John WALSH

  General Notes:

John Walsh is believed to have lived in the townland of Roos (near Hollymount / Roundfort) in the parish of Kilcommon, Co. Mayo, Ireland. This area was predominantly owned by the Jen(n)ings family (a survey of 1876 recorded Charles Bingham Jenings as owning 1,702 acres in the County). In the Griffith's valuation of householders / landowners (1857) there are five/six Walshes in Roos, living and/or working land belonging to the Jen(n)ings family. These are John, James, James (same?) Patrick, Patrick jnr. and Michael. It is not known if any of these are Thomas' relations, but the only John Walsh recorded is the tenant of land and an office, not a house.

As it believed that his son, Thomas, was born at Mount Jennings, it is assumed that John worked at Mount Jennings, possibly being on the staff with accommodation. This would have been at the time when Benjamin Jenings was in residence and the registered land owner. The Jenings family hit hard times and Mount Jennings was sold around 1886. The singer Delia Murphy, the famed singer and collector of Irish ballads, lived at Mount Jennings as a young girl in the early 1900s and her parents still resided there in the 1940s. The house eventually fell into disrepair and the roof was taken off in the 1970s and is now demolished.

John is noted as being deceased on the marriage certificate of his son, Thomas, in 1874.

It is thought that John's wife may have been called Charlotte and that she may have remarried to a Conroy.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Marriage, 31 May 1874, St William's Church, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England.

John married.