The following is based on information from Barbara Fromberg and Michael Smithwick, as well as my own research. 

Barbara is the granddaughter of James Byrne of Killarney, who was the younger brother of George Byrne, my great grandfather. Barb lives in Sydney, Australia. Michael lives in London, but his aunt Peggy lives in the house in Chapel Lane, Killarney where George and James lived with their mother for ten years from 1872 to 1882, before it was sold to Peggy’s auntie, a certain Ellen Hanlon. George Byrne left for Australia that same year, 1882, and no doubt the sale of the house helped fund his emigration.

The Byrnes of Killarney

George and Sarah Byrne were my great great grandparents. They lived out their lives in Killarney, Co Kerry, Ireland. They had, to my knowledge, four children. The oldest, Hannah, is lost to history. I have no idea what happened to her. However, her three brothers all migrated at different times to Australia, George (junior) in 1882, James around 1890 and Richard, the youngest, in 1892. 

George Byrne (1827 – 1872) was a nail maker like his father, William. His wife, Sarah Ruddle (1825 – 1892) had been a sextoness in the Church of Ireland in Killarney before they married.  I will write more of the Ruddles in another blog. But what of the Byrnes? Who were they and what was their ancestry and heritage?

Byrne is one of the most common Irish surnames, and for this reason, the background of my Byrne family has been difficult to map out with certainty. However, Barb and Michael have provided some possibilities.

George Byrne, son of William and Johanna 

George’s parents were most likely William and Johanna Byrne of Killarney. I say most likely because there are a number of anomalies in the records, things that don’t quite match what we know. 

What we do know is that George’s father was a nailor, and that his name was William, because this is clearly recorded on George and Sarah’s marriage certificate. That same document states that George and Sarah were married in St Mary’s Church of Ireland in Killarney, which is a Protestant church, and that George was 26 and Sarah 22, but there is reason to doubt these ages, as will be seen. The date of their marriage was 24 February 1857. The only death certificate we have managed to find for William is from 1882, which lists his age as 81, which of course implies that he was born in 1801. This lists his religion as Church of Ireland. A picture emerges of a Protestant family named Byrne who lived in nineteenth century Killarney. 

Scouring the records on irishgenealogy.ie to gain more information about this family, there appears to be only one family in Kerry which lists a William Byrne with a son named George with dates to approximately match our family. This William married Johanna Fitzgerald in in January 1826 and had at least seven children. Michael, Barb and I agree that this must be our Byrne family. The children, gleaned from irishgenealogy.ie, were as follows:             

• George 4 February 1827
• Mary         18 May 1831
• John         22 July 1833
• William 15 June 1836
• Johanna     9 December 1839
• Michael 2 August 1840         
• Henry         15 March 1842         

However, the marriage of William and Johanna in 1826 was in a Catholic ceremony by a Catholic priest, and all the children’s births are registered in the Catholic Church records. How could it be that William, married a Catholic, died a Protestant?  How can it be that his son, George, born a Catholic, married a Protestant in the Church of Ireland? The other anomaly, of course, is George’s age. If he was born in 1827, he would have been 30 when he married, whereas his marriage certificate says he was 26. How do we explain these anomalies?

Tracing William Byrne’s origins

Barb has resolved the first question by finding in the church records a William Byrne born in 1801, who was COI, but he was born in the wrong town, namely Dublin. This William Byrne  was baptised at St Audoen’s Church of Ireland on 26 July 1801. If this is our man, it would require that at some stage he “migrated” to Kerry, and then married a Catholic girl, Johanna Fitzgerald. Their children were all baptised Catholic, but at sometime after the birth in 1842 of the last recorded child, William reverted to the Church of Ireland. His oldest son, George, would have been fifteen in 1842. At some stage before George married in 1857, he must have converted to Protestantism.

All of this is quite possible, of course. Marriages between Catholics and Protestants were not unknown in Ireland, even if they presumably required one of the parties to “renounce” their former religion. Reverting back to COI could have been the result of Johanna’s death. However, we have not been able to find a death record for Johanna, so it not clear when she died, or whether she was Catholic or COI when she was buried.

Michael feels that that the migration of a Protestant William Byrne to Killarney from Dublin, followed by a marriage to a Catholic Johanna Fitzgerald is an unlikely sequence of events, and that the reverting of this same William and his eldest son, George, to Protestantism, is also unlikely. He has identified a William Byrne born in Killarney who he believes is more likely to fit the bill as the father of our George. This William is Catholic, and was born in Kerry. However, his date of birth is 9 February 1804, which means that in 1882, when his death was recorded he would only be 77 or 78, not 81.  Of course, ages recorded on marriage and death certificates are notoriously unreliable, based as they often are on memory rather than documentation. Having said that, I have not to date been able to find the birth record for William to which Michael refers.

Michael, commenting on Barbara’s theory in a recent email wrote, 

I can’t really say about the Dublin connection. It’s interesting, it’s possible but there is no proof either way. All I would say is that 220 years ago there were a lot of  Catholic Byrnes living in Killarney. Whatever about the C of I connection the data for Killarney fits for George [with] father William and Grandfather Michael. The Catholic register lists William as godparents for various people from 1827 up to 1842. Then there are no more records of him until he died in 1881 [as Church of Ireland]. 

(Personal communication from Michael Smithwick 17 November 2020)

The Byrnes of Killarney in the Nineteenth Century

To summarise then (with some extra facts from other sources thrown in), Barb’s and my Byrne ancestors in Killarney were apparently a mix of Protestant and Catholic. 

• William Byrne was born in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Barb believes he was born in Dublin in 1801 to George and Mary Byrne. Michael believes his parents were Michael Byrne and Katherine Gallwey of Kerry, who married in 1797. 
• William married Johanna Fitzgerald, a Catholic girl, in 1826, and their first child, George, was born the following year in 1827.
• William and Johanna had at least six other children between 1827 and 1842, including two daughters named Mary (the name of William’s mother if Barb is correct) and Johanna (the name of William’s wife).
• All William and Johanna’s  children were baptised Catholic, and presumably raised as such, the religion of their mother (and father if Michael is correct)
• William “converted” or “reverted” to Protestantism at some stage (or perhaps he never became Catholic, simply allowing his children to be raised Catholic according to the wishes of their mother – see Barb’s email below)
• It is unclear when Johanna died.
• William died in 1882, when he was 81 (or 78 if Michael’s assumption is correct).
• George, his first son, died ten years before his father, in 1872, when George was only 45. He left his wife Sarah with four children, the oldest being Hannah, who was 13, the youngest Richard, who was 1. 
• Just before he died, George and Sarah acquired a house in Chapel Lane Killarney, where Sarah remained for ten years until 1882, the year her father in law William died. The house was sold to an ancestor of Michael Smithwick’s, a certain Ellen Hanlon, and remains in the same family to this day.

Commenting on all this in a recent email, Barb wrote the following:

Actually I suspect that William didn’t convert and that mixed marriages were not as uncommon in 18/19 century Ireland as they became late 19th early 20th…  My mother’s Scots family were full of Protestant blokes marrying Catholic girls.  Three generations in one family.  The men didn’t convert, but the children were, to a one, baptised into the Roman faith.  I am not sure if any lapsed.  We are of course assuming that Johanna was devout.  Maybe she wasn’t, but still would be obliged to bring the children up as RC…    Getting back to our George, if he was brought up in a mixed religion household, maybe it wasn’t a hard choice for him to give up his Papist ways for that vixen Sarah 😆.  We have only seen her as an old widow lady [see photo below, the only one we have of Sarah Byrne] – could have been a Maureen O’Hara in her youth.  She seems to have earned quite a lot of respect through her years.   That photo was carried by James all his life… Isn’t it typical of family research, the more you know the less you know.   It appears that William’s dad was also a George and I have found a George born late 1700s with COI parents called Nicholas and Ann…

(personal communication from Barbara Fromberg 16 November 2020)