The Quaids of Ballymacamore

About 15 miles southwest of Limerick, midway between the villages of Ballingarry and Croom, sits a little collection of farms known as Ballymacamore. In Irish it would be Baile Mhic Aodha Mór, "Place of Big Aodha's Son".

Ordnance Survey of Ireland, revised 1898-1899

The area is farmland today, just as it was almost 200 years ago when my third-great-grandparents Patrick and Ellen Dundon Quaid lived there, surrounded by extended family.

Quaids in the Ballymacamore House Book, circa 1852

Land records from the 1850s show Patrick living in Ballymacamore, next door to Timothy Quaid. A couple of doors down was the home of Michael Quaid, and further down the road lived John Quaid.

Godparents

I don't really know the relationship between these Quaids; it's possible that one of them is the father of the others, or perhaps they have more distant relationships. But in addition to living near one another, they show up as Baptism sponsors (i.e. Godparents) for each others' children.

The baptismal record of Patrick and Ellen's son
Timothy, sponsored by Patrick's maybe-brother Timothy

The baptismal records list the parents by their birth names, so for example Ellen Dundon Quaid is always Ellen Dundon here -- not "formerly Dundon" or anything like that, just Ellen Dundon. I find that really interesting -- in this sense Ellen and her contemporaries never really dropped their birth names, it's just that different forms of their names were used in different contexts.

I've read through the baptismal records for the parish at Croagh, up through about 1848. I'm sure I missed a few entries since the handwriting is a problem, the scan isn't always great, half the entries are written in Latin, and frankly the eyes glaze over. But these are the people I found, apparently close but otherwise of unknown relation:

• Patrick Quaid and Ellen Dundon, my ancestors.
• Michael Quaid and Alice Renihan.
• Denis Quaid and Alice Barry.
• John Quaid and Bridget Sheehy.
• Timothy Quaid and Catherine Sheehy.
• David Quaid and Ellen Sheehy.

There is an Alice Barry who forms the glue of this little group, appearing on baptisms for all the other families. But they might not all be Denis' wife, since an Alice Barry is also a sponsor for Denis and Alice's son Martin.

Law & Order ("Dun don")

David Quaid sues James Quaid

In 1857 there was a case in Petty Sessions, sort of a small claims court, in which one David Quaid, farmer in Ballymacamore, sued James Quaid, also a farmer in Ballymacamore, for allowing his cows to trespass on David's garden. Actually there were two such cases between David and James that year, so I guess those cows were ornery.

Practically the only references I have to James Quaid are Petty Sessions cases, mostly cases in which he's complaining about neighbors starting in 1856. I haven't seen James on land records or among the church records, so he might be from a separate branch of Quaids.

The Franchise

In 1829 the English passed the Parliamentary Election Act, which restricted the right to vote for "knights of the shire" to men who held or rented freeholds worth £10 or more. For almost 500 years prior to that, anyone across the kingdom holding land worth 40 shillings had the right to vote. The act had the effect of reducing the number of voters in Ireland from about 215,000 to 40,000.

The Limerick Chronicle printed a list of freeholders who intended to register for the vote in County Limerick, neatly organized by township, over four full pages of the newspaper.

The Limerick Chronicle, May 30 1829

In the barony of Upper Connelloe we find the township of Bally McMone, which I believe is another spelling of Ballymacamore. In that township we have five Quaids, all claiming a yearly value of exactly £10, as everyone did. These are the only Quaids listed in this edition of the paper, or at least the only ones that the search engine can find.

These are all the freeholders associated with Bally McMone:

Michael Molony	James Liston
John Liston	Denis Quaid
William Quaid	Timothy Quaid
Patrick Quaid	Patrick Hannan
William Burns	John Molony
John Quaid

This Patrick Quaid may or may not be my 3rd great-grandfather. My ancestor was apparently born around 1795, and therefore would have been 34 years old at this time and potentially out on his own. On the other hand he didn't get married until 1831, so his age is a little suspect in my mind, and often it seems that children didn't establish their own households until they were married.

Tithe Applotments

To support the Tithe Composition Act of 1823, surveyors were sent around Ireland to record the type and value of agricultural land, and its occupiers. For Ballymacamore, records from the Tithe Applotment survey survive from 1834.

Tithe Applotment of 1834 for Ballymackeymore.
From the National Archives of Ireland.

The landholders listed are:

• James Lyston & partners
• Representatives (?) of Molony & Patrick Hannan
• John Quaid & partners & Representatives of David Quaid
• Tenant of E. Fitzgerald & James Letright & partners
• Burns & Hannan
• Denis Quaid & William Storin, formerly Timothy & Darby Quaid
• Timothy Quaid

Compared to the list from 1829, we still have John, Denis and Timothy Quaid, although of course they might not be the same people. We've lost Patrick and William from the list, but gained David. It's not clear what to make of "formerly Darby Quaid".

My ancestor Patrick Quaid got married to Ellen Dundon in 1831, so one might expect that they had an independent household by the time this survey was made a few years later. There are a total of three men named Patrick Quaid who show up Tithe Applotment surveys, all in Limerick. It's not possible to know which is which, but in the nearby township of Kiltanna there's a Patrick Quaid with just two acres of third-class land, listed next to someone Patrick Dundon. Maybe an in-law?

Land

For the most part the Quaids didn't own the land. In fact the whole area, all of Ballymacamore and apparently most of the surrounding countryside, was owned by John Pigott, Esq. American readers will associate the honorific Esq with lawyers, but in 19th century Ireland it had the more traditional connotation as "the local squire", the owner of an estate. I don't know much about this Pigott, but his ancestor, also known as John Pigott, Esq, wrote a letter that described why he separated from his wife. Apparently that story was so juicy that it got published as a pamphlet, but the copy I saw was a little out of my price range, so the details remain a mystery.

 

Patrick and Timothy had "one life" leases from Mr. Pigott.

The land records show that Patrick and Timothy had "one life" leases from Pigott. My understanding is that a "one life" lease is just what it sounds like -- valid until the tenant dies. There are also two and three life leases; I think that means the life of any of three people, as opposed to some multi-generational thing. In the Tenure Book both leases appear as "one life 1797". That's close to the birth year for Patrick, so perhaps it helps identify the life in question. But if that's the case, does the same year on both leases mean that Patrick and Timothy were twins?

These Tenure Books also record changes, through the simple of expedient of crossing things out and overwriting. That makes it awfully difficult to understand; I'm under the impression that the overwritten text might be in colored ink, which probably helps. But you can see plots that were once leased by John Quaid were later leased by David Quaid, and may even have been owned outright ("free forever").

Assessments of the Quaid Buildings

These land records were all about taxes, of course, so they include property assessments. Patrick's property included a house and stable. The house is given the quality code of 2B. The "2" means that it was a thatched-roof building with stone or brick walls held together with lime mortar. The "B" means that it's in good repair, but not quite good enough to earn a B+.

Instructions for Building Classifications

My current house has a slate roof, stone with lime mortar, and I like to think it's in good shape, so I think I'll give it a 1B+.

The dimensions are in feet, so the house is 45 by 19 (around 850 square feet), with a low ceiling of 6 and a half feet.

The stable was 3C, which translates to a thatched roof building with walls of dry stone, stone with mud mortar, or "good mud" walls. The C rating means that it is old and out of repair. Tim's stable was in slightly better condition.

Another entry assesses the land, describing it as Clayey (suitable for wheat, apparently) and Gravelly (suitable for corn) Arable and Pasture.

I don't know that much about Patrick and Ellen or their children. I think I can identify nine children in all, born in the 1830s and 1840s. They appear to have been having kids right through the worst of the famine years. The famine devastated nearby Ballingarry. It is possible that holding a life-lease may have buffered the Quaids somewhat, since at-will tenants were often evicted.

Among Patrick and Ellen's children was a son named David who emigrated to California, ending up near dusty Hollister, California; his great-grandson was a policeman who had retired in Mountain View when I worked nearby. I wish I had known at the time. Patrick and Ellen's son Charles, my great-great-grandfather, moved to Limerick, the big city, and became a pig buyer.

Patrick Quaid's death registration

Patrick Quaid died in 1873, presumably ending that one-life lease. Ellen Dundon Quaid died in 1883, by that time living with Charles and his family in Limerick.

By the 1901 Census, Ballymacamore was down to 10 farms, possibly due to reduced population but presumably also increased mechanization. Michael Quaid, possibly the son of Patrick, was by that time the only Quaid remaining.