Community website for Millstreet, Co. Cork, Ireland
Preceded by Jimmy Reidy’s Archival Show No. 129 relating to Castletown-Kinneigh on Cork Music Station at 8pm on this Tuesday, 3rd Dec. 2024…..“Radio Treasures” (from 9.15pm to 11.30pm) features at 10pm – a special review of the Turning on of the Millstreet Christmas Lights on last Sunday. All this and so much more on tonight’s very special Show. Feel most welcome to contact us on 086 – 825 0074 or by emailing corkmusicstation @gmail.com . Tap on the images above to enlarge. (S.R.)
SOLD OUT
Join us as we celebrate Nollaig na mBan on January 5th 2025. A glass of Prosecco will be followed by Afternoon Tea served by the wonderful Pastry Fork in Corkery’s Bar.
Hello Millstreet community,
Recent DNA matches show that I may have a link to Millstreet involving an old family story, one now backed up by modern records. My great-great-great-grandparents, Edward and Susan McDowell, eloped about 1793-94. Edward was Susan’s family coachman, so she was then disinherited – ‘cut off with an angry shilling’ was the phrase used in an old letter in my possession; he then became a shoemaker to keep them. No maiden name for Susan is recorded in folklore or in the relevant records I’ve been able to find in recent years online. Admiralty records show that Edward McDowell, 30-year-old shoemaker, b. 1766 Augher, co Tyrone enlisted in the Royal Navy as a private marine in 1796 and that the couple were in RN Dublin accommodation in 1797. A plausible 1839 death record for Susan describes her as 65, so she would’ve been under age when she and Edward married. She is described as his wife by both the RN and St Mary’s, Dublin where their eldest child John, b. 1794, was baptised in April 1795, but no modern record of their marriage exists. (They must’ve used a clergyman willing to marry clandestine couples, who gave them a piece of paper to flourish; perhaps he didn’t keep a tight register or else it was destroyed.) The couple had three children; I’m descended from the third, Sarah, born at Bristol in 1807 but WWII bombing destroyed all relevant records there. Sarah emigrated to Van Dieman’s Land and married a Donegal man in 1833. Her 1861 Kangaroo Flat, Victoria death certificate confirms her parents’ names and Edward’s occupation as shoemaker. There are hundreds of McCarthy links in my DNA matches; a few also indicate Millstreet as a location of interest, although it’s hard to say more because few Ancestry DNA matches have trees. Does this elopement story chime with the folklore of any one reading it here? I would be very grateful for any information about who Susan may have been, whether McCarthy or else, perhaps, some connected name. She is my last big family mystery, one I’ve been trying to crack for decades. I live in the Hunter Valley, NSW.
Jo Killmister
Contact –
ted_jo @bigpond.com
Dia is Mhuire díobh go léir a cáirde and welcome to my report.
And welcome to December, the last month of the year. The month when we look back in disbelief and ask ourselves, ’where did it go’ Not an easy question to answer but it’s up to ourselves how we spend our time and when we look back and pick out the things that we did in those past months maybe we could tell ourselves that we didn’t waste them after all. Our way into Mass on Sunday was made all the more spectacular with the placing of the beautiful wooden crib at the gate thanks to the efforts of our Men’s Club. Everybody stopped to admire their presentation, complete with the all the figures of the age old Christmas scene. It is a wonderful addition to our way into Mass for the Holy Season of Christmas.
