Nearly all the Phairs in Fermanagh were Church of Ireland (judging by the 1901 census). Be aware that many Church of Ireland records are not on-line. If she is from Kinawley you might need to pay a researcher to go to PRONI to look the records up. You should also know that about 40% of the Church of Ireland’s records were lost in the 1922 fire in Dublin, so another possibility is that there is no longer a record to find. But fortunately Kinawley’s records have survived and can be searched. Just not on-line.
Re the age, errors on death certificates are common as often the informant didn’t have all the relevant information. A marriage certificate is more likely to be accurate but even then people had their reasons for not giving totally accurate information. A common reason for age discrepancies was they didn’t actually know how old they were. They normally didn’t celebrate birthdays in Ireland in the 1800s. If officialdom asked for an age or date of birth it was common just to guess or make a date up.
Alexander Irvine was born in 1863 in Antrim town and became a Minister living in the US. This extract from his book “The Chimney Corner revisited” perhaps explains why people often had to guess their ages:
“My mother kept a mental record of the twelve births. None of us ever knew, or cared to know, when we were born. When I heard of anybody in the more fortunate class celebrating a birthday I considered it a foolish imitation of the Queen’s birthday, which rankled in our little minds with 25th December or 12th July. In manhood there were times when I had to prove I was born somewhere, somewhen, and then it was that I discovered that I also had a birthday. The clerk of the parish informed me.”
