Newest Focus
New sibling hunt: Niece ‘Mrs Chas King’ in Ware, Massachusetts
Open Issues
- Looking for siblings who emigrated
- Looking for the identity of Mrs Chas King
Where they lived
(locality information coming soon)
IN IRELAND
Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly
IN THE US
Massachusetts and Wisconsin
Associated surnames
Deverey
Caughlin cousins?
Descended from Coughlans from this area, or match me on DNA? Let’s compare notes.
Clonmacnoise, Offaly to Wisconsin
The brick wall
Patrick is about as solid an immigrant Irish ancestor as I’ll ever get. More solid than any of the 6 or 8 real brick walls I have. A well documented US post-immigration life, marriage, census, an obituary, land records, the lot. It’s the generation above him that vanishes: his parents, James Coughlan Sr and Ann Deverey, of Clonfinlough, in the parish of Clonmacnoise. I know that parish because Patrick’s very highly likely sister Catherine’s own emigration record to Australia in 1841 states it outright, and names both parents, with the mother marked as dead. That one document is doing more work than anything else in this file. It would be nice to have more than one source.
The trouble is that James and Ann married, and had all their children, before either a marriage register or a baptismal register survives for Clonmacnoise — the surviving baptismal book only starts in 1824, and Patrick was already four.
Then, there’s a widow, “Mrs Coughlan,” recorded holding almost 97 acres in Clonfinlough that same year. I’m working on what plot of land that actually might be. Either way, she’s one generation further back than I’ve been able to place with any certainty. Yet. (There may be breaking news on this!)
What I’m looking for
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- I’ll pay ransom money for the identity of a Mrs Chas King, who lived in Ware, Massachusetts
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- Anyone researching Coughlan (and the surname variants) or Deverey.
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- The 1824 Kings County Land Holder Register that names Mrs Coughlan. I’d like to see the original, and a map!
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- Descendants of the Coughlans who stayed in Ireland — families were still farming at Clonascra and Carrowkeel, a few fields from where this one started, into the 1900s. We have one brother, James – but that’s it.
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- DNA matches carrying Deverey, Devery, Devers or Devereux ancestry out of Offaly.
Patrick Caughlin — a world timeline
Patrick’s life set against what was happening at home in Ireland, over in America, and in the wider world. The coral markers are our own family; the rest is the world he moved through.
Our familyIreland & UKUnited StatesWider world
Behind Patrick stand his parents, James Coughlan and Ann Deverey, and the family’s roots around Clonmacnoise. Beyond them, for now, is the brick wall.
1815
Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna redraws the map of Europe, opening a long era of relative peace between the great powers.
1815
The end of the Napoleonic Wars collapses wartime grain prices, deepening rural distress across the Irish midlands, King’s County among them.
18 Feb 1820
Patrick Caughlin is born at Clonfinlough, beside Clonmacnoise, in King’s County (now Offaly) — a son of James Coughlan and Ann Deverey.
1825
The Stockton and Darlington Railway opens in England, the world’s first public steam railway and the start of the railway age.
1829
Catholic Emancipation, won largely through Daniel O’Connell’s campaign, lets Catholics sit in Parliament and hold most public offices.
1831–1836
The Tithe War: widespread, sometimes violent resistance by Catholic tenant farmers to tithes paid to the Protestant Church of Ireland.
1836
Wisconsin Territory is created by Act of Congress, formally opening the region to organised American settlement.
1841
Ireland’s population peaks at about 8.2 million, the land heavily subdivided into tiny plots dependent on the potato.
1843
The Catholic Diocese of Milwaukee is established, giving parishes and clergy to the Irish and German families then settling south-eastern Wisconsin.
1845–1852
The Great Famine (An Gorta Mór): repeated potato blight brings roughly a million deaths and a million more emigrations; the midland counties suffer heavy loss.
mid-1840s
Patrick leaves Ireland for America. The exact ship, port and date are still an open question in the records — a thread I’m actively chasing.
1846–1848
The Mexican–American War ends with the US annexing vast territory in the west and south-west, speeding westward expansion.
1846
Britain repeals the Corn Laws, ending protective tariffs on imported grain — a landmark in the shift to free trade.
7 Nov 1846
Patrick marries Bridget Sheridan, from County Cavan, at Chicopee, Massachusetts.
1848
A wave of liberal and nationalist revolutions sweeps Europe, most of them ultimately suppressed.
29 May 1848
Wisconsin is admitted to the Union as the 30th state.
6 Aug 1848
Their son James — my direct line — is born at Chicopee, Massachusetts.
1849
The Encumbered Estates Act sets up a court to force-sell debt-laden Irish estates bankrupted by the Famine, moving much land to new owners.
1849–1855
More children arrive in Massachusetts — Bernard in 1849, John in 1855 at Springfield — and two little ones are lost before 1854.
1850s on
Sustained mass emigration to America and Britain becomes a permanent feature of Irish life; the population keeps falling for decades.
1854
The Republican Party is founded, with an influential early meeting at Ripon, Wisconsin, opposing the spread of slavery.
c.1855
The family leaves Massachusetts and settles at Clyman, Dodge County, Wisconsin, where Patrick farms.
1859
Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species, setting out evolution by natural selection.
1860
The youngest, William Francis, is born at Clyman, Wisconsin.
1861–1865
The American Civil War: Wisconsin sends some 91,000 men to the Union armies, among them the largely-Irish 17th Wisconsin Infantry.
1862
The Homestead Act grants 160 acres of public land to settlers who farm it, driving westward settlement.
1866
The first durable transatlantic telegraph cable is completed, allowing near-instant messaging between Europe and North America.
1869
The first transcontinental railroad is completed, linking the eastern rail network to the Pacific.
1871
The Peshtigo Fire in north-eastern Wisconsin, the deadliest wildfire in US history, kills an estimated 1,200 or more — the same night as the Great Chicago Fire.
1876
Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone, beginning the spread of voice telecommunication.
1879–1882
The Land War: Land League agitation under Davitt and Parnell resists evictions and demands tenant rights during an agricultural depression.
6 Feb 1897
Bridget (Sheridan) Caughlin dies.
1901
Robert La Follette becomes governor of Wisconsin, making the state a national showcase for Progressive-Era reform.
1903
The Wyndham Land Purchase Act funds tenants to buy out their holdings, largely dissolving the old landlord system.
1903
The Wright brothers make the first powered, controlled aeroplane flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1912
The Third Home Rule Bill is introduced at Westminster, reviving the drive for Irish self-government and provoking a bitter Unionist reaction in Ulster.
1912
The liner Titanic sinks on her maiden voyage after striking an iceberg, with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.
3 May 1913
Patrick dies at Clyman, aged 93, and is buried at Holy Assumption cemetery in Dodge County — a long life, a world away from where it began.
