I Found The Actual Holding!

    Still working on my third great-grandfather Cornelius, aka Connor, Ryan.  Everything else went on the back burner while I concentrated on finding Connor's lot and I'm ecstatic to be able to say I've done it.  It's incredible how much can be discovered if one puts one's mind to it.  And if one has internet access and time on their hands.

     I found Connor in Griffith's Valuation living in Goldengarden Tipperary, and the baptism records of his children confirmed he was there for an extended period.  The problem was the lot number he was assigned in Griffith's and the various pre-publication books, Field, House and Tenure Books, all put him on a lot whose number did not exist on the maps.  The Valuation Office in Dublin cleared that up-- the lots had been renumbered.  Below is a map of the townland of Goldengarden sent to me by the Valuation Office showing Connor's oddly shaped lot 12 down in the right corner and below that, a close up of the lot showing Connor's house which I found at Geohive.  I added the number 12:

     I wasn't sure what the lines near the house were, but another map, also from Geohive, cleared that up:

     It was water and it marked the southwest boundary of the lot!  That might make it easier to find the land if and when I get to Ireland to hunt it down.  Next I went to Google Maps hoping I could use street view to take a stroll through the area.  I typed in Goldengarden Tipperary then clicked on the satellite view but I had some trouble finding the lot from that angle.  Connor's holding sat right at the edge of Goldengarden's border with the much smaller townland of Farranaraheen as you can see below:

    

        I returned to Google Maps and did a search for Farranaraheen, then switched to satellite view, this is the image that came up:

 
     It was Connor's lot!  Just to the left of the plowed field with the red marker.  Still the same tiny, odd shape all these years later.  And it was right on the road so I wouldn't have to irritate any Irish farmers by tramping across their fields to reach it.  It was near a highway which the smaller road it sat on ran off from, so it should be simple to take a "walk" down there.  For some reason however, I could only get part way down the road from the highway.  Disappointed, I figured I might as well try setting the little Google street view man down on the road right next to the lot though I didn't expect much.  But it worked!

     How utterly amazing!  I was on the road Connor must have walked a thousand times!  I took a look around trying to find the water seen on the maps but all I saw was what might have been a ditch in the field.  Possibly that was the water seen on the map?  I went further down the road, turned, and tried coming at it from the other direction, the one I had first tried but wasn't able to get all the way down:

     Eureka!  There was the water, this was it, it really was the right lot.  I was so excited I nearly cried.  This was the spot Connor's daughter Anna Ryan, my grandmother's grandmother, was born in 1831.  Put that way it doesn't seem so very long ago.  When my grandmother passed I inherited the prayer book Anna had given Grandma when she was a girl.  My grandmother knew the woman who grew up on the banks of that little stream in Tipperary.  Then I did cry a wee bit, I had found a piece of my past, it felt like coming home.