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THE HAGGERTY FAMILY OF KILMEEN PARISH,
SOUTHWEST COUNTY CORK, 1767-1792


Transcribed from Haggerty, F.H. (1948). History of the Haggerty Family and Early Irish History Bearing on the Family. (pp. 24, 26, 28-31) [with corrections and comments by Sharon Haggerty, updated October 2004].


Copied from a parchment book, brought from Ireland by James Haggerty (13).


[Ann?] was born April 1767

Elizabeth was born 1768

Mike was born April 17 1770

Willm was born Dec. 18 1771

Tim was born Aug. 4 1773

Mary was born ------ 24th 1775

John was born June 1777

Jane was born January 26 1778

Sarah was born January 14 1781

Jonathan was born December 12 1783

Adam was born February 1 1785

Amelia was born June 1 1787

James was born November 7 1790

George was born June 22 1792


[The following is modified from the text of Florence Haggerty's conclusions about the Haggerty family which immigrated from Ireland to Canada in the first half of the 19th century. Florence's words are in italics; my (Sharon) comments are in normal font. Marriage records I refer to are those listed in the Marriage License Bonds of the Diocese of Cork and Ross (MLB).]


(1) Name not known. [This child may have been called Ann/e. There are baptism records for children of Elizabeth Hagertie (2?) and Charles Bateman in the Rathclaren Parish register. Among the sponsors are Anne, William and Mary Hagerty.]


(2) Eliza. I have reason to believe that Eliza (2) came to Canada with her brother William (4), in 1825. There was an Eliza Haggerty who lived in Talbot, Co. Kent, Village of Blenheim, also a Miss Eliza Haggerty who died and was buried in Wayne, Mich. This may or may not be (2). There is a story that three members of the family of James (13) married three cousins, all of whom were cousins. If this is so, Eliza must have married a man by the name of Stout, and the first theory is wrong. James' daughters Anne and Elizabeth both married men by the name of Stout, and these two men were cousins. His son, John, married a cousin, Elizabeth Haggerty (14.8). If the Stouts were cousins of the Haggerty family, this would be the three couples.

[In 1788 an Elizabeth Hagertie married Charles Bateman in County Cork, Ireland. Their children were baptised in Rathclaren Parish between 1789 and 1805. Elizabeth and Charles emigrated to New Brunswick, probably in the late teens. Several of their children later moved to Caradoc Township, Middlesex County, Ontario. Elizabeth Ann Nagle, who married John Hagerty, was a grand-daughter of Elizabeth and Charles Bateman. Because of the names of the Hagertys who sponsored their children at baptism (see above) I believe that Elizabeth Hagertie Bateman is from this Hagertie family.]


(3) Mike. I have heard that Mike settled somewhere in the U.S.A., but have no trace of the family. [I too have not been able to find any trace of this person. There were no marriages listed in MLB for either a Mike or a Michael Hagertie, suggesting he may not have survived to adulthood.]


(4) William. William came to Canada in 1825, according to the following account of rations given by the government to settlers. It is not likely that two William Haggerty's with families answering the same description as to age and number of children, would come to Canada at that time, so I conclude that this ration record applies to him.

[There was indeed another William Haggerty family. The record FHH referred to here is for William Hegarty, whose household in September 1825 consisted of one man, two women, three children over 7 years of age, and 1 child under 7. By December 1825 this household was headed by "Widow Hegarty". I have discovered that this was a different family. They were among the settlers Peter Robinson brought from Ireland in 1825. The family was from County Kerry and included William, Catherine and their children.

Documents copied for me by Sherman Gauley, a descendant of Martha Gawley's brother, indicate that the Gawley family came from Ireland in 1823. There seems no doubt that the Gawleys and William came from Ireland on the same boat. I believe 1823 is probably when William and his children arrived from Ireland.

A book on the Beamish family of Cork, Ireland (Beamish, 1950) includes a marriage record for Elizabeth Beamish to William Hegarty at Drimoleague, Cork August 10, 1803. I believe this to be the record of our William and Elizabeth. This marriage date suggests that William and Elizabeth must have had other children before John. These children must have either died young or remained in Ireland.]

William's wife, Elizabeth Beamish, died in Ireland when her fourth child was born. There is a story that their son John (4.1) often told, which is quite intriguing [FHH's husband, George, grew up with his grandfather, John, a member of the household; when John died George was 22 years old, so he would have remembered his grandfather well]. [John] told how his father raised the baby, who slept with him, and how the child's mother came back each night and tucked the baby in bed, and admonished William to take good care of him. He also told how, as William rode to town on Saturday nights to get the provisions for the family, she would come and get on horseback behind William, and ride till they came to the Shannon River [could not have been the Shannon, but may have been the Argideen River], when she would slip off and disappear, not being able to cross water. One night William tried to keep her by force, but she got away from him. That night, she came to tuck the baby in as usual, but told him he did very wrong trying to hold her, and if it happened again, her companions would kill him. Then she disappeared, and did not come back any more.

. . . Neither can I find anyone who know anything definite about him [William], except that he is buried in the St. Thomas Anglican Churchyard in Belleville, Ont., and that his daughter, Mary, is buried in the same grave, at her request. Here is a partial list of the people who came out on the same boat with William and his family: Jonathan (10), and his wife, Sarah Morley and what family they had, one of whom, James, married William's daughter Mary; Tom Sceuse; Isaac Ingram; Tom Beamish, brother-in-law of William; Margaret Gawley, who later married William's son, John (4.1); her parents, two brothers, John and James, and a sister. Margaret Gawley's mother died crossing in an open boat. [Family stories indicate that James Sherman (brother-in-law of Andrew Gawley) as well as Thomas Beamish (brother-in-law of William) also arrived on the same ship as the Haggertys.] Jane Haggerty (4.1.13) often told me with a shudder, that sharks followed the boat for days after her grandmother's death, and it was only compulsion that made them bury her at sea, which they did after dark. These settlers landed at Montreal, P.Q.

I have heard a confusing story about Mary (4.2) and her father. I think it must have been her husband's father. However, the story is alright. Mary was alone a lot at nights as well as days, as her young husband had to be away to earn a livelihood for them and their infant daughter. The house had no doors on it to keep out prowling wolves. A quilt hung across the opening, served as a door. Her father (or father-in-law [i.e., Jonathan (10)]) one evening wanted her to come with him, but she would not. She said she had a gun and could shoot. He laughed and said "How good?" He had a little dog that was his constant companion, and which was at the edge of the clearing at the time. She said, "Good enough to kill your little dog," to which he replied that if she could shoot his dog at that distance, she had his permission to do so. And she did. [FHH believed that William had died in 1825, several years before Mary was married, and that may be why she thought it must have been the father-in-law whose little dog was shot. It is now certain that William lived until 1848, and hence could well have been the owner of the poor little dog.]


(5) Tim. Timothy Haggerty settled in Marlborough township, Ont., November 2, 1825. (Land book N. p. 283). I have not been able to compare data with any descendants of this man. Timothy Haggerty, Toronto, claims to be a descendant, but he was not willing to co-operate. He said our religion was different, and we do not spell our name the same. Nevertheless, I am still of the opinion that this Timothy Haggerty is (5).


(6) Mary. Mary married a Tanner [William]. It is believed that he died in Ireland, as none of his descendants now living, have ever heard anything of him. Mary was blind the last years of her life and I have heard stories of childish pranks played on her by her grandchildren or great grandchildren, when they were sent with her to be her eyes. She had three sons and no daughters, and spent her declining years with her son, Edward. [It is now known that Mary also had three daughters who remained in Ireland. Mary's son William was a baptism sponsor in Hastings County Ontario in September 1843, so may have come to Canada earlier than some of his brothers. The Tanners had believed that their family came in 1852.]


(7) John. There was a John Haggerty, whom I presume is (7), who was a gunner in the Royal Artillery. He came to Canada and settled in Bathurst township (the part of Ontario south of the Ottawa River and extending west to about Peterborough and down to Lake Ontario) June 30, 1820. (Land book L. p. 45). I have no trace of his descendants. [This seems unlikely to me, as there is no evidence of any interaction between this John and others in the family. There is a Kilmeen parish record of a marriage 28 February 1828 between a John Hagertie of Kanturk and Mary Hawkins of Garough. Garough is a townland in Kilmeen parish. John and Mary Hagertie of Garough had a son George, christened at Kilmeen 22 February, 1829. This may have been our John.  There was a Michael Hegarty living in Garough in 2002. He was quite elderly at that time.]


(8) Jane. Jane married Richard Forbes, and lived in Mercer Co., Penn. They had two sons, Dick and George, both married. Dick Jr. had two sons and George was the father of quite a large family. [Jane actually married James Boyd. Their marriage is recorded in the MLB in 1800. Their daughter Dorothea was baptised at Kilmeen in 1816. James and Jane Boyd immigrated from Cork in 1821, settling in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. Jane and James Boyd lived near Jane's sister Sarah Forbes and her brother George according to the 1850 census. I have been able to contact some descendants of Jane and James and have been able to collect quite a bit of information on this branch of the family.]


(9) Sarah. Sarah (Sally) Haggerty married a man by the name of Boyd. They had at least one son, Joe, who married and had a family. Her descendants are in U.S.A., but I have no record of them. [Sarah married George Forbes. I have been in contact with descendants of two of their daughters, Alice and Elizabeth, who married Thomas and William Sweesy, respectively and their son Richard. This family also settled in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. George died before the 1850 census, at which time Sarah was living with her son Richard.]


(10) Jonathan. Jonathan married Sarah Morley, in Ireland, and with their family, came to Canada on the same boat as his brother William. They settled on lot 13, con. 4, Huntingdon, Ont., and raised a large family. They both rest in the St. Thomas Churchyard, Belleville, Ont. There are not many of his descendants still in that part of the country. Jonathan was appointed Overseer of Highways for the Township of Huntingdon, for the year 1836.


(11) Adam. I have no trace whatever of Adam or any of his descendants. [There were a number of marriages in the MLB for Adam Hagertys. One Adam married Susannah Kingston in 1823 in the city of Cork. The IGI (www.familysearch.org) record of this family indicates Adam and Susannah married 30 January 1823 and lists the following children: James, born/baptised 1822; Samuel Stanley 1823; Marmaduke 1829: Richard George 1830; Adam 1832; and Henry 1834; Each of the first five sons is listed twice: once as being baptised in Cork and once in Wexford. Henry is only listed in Wexford. Perhaps the family moved to Wexford before Henry was born. Susannah Kingston's parents were Samuel Kingston and Ann Stanley. They were married in Murragh parish, which is now served by the same rector as Kilmeen--they are only a few miles apart. I was recently contacted by a descendant of Adam and Susannah. Adam and Susanna immigrated to Australia, along with most of Susanna's family. According to Adam's death record he was been born about 1800. At one time I thought he might have been a member of this family, but the ages do not match. It now appears more likely that he could have been a cousin of our family. There were both a James and an Adam Haggertie in Kilmeen in 1794--see item from Cork newspaper elsewhere. Upon reviewing numerous parish registers from southwest Cork I discovered that the name Adam was exceedingly rare at that time. No Church of Ireland registers recorded the name for any family except Hagerties.]


(12) Amelia. Amelia married John Webb. I do not know anything about them. There are two marriages between the Haggerty family and the Webb family in Hastings Co., Ont., in the older generation. These may or may not be the same family. Some of them are now in U.S.A. She had a granddaughter who married a man by the name of John Moon, so I have been told. [Amelia Hagertie of Kildee married George Webb June 24, 1824 in Kilmeen Parish, Cork. George was said to be from "Milane," a township in Fanlobbus parish (area around town of Dunmanway, a few miles northwest of Kilmeen). There were no baptisms recorded for their children, so they evidently lived elsewhere (perhaps Milane) before immigrating to Mercer County Pennsylvania in 1822. There are census records for both Webbs and Moons in 19th century Hastings County that may be related to these Mercer County families.]


(13) James. James married Anne Morley, a sister of Sarah Morley(1), and came to Canada in 1827 bringing with him a family of seven children, and a nephew, William Lannon. He settled on part of Lot 3, Con. 4, Huntingdon Tp., Ont. He and his wife lie at rest in the burying ground on a little wooded knoll on the homestead, along with a number of other good old pioneers. Today there are few stones to mark their resting place, but the knoll is still well preserved. James and his wife had a family of eleven children, but only seven lived to maturity. One wonders if the hardships of pioneer life took its toll.


(14) George. George married Mary Shannon. They raised a large family, who nearly all went to Penn., as did George and his wife. At least one daughter, Martha, remained in Canada. She married John Stout and is buried in St. Thomas Churchyard, Belleville, Ont. [Several of George and Mary's children were baptised in Kilmeen parish before they left Ireland. George arrived in the USA in 1827, as revealed in the US naturalization records. It appears he registered an intent to be come naturalized, but never actually did so. I have found records for George and Mary Haggertie and a number of their descendants in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, and have met several of this family.]


Known descendants of several of these Haggerties are posted on the Internet through the RootsWeb WorldConnect database.


1. A third Morley sister, Susannah, married John Justice, 20 June 1830 in Ballymodan parish (Bandon), County Cork. The parish register indicated that both were  residents of the parish. Susannah and John Justice also settled in Huntingdon Twp., on property adjacent to the James Haggertie farm.