The O’Connell-Kennedy Family from County Cork, Ireland

by Bob Gray, November 20107

Introduction

This page builds on my Researching My Mother’s Irish Roots page and focuses on the O’Connell-Kennedy family in County Cork, Ireland. Johanna Kennedy and Richard O’Connell had eight children when they immigrated to New York in the early 1870s. Although their records indicate some of the family came to New York as early as 1865, the earliest census record found for the family was the 1880 Census. The 1880 immigration date is consistent with their death certificate records shown below. Other than their cause of death, the records did not provide any new information, such as the names of their parents.

Death certificates from the Department of Health, Buffalo, New York. Richard O’Connell’s on the left and Johanna Kennedy O’Connell’s on the right. Click on a record to enlarge.

As discussed in Researching My Mother’s Irish Roots, I was able to find baptism records for all of Richard and Johanna’s children via the RootsIreland.org web site. Subsequent research indicated an error in my efforts to identify the parents of Johanna Kennedy and Richard O’Connell as I missed the fact that there are gaps in the Roman Catholic baptism records around the time of their birth. The baptism records for the parish of interest, Castlemagner, start with May 1832. This corresponds with a change in the parish priest. This misunderstanding of the records resulted in incorrect relationships. In addition, no marriage record could be found for Richard and Johanna. Examination of the marriage records at the National Library of Ireland shows there is a gap of about one year in the marriage record book for Castlemagner in 1846 which is the estimated year of their marriage. This page is my second attempt at researching the family’s time in Ireland before coming to the United States with the goal of learning as much as possible from the records that exist.

The baptism records for Richard and Johanna’s children were all from the Roman Catholic parish of Castlemagner. The civil parish of Castlemagner appears to have boundaries that are similar to the Roman Catholic parish, but differences may exist. Castlemagner Parish lies to the east of the town of Kanturk which is in northern part of the County of Cork. The map of Kanturk below is from the Ordnance Survey Ireland’s GeoHive web portal. Ordnance Survey maps were included with the Griffith Valuation collected in the 1840s, but this map is a modern version. Note the labels for Bluepool and Greenane to the right of Kanturk. This is where I thought the O’Connell-Kennedy family lived based on their children’s baptism records. The street names on either side of the Kanturk label are Bluepool Upper and Bluepool Lower. A Greenane Street Lower is seen on the other side of the river near the Bluepool label. Although not labeled, the street heading north past the Greenane label is Greenane Street Upper. There was also an Upper Bluepool Lane off Bluepool Upper near the intersection with Market Place on the map below. This resulted in research to determine if the information listed in their children’s baptism records was for townlands or streets. In the end, I became convinced that they were references to the townlands, not the streets.

The baptism records for the children are summarized below. The names of their sponsors are included as they may have been other family members or neighbors. As shown in the table, the family’s address was given as Bluepool for the first six children and then Greenane for the last two children. The map above shows Bluepool and Greenane are areas to the east and north of the city of Kanturk. I started this investigation looking at the Griffith’s Valuation records for the Bluepool area.

Baptism records for the children of Johanna Kennedy and Richard O’Connell at Castlemagner Parish, County Cork, Ireland.

Given Name	Baptism Date	Address	Sponsor 1	Sponsor 2
John H	23 Aug 1847	Bluepool	John Kennedy	Ellen Kennedy
Margaret	1 Jul 1849	Bluepool	Patrick Brien	Mary Connor
Edward D	17 Aug 1851	Bluepool	Daniel Connell	Mary Connell
Mary	28 May 1854	Bluepool	Thomas Doyle	Johanna Hickey
Johanna	29 Oct 1859	Bluepool	William Connell	Ellen McCarthy
Ellen	29 Nov 1863	Bluepool	John Shine	Bridget Murphy
William J	8 Sep 1867	Greenane	Richard Brian	Johanna Brian
James	25 Dec 1870	Greenane	William Browne	Emily O Connell

Griffith’s Valuation Records

As discussed in The O’Brien-Kelly Family from County Carlow, Ireland, I have learned a lot about the Griffith Valuation records which were collected in the 1840 to 1850 time period. I looked in the Griffith Valuation records at Ask About Ireland for O’Connells/Connells living in the Bluepool area. The result is shown in the table below. There are three listings of O’Connells as occupiers under the Bluepool townland (outlined in red), one for David and two for James. However, these listings indicate that the properties are only land without houses. James and David are identified as the Immediate Lessors of properties with houses, but they are occupied by others.

I then spent some time looking at other records for Kanturk and in the processes realized that the listing below the ones outlined in red are also for Bluepool. It appears that the absence of an (Ord. S #) indicates that the listing for Town of Kanturk (Part of.) are also Bluepool. Another clue to this is the fact that the properties under Town of Kanturk are all listed as number five on the map reference and the ones under Bluepool are one to four. The Town of Kanturk portion of the Griffith’s Valuation for Bluepool is outlined in the Blue. The last few entries are provided in the next table.

The table below recreates the table above and highlights the occupiers with surnames of the sponsors identified in the baptism table above. It is noted that even with the inclusion of the properties in the Town of Kanturk, none of the properties occupied by an O’Connell includes a house. There is another property occupied by others that has a house and an O’Connell is identified as the immediate lessor, but none where the occupant is an O’Connell. There is a house occupied by an Ellen Kennedy and she also is the immediate lessor of another property with a house. The Griffith’s Valuation for County Cork was published in 1853 and the information in it was collected over a few years prior to that. Richard and Johanna’s first three children were baptized during this same time period. If in fact they were living in the Bluepool area and not on one of the streets in Kanturk with Bluepool in its name, then the logical assumption is that they were living at the house occupied by Ellen Kennedy. Therefore, it seems likely that Ellen Kennedy was Johanna’s mother.

The table below also includes the area associated with each property. The units are acres, roods, and perches. The conversion between them is 1 acre equals 4 rood equals 160 perches. The total area in the table below is slightly less than the total in Griffith’s Valuation record above as it does not include the land under buildings or the waste.

Griffith’s Survey, Castlemagner Parish, Bluepool, Pages 3 & 4. Surnames of interest highlighted in blue.

Subsection	House Ref	Occupiers	Immediate Lessors	Description	Area
Subsection	House Ref	Occupiers	Immediate Lessors	Description	A.	R.	P.
1		David O’Connell	John Collins	Land	25	1	0
1	a	Daniel Horgan	David O’Connell	House
2		Daniel Harding	John Collins	Land	6	0	23
2	a	John Smith	Elizabeth Harding	House
3		James O’Connell	David O’Connell	Land	1	1	20
4		James O’Connell	John Collins	Land	13	3	25
	a	James Egan	James O’Connell	House
	b	Honora Mullane	James O’Connell	House
5	1	Dennis Brien	John Collins	House & garden			23
	2	William Kelleher	Mary Browne	House
	3	Mary Browne	John Collins	House & garden			10
	4	John Collins	_ Chatterton	Garden			30
	5	Margaret Dorgan	John Collins	House & garden			10
	6	Ellen Kennedy	John Collins	House & garden			14
	7	John Galvin	Ellen Kennedy	House & yard
	8	John Browne	John Collins	House & garden			10
	9	Unoccupied	John Browne	House
	10	Unoccupied	Timothy Connor	House
	11	Timothy Connor	John Collins	House & garden			12
	12	Peter Thornhill	David Sheehan	House
	13 & 14			Ruins
	15	David Sheehan	John Collins	House & garden			14
	16	David Cahill	John Collins	House & garden			11
	17	Garrett Barry	John Collins	House
	18	Jeremiah Leahy	John Collins	House & garden			11
	19	Denis Keeffe	Jeremiah Leahy	House & yard
	20	Edward Lynch	John Collins	House & garden			25
	21	John Lynch	John Collins	House
	22	William Lynch	James O’Connell	House
	23	James O’Connell	John Collins	Land		3	27
				Total Land	48	3	4

When I looked at the Ordnance Survey map for Bluepool at the Ask About Ireland site, I only found four subsections for Bluepool. Examination of alternate versions of the map at Ask About Ireland indicated that area 5 had been omitted from the first map. Area 5 has been added to the map below (look around the B in Bluepool). However, there are no numbered properties indicated in Area 5 on this map or a more detailed one for the Town of Kanturk. It appears that the map below is either from a different time or a companion map is missing. Modern Google maps indicate the area is now a commercial facility of some sort and there are no houses present. After some false starts looking at Connells in other parts of Kanturk, I ended up investigating the process used to develop the published Griffith’s Valuation records as discussed in the next section.

Ordnance Survey map of Kanturk and Bluepool. Area 5 for Bluepool has been added.

I later found the map for Bluepool at the Kanturk website. The map below shows 22 numbered properties. The Griffith's Valuation records show 23 properties, so one is missing. Ellen Kennedy is identified as the occupier of property number 6 and the immediate lessor for property number 7.

Ordnance Survey map of Bluepool. Ellen Kennedy lived at house number 6.

Process of developing the published Griffith’s Valuation records

Publishing the Primary Valuation of Tenements or Griffith’s Valuation took several years to acquire the information and compile it in the form seen in the above pages for Bluepool. The National Archives of Ireland provides details of the process used in developing the valuation records. According to the National Archives of Ireland site, there were four distinct kinds of books involved as follows:

Field Books – manuscript books that record the information required for the valuation of agricultural land. The field books covered rural areas and date between 1830 and the mid-1850s.

House Books - manuscript books in which information on houses and buildings is recorded. The books include houses and buildings situated in rural areas and in cities, towns and villages. They date between 1833 and the mid-1850s and were made as the other valuation work was carried out, county by county.

Tenure Books - a series of manuscript notebooks in which information required for the Tenement Valuation was compiled. The Tenure Books are also known as Perambulation Books, as the staff ‘perambulated’ or walked around the boundaries of the tenements. The Tenure Books were made between 1846 and 1858, under the Acts of 1846 and 1852, and cover rural areas and some towns.

Quarto Books - a series of manuscript books relating to the valuation of houses and buildings in towns. The Quarto Books date between 1839 and 1851, and the work took place at various dates as part of the valuation of each county.

Some of these books used printed forms and the information was hand written by the valuators, while others were completely hand-written notebooks. The information in the printed Griffith’s Valuation documents came from one or more of these books. Not all of the information in the books necessarily end up in the printed documents.

The search portal at the National Archives of Ireland includes two more types of books, Rent and Survey, but neither appear for Bluepool. The books that appear for Ellen Kennedy, County Cork, Townland of Bluepool are House and Quarto books as shown in the screen shot below. It is noted that there are two entries for a Quarto Book dated 1848 and one entry for a House Book dated 1849.

Search results for Ellen Kennedy at the National Archives of Ireland site for Valuation Office Books.

Starting with the Quarto Book entries from 1848, Ellen Kennedy appears on pages 61 and 62 of one of the books as shown below. Portions of the pages appear to have been prepared prior to the actual valuation as there are several entries that have been crossed out and new information added. Of most interest is the fact that the occupier of the property associated with Ellen Kennedy in the printed Tenement Valuation book was initially identified as being Edward Kennedy. Edward is crossed out and Ellen is written over it. The significance of this is clarified by the entry for Ellen Kennedy in the 1849 House Book.

Quarto Book pages for Ellen Kennedy, Bluepool, June 14, 1848. Click on page to expand.

Other notations on the first page above indicate that the land originally associated with the property was changed to be occupied by James O’Connell as property number 23. The area of the land associated with a property is listed in the column titled Area and is given in Acres, Roods, and Perches. Property number 23 is listed as being 3 roods and 27 perches in area which is equal to 40,020 square feet or almost an acre. The National Archives of Ireland site cautions that the areas may be given in Irish or plantation units which are a factor of 1.6 larger than a standard acre. The change in occupier of the land may have been associated with Ellen assuming occupation of the house instead of Edward.

The page on the left below is identified as being from a House Book dated 14 Feb. 1849 as this date appears at the top right corner of the page. The page on the right is identified as being from a House Book dated September 24, 1847 in the bottom right corner of the page. However, the pages are consecutively numbered, page 1 on the left and page 2 on the right, as are the properties. In fact, comparing the occupiers with the Griffith’s Valuation record shown above for Bluepool in 1852, there is little doubt that these two pages are from the same book. Added confirmation is the fact that their digital file names are also consecutive.

House Book page for Ellen Kennedy, Bluepool, dated February 14, 1849 (left) and the following page dated September 24, 1847 (right) Click on page to expand.

The entry for Ellen Kennedy in the House Book above has not one, but two crossed out given names, Edward and John, with Ellen’s name written above. Therefore, it is assumed that sometime prior to September 24, 1847, the occupier of property number six was John Kennedy. On September 24, 1847, John’s name was crossed out and Edward’s was added. This would indicate that John Kennedy stopped occupying the property sometime before September 24, 1847 and Edward Kennedy assumed occupation of the property. The Quarto Book entry from June 14, 1848 indicates that Edward is no longer living at Number six and Ellen Kennedy has now assumed occupation of the property. On February 14, 1849, the House Book was updated again to show Ellen Kennedy as the occupier of the property. This assumes that each book was populated with existing information prior to the actual on-site valuations. The House Book probably used information from previous valuations as a starting point. The National Archives of Ireland’s page on House Books states the following:

The valuation work was carried out from 1830 under the Townland Valuation. This was replaced in 1852 by the Tenement Valuation, following partial measures introduced from 1844. Houses were included in the valuation from the beginning, and a number of changes were made to the rules concerning buildings to be valued, and therefore recorded in the documents. Between 1831 and 1836, only houses over £3 were valued. In 1836, the threshold for valuation was raised to £5. As the vast majority of houses in rural areas were below the threshold, they were not listed, and their occupiers were not named before the introduction in 1844 of the Tenement Valuation, under which all houses were valued. Houses in towns were considered more valuable than rural houses. Many were above the threshold from the beginning and were therefore recorded and their occupiers named.

which indicates there may have been earlier versions of the House Book for Bluepool. If there were, they do not appear to have survived or at least have not been digitized, as they do not appear in the search results. It also seems feasible that the same book was filled out at an earlier date and then updated in 1847 and 1849. The remainder of the book was examined to see if any other dates appear on the pages. There are 40 pages in all and the dates at the end of each townland record are all for 1847 except the first page which has the 1849 date. The last page has a note about the total being calculated on February 11, 1848, which would be just before the Quarto Book was filled out. A general search for House Books in County Cork resulted in at least one book as early as 1829. The 1829 book used the same printed form as the one for Bluepool above. The book from 1829 had a date written in pencil on the first page and the others were undated. The book also had a date of 1849 indicating it had been updated then. This finding supports the idea that the House Book for Bluepool was probably first filled in sometime between 1829 and 1847. The book was then updated in 1847 and 1849. The absence of an earlier date is troubling but given the condition of the book and the fact that another book only had one penciled in date, it is not taken as a serious issue. In addition, examination of the entry for John, Edward, and Ellen Kennedy below indicates they were done by different hands. The Es in Edward and Ellen are clearly different and the entry for John Kennedy is completely different from the Edward and Ellen.

House Book entry for John, Edward, and Ellen Kennedy, Bluepool, County Cork.

The Quatro Book probably used the September 24, 1847 version of the House Book to populate its records prior to the on-site valuations. The February 14, 1849 version of the House Book would have been updated with the changes documented in the Quatro Book from June 14, 1848 prior to the on-site valuations.

The House Book includes some information about property number six that does not appear in the printed Tenement Valuation. The whole point of performing the Tenement Valuation was to determine how much tax should be levied on the occupiers or immediate lessors of each property. The last three columns of the Griffith’s Valuation tables presented above are the Net Annual Value for the land, the buildings, and the sum of the two or the total Net Annual Value. Determination of the Net Annual Value of the land was based on the amount of land and its use. The land associated with property number six is given as 14 perches which is 4,811 square feet or about 1/12^th of an acre. This area is just for the garden as there is an entry in the Griffith’s Valuation for "Land under houses, yards, and streets.”

The Net Annual Value for buildings was based on the type of building (e.g. house, office, barn), its condition, and its size. The printed Griffith’s Valuation tables only identify the type of building(s) and the Net Annual Value. The other information needed to determine the Net Annual Value is contained in the House Book. The entry for Ellen Kennedy in the House Book is provided in the table below.

House Book entry for Ellen Kennedy, Bluepool, County Cork, February 14, 1849.

Name & Description

Quality Letter

Length

Breadth

Height

Number of Measures

Rate per Measure

Amount

£.

6 ~~Edward~~ Ellen

7 ~~John~~ Kennedy House

27.6

18.0

6.0

The National Archives of Ireland explains the Quality Letter 3B as follows:

Description of House: 3 = Thatched house with stone walls with mud or puddle mortar; dry stone walls pointed or mud walls of the best kind.

Condition of House: B = Medium, slightly decayed, but in good repair.

The dimensions are given in feet and inches, so the house is 27 feet 6 inches in length, 18 feet in breadth, and only 6 feet high[i]. The number of measures is the area of the building in square feet divided by 10. The house is 490 square feet. The Net Annual Value is calculated from the Number of Measures and the Rate per Measure and it appears that the Rate per Measure is in pence (d.) as the result of 245 converts to one pound and five pence as there were 240 pence to a pound. The published Net Annual Value of the building is somewhat higher which may have come from a rate change that occurred after the House Book data were collected.

Prior to the Griffith’s Valuations, the occupiers of agricultural holdings over one acre had to pay tithes to the Church of Ireland. The amount to be paid was recorded in Tithe Applotment books. The next section examines these records.

Tithe Applotment Books

A survey of the value of property was carried out from 1823 to 1838 to determine how much tithe each landholder would pay. The Tithe Applotment Books record the results of the survey. The National Archives of Ireland provide the records on-line. The search provided two sets of records for Bluepool, one identified as being from 1826 and the second undated.

The 1826 records appear to be for Upper Bluepool Street in Kanturk, not the townland of Bluepool. The record display identified the field where Bluepool appears in the 1826 records as “Town or Street,” while the search field says “City or Town.” The 1826 records show 55 occupants which is more than twice the number identified in the later Griffith’s Valuation records. A comparison of surnames in the 1826 tithe record identified as Bluepool indicates it was probably for Upper Bluepool Street in Kanturk. This is supported by the fact that 1826 tithe record is identified as being part of the Parish of Clonfert, not Castlemagner. Only the part of the Town of Kanturk associated with Bluepool is in the Castlemagner Parish, the rest is in Clonfert Parish. No 1826 records for the townland of Bluepool could be found.

The beginning of the digital record of the tight record indicates there are two books and identifies them as being for 1834. The surveys were conducted by two assessors, and the type information collected by each is similar but not exact. At the beginning of the book, there is a long legal description of who will receive the tithes and how they were calculated. The tithes were based on the amount of arable land and the crop grown. It states that wheat was the common crop grown in Bluepool and gives its average price for per barrel. The Bluepool pages from one of the books for Bluepool are shown below.

Tithe Applotment Book record for Bluepool, County Cork, c. 1834. Click on a page to expand.

The names of occupiers and the description of their land are provided in the following table. It is noted that many of these properties were far less than an acre, so the tithes seem to have been levied on anyone with arable land. Comparison of the table below with the Griffith’s Valuation table above shows there are only a few names in common between them and that the total areas are different. The occupiers in common (Margaret Dorgan, Timothy Connor, Jeremiah Leahy, and Edward Lynch) have land amounts that are close, but not exact. Per the findings of the previous section, it is known that the land shown for John Kennedy in the tithe record was transferred to James O’Connell in 1848.

Tithe Applotment Records, Bluepool, County Cork, c. 1834 listed in the pages above.

No.	Name of Occupiers	Quantity in Detail			Quality
No.	Name of Occupiers	A.	R.	P.	Quality
197	John Browne	1			1^st
198	John Gregg		3		1^st
199	Calyph Coakly	1	3	7	1^st
200	William Buckly	1	2	16	1^st
201	Daniel Ahern	1	2	31	1^st
202	Widow Connell	1	2	26	1^st
203	Jas Holey & Webb	1	1	19	1^st
204	Timothy Tuohill		3	20	1^st
205	Peter Falvey	2	2	29	1^st
206	Thomas Morgan	2	3	13	1^st
207	William Keating	1	1		1^st
208	Daniel Ahern	3	2		1^st
209	Jeremiah Hickey		3	16	1^st
210	Phil Morgan	2	2	26	1^st
210	Maurice Quinlan	2	2	26	1^st
211	John Kenely	1	1	26	1^st
212	Philip Morgan	1		23	1^st
213	John Kennedy		3	20	1^st
214	Michael Browne		2	20	1^st
215	Edmond Lynch			12	1^st
216	Jeremiah Leahy			12	1^st
217	David Sheehan			12	1^st
218	Patrick Sullivan			12	1^st
219	Timothy Connor			12	1^st
220	John Browne			12	1^st
221	Peggy Dorgan			12	1^st
Total Land		29	0	16

There must have been a consolidation of property in the period from 1834 to 1854 as the areas of land occupied by David O’Connell, James O’Connell, and Daniel Harding are much larger than any of the properties identified in the table above. The total land is greater in 1854 than in 1834 which cannot be explained. However, it is known that the 1854 Griffith’s Valuation included pasture land as well as arable land while the 1834 tithe valuation probably did not include pasture land as it was based on the average price of a barrel of wheat. This consolidation indicates that most of the occupiers have given up their larger tracts of arable land in favor of smaller gardens. The majority of the land is under the control of David and James O’Connell in 1854 but their names do not appear in the 1834 tithe record. There is an entry for Widow Connell in the tithe records. She most likely was Richard’s mother and, if this is true, then Richard’s father must have died sometime prior to 1834. The relationship between David and James O’Connell and Widow Connell cannot be determined but it is known that Richard had at least one brother as his niece, Johanna O’Connell, was staying with him in Buffalo, New York when she died. There are Griffith’s Valuation records for a David Connell who occupied fa house and small garden on Upper Bluepool Street in Kanturk, and a James Connell who occupied a house and garden on Lower Bluepool Street in Kanturk.

Conclusion

This research demonstrated the importance of tracing information back to its original source whenever possible. Much of the new information about the O’Connell-Kennedy family in Ireland came not from published records but rather from the hand written notebooks used to collect the information used in the published records. Due to the loss of the census information from the mid-1800s, this research examined census substitutes. Previous research had examined the Griffith’s Valuation records but not the level of detail presented here. In addition to the printed valuation, the note books associated with the valuation were examined and found to provide addition information about the family.

The objective of this research was to learn more about the O’Connell-Kennedy family during their time in Ireland. No new records explicitly for Richard O’Connell or Johanna Kennedy were found. Starting with the information previously found, their children’s baptism records, the research focused on other available information for the townland indicated in those records, Bluepool, County Cork. The following is a summary of the findings of this research:

· Richard O’Connell and Johanna Kennedy lived in Bluepool, County Cork in houses at the end of Lower Greenane Street. They most likely were born and raised there as there is evidence of their families being on this street as early as 1834.

· Richard’s father died sometime before 1834 as Richard’s mother is listed as Widow Connell in the 1834 tithe records. Richard was born in 1827, yielding a small range for his father’s death. Richard’s father’s name was probably John based on the name of Richard and Johanna’s first son.

· Richard’s mother died sometime between 1834 and the first collection of information for the Griffith’s Valuation. The Griffith’s Valuation for County Cork was published in 1854 but the information was collected at least as early as 1847 and his mother is not listed.

· Johanna Kennedy’s mother’s given name was Ellen. This is based on the Griffith’s Valuation record showing an Ellen Kennedy living in Bluepool in 1854. It is assumed that Richard and Johanna lived with her mother until they moved to Greenane sometime between 1863 and 1867. Ellen Kennedy most likely died in this same time period, prompting their move to Greenane.

· Edward Kennedy was Johanna’s father. Based on notes in the House Book and Quarto Book for Bluepool, Edward died sometime between September 24, 1847 and June 14, 1848. Support for this comes from the given name of Richard and Johanna’s second son, Edward. The naming tradition at the time was to name the second son after the maternal grandfather.

· John Kennedy was Edward Kennedy’s father. John died sometime between the first collection of information in the House book and 1847. He is listed in the 1834 tithe records and his name is crossed out and replaced with Edward’s in the 1847 update of the House Book for Bluepool. The initial date for the House Book is unknown but it had to be after 1834 and before 1847.

· John Kennedy, Edward Kennedy, and Richard O’Connell’s father had small farms and their crop was wheat based on the tithe records. Richard O’Connell probably was not a farmer as there was only a small garden listed for the property occupied by Ellen Kennedy.

· Ellen Kennedy’s house was probably built around 1800 and was a stone structure with a thatched roof. The house was 28.5 feet by 18 feet and the walls were 6 feet high. The house was about 490 square feet. It most likely had a large center room with a hearth and bedrooms on either side. There may have been sleeping areas under the eaves over the bedroom areas. At a minimum, this house would have been occupied by Ellen Kennedy, Richard and Johanna O’Connell and their six children.

· Johanna Kennedy probably had a brother named John and either a sister or sister-in-law named Ellen based on their first son’s baptism record.

· Richard may have had brothers named James and David based on the Griffith’s Valuation records for Bluepool. James and David O’Connell were farmers occupying some 40 acres of land between them. They most likely grew wheat and also raised cows as some of the land was pasture, not arable land, based on a comparison of the tithe and Griffith’s Valuation records. James and David lived in Kanturk, not Bluepool.

As demonstrated by my previous effort, these findings are subject to change. However, they provide a platform for future research which may either prove of discredit these results.

One area of future research on the O’Connell-Kennedy family is finding records for the potential siblings of Richard (James and David O’Connell) and Johanna (John and Ellen Kennedy). There are several other O’Connells/Connells listed in the Griffith’s Valuation and tithe records for Kanturk. In addition, the Cork Genealogy Organizations web page for Castlemagner Parish identifies several other census substitutes including donors for the Connell Tribute around 1843 and Castlemagner-born soldiers discharged prior to 1853. Information about the actual owner of the land farmed by Richard and Johanna’s parents will be sought as there may be estate records.

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