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Shanacloon is a townland in Toem that is enclosed on the west by Cahernahallia/Knockanavar, on the east by Moher (or what is today East Moher), and on the south by Toem itself. It is a bit west of the village of Cappawhite, but it is quite centrally located relative to the crossroads of Toem -- where the Toem cemetery and ruined chapel are located:
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| Toem Cemetery |
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| The Townland of Shanacloon |
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Shanacloon stands out in the historical record as the townland with the richest body of available records for the Buckleys of Cappawhite. These include the oldest record of Buckleys in Toem (the 1814 marriage of Edmond Buckley and Judith O’Dwyer), the largest set of baptismal records in our collection (17 baptisms from 1816 through 1835), the most diverse set of property records, and the most interesting set of connections (and potential connections) to Buckleys in the other townlands.
On top of all this, like Doon, Buckleys continue to live in Shanacloon (now Shanaclune) to this day – nearly 200 years after this story begins. The best early snapshot of the Buckleys of Shanacloon is found in the 1826 Tithe Applotment records, which identify four Buckley leaseholds: William & Edmond, John, and Michael.
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| The Buckleys of Shanacloon, 1826 |
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When matched up with marriage and birth records through the time of the Tithe Applotments, we see that these four names represent four young families, with children being born right into the early 1830s, suggesting heads of families who were perhaps in their late 30s by 1826. In addition to these four, however, there was a fifth family, headed by James and Catherine (Kearney) Buckley, having children during this time period but who does not appear in the property record until the 1851 survey of leaseholds comprising Griffith’s Valuation.
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| James Buckley of Shanacloon |
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Working with the original Griffith’s data and the subsequent series of Griffith’s updates, we have been able to reconstruct the record of successive owners for each parcel:
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| Shanacloon Parcel Evolution [click to enlarge] |
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By taking this data and combining it with an 1872 annotation of the original Griffith's survey map, we have been able to develop maps of the original Buckley holdings in Shanacloon. These maps show that the Buckley holdings in Shanacloon were divided: two sets of parcels spanning the width of the townland from east to west, divided from one another by an intervening parcel (held by the Maher family).
These two sets of holdings are depicted in the maps below, which refer to them as the "North Buckley Parcels" and the "South Buckley Parcels." The parcel numbers you see in these maps refer to the parcel numbers in effect during 1872-1883, as established in the GV updates. You will also see them referred to in the table of lessors, above. (See the map at the top of this page to get a sense of the location of these parcels within the townland as a whole.)
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| The North Buckley Parcels |
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| The South Buckley Parcels |
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The pattern of the Maher parcel sandwiched between the two sets of Buckley holdings persists for decades. We have often wondered whether this happened merely by circumstance, or whether the Buckleys and Mahers moved to the area together in the first place – perhaps joined by marriage?
Other relationships are suggested by the Shanacloon map data when it is placed on the same map with the Buckley holdings in the neighboring townlands. For example, there was another pair of Buckley leaseholders in the 1826 TA, named William & Edmond, in the adjacent townland of Moher. When the parcels are mapped, they turn out to be exactly adjacent to the Buckley parcels in Shanacloon, suggesting that they are likely the very same William & Edmond Buckley (rather than a separate pair of individuals) as those listed for Shanacloon. The Shanacloon Buckleys are also quite close to the Buckleys of Cahernahallia/Knockanavar, and not far from the Buckleys of Glengar (and later, Leugh) – suggesting still more likely connections. |
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| The Buckleys of Cappawhite, 1826 [click to enlarge] |
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These likely connections will be covered elsewhere on this site.
We have taken all this data -- including the marriage records, baptismal records, property records, and some civil records – pieced it together, taken it part, sifted it with the assumptions, inferences, and other techniques discussed in “The Process” section of this site, to try to develop the best family tree for Shanacloon that we could. The quality of this tree varies with time. We believe we have a reasonably good picture of the early Buckley families in Shanacloon, which as best we can tell looks something like this: |
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| The Buckleys of Shanacloon [click to enlarge] |
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Limitations of this tree
Buckley/O'Dwyer: This tree is still be actively revised, so its limitations should be pointed out. First, there is a discrepancy in our data for the family of the first Edmond Buckley and his wife, Ms. O'Dwyer. The marriage data we have says that Ms. O'Dwyer's name was Judith, but the baptismal record says Margaret - with a Judith Dwyer serving as a sponsor for one of the children. We do not have reason to believe that there were two separate Edmond Buckleys in this area at this time who were both married to an O'Dwyer girl, so we are treating this as a transcription error for now.
Edmond (Sen.) & (Jun.): Second, the GV records show two different Edmonds possessing parcels after 1851 -- sometimes jointly -- with one designated "Sen." (i.e., senior) and the other "Jun." (i.e., junior). Typically, in the GV records, this indicates a father/son relationship between the two individuals. For a balance of reasons, we currently believe that these two individuals were likely uncle and nephew (a similar situation arises in the Knockanavar data) -- but this is a working assumption at this point.
Michael & Ellen (White): Finally, I have placed Phil Buckley's ancestors (Michael Buckley, married to Ellen White) under the original William Buckley here, but this is a bit of a reach. We do not in fact know where Phil's family fits: it could be Shanacloon, it could be Glengar, or it could be somewhere else altogether. This, likewise, is a working assumption.
[JRB Note: We are still examining the property records, and additional baptism and death records (mostly from the 1860s-1870s), so we will continue to refine this tree with any applicable data from those sources. I will eventually be posting an annotated version of the family tree giving detailed information for the source of our data and any assumptions we used in assembling the tree in its current form.]
The data we currently have gets sketchier as time progresses into the late 1800s. My family has left by 1884; Phil Buckley?s and Bill Buckley?s families likely left in the 1840s. Though none of us is perhaps directly descended from the Shanacloon Buckleys, per se, we have uncovered these Shanacloon records for the time periods we were focused on. There are more records available at TFHR, but we have already expended considerable sums with TFHR and don?t have any focused plan of attack for the data after the mid-1870s. The family tree starts to become more confused as Buckleys left the farms for town, or left the area altogether.
Where to next?
We do, however, have one thread of data that carries us forward toward the present day: the Griffith?s Valuation updates. These property records continue into the 1960s, so we are hopeful that the Buckleys living in Shanacloon today will be able to help fill out the picture. Working backwards from the present, they should be able to link up their recent family history to the families we show in the property records into the 1960s. In particular, we would refer our modern cousins to the families indicated in the last GV update in our collection: |
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| 1923-1967, p.1 [click to enlarge] |
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| 1923-1967, p.2 [click to enlarge] |
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| 1923-1967, p. 3 [click to enlarge] |
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| If you are connected to these modern Buckleys of Cappawhite, please contact us through the “What Do You Think?” page on this site and tell us your story!
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