The People

Origins

As I have considered each branch of the Buckley family in Cappawhite, two of the questions I always ask myself are: Where did they come from? and Where did they go?  The first of these questions can be applied to the very existence of Buckleys in the Cappawhite area in the first place: How did our clan come to be in Cappawhite?  As we trace our family back through the historical record, this becomes a very real question, because although there were several Buckley families recorded in the Tithe Applotment records in 1826, there were none recorded in the 1766 religious census. 

Poring over all of the records we have assemble so far, we have absolutely no record of Buckleys in the civil parish of Toem  before about 1814, when Buckleys appear simultaneously in church records for the townlands of Shanacloon (RC parish of Cappawhite) and Ayle (RC parish of Solohead & Oola).  Within a short time, there is a proliferation of Buckleys in Shanacloon (at least four Buckley families) and Cahernahallia (at least two families).  

The only information we have on any of these Buckleys prior to their arrival in the Cappawhite is for the John Buckley/Mary Ryan family of Cahernahallia/Knockanavar, which first appears in church records in the Archdiocese of Cashel & Emly in the RC parish of Newport, Kilcomenty civil parish, in 1816.  By at least 1822, they were living in Cahernahallia.  (See the map of RC parishes in the Archdiocese of Cashel & Emly to understand the geographical relationships of these different parishes, reproduced in an annotated form below from the website for the Archdiocese.)  (http://www.cashel-emly.ie/main/parishes/mapdean2.htm)

Both of these earlier locations are west of Cappawhite/Toem, straddling the border between Co. Tipperary and Co. Limerick, so we broadened our look at the area to consider possible connections flowing across the border.  To get at this issue, I looked at the extensive (and excellent) Griffith's Valuation data for these two counties that is available by subscription to The OriginsNetwork (www.origins.net), and plotted the number of Buckley parcels appearing in 1851 on a (civil) parish-by-parish basis.  The results is shown below:

This map may be a bit of an eye-test, but it suggests that in this two-county region there were roughly three main centers of Buckley populations in 1851, corresponding to Abbeyfeale on the west coast of Co. Limerick, the regional center of Caher in Co.Tipperary, and the area of Kilcomenty (including the RC parish of Newport) in Co. Tipperary at the north end of the border with Co. Limerick.  Looking at maps of the area from the 1830s, the road system favors migration from Newport to Toem more than the two other possibilities. 

This circumstantial evidence seems so strong that I would almost conclude that we came from Kilcomenty/Newport, except that the 1766 Religious Census shows as strong a correlation with the civil parish of Grean (also in the border area of Cos. Limerick and Tipperary) as with Kilcomenty.  Whether from due west (the direction of Grean) or the northwest (the direction of Kilcomenty), it seems likely that the Buckleys of Cappawhite originally came to their new home the Cappawhite area sometime around 1800-1815.