On January 4, 1907, my grandfather, John Patrick O’Mullan was born to Daniel William Mullan and Elizabeth Gallagher in Moyaver, County Antrim, Ireland. They christened him at St. Olcan’s church – where his father was christened and his family is buried.
In the 1980s, my parents were directed by locals to the O’Mullan homestead. They didn’t realize it at the time but they photographed a cottage that was occupied by my great-grandfather’s siblings – Pat, Elizabeth and Mary Anne. My direct ancestors never lived there.
The O’Mullan family, including my 3rd great-grandfather William O’Mullan, leased a fair bit of acreage in Mount Hamilton – but it looks as though they had to drain a lake to get it. They rented portions of what was a lake in 1832, drained it, and brought it entirely under plough by 1837.
My 3rd great-grandfather, Patrick Scally, was born in Moyaver around 1791. Though his life largely predates Catholic parish registers, we can piece a lot of it together from census and property documents. An agricultural census shows that his father, Daniel Scally, was working in Moyaver as a farm labourer in 1803. Pension records show that…
My great-grandmother was born in Dundee, Scotland to parents who were born in Scotland, and grandparents who were born in Ulster, Ireland. In the Scotland of her day, that made her Irish – not Scottish.
My great-grandfather and his siblings are buried together under one stone with their parents at St. Olcan’s Cemetery in Armoy, Antrim, Northern Ireland. When I visited my grandfather’s birthplace, I took the opportunity to document all the gravestones in his churchyard – 797 souls – and 39 of them were born before 1830, the earliest…
As a kid, I remember thinking that my grandfather’s family owned a farm called ‘Moyaver’ in a place called ‘Armoy’ – – but none of that turns out to be true. Here’s what’s true…
My 2nd great-grandfather, Daniel O’Mullan, moved to Moyaver from Mount Hamilton around the time he married Isabella Scally. They lived in a cottage on the Limepark Estate.
My grandmother, Margaret Teresa Costello, was born to John J. Costello, a blacksmith, and Honora Brown in Newark, NJ on the 3rd of August 1903. Her father would died of kidney failure when she was not yet 3 years old, and she grew up in her mother’s boarding house on Plum St. in Newark.
O’Mullan derives from the Gaelic surname O’Maoláin, which dates to before the 10th century. ‘Maol” means bald or tonsured. So Maoláin refers to a monk or a disciple, or really anyone who shaves their head as a sign of religious devotion.