Just realised the importance of defining a civil parish from a Roman Catholic parish.  The latter tends to be smaller and the former is equivalent  of non RC parish and bigger.  So same townland can be in two 'different' parishes yet be same field!

Titanic victims

My late father in law told me 30 years ago of two neighbours who perished in the Titanic.  I have been disappointed not to be able to find any corroboration of this story.  I have checked the census for 1911 for the locality, the list of passengers even looked in the local graveyard but nothing to be found.  I thought I had enough information to identify them but so far no luck.

Weekly digest from Boards

There is a forum devoted to genealogy in Boards.ie.  I get a weekly digest of postings to same, usually arrives over Sunday night.  Always something of interest.

This is Titanic anniversary week.  It reminds me of the story my father in law told of two girls that were neighbours of his that perished in the disaster.  Some family member suggested a family name but I could not find two girls that fitted in the passenger list or in the 1911 census for area that they lived in.  One of the threads to be teased out  and to add to family tree.  A small detail like this adds life to a family story.

I later researched this story some more and found the girls had perished on a ship that went down in Carlingford Lough.

"Rose Anne Maguire aged 25 yrs and her sister Margaret Alice (Maggie) age 19 years.  Their family home was two plots along from the Burns cottage on Aghoo.  The parents were Philip and Mary Marguire and they had 10 children by 1911 when there were four of them living with them.   The older girl had been working in Scotland but came home to collect her young sister to take her to America."

It was a ferry, SS Connemara, out of Co Down en route to Holyhead and went down with all drowned when a coal boat hit them in rough weather.  It was Nov 3 rd 1916 at night with low lighting on ships due to u boats and only 80 odd passengers on the ferry tho capacity for 800.   All bar one non swimmer drowned on other boat also.   I checked out details with BMD and census and all correct.  The girls used help out with his mother and lived two farms over. "

Just spend a weekend rummaging about in old graveyards relating to husband's side of the family.  I was surprised to see many new replacement gravestones on very old graves.  Great to have digital camera and spare batteries to record details.  Sunday morning good time also as was able to go inside church that would otherwise be locked... sign of the times sadly.