The Morrow family of Muineagh

[AlexStewart]

I wonder if anyone is connected to the Morrow family of Muineagh in the Fanad area of NE Donegal in the parish of Clondevaddock.
I wonder if anyone has discovered where they were before coming to Donegal. My grandmother was born in Muineagh; her great grandfather Matthew Morrow was born in 1775. He emigrated to Pennsylvania where he is found on the 1850 US census. Alexander Morrow died in Muineagh in 1799 and may have been Matthew’s father born c.1750.  Matthew married Mary Wilson from Magherabeg in 1799. She died in 1846 which may well have influenced Matthew to join his son Gideon and daughter Letitia in the US.
Any information on this Morrow family would be deeply appreciated.
Alexander

[Kiltaglassan]

Is this Matthew Morrow and his family related?
1901 Irish census
House 8 in Muineagh (Fanad West, Donegal).
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Donegal/Fanad_West/Muineagh/1191713/
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai000682041/

Muineagh townland
https://www.townlands.ie/donegal/kilmacrenan/clondavaddog/fanad-west/muineagh/
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/5385344#map=12/55.1926/-7.7392

...and in 1911 irish census
House 4 in Muineagh (Fanad West, Donegal).
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Donegal/Fanad_West/Muineagh/501590/

[AlexStewart]

Yes, the Matthew there in 1901 at 94 was the son of the Matthew who emigrated to Pennsylvania. I am aware of the family at that time and later. My question was more about how and when they appeared in that remote part of NE Donegal at a much earlier period in the 1700s or before. What do we know about those early settlements there?
Alexander

[Elwyn Soutter]

The name Morrow is fairly common in Donegal. The majority were Protestant suggesting they were incomers. (1901 census has 435. All Protestant save for 51 RC).

Co Donegal was settled by significant numbers of Scots and English in the 1600s, so a there’s a fair chance your family came over from Britain sometime in that century.  There are no Morrows in Donegal in the 1630 Muster Rolls so that suggests they arrived after that.

MacLysaght’s “The Surnames of Ireland” says of Morrow: “Without the prefix Mac, Morrow is now more common in Ulster than in England whence it originated.” So it looks likely your family are of English origins.

We have no individual records of folk who settled in Ireland in the 1600s. We do know the details of the main English & Scottish landowners but not of the folk who settled on those lands.

[AlexStewart]

Thank you for your general points about the Morrow name.

[rathmore]

possible flax seed growers


http://www.failteromhat.com

then click on Census/Directories

they Flax 1796

Alexander Morrow

[AlexStewart]

possible flax seed growers


http://www.failteromhat.com

then click on Census/Directories

they Flax 1796
Thank you, Rathmore. I am aware of that entry about flax seed growing. Alexander may well have been the father of Matthew who was a farmer in Muineagh.
Alexander

Alexander Morrow

.      Thank you, Rathmore. I am aware of that entry about flax growing. Alexander may well have been the father of Matthew, who was a farmer in Muineagh.
Alexander