Down To The Wire

     

     Only one day left, my Rootsireland subscription was about to expire. To what should the remaining hours be devoted? I settled on the Travers family. My third-great-grandmother Mary Travers has long been without a definite birthplace, it was past time to remedy that. When the NLI published it's Irish Parish registers to the net a few years ago I spent hours looking for Mary. I knew she was married to Michael O'Hora at Rathvilly Parish in County Carlow in 1814 so odds were good she had been born near that place but it could have been any of three counties. Rathvilly is uniquely situated on Carlow's borders with counties Wicklow and Kildare.  After a long search the closest I ever came was a Maria Trevers born in 1794 to John Trevers and his wife Margaret Lawlor in the Parish of Castledermot, County Kildare, a stone's throw from Rathvilly. This couple had four other children in the Castledermot baptism register, two Michaels, a William and a John. It didn't help that the pages were so faded they could barely be read, which may be why none of these records were found at Find My Past.  I would bet there were additional children but until the FBI gets around to applying their image enhancement technology to these records, (a long held dream of mine), they remain beyond reach.

Mary Travers O'Hora 1794-1869

    Another clue collected along the way, Mary's granddaughter, Anna O'Hora, married an Irishman named Michael Travers in Auburn, New York in 1868. Mary herself was living in Auburn by that time, and from news articles it was clear Michael Travers spent a good deal of time with the O'Horas, even before his marriage to Anna.  I recall wondering when I found all this if Michael could be a nephew of Mary's?  In later years when Michael Travers found himself a resident of the Onondaga County Almshouse near Syracuse, their admittance form asked his birthplace.  Michael responded he was born in County Kildare!  More information was found in land records in Ireland, many of the Travers families in Kildare were found in the Castledermot area, including John, James and "the Widow Travers", all in the townland of Ballyvass.  Also in Ballyvass were almost all the surnames of sponsors and witnesses contained in the Travers church records I was about to find in this final project with Rootsireland.  It seemed this was a likely area for Mary's hometown. 

    Pulling out all the clues I had for Mary, I opened the site and began hunting. When Michael Travers married Anna O'Hora, their marriage record gave his parent's names as John Travers and Catherine Bede. That seemed like a good place to begin so I tried a marriage search; there they were, getting married in 1836 in Castledermot.  Next stop, baptism records which I searched using only their names in the spaces for parent's names. I didn't find Michael but I did locate his sister Julia Travers who was baptized in 1838 in Castledermot Parish. Julia and her husband James Brennan along with several of their children also immigrated to Auburn, there is a picture of her at Ancestry, copied below...

Julia Travers Brennan 1838-1918

     There was also a Mary Travers around Julia and Michael's age living in the Auburn area in 1860 but I can't locate her after that and cannot connect her to this family.  I'm sure there were more children born to John Travers and Catherine Bede besides Julia and Michael, who wasn't born until 1843, so Mary may well have been another sibling.

     The baptism records of John and Margaret Lawlor Traver's children, John Jr., (husband of Catherine Bede), and the firstborn Michael do not contain addresses.  Those of William, the second Michael, and Grandma Mary however, give the townland of Kilkea, which borders Ballyvass, as their home so I've penciled that in as Grandmother Mary's birthplace.  It feels good after searching all these years to finally know where she was born and I must say, Kilkea seems like a fascinating place.

     Within it's environs lies a ringfort, (where the fairies dwell), sited upon a hill in Mullaghreelan Wood.  Also located there is the imposing Kilkea castle.  Built in the 12th century it became home to the FitzGerald family, prominent landlords in Kildare. One who resided there was Gerald FitzGerald, 11th Earl of Kildare, born in 1525 and known as the "wizard earl", who supposedly practiced magic in the tower.  Gerald reputedly haunts the place, appearing astride a white horse every seven years.  Nearby Castledermot boasts an ancient round tower and the ruins of an abbey.  This must have been an entrancing place to grow up, where a child's imagination could run wild.  Imagine the tales told of the Earl's ghost gamboling through the countryside with his band of horsemen, the stories of the capers of the mischievous Mullaghreelan fairies and monks in their towers.  

The abbey at Castledermot

          The townland of Kilkea, another place now added to my must see itinerary!