1.1Kenny-Cahill Family

1Kenny lineage

1.1Kenny-Cahill family

As far as I can tell, the parents of this family, Lawrence Kenney and Bridget Cahill never left Ireland. I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to find when they lived in Ireland, as all subsequent records, in England or in the U.S.A. refer to the place of origin as “Ireland” with no additional information, such as county or parish, or townland. No information is available regarding the parents of Lawrence Kenny and Bridget Cahill. It appears that they would have lived off the land, in a very rural community of Galway county.

1.1.1John Kenney and his siblings

John Kenney was born in January 1843 in Ireland as shown by the 1871 census in England. We do not know when he moved to England, but no sibling or parents appear in the British census data that I have seen. His wedding certificate indicates that his father was Lawrence Kenny, an agricultural labourer. His death certificate further indicates that his mother was Bridget Cahill. Using Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.com and Google, I found the following individuals born in Ireland around the same time and having both Lawrence Kenny and Elisabeth Cahill as parents. I have built this tentative family tree using the data but caution is advised as it does not seem possible to consult birth records for that era in the Irish archives, and validate that they were all born in the same parish, at the date indicated by later documents, from the same parents.

The birth dates are remarkably clustered and John is in the middle of the pack. None of the records shows a place of birth, except for Catherine who married in Killeroran, Galway. The wedding certificate below shows that the bride is from Lough village.

Lough in Irish is pond or lake, but I could not find it on a map of Killeroran (that includes Killian, groom’s place) or nearby. I posted a question regarding this location on the Ireland XO web site and obtained the following answer from Martin Curley:
In the civil records it is recorded as 'Cunananty'
Looking at the 1901 Census for any Lawrence Kenny in that area with an address matching I found this
and the info on alternate spellings and more:

Further information was provided John O

This is the EPPI website of census data from 1841 - 1861 for the area. It shows how some homelands were de-housed andde-populated after an Gorta More (eg. Cloonabricka, Cornadrum) and others remain relatively unscathed (Cornanata, Corrabaun). Maybe Lough village was partially de-populated and thengentlyfaded away.

PS - There are two Lawrence Kennys sited in Griffiths one in Cloonabricka and one in Cornananta More

I was just chatting to my mother on the phone and mentioned your post(she was born in Cornadrum, Killeroran in 1925 -she's 92). I asked her if she had heard of Lough Village and she said yes - she said it was just south of Cornadrum towards Castleffrench and it was, indeed,by a small lake. I asked her if she recalled any Kennys and she said yes, an elderly couple who livedthere and, as far as she could remember, had no children. Then, unprompted, she said the other family she could remember from there, wereMannions. Apart from them, there wasafamily called Larkin andshe is ablespeak to their grand-daughter, "out of curiosity", to see if she has any info. Finally, as an aside, she had a childhoodrecollection of onestrange, slightly scary, old woman from there that used to try and feed children bread, as though they were ducks!That's what living by a lake can do to you.
She doesn't believe that there will beanyone living there now.

If John O’s mother is 92, she may remember as far back as the 1930s, at which time Lawrence and Bridget would have been nearly 120 years old. They may have had a son who stayed around and was elderly when John’s mother was young.

The last link about the Griffith evaluation (Published between 1847 and 1864) is quite interesting. The first Lawrence Kelly Leased a small piece of land and house from Denis H Kelly in Cloonabricka for a valuation of 2 pounds and 17 shillings for the land, 3 shillings for the buildings. The second (or the same) leases from James Thorngate in Cornanantamore another piece of land and building with a valuation of 30 pennies for the land 2 pounds and 10 shillings for the buildings. I would say the first piece of land is for farming, the second is the house. Both are in the Castleffrench electoral division By plugging the GPS coordinates of the two locations in Google Maps, I find that they are 3 km apart, in areas that are now pretty much uninhabited, on either side of Ballinamore Bridge. Not quite a house on one side of the road and the field on the other side. Cornadrum mentioned by John O lies just about where the east red dot is, and that is the house.

Now, we need to know where and when Lawrence Kenny died, and whether they did have a younger son.

District Clonbrock, Parish is Killeroran

Place names in Killeroran