Cork to Copper

The Old Parish Road

The surname books say that before they were Haggartys, they were O hEigceartaigh, a Gaelic sept they trace to Niall of the Nine Hostages, the legendary High King of Ireland. They also say the name means "the unjust one." Make of that what you will. It is a tradition about a surname, not a record of this family.

Here is where the records actually begin. On 17 February 1844, in the Catholic parish of Ballybunion, in north County Kerry, Father M. O'Sullivan married Gulielmi Hagarty and Mariae Griffin, "de Ballybunnion," with Edmund Griffin and Timothy Griffin as witnesses. That December the same register records the baptism of their son Thomas. You can read both pages for yourself, free, at the National Library of Ireland.

So why Cork to Copper? Because that is where the family's memory pointed, and a branch of the surname became common in Cork. Tradition called us a Cork family, and this site's name came from there, and it stays. But the paper starts in Kerry. No record yet puts William or Mary in Cork, and none yet names their parents or their townland. Think of Cork as the story we inherited and Kerry as the place the records let us stand.

If you know a townland, a Griffin connection, or anything else about where William and Mary came from, we want to hear it.

Exiled for an Attempt on the King's Life

That's the family story. Someone tried to kill the king, and the Haggartys were exiled for it.

We have looked. No charge, trial, sentence or transport record has been found for this family, so the story stays what it has always been: a story, handed down. It deserves to be kept and it deserves its label.

It may be remembering something real. In the 1820s Munster was shaken by the Rockite movement, a violent uprising of secret societies against landlords and tithe collectors, and men were transported for it. Over generations, a story like that can compress into something more cinematic. But that is general Irish history, and nothing yet connects it to William and Mary.

What the records do suggest is quieter. If the Kerry couple is the Ontario couple, they were still in Ballybunion at the end of 1844, and their son Edward was baptised in Ontario in June 1850. That means they left somewhere in those five years, around the terrible start of the Great Famine. We don't know the ship or the year. We would love to.

Six Names on Ship Lists

The family has long said that brothers came over on the boats, and between 1833 and 1838 six Hegartys do appear in the New Brunswick arrival indexes. Here they are, as the indexes have them.

Daniel, 23, on the Pallas from Cork, 1833. John, 21, on the Highlander from Londonderry, 1834. Another John, master of the Eleanor from Londonderry that same year: crew, not a passenger. William, 30 by an index reading not confirmed on the original, and Peter, 16, on the Robert Watt from Cork, 1837. And a third John, 25, on the Pallas again, 1838.

This site used to say that the William on the Robert Watt was almost certainly ours. He wasn't. That passenger is indexed at 30, a reading not confirmed on the original, and our William was marrying in Kerry seven years later. We have taken it back.

Were the six brothers? Every possible pairing has been tested, all fifteen, and none is proved. They did not all sail from the same part of Ireland. Today they are six people with our surname and no known tie to us or to each other, and they stay on this site as an open question, kept apart until a record joins them up.

Many Irish emigrants of the time did cross in timber ships, cheap passage in vessels heading back for Canadian lumber. William and Mary may have been among them. No passenger list for them has been found.

A Log Shanty in Grattan

Early in 1852 a census taker reached a one-story log shanty in Grattan Township, Renfrew County, in the Ottawa Valley. Inside: William Hagarty, farmer, 27, born in Ireland. Mary, written "Griffan," 23. Thomas, 7, born in Ireland. Helen, 3, and Edward, 2, both born in Canada. And an old man, Edmond Griffin, labourer, 71. Nobody recorded who he was to them.

Is this the couple from Ballybunion? Very probably. The names match. Thomas is the right age and Irish-born. There are Griffins around them on both sides of the ocean. But no record yet names both Kerry and Grattan for the same people, so we mark that step as probable and keep looking for the document that closes it.

They stayed. By the 1871 census there were ten children: Thomas, Ellen, Edward, John, Timothy, Elizabeth, William, Jeremiah, Mary, and Hannah. William took out Crown patents on Grattan land in 1862 and 1877. He is reported to have died in December 1894. Mary made her will in February 1899, leaving her household goods to her daughter Mary and remembering a granddaughter, and she is reported to have died at Eganville on 4 July 1904. We are still after images of those two death records.

Edward Haggarty was born on 7 May 1850 and baptised at Mount St. Patrick, the son of William and Mary. On 22 November 1880 he married Ellen Deloughery at Eganville. That record names both sets of parents: William Hagerty and Mary Griffin, and Michael Deloughry and Ellen Helferty. It is one of the best documents we have.

Edward and Ellen raised at least seven children, and they did not leave. The family used to say everyone had gone to Montana before 1901. The census says otherwise: Edward, Ellen and several children are still in Renfrew County in 1901 and in 1911. Their son William Patrick was a trainman when he enlisted in August 1914. His service file, now opened, puts him with the Canadian 5th Battalion and records him wounded on 28 April 1915.

Edward died in 1913, according to a cemetery transcription, and is listed at St. James the Less in Eganville. We still want his death registration to be sure.

The Montana Convergence

A Social Security index names Tom's parents as Michael Haggarty and Marie Hanley, and the California death index gives his mother's maiden name as Hanley. The family records that he married Doris Anne Mudd at Missoula in January 1955. Doris's family were Montana people too: a published Mudd genealogy traces them back through Texas and Kentucky to Maryland.

Michael's brothers and sisters scattered in their own ways. His sister Elizabeth Ann worked as a milliner, never married, and made her home in Butte. She died in Seattle in 1963, with a nephew as informant on her death certificate, and was taken home to Butte for burial. Edward Leonard is in the family's household in 1911. He married at Anaconda in 1923 and, by an obituary card, died at Great Falls in 1975.

William and Mary's other children spread too: to North Bay, Killaloe, Great Falls and beyond. Their lines are being traced now, and you'll find them under People. This is one branch of a much larger family.

What We've Found, and What We're Still Looking For

This research is alive. The questions this site used to ask have started to get answers, and every answer opens another question.

Found

Still looking for