The vagaries of searching for ancestors in the Beara Peninsula and Bonane in particular are well known. A large area of the Beara Peninsula is in Co. Cork but in the Catholic Diocese of Co. Kerry. I am grateful to Mike Riney for his Guest Post here, giving us an excellent explanation of the records – Civil & Church available.
The eastern boundary of the Beara peninsula could be considered the N71 “tunnel” road from Kenmare to Glengariff, which goes through the Bonane “area” So Bonane people would feature in Beara genealogy research – arising from marriages between Bonane people and other bounding parishes etc. I have been researching the Shea family of Gurranes townland, Bonane, so wanted to share some insights.
The area name is also written as Banawn or Bunane.
Irish Genealogy – Civil records:
Births marriages and deaths of people from Bonane are in the Kenmare Civil district but they are in the Tuosist parish pages of the register. This can be confusing, especially since Bonane has “Gurranes” townland and Tuosist has “Garrnes” townland.
In general on IrishGenealogy.ie spelling variations by sound are not as well as they are on sites like Ancestry.com. A search for “Riney” does not return data recorded as “Ryney”. But a search for “Ryney” does bring back “Ryan”.
Irish Genealogy- Catholic Church records:
Bonane is one part of Kilcaskan parish. The other part of Kilcaskan is located over the mountain in Co Cork including both Adrigole and Glengariff. All of Kilcascan is in the Catholic Diocese of Kerry. In true Irish confuddlery, there is also a townland named Kilcaskan in the Cork-Kilcaskan parish. Glenariff is the residence of the parish priest, who also says mass in the church in Bonane. But on the website, data on people from Bonane townlands are recorded under the parish titled “Glengariff”. They can be found if you search for the exact townland spelling used in the stored data.
https://www.townlands.ie/kerry/kilcaskan/
https://www.townlands.ie/cork/kilcaskan2/
But while the website search location can also be just the parish name, that doesn’t work for Glegariff parish. There seems to be some problem on the site for searches of “Glengariff”. I would expect all relevant results from the parish of Glengariff to be returned, but there are never any results, no matter how “wide” the search query is, eg “Shea” 1840 to 1890. The only way to get data from Glengariff parish is to use the exact townland name, or no location at all. And Glengariff Parish data has some records where the townland is “Glengariffe” with an “e” – people from the village itself, I suppose. Those are also not returned in the search.
In addition, some people from the Bonane area that I was researching, do not seem to be in the church database at all. But that can happen for any parish, if pages were missing from the paper documentation etc.
Bonane census data is recorded under the Kerry District Electoral Divison of Banawn – http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/…/1901/Kerry/Banawn/ Bonane is in the Kerry barony of Glanrought. Kilcaskan-Cork is in the Cork Barony of Bear.
So in summary, a person born in Bonane could have their baptism reported in the parish of “Glengariff” (but cannot be searched), have their civil birth in the Kenmare district, under parish of Tuosist, and appear in the census under Banawn!
Thank you to Mike Riney for this welcome Guest Post.
Kay I love your Blog
Thank you’
Maryellen Moore
Maryellen, it’s great to get positive feed-back.
Hi Kay
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 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 townlans of Coonane,
Gortoe Upper,Gortoe Lower and Reenmeen East and on the Cork Dioceses side through Coomaclavig,Drogane, Derreenathitighy and Droumgarriff where it flows in to Bantry Bay.
The townlands in the Kerry Dioceses can be found in the census 1901 and 1911
of which there are forthy one by searching Kilcaskan this includes Mounteensudder which is actually now Glengarriff Village.
There are twenty seven townlands in Glengarriff in the 1901 and 1911 census but are all in the Dioceses of Cork and the parish of Kilmocamogue (now Bantry).
This is very confusing if one does familiar with the history.
On another point in Mike’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) 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, Millers,Garryletter,Geragh,Gortnaburu? maybe incorrect spelling Droumgorteen. 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 Baptim records
The parish priest was Fr.John Mangan who was born in Listowel in 1853 ordained in 1877 was in Glengarriff from 1885 to 1892 in Sneem from 1882 to 1901 Kenmare 1901 to 1904 and Bishop of Kerry 1904 to 1917 died 1st of July 1917.
Thank you for the opportunity to share this info and I would like if you send my email to Mike Riley as I may have more information he may be interested in.
Kindest Regards
John Connolly( PS committee member of Bantry Historical &Archaeological Society see bantryhistorical.com/westcork)
Love this information
I’m born in Bonane and doing my OConnor History .
Margaret, best of luck with it. Bonane is not the easiest…
This article popped up when researching “Coonane Glengariff” as part of sorting through my O’Sullivan ancestors on the West Cork/Kerry Border. Derrynacaheraugh is the townland on which my search centers and the confusion about Cork/Kerry as well as the O’Sullivan/Sullivan naming patterns is very consuming. I’ve got some good DNA now and although slow, it is giving me a shred of confidence as I try to sort through Timothy Sullivan and Catherine Leahy’s family, my grandfather being the fourth of their eight sons. I joined “my heritage” rather than ancestry for this round of research. It would be lovely to connect with anyone interested in sorting out all of the knots in the ancestry. What a lovely hobby!