Before the graveyards, before the bus, before any of it: the farm.
I gave Ankit the postcode (that’s what we’d call it in the UK; here it’s an Eircode, and it does a lot of heavy lifting, because rural Ireland apparently doesn’t really do addresses). He punched it in, off we went down the back roads, and he pulled up right alongside.
I had the details of the people who own the farm now, but they weren’t in. It was early on a Saturday morning, and hardly anyone came by. Just me, Ankit, the birds, and a whole lot of green.
How I knew where to go
Here’s the bit I have to tell you, because it’s the reason I was standing on that road at all.
A while back I put a post in an Offaly genealogy group on Facebook. Crickets. I tried again. This time someone reached out: they were researching the same surname, in the same townland. They asked whether I knew any of five couples they’d spent years, and several trips to Ireland, researching.
One stood out: James Coughlan and Ann Condron.
A quick word on Griffith’s Valuation
If you’re new to Irish research, Griffith’s Valuation is one of the big ones. It was a survey of property across Ireland, overseen by Sir Richard Griffith, with work starting in 1847 and the last volumes published in 1864. For each townland it lists the occupier (the person responsible for paying the tax, usually the head of the household), who they leased from, a short description of the property (house, offices, land), its size and its value. Each holding has a reference number, often with letters (5a, 5b and so on), that ties it to the valuation maps.
No wives, no children, nobody else matters as far as Griffith’s is concerned. But we love it anyway, because so many of Ireland’s 19th-century census returns didn’t survive. Griffith’s is one of the earliest listings of ordinary people we have, however posh (or not) their house was.
Two houses, one farm
In Griffith’s, James Coughlan was on a farm, in one house. In the other house on that same farm was a James Condron.
At that point I hadn’t quite clicked that this was the James Coughlan of James and Ann Condron. That James Coughlan was my 2nd great-grandfather’s brother.
And in the other house? James Condron, and a Margaret Coughlan: the 2nd great-grandmother of my genealogy excitement buddy.
This buddy knew the house. They had the dirt on the family from local farmers whose people have been in the area for generations, and they’d been travelling back to this corner of Offaly for 40 years to learn more. GOLD. (And yes, we’ve now met, and it turns out we’re officially related too, if distantly.)
Anyway. I digress.
The farmhouse
The farmhouse is severely overgrown. I had hoped to nick a stone from the ground to bring home to my mother, but there was no getting close to it. Much of the centre of the building has fallen in.
What surprised me most was how small it was, considering how many people lived in it. I took ten paces and was already further than the length of the front.
There’s also a much smaller house about twenty paces from the main one, and another house directly across the road.
Looking at the Griffith’s map, I think the little house was plot 6c, lived in by a Bridget Coughlan. I’m not sure yet whether she was a spinster or a widow. Which would make 5a and 5b the two houses in question.
Walking around it
To touch this farmhouse, and walk around it knowing that my 2nd great-grandparents and their families, and very likely my 3rd great-grandparents too, did exactly the same, was very special. I don’t have a better word for it than that.