BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

I’ve returned home now and want to share some information about what I found at NLI. After I spent several days in Limerick with an excursion to nearby Ennis to do research in the county library’s local history center, I took the train to Dublin and spent a day and a part of another day at NLI. What my previous posting doesn’t explain is my primary interest in visiting NLI.

John Ryan and Wife Margaret Oates: Records of Bessborough Estate, Southern Co. Kilkenny

In previous postings, I’ve written about one of my ancestral lines that descends from a couple named John Ryan (b. ca. 1785) and Margaret Oates of Piltown in southern County Kilkenny. As a posting I made in April 2015 notes, among the holdings of NLI is a collection of documents entitled “Bessborough Papers. Ponsonby Family, Earls of Bessborough, 1826-1864.”[1] My April 2015 posting explains that not long before I wrote that posting, I discovered that my ancestor Margaret Oates Ryan appears in a list of women paid by the Bessborough estate in 1827 for spinning flax for the estate. I knew this information from a posting of Jim Ryan entitled “Kilkenny Women Flax Spinners, 1827” at his Ancestor Network website.

The link I provided to Jim Ryan’s posting in my April 2015 posting appears no longer to be active. The information in Jim Ryan’s posting has, however, been published by Mary Flood and Jim Ryan in an article entitled “An 1827 List of Kilkenny Women” in Old Kilkenny Review 69 (2017), pp.  114-7. This article extracts names of women, all of whom seem to have lived near Bessborough House, who appear in payment records of the Earl of Bessborough in 1827 being paid for spinning flax. As the article notes, Mary Flood and Jim Ryan were reporting on a set of manuscripts in the Bessborough Papers entitled “Spinning and weaving accounts.”[2]

My primary objective in visiting NLI on my recent trip to Dublin was to go through the 1827 spinning and weaving accounts from the Bessborough estate, since I knew from what Mary Flood and Jim Ryan had published about the accounts that my ancestor Margaret Oates (“Peggy”) Ryan was among the women paid by the estate in 1827 for weaving flax. I also wanted to go through the rent rolls that the Bessborough estate kept from 1826 to 1840. These provide a detailed list of all those renting land or other property from the Bessborough estate in southern County Kilkenny in that time frame; the rolls also specify exactly where those renting Bessborough property lived, and in this way, they help to pinpoint where people connected to the Bessborough estate as renters were living in the 1826-1840 period.

Pinpointing John and Margaret Ryan’s Place of Residence: Logriach, Belline and Rogerstown Towland, Piltown

The April 2015 posting linked above and several other postings linked within that posting provide information about why these Bessborough documents are particularly important to me. As these linked postings explain, the first record in which I catch sight of John and Margaret Oates Ryan is the baptismal record of their first child, a son named Valentine, in Templeorum Catholic parish on 6 May 1805. Templeorum Catholic parish is in southwest County Kilkenny, bordering on both Counties Tipperary and Waterford — see this map of the Catholic parishes of County Kilkenny at John Grenham’s Irish Ancestors website. When Valentine was baptized, the couple was living — the baptismal record states this — at a place called Loughreagh. Other records from this period spell the place name as Logriach or Logreich.

The baptismal record of John and Margaret’s next child, Judith, who was baptized 3 August 1806 in Templeorum parish, gives John and Margaret’s residence as Piltown. As my April 2015 posting and others it links explain, Logriach (or Loughreagh) is a name for a locale in the southern portion of the townland of Belline and Rogerstown where that townland verges on a part of the River Suir called the River Pil or Pill. Owen O’Kelly’s The Place-Names of the County of Kilkenny states that the Irish name Log riach means “the grey hollow.”[3] Though O’Kelly indicates that Logriach is in Belline and Rogerstown townland, it appears to me that the boundaries of this hollow may also extend into the adjacent townland of Banagher.

Belline and Rogerstown and Banagher are adjoining townlands that are today included, more or less, within the purlieu of the town of Piltown. Both are adjacent to the former Bessborough estate owned by the Ponsonby family, whose historic Bessborough House mansion is now the agricultural school Kildalton College. As the April 2015 posting linked above indicates, Piltown is a “Ponsonby village” largely built by the family who owned and lived at the Bessborough estate. Piltown and the areas surrounding it were closely associated with the Bessborough estate, and most of those living in this area rented their land from the Ponsonbys, with many renters doing work of some sort for the estate, including, as noted previously, spinning and weaving flax in the 1820s.

The first glimpse we have of John Ryan and Margaret Oates in Templeorum Catholic parish records, showing them living at Logriach in May 1805 and at Piltown in August 1806, is a very important record pinpointing where this Ryan family lived and where it rented land from the Bessborough estate. I use the word “pinpointing” here precisely to note that this 1805 record places a pin on a map indicating a precisely place in which John and Margaret Ryan were living when their first children were baptized.

This pinpoint helps me distinguish the John Ryan with wife Margaret Oates from several other John Ryans who appear in the Bessborough rent rolls renting land from the Bessborough estate in the first half of the 1800s. My April 2015 posting suggests that John and Margaret may have moved their family to a number of other nearby places in the period 1805-1815, while Logriach remained their pied á terre, the pinpoint on the map to which they were constantly connected. I’ve now concluded, though, that John and Margaret Ryan lived continuously in Logriach-Piltown, and didn’t move to several other places as I had previously thought, while retaining a foothold in Logriach as they moved about.

I had based the notion that John and Margaret may have moved to nearby Harristown and then Milltown on the fact that three of their children, my ancestor Valentine (a second son who was given this name after his older brother had died) and his siblings Mary and Daniel were baptized in October 1811, May 1814, and December 1815 in Milltown and Harristown. I’ve subsequently discovered that John and Margaret also had a son Patrick baptized 13 December 1807 at Carrick-on-Suir in County Tipperary.

Now that I’ve had a chance to go through the Bessborough estate rent rolls from 1826-1840, I’ve concluded that John and Margaret Ryan remained continuously where I first find them in 1805, at Logriach-Piltown, and did not move about in the period 1805-1815, to Carrick-on-Suir, Milltown, and Harristown. I’m not entirely sure what accounts for those places being listed as several of their children were baptized in the 1807-1815 time frame. It’s possible, as I proposed in the April 2015 posting liked above, that John was doing some work for the Bessborough estate in these years, and this might account for his and Margaret’s residence being listed as Harristown or Milltown as their last set of children were baptized.

I tend to doubt, however, that John and Margaret moved their family from the Piltown area to Carrick-on-Suir in 1807, then to Milltown, and after that to Harristown. On going through the Bessborough rent rolls on my recent visit to NLI, I discovered that the rent rolls consistently list a John Ryan from 1827-1840 renting land from the Bessborough estate in either the townland of Belline or Rogerstown or the townland of Banagher. The 1828 Bessborough rent roll shows John Ryan renting Bessborough land in that year at Piltown Logreich (i.e., Logriach), and in 1829, this same John Ryan is listed as renting Bessborough land at Piltown Banaher (i.e., Banagher).[4]

In both cases, this John Ryan is listed next to a Patrick Ryan who appears with John Ryan in a number of the Bessborough rent rolls, and in both cases, the property the two men are renting jointly is given the number 149. This John Ryan is, I think, certainly the John with wife Margaret who was paid by the Bessborough estate in 1827 for spinning flax for the estate, and the John with wife Margaret whose first two children were baptized in 1805 and 1806 with the Templeorum parish register stating that the couple was living at Loughreagh (i.e., Logriach) and Piltown.

This conclusion is reinforced by the Tithe Applotment listing for John Ryan in 1828, a document I’ll discuss in more detail below, and Griffith’s Valuation listing for John in 1849, a point I’ll explain as well in a moment. And as I’ve just noted, the 1827 list of women paid by Bessborough estate for weaving flax, which includes John’s wife Margaret (listed as Peggy Ryan), reinforces the conclusion that John and Margaret continued to reside in Logriach in 1827.

The Bessborough Estate Spinning and Weaving Accounts, 1827

Noting that the Bessborough spinning and weaving accounts are found in a folder held by NLI that includes “several documents…, each of which is a register of payments for a series of weeks within the period March to July of 1827,” Mary Flood and James G. Ryan write,[5]

The documents are on several loose pages in the Bessborough Papers in the National Library of lreland MS 29,805 (1). These papers are those of the Ponsonby family whose titles include Baron and Earl Bessborough and Viscount Duncannon. In the document he is described as ‘Lord Duncannon.’ …

Although the location or residence of the women is not specified in the documents, it is almost certain that all lived in one of the 20 or so townlands in the immediate vicinity of the Bessborough Estate at Kildalton. A comparison of the names on the list with those in the Griffith Valuation returns (1850) and the Tithe Applotment Survey shows that almost aII of the surnames appear in this immediate vicinity. In particular, 15 of the 83 family names appear in the townland of Belline and Rogerstown; six in Tobernabrone; six in Banagher and six in Fiddown. This would make sense as there was no practical reason why the farm management would seek flax spinners further from the farm than was necessary.”

Some Notes on the Oates Family

In addition to Peggy Ryan, the list of women paid by the Bessborough estate for spinning flax in 1827 includes Ally (Alice), Anstie (Anastasia), Mary, and Molly Ryan. It’s not clear to me whether the last two Ryan women are the same person. Could the Mary or Molly Ryan being paid for spinning flax in 1827 be John and Margaret Ryan’s daughter of that name who was baptized in May 1814 in Templeorum parish?

Also on the Bessborough list of women paid for spinning flax are two Oates women, Biddy and Mary. Templeorum Catholic parish records allow us to identify Biddy and where she lived: the parish baptismal register shows Andrew Oates and Bridget Walsh of Logriach with a daughter Mary baptized 17 May 1827, with sponsors Thomas Walsh and Jane Ryan. On 3 August 1829, with Andrew and Bridget again living at Logriach, the couple had a daughter Anne baptized with sponsors James and Ellen Conway.

On the 1830 rent roll for Bessbourgh estate, John Ryan is listed next to Pat Ryan, both living at Piltown Banaher (i.e., Banagher) and tagged with the number 149, and in the same listing at Piltown Banaher is Andrew Oates, tagged as number 155.[6] John Ryan and Andrew Oates were neighbors, apparently, and it’s very likely that Andrew was a close relative of John’s wife Margaret Oates Ryan. These pieces of information confirm Mary Flood and Jim Ryan’s deduction that the women paid by Bessborough estate in 1827 for spinning flax almost certainly lived very close to the estate and its mansion house.

The Mary Oates paid by the Bessborough estate for spinning flax in 1827 may be Mary Dempsey, wife of James Oates; this couple had a daughter Ellen baptized 11 November 1832 in Templeorum parish, with William Foley and Mary Butler as sponsors. James and Mary lived at Fiddown some 1.7 miles from Piltown.

Mary Flood and Jim Ryan note that the surname Oates, also spelled as Oats and Othes, is one of the less common surnames found in the list of payments to women spinning flax for Bessborough, and that there are “several families” in the civil parish of Fiddown with this surname.[7] In communications he sent me in June and July 2008, John Walsh, a descendant of the Oates family of Fiddown parish, told me that there “was only one family of Oates in Piltown” (i.e., all those with this surname in this vicinity stem from the same ancestor). John Walsh told me that his great-grandmother Mary Oates was born in Tybroughney in 1837 and married Richard Walsh of Piltown. This family worked for the Briscoe family, a branch of the Ponsonbys, who had a large house at Harristown.

The Tithe Applotment Listing for John Ryan, 1828

As I’ve just suggested, when used in tandem with each other, the Bessborough estate rent rolls, the Bessborough payment list for women spinning flax in 1827, and the Templeorum Catholic parish records can yield significant information allowing us to determine who lived where (or who rented Bessborough land where) in the first half of the 1800s. Another valuable record that should be used in tandem with these sources is the Tithe Applotment books, which determine the amount of tithes occupiers of agricultural landholdings over one acre were expected to pay.

The Tithe Applotment listings for Fiddown civil parish appear to have been made in 1828. This record shows, once again, John and Patrick Ryan renting Bessborough land at Banaher (i.e., Banagher), Logriach, Piltown.[8] John Ryan is listed as no. 114 on this list and Patrick is no. 116. Patrick’s name is crossed out and the name Alice Casey is penciled in its place.

Notes on Patrick Ryan, Son of John Ryan and Margaret Oates

Patrick Ryan begins appearing on the Bessborough rent rolls in 1827, and is listed as renting land at Piltown.[9] As I noted previously, the 1828 rent roll shows John Ryan renting Bessborough land along with Patrick at Piltown Logreich (i.e., Logriach), and in 1829 and 1830, John and Patrick are renting the same piece of land at Piltown Banagher. Up through 1839, the Bessborough rent rolls show John and Patrick side by side renting land listed as Piltown land (though occasionally one or the other name drops from the list for a year).

I haven’t been able to find any information about Patrick in the Templeorum Catholic parish register. The lack of any records for children born to him or records showing his wife’s name make me think that he may not have married. My conclusion is that Patrick is John Ryan’s son of that name who was baptized at Carrick-on-Suir on 13 December 1807. As I noted previously, John and Margaret Oates Ryan’s first-born son Valentine, who was born in May 1805, had died before October 1811 when Templeorum parish records show John and Margaret having a second son Valentine baptized.

Patrick was, then, John and Margaret’s oldest son after their first son Valentine died. He would have been of age by 1827, when he begins to appear on the Bessborough rent rolls living at Piltown, with his residence identified specifically as Piltown Logriach when he and John Ryan appear on the rent rolls the following year. I think that John Ryan and his oldest son (after the first Valentine died) Patrick farmed together, and this may well account for the fact that when John and Margaret Ryan’s two youngest sons Valentine (the second son of that name) and Daniel came of age and married, they married women in Mullinavat to the east of Piltown, and settled there.

Patrick Ryan disappears from the Bessborough rent rolls in 1840, the last year covered in the collection of Bessborough estate papers in NLI. I do not think that Patrick died by 1840, since he was a sponsor as the baptism of his nephew Willam, son of Valentine Ryan and Bridget Tobin, when William was baptized at the Mullinavat Catholic parish on 12 September 1841. What became of Patrick after this and why he is not listed with his father John on Griffith’s Valuation record when it was made in 1849 in Piltown, I do not know.[10]

Notes on Peter Ryan, Blacksmith of Piltown

Instead of being listed next to Patrick Ryan on the 1840 Bessborough rent roll, John Ryan appears in that year next to a Peter Ryan who is listed on the Bessborough rent rolls from 1826 to 1840 with landholdings identified sometimes as Piltown property, other times as Piltown Banaher property, and at other times as Banaher Logreich or Logreigh (i.e., Logriach) property. The 1829 Bessborough rent roll shows Peter Ryan with both land and a forge rented at Piltown.[11] This 1829 rental listing ends with a list of those in arrears including Peter Ryan for his forge; noted next to the arrears listing is a note that Peter’s arrears had been forgiven.

In 1830, Peter Ryan’s forge shows up again on the Bessborough rent roll, this time with the information that the forge was in Banaher (Banagher) Piltown, and again with a notation that Peter was in arrears for his rent on the forge and the debt had been forgiven.[12] Peter and his forge at Banagher continue to show up on most of the rental lists through 1837, with no notation after 1830 that he was in arrears for his rent of the forge.

I do not know who Peter Ryan was. That is, I cannot explain his connection to John Ryan. I find no information about him in the Templeorum Catholic parish register. John Ryan and Margaret Oates had no son named Peter baptized in that parish, nor do I find any other nearby Catholic parish register showing John and Margaret with a son named Peter baptized in another parish. If Peter was a contemporary of John — though I don’t know this fact for certain — perhaps they were brothers.

In the holdings of NLI are two sets of maps of Bessborough property in southern County Kilkenny, one dated 1847 and the other dated 1850.[13] The maps are arranged by townland. The 1847 map for Banagher shows John and P. Ryan listed together with a notation that this was the forge tract. The 1850 map for Banagher shows only Peter Ryan on the same tract on which John and P. Ryan are listed in 1847, when the tract was labeled the forge tract. This forge tract is located at the intersection of what is now Piltown’s main street and the road from that street through Banagher to Tybroughney. Just down the main street from this tract is a tract marked Anthony, which appears on contemporary maps of Banagher-Piltown as the location of Anthony’s Inn.

Griffith’s Valuation and John Ryan’s Landholdings in 1849

Finally, there’s Griffith’s Valuation record, a property tax survey conducted between 1847 and 1864. This survey was made in the Piltown area in 1849. In its listings for Piltown’s townland of Banagher, Griffith’s Valuation shows John and Peter Ryan renting property from the Earl of Bessborough side by side.[14] John’s property, listed as no. 7, is a house, offices and a garden. Peter Ryan, at no. 6, is renting a smithy, office, and yard. Peter is also shown renting no. 29 in Piltown’s townland of Banagher from Bessborough, a house, offices, yard, and garden from Bessborough. This document indicates that in 1849, John and Peter were probably not living side by side, but John may have been living next to Peter’s smithy on Piltown’s main street where that street intersects the road from Piltown to Tybroughney. Peter is also shown on Griffith’s Valuation renting land labeled as no. 9 in Banagher from the Bessborough estate.

Not only was Peter Ryan renting more than one piece of property from the Bessborough estate when Griffith’s Valuation was made in 1849; but John Ryan was, as well — or, at least, other pieces of rental property are enumerated for John in a section of Griffith’s Valuation for the Piltown area entitled Valuation of Tenements as Altered or Confirmed on Appeal by the Sub-Commissioners. It had puzzled me in the past that Griffith’s shows what I had thought were perhaps three John Ryans renting Bessborough property in Belline and Rogerstown townland, in Banagher townland, and in Belline and Rogerstown Piltown. When I first found those listings, I thought there must have been more John Ryans living in the Piltown area in 1849 than I had realized.

After making my way through the Bessborough rent rolls held by NLI, I now realize that there was a single John Ryan renting Bessborough propery in this locale in the period 1827-1840. The listings for several John Ryans in Belline and Rogerstown, Banagher, and Piltown on Griffith’s Valuation in 1849 are all for the very same John Ryan, my ancestor. He’s listed on Griffith’s Valuation several times because he was renting multiple tracts of land from the Bessborough estate: in addition to the house, offices and garden in Banagher Piltown noted above, on the listing of tenements as altered or confirmed by appeal, John Ryan also appears renting from Bessborough estate land listed as no. 21 and 27 in Belline and Rogerstown and a house, office, and yard at nos. 35 and 37 in Belline and Rogerstown Piltown.

What helps me understand that one John Ryan and not several Johns were renting these pieces of property from the Bessborough estate when Griffith’s valuation was made in this area in 1849 is that, if one takes the map that accompanies Griffith’s Valuation, which numbers each property listed in the Valuation itself, and pinpoints each piece of property listed as rented by John Ryan, they’re all very close to each other. Given that only one John Ryan appears on the Bessborough rent rolls in this vicinity up to 1840, it’s clear that the several listings for John Ryan on Griffith’s in 1849 are for one man, that same man found on Bessborough’s rent rolls in the Piltown area to 1840.

The arrows on the map show the pieces of land John Ryan was renting from the Bessborough estate in 1849. The map highlights where Bessborough house at Kildalton was (Bessborough Demesne) and the names Belline and Rogerstown, Banagher, and Piltown.

All these places, the places pinpointed by arrows, are very close to each other. You can easily walk in just a few steps or minutes to go from one to the other. Several of the arrows for where John was renting land from the Bessborough estate in 1847 are exactly where the now non-existent little hollow of land called Logriach was located.

In conclusion, the documents in the Bessborough Papers cache held by NLI may have great value for those researching families who rented land from and did work for the Bessborough estate at Piltown in the first half of the 19^th century. When used in tandem with several other sets of records — the Tithe Applotment books, Griffith’s Valuation, the list of women paid for spinning flax for the estate in 1827, and the records of Templeorum Catholic parish — one can identify particular people and their spouses, pinpoint where particular people lived in this time frame, and track some of their interactions with the Bessborough estate.

Other sets of papers found the the collection of Bessborough Papers are also very valuable for those seeking specific information about people renting property from the Bessborough estate from 1826-1840. One set of documents entitled “Bills for assisted emigration, to Newfoundland, U.S.A. and Australia, Bessborough Estate” tracks payments Bessborough made from 1828-1840 as they emigrated from Ireland.[15] These records show the estate paying for clothes or trunks for emigrants, helping arrange their passage from Ireland, etc.

In this collection, I found a note stating that Edmond Ryan was paid £5 by the Bessborough estate for surrendering his lands and premises in Whitechurch as he planned to emigrate to America in spring 1834. On the back of the note is a note stating that John Ryan was surrendering his farm, with the figure of £5 also stated. From 1828 through 1832, Edmond and John Ryan are listed on the Bessborough rent rolls near each other at Whitechurch, renting property from the Bessborough estate. Over the course of that time period, these two Ryan men appear on lists of those with rents in arrears in Whitechurch.

Could this John and Edmond Ryan be the two men of that name who arrived together in New York from Ireland by way Liverpool on 9 June 1834 aboard the Silvanus Jenkins, John aged 25 and Edmond aged 33? I can’t say for sure, since I have done no other research on this set of Ryans. What I can say is that the Bessborough rent rolls used in tandem with the Bessborough bills for assisted emigration allow me to say that an Edmond and John Ryan rented property from the Bessboroughs from 1828 through 1832 and lived at Whitechurch, and Edmond was planning to emigrate to America in the spring of 1834.

I have not been able to find a death record for John Ryan or his wife Margaret Oates. The Templeorum Catholic parish records do not appear to contain burial information for the first half of the 1800s. If both were born, as I suspect, about 1785 (I’m basing that on the baptism of their first child in 1805 and assuming neither had had a previous spouse), then John would have been a man up in years in 1849.

A Margaret Ryan appears on Griffith’s Valuation renting a house and small garden from the Earl of Bessborough in Ardclone Piltown. I do not think this Margaret is Margaret Oates Ryan, since I haven’t found any record at all placing John (and Margaret) in Ardclone townland. Because the Bessborough rent rolls clearly show a single John Ryan renting property continuously from the Bessborough estate from 1828 to 1840, with the Tithe Applotment confirming this, and with Templeorum parish records showing John and Margaret living at Logriach Piltown in 1805 and 1806, I’m inclined to think that the John Ryan found in the 1805-6 baptismal records is the same man who appears on Bessborough rent rolls, the Tithe Applotment, and Griffith’s Valuation, and that John lived continuously up to 1849 in Logriach, and probably died in this location after Griffith’s Valuation was made in the Piltown area in 1849.

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[1] The Bessborough Papers are catalogued in the NLI catalogue as MSS 29,791-29,805. The library catalogue contains a helpful collection list providing a detailed description of the contents of each folder in the Bessborough Papers collection.

[2] MS 29,805 (1) in the NLI catalogue.

[3] Owen O’Kelly, The Place-Names of the County of Kilkenny (Kilkenny: Boethius, 1985), p. 126, citing William Carrigan, History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory, vol. 4 (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker, 1905), pp. 223-4.

[4] NLI, “Bessborough Papers. Ponsonby Family, Earls of Bessborough, 1826-1864, “Rental and account of the Estates of the Earl of Bessborough in the Counties of Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Carlow for one year due and ending 4 November 1828,” MS 29,791 (4); and “Rental and account of the Estates of the Earl of Bessborough in the Counties of Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Carlow for one year due and ending 29 September and 1 November 1829,” MS 29,791 (5).

[5] Mary Flood and Jim Ryan, “An 1827 List of Kilkenny Women” in Old Kilkenny Review 69 (2017), p.  114.

[6] NLI, “Bessborough Papers. Ponsonby Family, Earls of Bessborough, 1826-1864, “Rental and account of the Estates of the Earl of Bessborough in the Counties of Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Carlow for 1 year ending 1st November 1830,” MS 29,791 (6).

[7]Flood and Ryan, “An 1827 List of Kilkenny Women,” p. 116.

[8] Applotment of the Tithes of the Parish of Fiddown in the Union of Fiddown, Diocese of Ossory, and County of Kilkenny, Townland of Banaher, Logriah, and Piltown (unpaginated). The original Tithe Applotment books are available in digitized form at the website of the National Archives of Ireland.

[9] NLI, “Bessborough Papers. Ponsonby Family, Earls of Bessborough, 1826-1864,” “Rental and Accounts of the Estates of the Earl of Bessborough in the Counties of Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Carlow, For the Half Year due and ending to 1 November 1827,” MS 29,791 (3).

[10] Note that Mary Flood and Jim Ryan think that Griffith’s Valuation records in Fiddown civil parish date from 1850 — see n. 5 supra — but the original valuation record shows that it was actually made in that parish in August 1849.

[11] NLI, “Bessborough Papers. Ponsonby Family, Earls of Bessborough, 1826-1864,” “Rental and account of the Estates of the Earl of Bessborough in the Counties of Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Carlow for one year due and ending 29 September and 1 November 1829,” MS 29,791 (5).

[12] Ibid., Rental and account of the Estates of the Earl of Bessborough in the Counties of Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Carlow for 1 year ending 1st November 1830,” MS 29,791 (6).

[13] NLI, “Bessborough Estate land maps including miscellaneous estate documents, [ca. 1847-1936],” “Maps of Estates in the County of Kilkenny, 1847,” MS L 476, and “Maps of Bessborough Estate in the County of Kilkenny, [circa 1850],” MS L 475.

[14] Valuation Office Tenure Books, vol. 315: Perambulation of the Town of Piltown, Parish of Fiddown, Barony of Iverk, County of Kilkenny, p. 1, townland of Banagher. A digitized image of the original is at FamilySearch. An indexed and transcribed copy of the original is found in General Valuation of Rateable property in Ireland, 1847-1864, vol. 76 (Dublin: 1850), Iverk Barony, Parish of Fiddown, Town of Piltown, p. 13.

[15] “Bessborough Papers. Ponsonby Family, Earls of Bessborough, 1826-1864,” “Bills for assisted emigration, to Newfoundland, U.S.A. and Australia, Bessborough Estate,” MS 29,805 (15).