P43/236 Research journey

by Caoilinn Gleeson, 2024/25 student

When I first received my documents in the Special Collections and Archives, I made a list of every name and placename that I transcribed. As ‘Banteer’ was the most legible to me at the beginning, I looked it up on logainm.ie and placed it in the Barony of Dunhallow, Clonmeen.

My next line of research was figuring out who ‘Lord Lismore’ was, which I simply typed into google and was met with the Wikipedia page of ‘Viscount Lismore of Shanbally’. From there, I was able to click the link of ‘Lismore Shanbally’ on thepeerage.com  and found not only his biographical dates, but also information on his family and titles. As his father held a seat in the House of Lords, I looked up historyofparliamentonline.org and found more background information of Cornelius’s career, along with transcripts. From there,  I also did a quick search on both the landed estates database and the Irish Archives Resource not only for additional information on the Lismore-O’Callaghan estate, but also to get used to the setup of the websites. On landedestates.ie, I was shown the King (Earls of Kingston/ Lords Lorton) family as they appeared to be connected to the O’Callaghans; after some reading, I figured out that the 1^st Viscount Lismore had paid the head rent for the sale of part of the King’s settled estate in Dunhallow – thus presiding over Banteer.

Once I had figured out who Lord Lismore was and how he ended up with lands in Banteer, being based in Tipperary, I started researching William Rochfort. Once again, I searched for him on ‘the peerage’ and found his biographical dates, family information, titles, and full name. I knew it was the correct Rochfort as he lived in Cahir Abbey, tying in with my letters. I then typed ‘William Robert Hood Rochfort Cahir’ into google for some more information and found that local Tipperary historian and granddaughter of Timothee Looney, Margaret O’Sullivan, has done a lot of research on Rochfort in recent years, and a recorded lecture that she gave in October 2024 gave me all the additional information I needed on the estate agent.

I had to rely on the 1901 and 1911 census in the National Archives for the likes of Con Duggan and M. A. Deady. I got the name of Duggan’s mother Ellen and saw that she had been widowed since the letters were written, along with her job as a housewife and their ages. For Deady, I first had to look through the P43 catalogue to find her first name, Mary Anne, and I saw that she was a public house owner when searching for her on the census. When looking up forges in Banteer, I stumbled across a document on duchas.ie that provided me with not only information on Con’s father Dan, but also insight into what happened to the forge following Con’s eventual death. As for Patt Sullivan, his name was so common there was no way to determine which man he was, and so I found other documents in the Timothey Looney Collection containing his name and marked them down.

I booked an appointment to go back to the Special Collections reading room alone so that I could look at a few more documents related to these people in my letters. I was allowed to look at a ledger (P43/79) containing rents and notes of tenants, where I found the comments made by Rochfort about the Duggans, Deady, and Sullivan in the margins of their respective pages. I also looked at letters (P43/230) sent by Mary Deady concerning her difficulty in paying rent, claiming due to illness. I also examined several letters where Patt Sullivan was fulfilling his duty as a rent warner, providing Rochfort with information about the tenants in Banteer, including Ellen Duggan.¹ This gave me lots of additional material on the people in my letters and provided me with further insight to their lives.

To find ‘Mr. Fennell’ I had to look through the contents of the Looney Collection, finding him listed under ‘estate agents’ alongside Rochfort and Edwin Taylor. In the article by Hajba, I read that he was estate agent in the 1880s before Rochfort took over, and from there I checked Calanders of Wills and Administrations and found his will, date of death, and address. Through the Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives , I typed in his name and found his birth dates alongside his death dates.

Please note all student submissions have been edited where necessary for accuracy and clarity.