The In-Laws

For this chapter of Family Ties, I thought that I would explore my husband’s family history as it provides a challenge that I don’t have in my own family tree, research into Irish family history.

When my husband Huw and I first decided to look into our family history almost twenty five years ago, the only facts Huw knew about his maternal grandmother was that she was either Irish or part Irish, her name was Theresa, she was born in Ennis, County Clare (possibly) and  the name Giltinan featured somewhere on the Irish side. Huw’s mother and her siblings had all passed away by this time, so we were short of people to ask for information. Huw checked with a few of his cousins on his mother’s side and the consensus seemed to be that, yes, their grandmother was either Irish or half Irish and yes, she had been born in Ireland. Some had heard the name Giltinan mentioned; one cousin even had the name Giltinan as his middle name!

So the search began, but not immediately! In fact, it was another twelve years before we started seeking out Giltinans, when we had our first home computer and internet connection!

The first thing I did once we were up and running on the internet was visit Genes Reunited and Ancestry.co.uk websites and join as a free member. The 1881 UK Census collection was free to view on these sites and was a great place to start looking for ancestors on both of our family trees. When I finally started my search for the Giltinans, I typed in the name as a surname in the search field of both these sites and started the ball rolling! At this time, we had no idea whether or not the name Giltinan was a first name or a surname, but it was easier to search it as a surname.

I checked the 1881 Census Collection on Ancestry first, and my search found results in the 1881 England Census. There was a list of ten names, all with the surname Giltinan, of various ages; some were born in Ireland, and some were born in different parts of England. Two things stood out about the list: all ten people, at the time of the 1881 England Census, lived in the same place, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, indicating that they were all one family and one of the names listed was Helena Giltinan, aged three, which was the same first name as Huw’s late mother! We had a connection between Huw’s mother and the Giltinan name!

A couple of days after we discovered this on the internet, Huw remembered a box he’d had since his mother had passed away over twenty years earlier. He’d never checked the contents of the box but knew that his mother had kept some papers and photos in it. We checked the box to see if there was anything that could help us in our search. In the box were three marriage certificates and a death certificate, along with a few photos. The three marriage certificates were for his parents, maternal grandparents and paternal grandparents! On his parents’ marriage certificate, it showed his maternal grandfather as Benjamin Lewis James; the second certificate showed a marriage in Llanelly, in May 1908 between Benjamin Lewis James and ………..Theresa Giltinan! Our answers to the questions “Was Giltinan a first name or surname” and “How did it fit in to the family” had been within our grasp all along! Also it showed that Theresa’s father was called Thomas and that he was a soldier. Our only challenge now was connecting Huw’s grandmother Theresa Giltinan with the list of Giltinan family members we had found on Ancestry!

I checked the Ancestry 1881 Census records on the Giltinan family in Norfolk and found out that the family unit comprised of Mary Giltinan, born in Ireland in about 1807, her son, Thomas, born in Ireland in about 1837 and Thomas’ wife, Anne, born in Ireland in about 1846. There were seven children listed, all the children of Thomas and Anne: William, born in Warley, Essex in 1869, Thomas born in Aldershot, Hampshire in 1871, John, born in Chatham, Kent in 1873 and Catherine, Helena, Anna and Matilda all born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk in 1874, 1878, 1879 and 1881 respectively. Their address was given as “Barracks, Gt Yarmouth” and Thomas’ occupation was “soldier”, which explained why the children were born in various locations, as they were all born in army barracks in different parts of England. The connection to Theresa and the Norfolk Giltinan family had been discovered.

For my next step, I calculated Theresa’s age by the age on the marriage certificate we had found, which was twenty one when she married in the May of 1908, making her year of birth about 1886 or 1887. I then decided to try and find the family, including Theresa, on the 1891 Census for England & Wales, but with no luck. Only one person with the surname Giltinan showed up on the 1891 Census for England & Wales but it wasn’t a match to any of the previous ten names I had found or to Theresa Giltinan.

Using the free access to Ancestry at Llanelli Library, I decided to do a search on all of Ancestry’s records using the Giltinan surname. The index for Theresa’s marriage in Llanelly, in 1908, came up and also a record of birth under the Ireland Civil Registration Births index for a Teresa (minus the “h”) Giltinan, born in Ennis, County Clare in the first quarter of 1887! Huw’s maternal grandmother was definitely Irish! When I scrolled down the first page, six more items caught my eye, all from the  1901 Wales Census records, from Llanelly; one for a Patrick Giltinan, Frosta Giltinan and Francis Giltinan, all born in Ennis, County Clare in 1885 (Patrick), 1887 (Frosta) and 1890 (Francis), all residing in Llanelly in 1901.

There were also 1901 Wales Census entries for Llanelly for Helena and Margaret, both born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk and Anne, born in Limmerick in 1846, who was Head of the household and recorded as a widow and the mother of the other five people. Further down the page was an index for a death record for Patrick Giltinan in Llanelly in 1907. A death record also showed up for Thomas Giltinan in Llanelly in 1898. This showed that the family had definitely moved back to England & Wales from Ireland sometime between 1890, the year of Francis’ birth in County Clare and 1898, the year of Thomas’ death in Llanelly.

Further searches revealed that between 1885, when Patrick was born and 1898, the year their father Thomas died in Llanelly, four children were born to Thomas and Anne Giltinan in Ennis, County Clare; as well as Patrick, Theresa and Francis, I discovered that Theresa was one of twin girls and that Theresa’s twin Elizabeth was also born in Ennis in 1887. Sadly, Elizabeth died the following year, a few months before her second birthday.

Even though I was happy to find this information, and the answers to our questions about the Giltinan name and the Irish connection, it created more questions needing answers, such as “why did the family move back to Ireland at that particular time”, “why did they settle in Llanelli when they came back to the UK” and “who was Frosta Giltinan named on the 1901 Census, in Llanelly”?

Continuing my search, I found the index for the death record for Mary Giltinan, mother of Thomas Giltinan, in the Irish Civil Registration Death Index. In the 1881 census, Mary was widowed and was living with the family on an army camp in Norfolk. Just three years later, around September 1884, Mary died in Ennis.

When I searched for Military Records online for Thomas Giltinan, Huw’s great grandfather, I found a record at Clare County Library; it had been donated by someone named Terence Giltinan.

The record showed that Thomas had enlisted in the army in 1855, at Limerick, aged 20. It gave Thomas’ place of birth as Drumcliffe, Ennis and revealed that he served in the following regiments between 1855 and 1883; 9th Foot 2nd Battalion (March 1855 to April 1876) and the 9th Foot 4th Battalion (April 1876 to September 1883). The record also showed that Thomas was “discharged to a pension” in Great Yarmouth in 1883, at the rank of sergeant. It also mentioned that he had returned to the Turnpike area of Ennis, County Clare! We couldn’t believe our luck at finding this information. It gave us so much more information than I had thought we would find from one military record!

When I had searched on Genes Reunited for Thomas Giltinan, when the results showed up on screen, so did the user names of Genes Reunited members who had Thomas Giltinan in their family trees. One of them was named Terry, possibly the same Terrence Giltinan who had donated Thomas’ military record? Altogether, a list appeared of 6 people who had a Thomas Giltinan in their tree;. There were two people who had a Thomas Giltinan born in 1871, Hampshire in their tree, this Thomas being Huw’s great uncle. They also had the Thomas I was searching for listed under their names. The other two people, including Terry, had just Thomas Giltinan, born in Ennis in 1836 listed.

I decided to take a risk and contacted Terry through Genes Reunited’s messaging system and the risk paid off! He was the same Terence Giltinan who had donated Thomas’ military record and, like Huw, was Thomas’ great grandson, making them second cousins! Success! Terry was the grandson of Theresa’s youngest sibling, her brother Frank. Frank had settled in Swansea and died in 1959.

As to the reason why the family returned to Ennis in the 1880’s, I suppose that once Thomas retired from the army, he may have wanted to return to Ireland to live. Also, he had an elderly mother. It is not impossible to understand that maybe Mary, Thomas’ mother, may have wished to spend her remaining years back home in Ireland and Thomas’ retirement from the army in 1883 enabled this. As the records show, Mary died in 1884, so maybe the move was made as her health wasn’t very good and she wished to return home to die. Of course, this is just speculation and we will never know for sure.

The family stayed in Ennis for at least another six years, as Francis, or Frank, the youngest of Thomas and Anne’s children, was born in Ennis in 1890, six years after Mary’s death.

My next task was finding out who Frosta Giltinan, living in Llanelly at the time of the 1901 Census, was. I typed the name into the Ancestry search box, but the only record with that name was the 1901 Census record. I did the same thing on Genes Reunited and the name Frosta showed up on the family trees of the same four people who had Thomas Giltinan, senior, in their trees. By this time, I had sent messages to Terry Giltinan and the other three people listed as having both Thomas and Frosta in their trees. We had corresponded with Terry and we also heard back from another second cousin of Huw’s, from Bristol, who was on the list. Lynne is the granddaughter of Theresa’s eldest sibling, William, who died in 1914, in Staffordshire, England aged 44. William had served in the British army in India for many years before his death.

Neither Terry nor Lynne knew any more about Frosta than we did. I went back and studied the original 1901 census record for the family on Ancestry. I realised that Theresa was missing from the Census record but that the details recorded for Frosta matched those of Theresa: aged 14 years old in 1901 and born in Ennis, County Clare. When the 1911 Census records became available in 2009, I checked it for both Frosta and Theresa but only Theresa appeared on it, living with her husband Benjamin James and their two children, the eldest of which was Huw’s mother Helena. Theresa’s mother Anne was the head of the household and they lived in Llanelly.

A general search for Frosta Giltinan didn’t reveal any records among Births, Marriages and Deaths or in the 1911 UK Census collection. My conclusion was that Frosta and Theresa were one and the same person. I think that Theresa’s name appeared as Frosta on the Census record in 1901 either due to an error on the part of the census enumerator; perhaps he didn’t understand Anne’s Irish accent when taking the information, or it occurred as an error when the information was transcribed to the record. Huw’s cousins agreed and we all removed Frosta’s details from our Giltinan family trees.

The other question we were seeking an answer for was why did the Giltinan family settle in Llanelly when they returned to the UK? At first, I couldn’t find a connection to Llanelly but finding an index to the marriage record for Thomas and Anne changed that. At first, I found only the Civil Registration for Marriages in Ireland and that listed Thomas Giltinan and Anne Hegarty as marrying in Dublin on the 14th October 1868. A few months later, another Irish collection of records was added on to Ancestry, the Ireland Select Marriages 1619-1898. I searched this collection for details of Thomas and Anne and found much more information. On this marriage index, Anne is listed as Anne Brien Hegarty and the bride’s father is noted as Michael Brien. Whilst Thomas’ status is given as “single”, Anne’s status is given as “widowed”, so Brien was her maiden name and Hegarty had been her name from a previous marriage.

Terry, Huw’s newly found cousin, had previously mentioned that both Thomas and Anne’s fathers had been in the army. According to Terry’s research, Michael Brien (also known as Breen) had served in the Crimean war and spent six years in Greece and Corfu with the army. Terry believed that Anne’s mother had died in Greece. I was unable to find any military records for either Michael Brien or Michael Giltinan on the free military sites I searched.

I typed Michael Brien’s name into the search box on Ancestry, hoping to find some records for him in the Irish indexes. There were too many results to check out immediately and with quite a few variations of the name Brien, just to make it even more difficult. I checked for Michael Brien’s name in the general English and Welsh records hoping to find a mention of his military record. I found him in the Wales Census records for 1871, 1881 and 1891, living in Pembroke in 1871 and in the St. Pauls area of Llanelly, in Tymawr cottages, in 1881 and 1891. Michael had married a woman named Ann Lloyd in Pembrokeshire in 1868. Ann was born in Solva, Pembrokeshire.

In the 1871 Census, Michael, Ann and Francis, aged 10, were living in the Pembroke area. Francis was described as the son of the head of the household, Michael, but I think he might have been Michael’s son by his first wife, Anne Giltinan’s mother, as Francis’ place of birth was given as Corfu, Greece. Huw’s cousin Terry had mentioned that Michael’s first wife died in Greece. Did Anne’s mother die giving birth to Francis in Greece? Another fact linking the Brien family in Pembroke to Anne Giltinan is the fact that Anne had a son named Francis, born in 1890; Francis Brien was born in about 1861. Did Anne name her son after her younger brother?

By the 1881 Census, Michael, Ann and Francis had moved to Llanelly, to the St. Paul’s area. Is this the reason that Thomas and Anne Giltinan moved to Llanelly on their return to the UK, to be near Anne’s family?

The main difficulty I have found in researching Huw’s Irish connections is the lack of Irish Census records. The Census records for 1821 to 1851 were destroyed in a fire during the civil war in Ireland in 1922. The Census returns from 1861 and 1871 were destroyed soon after being taken, probably because of lack of space! The 1881 census and 1891 census were pulped during the First World War to help support the war effort. This all amounts to a lot of lost knowledge of vital importance to the family historian. The Irish censuses for 1901 and 1911 are the only complete set of census records available. These are available free online.

On the plus side, fragments of the census records from 1821 to 1851 still exist; Ancestry has the Irish Civil Registration Indexes which are very useful and Find My Past has an extensive collection of Irish records. With some sites you find that not all the Irish counties have their records online. In my own search, the three counties I was interested in (Clare, Limerick and Kilkenny) had limited records available online.

The good news is that the Irish Family History Foundation has been the coordinating body for a network of county genealogy centres in Ireland for over thirty years. Their databases include Church records of various denominations, gravestones inscriptions, as well as “census substitute” records, which are records that family historians must rely on for information because of the lack of census records. These include land records (especially Griffith’s Valuation), court records, school registers, old age pension applications and trade directories.

Sometimes you can find unexpected records; a month ago, I found court documents on Find My Past from 1895 referring to Thomas Giltinan’s dispute with his landlord over repairs to the home they were renting in Turnpike, Ennis, County Clare; because the landlord had not made the agreed repairs, Thomas had withheld the rent for a few weeks, to force the landlord to make the repairs! This record shows that the Giltinan family were still residing in Ireland in 1895.

Even though it’s not as easy to trace your Irish ancestors through Census records as it is to trace ancestors from other parts of the UK, the situation has improved over the last few years. There is now a website supported by the Irish government’s Department of the Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht called Irish Genealogy.ie which has an extensive collection of Irish records, including the 1901 and 1911 Censuses. Huw’s Irish ancestors came from the south of Ireland, but there are sites available to research Irish ancestors from the north of Ireland, such as PRONI (Public Records of Northern Ireland), the website run by the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure. There are also Irish records available at the National Archives UK, as well as the National Archives of Ireland.

As for the Giltinan family, Helena, Theresa’s sister, after whom Huw’s mother was named, died in Llanelly in 1904, almost a year after getting married, and leaving behind her only child,  a daughter aged just weeks old.

Anne died in 1915 in Llanelly. She and Thomas are both buried in Box Cemetery. Huw’s Grandmother Theresa died in 1932 and is also buried in Box Cemetery. Her name lives on as she has two granddaughters named after her.

When I started researching the Giltinan family, my first thought was that it would be an easy name to trace, as it seemed unusual and, so I thought, rare; however, since researching Huw’s family, I have found out the opposite, that there are many Giltinans spread all over the world from Ireland and the UK to Australia, South Africa, Canada and the USA.

Websites used for this article:

http://www.myirishconnections.com/irishancestry.htm

www.findmypast.co.uk

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www.amcestry.co.uk

https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/

Tracing Irish Ancestors Online