Portadown Rowe Family

[Sessylt]

Hello all,

A long-standing brickwall of mine has been the couple John Rowe and Catherine Rowe and their three children Margaret, John and Selina. All five of them are only attested after leaving Ireland for Cumberland, and listed as born in Ireland – Margaret specifies in later sources that it was Portadown, Co. Armagh, but that might obviously not apply to everyone.

According to their census ages, which are unfortunately rounded up in the first England censuses, John should be born ca. 1801 and Catherine ca. 1806. This matches more or less with their ages on their death certificates. Margaret was born ca. 1834, John ca. 1838 and Selina ca. 1846. All of these ages probably have to be taken ± 5 years.

Would anyone more savvy about navigating Irish records be able to tell me if there are any appropriate births for a John Rowe/Roe/Row/Wroe/etc. in Armagh (or elsewhere) ca. 1801, or if there is a marriage between a John Rowe and a Catherine before ca. 1834? I realise this isn't much to go on, but maybe there's a chance to find something, especially births for the right children...

Some variations might include Catharine (as she appears in the English sources) or Katherine/Katharine; Selina appears as Saleena and Sceline in the English sources.

Thank you very much for any insight!

Kind regards,
Sessylt

[Elwyn Soutter]

Birth and death registration didn’t start in Ireland till 1864, non RC marriages 1845, RC marriages 1864. So your family married and were having children long before those dates.  You might be able to find their baptisms and marriage if the records still exist. However those records may well not be on-line.


First thing we need to know was the family denomination. If Church of Ireland (ie Anglican) and Portadown is accurate, you could search the records for Drumcree which start in 1784, and Portadown itself whose records start in 1826 which is possibly when the church opened. If they were of another denomination, let me know and I’ll tell you what records are available. However looking at the 1901 census for Armagh there were 30 folk named Rowe. All were Church of Ireland, so I’d start with it.

The Drumcree and Portadown records are held in PRONI in Belfast. Personal visit required to view them. I don’t think either set is on-line anywhere yet.

Bear in mind that tradition was to marry in the bride’s church after which she’d attend her husband, so the marriage might not be in the same church as the baptisms.

If Portadown is not correct, then you could widen your search to adjacent parishes but there’s quite a few.

https://ulsterhistoricalfoundation.com/getting-started/ulster-civil-parish-maps/county-armagh

[Sessylt]

Birth and death registration didn’t start in Ireland till 1864, non RC marriages 1845, RC marriages 1864. So your family married and were having children long before those dates.  You might be able to find their baptisms and marriage if the records still exist. However those records may well not be on-line.


First thing we need to know was the family denomination. If Church of Ireland (ie Anglican) and Portadown is accurate, you could search the records for Drumcree which start in 1784, and Portadown itself whose records start in 1826 which is possibly when the church opened. If they were of another denomination, let me know and I’ll tell you what records are available. However looking at the 1901 census for Armagh there were 30 folk named Rowe. All were Church of Ireland, so I’d start with it.

The Drumcree and Portadown records are held in PRONI in Belfast. Personal visit required to view them. I don’t think either set is on-line anywhere yet.

Bear in mind that tradition was to marry in the bride’s church after which she’d attend her husband, so the marriage might not be in the same church as the baptisms.

If Portadown is not correct, then you could widen your search to adjacent parishes but there’s quite a few.

https://ulsterhistoricalfoundation.com/getting-started/ulster-civil-parish-maps/county-armagh

Thanks for the information Elwyn. It's pretty clear from the children's and grandchildren's records that they were all Catholic, not CoI; does that make things easier or more difficult?

[Elwyn Soutter]

Helps in the sense that most RC parish records are on-line on various sites such as FindMyPast, Roots Ireland and the National Library. However Drumcree’s RC records don’t start till 1844. Your family were evidently in England by 1841 so you are probably out of luck.

Incidentally re the age rounding down in the 1841 census, that applied to adults but people aged 15 and below were supposed to have their actual ages recorded. Can still be wrong but probably not too far off.

[Sessylt]

Helps in the sense that most RC parish records are on-line on various sites such as FindMyPast, Roots Ireland and the National Library. However Drumcree’s RC records don’t start till 1844. Your family were evidently in England by 1841 so you are probably out of luck.

Incidentally re the age rounding down in the 1841 census, that applied to adults but people aged 15 and below were supposed to have their actual ages recorded. Can still be wrong but probably not too far off.

Do you know where Drumcree's records are hosted? The family actually only appears in 1861, not 1841 or 1851, and the youngest daughter was apparently born in Ireland ca. 1846, so she should still show up in those records. I've assumed it's due to the potato famine or fallout after it, as Cumberland received a huge amount of Irish immigration due to it (to the point Cleator Moor became known as "Little Ireland" and had to build a Catholic church). This could match well with leaving after 1852 but before 1861, and missing the 1851 census.

[aghadowey]

Drumcree R.C. Registers online (free)-
https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0213?locale=en

[Sessylt]

Drumcree R.C. Registers online (free)-
https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0213?locale=en

Thanks, in the end I couldn't find anything 1844-1847 relating to Selina (or anyone else born with the surname Rowe, in fact).

Another problem is that I've never been able to find Catherine Rowe's death: she's in the 1861 (RG09 3952/59 3) and 1871 (RG10 5263/4 1) census, then disappears, but there's no appropriate deaths 1871–1881, unless she died in another parish.

[Elwyn Soutter]

I've assumed it's due to the potato famine or fallout after it, as Cumberland received a huge amount of Irish immigration due to it (to the point Cleator Moor became known as "Little Ireland" and had to build a Catholic church). This could match well with leaving after 1852 but before 1861, and missing the 1851 census.
[/quote]

Ireland has very few natural resources (no oil, coal, iron ore etc) and so did not benefit from the industrial revolution in the 1800s, the way Scotland, England, the US, Canada & Australia did, which created hundreds of thousands of comparatively well-paid new jobs in new industries (coal mining, steel making, railways, ship building etc). So that was a big pull factor. There had also been a huge population explosion in Ireland going up from about 3 million people in 1750 to 8 million in 1830. There simply weren’t jobs for all those people. In much of Ireland the only employment was subsistence farming topped up in Ulster and one or two other areas with a bit of linen weaving. And then the straw that broke the camel’s back, along came the famine, numerous times throughout the 1800s. The worst period was when the potato crop failed almost completely 3 years in a row in the late 1840s, and then partially several more years after that.

Other factors encouraged emigration, eg early mechanisation on farms. With new machines to turn the soil and plant seed, farmers no longer needed an army of agricultural labourers to help on the farm. So those jobs were rapidly disappearing. Likewise mechanisation had led to linen factories being set up in places like Belfast. These made home weaving uneconomic and so also upset the labourer’s family economy. Agriculture was the biggest single employer in Ireland, but it was mostly a barter economy. Few people had any ready cash save what they could make from weaving or any government sponsored work such as building new roads. So when the opportunity arose to get jobs with a regular wage packet, as opposed to a few pence from your father each week, the decision to migrate wasn’t really all that hard to make. So it was as much about economic betterment as anything.

People had been pouring out of Ireland long before the worst of the famine. All the famine did was speed the tide up.

[aghadowey]

I would have been surprised in your Rowe family were Catholic and certainly Elwyn's post does indicate Church of Ireland was more likely but other Protestant denominations are also possible. My Rowe connection has been Methodist for quite a few generations.