Building a Tree of 18C and 19C Families

Continued from Irish Families

A speculative tree.

With so few families fitting the family tree, I had a second look at the statements made by John (1877)  [See Building the First Tree]. It seemed that the second statement [“Grandfather was born in the year 1803 and died in 1873, his family was William, John, George, Ned and four daughters”] might have been misinterpreted, and should have been taken to mean “Grandfather was born in the year 1803 and died in 1873, his children were William, John, George, Ned and four daughters”. This would place these eight persons in a later generation. If we make a second assumption that persons listed in column two of Irish Families Table 1 would have been born about 20 to 30 years before their marriage or the birth of the first child, then more of the families in Table 1 fall into place.                   

Families 1, William; 2, George and 3, James, could now have been children of Philip, and brothers to great-grandfather Ned. (They could also have been cousins through perhaps an unknown brother to Philip). These connections make it possible to link in others, resulting in 10 of Table 1 families being located in the tree as in Fig. 3. This is about as far as we can stretch our speculation. It must be remembered that both George and Philip probably had brothers who spawned their own families some of whom could account for the unidentified families in Table 1. The William (shoemaker) in USA, son of William and Catherine Hickey has been difficult to place. But finally I have guessed that William and Catherine could have been a brother to John with parents William and Mary Fitzmaurice. John lived in Doneraille and I am guessing that his supposed brother William was there also.

Fig. 3
This is my best construction of the tree of early 18th and 19th century Balfry Families last updated April 2017 Note: Page numbers refer to the detailed trees of Balfry branches found under the All Family Trees tab.
  Please note that this page will not be updated further, but any updates will be added to Page 1 under the All Family Trees Tab.

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