Protestant and Catholic branches of a family

[grahamd15]

Hi everyone,

I've recently been doing a broad search of the Hillock/Hillick/Hillocks/Hillicks family to try to get a sense of their earlier history in Ireland. My Hillock family were Catholic and immigrated from Armagh to Belfast to Scotland in the 19th century.

I have gone through the Irish civil records from 1845 to 1901 which contains 356 entries of the above variants of the Hillock name to try and connect them. I have found that for the most part the families were part of the Church of Ireland. After that around one "root" family was Presbyterian and two were Catholic, one from Armagh and one from Louth. I'm not extremely familiar with Irish history but do know that there has been a divide between the Catholics and the Protestants for a long time.

My question is that from these very basic statistics, is it likely that the single Presbyterian and two Catholic families converted out of the Church of Ireland, potentially at marriage? Or would it be more likely that these are distinct unrelated families. The Church of Ireland Hillocks & variants seemed to originate from Armagh, Cavan, and Fermanagh.

Thanks for any help in advance about this period of history!

[Wexflyer]

That would be an ecumenical matter....

[grahamd15]

You're doing well Father Jack

[aghadowey]

My question is that from these very basic statistics, is it likely that the single Presbyterian and two Catholic families converted out of the Church of Ireland, potentially at marriage? Or would it be more likely that these are distinct unrelated families. The Church of Ireland Hillocks & variants seemed to originate from Armagh, Cavan, and Fermanagh.

It's entirely possible that a family could have different branches following different religious denominations. DNA might be the only way to sort out the connections so far back if you can't find anything to confirm or rule out this in church records.