A line of Garveys has lived and thrived in the Clonallan parish and Newry areas of County Down since at least the late 1500's. Recorded genealogies described the Co Down Garveys as a line distinct from the Garveys in County Armagh, and this has subsequently been borne out by genetic testing. These Co Down Garveys were one of the Gaelic families who found a way to prosper under the late-1500s Elizabethan regime, and one of the very few who managed to retain their lands through the political upheavals of the 1600's. However some wealthier branches of this Garvey line eventually fled Ireland and settled in France, and Spain by the mid-1700's. The Garvey family crest with which we are all familar was granted in 1760 to a Garvey descendant of this County Down line.

The origin of these Co Down Garveys is not clear. The earliest known ancestor was a Patrick Garvey who became principal secretary to Marshall Henry Bagenal in Newry in the late 1500's. Some accounts say Patrick was a younger brother of Archbishop John Garvey and would therefore have come from Kilkenny. But alternatively, a letter from the Office of Arms, Dublin Castle in 1913 (quoted in Rosemary Garvey's book Kilkenny to Murrisk) expressed the opinion that "the said Patrick belonged to an entirely different family" than the Archbishop's line of Garveys. There appear to be no extant records to settle the question one way or another. It remains to 21st century DNA testing to finally answer that question. (We still need to test a known descendant of the Archbishop to make that determination).

Another possible explanation of Patrick Garvey's origins is that he may have been born and raised in that area (the barony of Iveagh). A line of Garveys had ruled in that same region 600 years earlier, but had then basically disappeared from history. In a poem written in the 1300's O'Dugan refers to the septs of O'Gairbhith/O'Garvey, O'Coinne/O'Kenny and O'hAinbhith/O'Hanvey as "powerful anciently" in Iveagh (previously known as Ui Eathach Coba) before the Magenniss sept came into power in the mid-1100's. The Irish annals refer to a "Gairbidh, Lord of Iveagh" who died in the battle of Crewe Hill in 1004 AD. Additionally, genealogies of several branches of the Iveagh royal lines have survived that show a Gairbhith in a line of royal cousins related to the Magennis line. But there are basically no references to Garveys in the area after O'Dugan's poem. There was a William Garvey who was vicar of Drumcar, in the Deanery of Ardee, Co Louth in the 1430's, but the distance from Iveagh calls into question any connection of that Garvey to the Iveagh region. There was also a reference to a Master John McGerywey, Canon of Dromore, who was "presented to the parish" of St Bromanae (Kilbroney) in 1428 AD. Dromore is the diocese in which Clonallan is located, and Kilbroney is the parish just to the east of Clonallan. But that entry may just be a mispelling of the name McGerwyn (which also appears in those same ecclesiastical registers).

Confusion regarding the historical continuity (or not) of Garveys in the area is exacerbated by an entry on the last pages of O'Brien's Irish dictionary (written in the late 1700's). He specifically mentions the Robert Garvey living in Rouen, France at that time (a descendant of Patrick Garvey) and claims that Robert "is the present head" of the ancient Iveagh Garvey line. He went on to write "[The Garveys] have preserved to this day, from the different wrecks and revolutions of times, a remnant of their very ancient and large estate, a land called Aughnagon [in Clonallan Parish], near Newry, one of the oldest tenures in all Ireland, or perhaps in any other country". But O'Laverty says O'Brien was simply incorrect in his claims regarding Robert Garvey being of the ancient Co. Down line of Garveys.

The historical waters are further muddied by the fact that the earliest references to this Patrick Garvey (including by the Office of Arms, Dublin Castle) refer to him as "Patrick Garvey of Aughnagon". However the first records we have of Garveys owning land in the area was when his son Dudley Garvey leased Tamnaharry townland in 1618 and acquired the adjoining Aughnagon townland in about 1629. Assigning the Aughnagon land to the Garveys a generation too early may have just been an accident by the early documenters. But obviously it could also be explained by the Garveys having some earlier connection to that land before the English land redistribution in the 1500s. Ros Davies' webpage provides an excellent map which shows the positions of Aughnagon and Tamnnaharry townlands in Clonallan Parish.

Whatever Patrick Garvey origins were, he seemed to have been extremely well connected. One sign of this was that he married the daughter of John Babe of Darver, Co Louth. The Babes were one of The Pale's old Anglo-Norman landed families and would not have married one of their daughters off to a commoner. Presumably it was also those connections that led to him acquiring the principal secretary position with Marshall Henry Bagenal. Those same connections may have continued to pay off in later generations. For example a Michael Garvey was sub-sherriff of Co Down during the Rebellion in 1641. (Interestingly, during that insurrection he was involved with the transfer of prisoners from Newry into the care of a John Babe in Co Louth). In general, the Garveys seemed to prosper, ending up far enough afield as to be a common name in Kilkeel parish (two parishes east of Clonallan) by 1659.

Tom Cunningham has done some great work investigating how Catholic families in that region, like the Garveys, acquired and maintained their land through those troubled Penal Law times. His webpages on the subject can be found here and at the bottom of this page. He mentions that in the early 1600's the Clonallan townlands were somehow jointly owned/administered by Hugh Magennis and Sir Edward Trevor. I say "somehow" because that land was originally re-granted back to the Magennises by Henry VIII in the 1540's. Supposedly that land could not be transfered again without royal approval, but Hugh Magennis seemed to have some arrangement with Sir Edward Trevor involving that land. Trevor's official title was that he held the "superintendency" of Iveagh. Some insight into the inter-connection of the nobility in those days can be gained from the fact that Trevor's wife Rose was the daughter of Henry Ussher - who became Archbishop of Armagh upon the death of Archbishop John Garvey in 1595. And Archbishop John Garvey's wife was another Rose Ussher - who was the aunt of the Rose Ussher who was Sir Edward Trevor's wife!

The Most Reverend Anthony O'Garvey mentioned in the surname historical account lived during the days of the anti-Catholic Penal Laws (early 1700s). Father Anthony Garvey held secret masses at the Garvey home in Aughnagon, and clandestine "mass houses" were setup in the area during his time of administering to the Clonallan and Newry areas. Rev Garvey received his doctorate at the University of Paris, and took up duties as Vicar-General of Dromore in 1728. He became Bishop of Dromore in 1747 and served in that position till his death on August 24, 1766. He is buried at St. Mary's in Newry. A branch of Patrick Garvey's descendants moved to Rouen, France in the 1730's and ran a shipping business. This French Garvey shipping firm made a brief appearance in US historical archives by the chance occurrence of handling freight for both Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin in the 1780's.

Patrick Garvey also had a descendant named John Garvey who moved to Annaghs Castle, Co. Kilkenny in about 1730. Sketches of Annaghs Castle in its better days can be seen on page 346 of this pdf file and also here. (While unconnected to Garvey history, one legend has it that the site of Annaghs Castle was where Strongbow married Eva McMurrough in the first days of the Norman invasion). According to the Office of Arms, Dublin Castle, the Garvey "Coat of Arms" (shown on the home page) were granted on June 17, 1760 to a descendant of this John Garvey named James Garvey. (Archbishop John Garvey had a different coat of arms granted to him 1576). Another of John Garvey's descendants was a William Garvey who moved to Spain in 1756 and founded the Garvey label of wines: Bodega de San Patricio Garvey. A less admirable chapter in the history of the descendants of this Castle Annaghs line of Garveys was one Pierce Francis Garvey of Brownsford Castle, Co Kilkenny who became notorious in the 1860's for tumbling down the cottages of his tenants.

Another notable fact regarding the Co. Down Garveys concerns their Y chromosome signature. Only one other signature remotely like it has been seen in Ireland (as of July 2011). That's because the odd Y chromosome signature of the Co Down Garveys is most common in Turkey and the country of Georgia! To quote from a 2004 paper describing the Y chromosomes of Turkey: "These peculiar chromosomes distribute along the northern tier of Turkey. While this lineage has not been observed in Greece, it has been detected in Georgia... suggesting Black Sea coastal gene flow". Jim Honeycutt's map of this group's distribution shows that there was also some gene flow towards the west, but this group is rare in Europe. More discussion on this Y chromosome signature can be found here. We'll probably never know the tale of how the Co Down Garveys' Y chromosome line wandered from the Black Sea coast of Turkey to Ireland, but it could well have happened thousands of years before recorded history began.

The Rath Barn is on the land the Garveys have occupied in Aughnagon for more than 400 years (Rev. Anthony Garvey's 1700's era house is just next door). If you zoom (+) far enough in on the map on this page you can see the position of the Rath Barn on the edge of Derryleckagh Lake. Just let Gerry Quinn (owner of The Rath Barn, and a descendant of Co Down Garveys) know if you're going to be in the area - and I'm sure he'll be happy to welcome you back to the Garvey ancestral home! One Garvey family still (as of 2011) remains and farms in Aughnagon townland. There are a large number of historic sites in the area. This map shows the relation of them to the townland of Aughnagon.