Newest Focus
Right now I’m working to pin down Bridget Sheridan’s home parish in County Cavan — and testing DNA matches who trace to the same corner of the county.
Open Issues
- What is the Callaghan connection?
- Which townland?
- Disambiguating a lot of Bridgets
Where they lived
(locality information coming soon)
IN IRELAND
Coming soon!
IN THE US
Hampden County MA and Dodge County WI
Associated surnames
The names that keep company with Sheridan in Cavan — Brady, Callaghan, Maher and Lynch. If one of these is yours, we may well be cousins.
Sheridan cousins?
Descended from these Sheridans, or match me on DNA? Let’s compare notes.
From an unknown Parish in Cavan
The brick wall
Bridget isn’t one of several open questions on this side of the family. She’s the central one. I know she came from County Cavan, born around 1824. And that’s all I know. No parish, a million Bridgets to look and those I can’t look at because no record shows they existed. Every lead I’ve chased down has ended up circumstantial.
Here’s what I actually have: a naming pattern that points to her own father being called Bernard (her second son is Bernard Francis); a tithe entry for a Bernard Sheridan holding under nine acres at Cordownan, in Killeshandra parish, alongside two other Sheridan smallholders on the very same ground; and a separate Bernard Sheridan who turns up in Boston and then Needham, Massachusetts — right county, right decade, right destination city, arriving four months before Bridget’s own wedding. I’ve pulled his probate file and searched the Norfolk County land records – none of it mentions Bridget, Ireland, Cavan, or a sibling of any kind.
The relationship I trust further than a hunch is her probable sister Anne, who witnessed Bridget’s wedding at Chicopee in 1846 and married a Francis Brady there two years later. Nothing of her has given me a parent name.
What I’m looking for
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- Any locals who have access to record holdings for Chicopee and Holyoke.
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- Anyone researching the Sheridan smallholders of Cordownan, Guartoquill, or the wider Killeshandra area in the 1820s and 1830s — or a Callaghan, Brady, Maher or Lynch family from the same corner of Cavan.
- Any locals who have access to record holdings for Chicopee and Holyoke.
- Anyone researching the Sheridan smallholders of Cordownan, Guartoquill, or the wider Killeshandra area in the 1820s and 1830s — or a Callaghan, Brady, Maher or Lynch family from the same corner of Cavan.
Sheridan Research
Bridget Sheridan — a world timeline
Bridget’s life, shared with her husband Patrick Caughlin, 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 she moved through.
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 and beyond.
18 Feb 1820
Patrick Caughlin — Bridget’s future husband — is born at Clonfinlough, King’s County (now Offaly).
c.1824
Bridget Sheridan is born in County Cavan.
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.
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.
by 1846
Bridget emigrates from Ireland — the year, her age and her route aren’t yet confirmed; a thread I’m still chasing.
7 Nov 1846
Bridget marries Patrick Caughlin 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.
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.
1889
Bridget spends about two months at Waukesha, Wisconsin — the “Saratoga of the West” — taking the Bethesda mineral-water cure for her health; her son William brings her there, and she returns home in September much improved.
6 Feb 1897
Bridget dies at Clyman, Dodge County, and is buried at Holy Assumption.
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 outlives Bridget by sixteen years, dying at Clyman in 1913, aged 93.