Searching for Kerry ancestors in the Beara Peninsula?  The Beara Peninsula is split between Counties Kerry and Cork.   It can be problematic tracing ancestor’s vital records in this area – more so than usual.   A complication arises that a number of the Beara Catholic Parishes in County Cork are in the Catholic Diocese of Kerry.

I am indebted to John Connolly,  Committee Member of Bantry Historical  & Archaeological Society.  Bantry Historical Society (National Heritage Week 2020 County Cork Winner) for this week’s guest post, in reply to last week’s guest blog post on Beara by Mike Riney.

“I found the article by Mike Riney very interesting as I lived in the parish of Kilcaskan  (Glengarriff) during the 1950s and early 1960s.   The farm I lived on was in the Dioceses of Kerry and had the boundary between the Barony of Bantry and the Barony of Bear and also between the Dioceses of Cork and Kerry .

This boundary is known as The Barony River which rises in the Coonane mountain and on the Kerry Dioceses side flows through the townlands of Coonane, Gortoe Upper, Gortoe Lower,  Droumadroum and Reenmeen East and on the Cork Dioceses side through Coomaclavig, Drogane, Derreenathitighy and Droumgarriff where it flows into Bantry  Bay.

The townlands in the Kerry Dioceses, 0f which there are forty-one can be found in the Census 1901 and 1911 by searching Kilcaskan.  This includes Mounteensudder which  Glengarriff Village is part of.

There are twenty-seven townlands in Glengarriff in the 1901 and 1911 census but are all in the Dioceses of Cork (County of Cork)  and the parish of Kilmocamogue (now Bantry).   This is very confusing if one does familiar with the history and the territory.

On another point in Mike Riney’s  correspondence he uses only one  (r) in the word Glengarriff,  I may be incorrect in my observation but I did a search in Irish Genealogy.ie church records for baptism using my grandmother’s name Mary Harrington used location Glengarriff with only one  (r) for the  years between 1880 and 1900 and the search returned only seven records of which she was not included and the seven had Glengarriff spelt with one  (r).   However when I included rr in the search it returned 35 records which included townlands in Bonane of Baureragh, Milleeens, Garryletter, Geragh, Gortnacorra, Dromagorteen. Thirty-two of these were baptisms and three were marriages and the years used were 1880 to 1900.

Just to end my grandmother was born 12th of February 1889 in the townland of Cooricullane,  Glengarriff according to Glengarriff Church Baptism records
The parish priest was Fr.John Mangan who was born in Listowel in 1853 ordained in 1877 and served in  Glengarriff from 1885 to 1892,  in Sneem from 1892  to 1901,  Kenmare 1901 to 1904 and he was Bishop of Kerry 1904 to 191.   Bishop Mangan  died 1st of July 1917.”
Thank you for the opportunity to share this info.