I think I found another Galvin family member, a brother for William, Patrick and Honoria (as well as Mary, Michael and Ellen). I was 100% sure until today but now I am down a few percentage points because I do not have any DNA relatives in Ancestry that match any of John Galvin Jr’s descendants. It’s possible that none of them have done the Ancestry test but I sure would prefer to have that confirmation. [edited to add: I have since confirmed some DNA matches to this branch. It IS "our" John.]
From Uncle Herbert O'Conor’s biography, I knew there was a brother named John but I could never find anyone who knew even an estimated birth year for him, much less any spouse or offspring.
I was looking through the Irish Civil records (https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/civil-search.jsp) for any Galvins in the Loughrea district when I stumbled on a “John Galvin” married to Margaret Heavey who were having a bunch of babies in the village of Attymon during the 1870’s. I checked google maps and Attymon is in the Kiltullagh parish, less that 4km away from the cottage where John Galvin and Honoria Connaughton raised their family.
That looked like something interesting to investigate further but while searching for John and Margaret’s children, I found another “John Galvin” who was married to Anne Hurley. They had five children around the 1860’s and their village, according to the handwritten civil records, was Gortakeeran. I checked where that was and after I got back up off the floor, I smiled a lot. Gortakeeran was the very small cluster of farms exactly where John and Honoria raised their family. According to the Griffith’s Valuation records (http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/), John Galvin Sr. AND John Galvin Jr. were tenant farmers on several plots of land in that village. Irish relatives have also confirmed the cottage on one of those plots as their ancestral home.
I have shown below the documentation for this branch of the family. Let me know if you see any error or hiccups in my thinking.
Incidentally, while I was putting this together, I noticed that the land next to the Galvin cottage was farmed by Patrick Hurley. I wonder if he had a daughter named “Anne”?
Fingers crossed, I will try to contact some of John Galvin Jr’s descendants on Ancestry to ask if they have done the DNA test. I sure hope John wasn’t adopted.
This shows the nearby Thomas Connor lands mentioned in the O'Conor biography














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