in Portarlington would have sucked in people as booms do. Did Nicholas go where the opportunity was rather than deriving from Portarlington?
4. James, at about 37, was relatively late marrying. William and George had children born a decade before James married Anne Halbert. While I know of many men of this era who married late, or never married, the possibility remains that there was room for James to have had an earlier family to a wife who may have died. However, to date we have noticed no evidence for this, but the possibility has to be there.
5. Ray has suggested often, if I have it right, that James started out as a hot-headed distiller in Dublin with his brother William. Is that right, Ray? He has also painted the picture of many ardent Irish, especially protestants, seeing where their bread was buttered and quite quickly taking up with the establishment, where they were welcomed. William seems not to have taken up his paymaster army commission until about 1807, with a developing war against Napoleon creating opportunities. William would have been about 30. Was this his settling down, just as James went (back?) to Wicklow to run a tavern and raise a very successful family? Could someone in the Castle (who knew the Duke of Cambridge?) have got William his entry to the army at a relatively advanced age?
Bill.
