The search for my Irish connection, part 1

 

In the 1891 census my Cavanagh family was enumerated at 82 Wentworth Street, Spitalfields, London. This photo was taken in 2019 and shows the building at that address in that year.

I probably have more than one Irish line in my ancestry but the main one is particularly problematic. Irish genealogical research has a reputation for being difficult as so many records were lost in the Four Courts fire in 1922. The main advice I've seen for doing Irish research, is to know the location your ancestors came from before you start researching in Ireland. The usual suggestion is to look for clues in records at the place to which the family immigrated. I saw that advice work out well when researching a Hickey family whose immigrant progenitor ended up in Halifax in the 1830s. Those Nova Scotia records showed his origins in Kilkenny. That information made taking the search back to Ireland easy. I don't think I'll have the same luck with my main Irish line.

The problem with my Irish family is that I caught the earliest glimpse of them in East London, a place where sheer numbers and endless mobility combine to create a huge morass of information almost impossible to wade through. At least, that's how it seemed when my search started way back in the pre-internet past. The hunt has become easier as records moved online. The advent of indexed databases made exploration of the records even better but, search as I might, there was still no joy.

Why do I think this vexing family line originated in Ireland? After all, I started this search before DNA evidence weighed in to show ethnicity. With a surname like Cavanagh, how could the family be anything but Irish?

Immigration history from Ireland leans heavily on the numbers of refugees from the great famine years in the 1840s. But the records I've uncovered predate that Irish exodus. I've traced the family back to the London birth of Benjamin Cavanagh in 1816. His parents' names were Benjamin and Matilda. Because of the early date that the first Cavanagh in this family line left Ireland the search becomes more difficult.

As the Cavanaghs ended up in London, rather than Liverpool, I surmised that they originated in the southern part of Ireland rather than Ulster; a case of sound reasoning or mere prejudice on my part? I've never been drawn to Northern Ireland. A county south of Dublin seemed more likely to me, perhaps Wexford? Silly really because they were Protestants. Still Google informs me that there are a minority of Protestants in Southern Ireland, mainly Presbyterians and Anglicans. My Cavanaghs were in the Anglican camp. Maybe I'm on the right track after all?