Acting on my belief that women have better memories than men, as far as matters of family history... more Acting on my belief that women have better memories than men, as far as matters of family history are concerned, I was seriously thinking of writing to you when your letter, which confirms me in my belief, arrived and rejoiced me in my heart, for you are interested in what I am doing and have information, I am sure, that will be useful. As you know, I have for some years been collecting all the facts I could about our family and since I retired from the active pursuit of my profession of Civil Engineering a couple of years ago, I have more time to do this. 1 Robert Jones Devenish, writing from his home in Denver, Colorado to Rosamund Going (née Devenish) of Dungarvan, Co. Waterford -his second cousin once removed, whom he had never met -was delighted to find that she understood his passion for their family history, which he was now devoting himself to in retirement. RJD, as I shall call him, recently graduated in engineering from Trinity College, Dublin, had emigrated to the United States in February 1888, destination Cincinnati, Ohio, where he had connections with the Gamble family, of the well-known Procter and Gamble manufacturing firm. Since then, he had returned to Ireland only three times, lastly in 1904. His relation James Norris Gamble was the chief executive of the successful business which had been cofounded in 1837 by his father James Gamble, a native of Fermanagh, who with his partner William Procter, and William's brother, had married three sisters, daughters of Alexander Norris of Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim, who had also emigrated to Ohio. This linked them with the Norris cousins -the Lawders, Percys and Joneses of Leitrim, who had intermarried with the Devenishes of Roscommon, and who also provided spouses to the next generation of Procters and Gambles in America. When RJD's younger cousin Thomas Devenish left Drumsna, Co. Leitrim for Cincinnatti in 1912, he immediately found employment with Procter and Gamble, but RJD chose to remain a freelance engineer, on roving commissions from a Cincinnati practice -to a mining boom town in Kentucky, then a sewage job in Albany, New York -and when the latter work shut down for the winter, he went home and married his first cousin Letitia Frances (Fannie) Jones at Leeson Park Church in Dublin on 17 March 1894. He arrived back at Albany on schedule on 1 April, to find a letter offering him a partnership in the Cincinnati office, which he accepted. Unfortunately, a severe economic slump meant that engineering work grew very slack. Having studied the matter, RJD became convinced that there was an opportunity to make a livelihood in orange growing, and with the help of a loan from James Norris Gamble, he bought an orange grove at Glenwood in Florida, inland from the resort of Daytona Beach where the Gambles wintered. He and Fannie built a house near the grove, and their first child, George Bushe Devenish, was born in Florida in 1897. RJD recounted the fate of the venture to George many years later:
Dear Sir -It shocked me to read in your columns the extracts from the book written by Skeffington... more Dear Sir -It shocked me to read in your columns the extracts from the book written by Skeffington Gibbons about the "Squires and Squireens of Roscommon 100 Years Ago". The writer of that book was reckless in throwing dirt on the graves of men long dead. The authors of the Skeffington Gibbons book are well known to be an unfrocked priest and a disgraced butler. Let the dead past bury its dead, and the work of these authors is unworthy of quotation. There are many men, some now in humble positions in life, who are still proud of these ancestors of theirs, which these papers insult. OLD ROSCOMMON The Roscommon Herald had informed its readers that the author of the objectionable articles "is usually supposed to be the pen name of one of the O'Conors of Belanagare, who wrote certain bitter and sarcastic things over a hundred years ago about his neighbours and friends in the Co. Roscommon", and concluded that "he was a kind of George Moore of his day". 1 After achieving a brief notoriety for The Recollections of Skeffington Gibbon, from 1796 to the Present Year, 1829, being an Epitome of the Lives and Characters of the Nobility and Gentry of Roscommon, the Genealogy of Those who are Descended from the Kings of Connaught; and a Memoir of the late Madame O'Conor Don, the writer sank back into obscurity, even his identity forgotten. 2 By 1892, Skeffington Gibbon was being glossed as a pen-name of "A. O'Kelly" (some supposed the A to be for Augustus). The above letter to the Roscommon Herald posited a pair of rackety authors, while the newspaper itself had another theory, and in 1935 The Irish Book Lover reported that "the writer of Skeffington Gibbon's Recollections was a Roscommon schoolmaster, one James O'Kelly who was a brother of Patrick O'Kelly, the author of The Eudoxologist, a poem (1812) in which he sings the praises of the gentry of the counties of Galway, Mayo and Roscommon". 3 Wikipedia today states that Skeffington Gibbon was a pseudonym, and that "no details in the book relating to his birth, childhood or ancestry have been independently proven". Some light may now be cast on aspects of his career from contemporary newspapers and a few surviving letters, which illuminate the context of his Recollections, and the workings of the Dublin book trade when the volume was published.
a consideration of ten shillings conveyed to Octavia Digby otherwise Crawford, lately of Rosepark... more a consideration of ten shillings conveyed to Octavia Digby otherwise Crawford, lately of Rosepark, County Down, but at present residing at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, England, widow, all her estate, right, title and interest as heiress at law of Dunlop Digby in the premises comprised in a lease of 10 th November 1829 between the Reverend John Cleland of Stormont, County Down, Miss Mary Crawford, Miss Octavia Crawford (now Digby) and Edmund Crawford, all of Cabin Hill, County Down, at the yearly rent of £66 sterling for 31 years and the lives of Edmund and Octavia Crawford concurrent, being the land, dwelling house, outbuildings and garden, which formed part of the farm of Rosepark, bounded on the south by the mail coach road from Newtownards to Belfast, and containing in the whole nineteen acres, two roods and ten perches Cunningham measure, in the townland of Ballymiscaw, parish of Dundonald and county of Down. 1 As recited by the memorial entered at the Registry of Deeds, the seemingly mundane transaction, like so many thousands of others, gives no hint of the circumstances that gave rise to it, but a box of solicitors' correspondence 2 illuminates the characters and their story.
The Vestry Book is held in the Representative Church Body Library, Dublin, with the catalogue ref... more The Vestry Book is held in the Representative Church Body Library, Dublin, with the catalogue reference P0737.05.1. It has a panel stamped in soft leather on the front cover, with the text shown below, and inside the front cover is written "Bound Rough Calf". The book was conserved and rebound in 2017, retaining the stamped panel.
County Roscommon Historical and Archaeological Society Journal, 2024
John Keogh, antiquarian, scholar and anglican priest, was born in Co. Limerick about 1653, the so... more John Keogh, antiquarian, scholar and anglican priest, was born in Co. Limerick about 1653, the son of Denis Keogh or MacKeogh of Castletroy. The Keoghs were a Catholic family who had been dispossessed of their plentiful estate "which they had enjoyed for above 1,700 years", as a consequence of the wars of the 1640s. Denis married a Protestant clergyman's widow, and John was raised in that religion, matriculating at Trinity College Dublin in July 1670, aged 17. He continued there for eight or nine years, according to his son, gaining "great credit and reputation for his strict morality, great abilities, and knowledge, especially in the mathematical sciences". The dates of his B.A. degree and ordination are not recorded, but he graduated M.A. in 1678. Having failed to win a college fellowship due to lack of patrons, he took the opportunity offered by Bishop Hodson of Elphin to be ordained for that diocese. According to one source, he was appointed vicar of Creeve parish in 1674, and in 1678 was presented to the living of Bumlin, Kilglass and Kilcola, and the prebend of Termonbarry. Residing thenceforth at Strokestown, he married in 1679 Avis Clopton, an English lady, with whom he had, it was said, at least 21 children. 1 Of the six who survived him, his second son, also named John (1681-1754), became chaplain to Lord Kingston at Mitchelstown, Co. Cork, and incumbent of that parish. He was the author of the Botanologia Universalis Hibernica (Cork, 1735), a catalogue of Irish plants and their virtues, Zoologia Medicinalis Hibernica (1739) and A Vindication of the Antiquities of Ireland, and a defence thereof against all the calumnies and aspersions cast on it by foreigners (1748), which included an account of his father and the family. He spelled his surname K'eogh, perhaps a reference to its derivation from the Irish Mac Eochaidh. At Strokestown John Keogh the elder devoted himself to his studies, and "had not leisure to look into the world, and pursue the riches, honours and profits of it". He kept a school, where over the years "he had near two hundred scholars, a great number of which he fitted for the college of Dublin" 2. 1 The principal sources for his biography are: his son John Keogh's Vindication of the Antiquities of Ireland (1748); Alumni Dublinenses (1924); Clergy of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh (2008); Papers of the Dublin Philosophical Society (ed. K. Theodore Hoppen, 2008). O'Donovan noted a local tradition that he had lived at Cloonslanor near Strokestown; also that Keogh consulted the planets when his first son was to be born, found their aspect inauspicious, and wanted the midwife to delay the birth to a more favourable conjunction, but to no avail, and the boy popped out. "All is wrong, says the father; he will be a rake! and so he was! and squandered all the little estate." OSL 117. The eldest son Michael Keogh (1680-1734) in fact became a minister of the established church, and served in his father's parish, though he may have been a rake as well. 2 The records of Trinity College show that Mr Keogh or Cugh of Strokestown had tutored for entry to the college in 1697 John Goldsmith of Ballyoughter, Leonard Hodson, John and Oliver King of Charlestown, all of Co. Roscommon, and William Piers of Tristernagh, Co. Westmeath. Thereafter, the Roscommon gentry favoured the new diocesan grammar school at Elphin, and the only mention of him subsequently was as tutor to Roger West in 1715, and to his own sons John and Michael Keogh, both of whom matriculated in 1705 at the mature ages of 23 and 24. (Alumni Dublinenses, 1924) 8 "Kinel Dofa, called in later ages Doohy-Hanly, extended along the Shannon from Cara na dTuath (Carranadoe Bridge) to Drumdaff in the southern extremity of the parish of Kilgefin (where Mr Digby lives)….[It] comprised all the parish of Kilglass, all Termonbarry, only one townland of Bumlin called North Yard, the east half of Lissonuffy… all the parish of of Cloontooskert, and all Kilgefin." OSL 115,116 9 "At the year 1398, Aughrim Mac Naodha, now Aughrim, is mentioned as lying in the territory Tir Briuin na Sionna… The probability is that Tir Briuin comprehended the parishes of Aughrim, Kilmore and Cloonaff…" OSL 83
Of the many thousands of Irishmen who left their country, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth ce... more Of the many thousands of Irishmen who left their country, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, to enter military service in Europe, few have left traces enough to amount to a life story. James Devenish, who rose to eminence abroad, was one of those whose memory was soon lost to his kin in Ireland, but the archives of Belgium, the Blenheim Papers in London (thanks to his fortunate, and perhaps not quite fortuitous, connection with the first Duke of Marlborough) and other sources have yielded enough material to permit this sketch, not only of his career, but of his regiment (its Musters; Pay; Clothing; and Officers) and his family. CAREER The Gazette d'Amsterdam of 17 August 1736 carried this report: Brussels, 7 August. Mr. Michael O'Connor, a young Irish gentleman recently arrived here, was presented to the archduchess by the Marquis Devenish, lieutenant-general in the Imperial armies. He had the honour of playing this evening for her serene highness and a great many of the court on a small Irish harp, which he did with such charm and skill that the archduchess, in token of her satisfaction, presented him with a fine gold medal of considerable value.
Acting on my belief that women have better memories than men, as far as matters of family history... more Acting on my belief that women have better memories than men, as far as matters of family history are concerned, I was seriously thinking of writing to you when your letter, which confirms me in my belief, arrived and rejoiced me in my heart, for you are interested in what I am doing and have information, I am sure, that will be useful. As you know, I have for some years been collecting all the facts I could about our family and since I retired from the active pursuit of my profession of Civil Engineering a couple of years ago, I have more time to do this. 1 Robert Jones Devenish, writing from his home in Denver, Colorado to Rosamund Going (née Devenish) of Dungarvan, Co. Waterford -his second cousin once removed, whom he had never met -was delighted to find that she understood his passion for their family history, which he was now devoting himself to in retirement. RJD, as I shall call him, recently graduated in engineering from Trinity College, Dublin, had emigrated to the United States in February 1888, destination Cincinnati, Ohio, where he had connections with the Gamble family, of the well-known Procter and Gamble manufacturing firm. Since then, he had returned to Ireland only three times, lastly in 1904. His relation James Norris Gamble was the chief executive of the successful business which had been cofounded in 1837 by his father James Gamble, a native of Fermanagh, who with his partner William Procter, and William's brother, had married three sisters, daughters of Alexander Norris of Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim, who had also emigrated to Ohio. This linked them with the Norris cousins -the Lawders, Percys and Joneses of Leitrim, who had intermarried with the Devenishes of Roscommon, and who also provided spouses to the next generation of Procters and Gambles in America. When RJD's younger cousin Thomas Devenish left Drumsna, Co. Leitrim for Cincinnatti in 1912, he immediately found employment with Procter and Gamble, but RJD chose to remain a freelance engineer, on roving commissions from a Cincinnati practice -to a mining boom town in Kentucky, then a sewage job in Albany, New York -and when the latter work shut down for the winter, he went home and married his first cousin Letitia Frances (Fannie) Jones at Leeson Park Church in Dublin on 17 March 1894. He arrived back at Albany on schedule on 1 April, to find a letter offering him a partnership in the Cincinnati office, which he accepted. Unfortunately, a severe economic slump meant that engineering work grew very slack. Having studied the matter, RJD became convinced that there was an opportunity to make a livelihood in orange growing, and with the help of a loan from James Norris Gamble, he bought an orange grove at Glenwood in Florida, inland from the resort of Daytona Beach where the Gambles wintered. He and Fannie built a house near the grove, and their first child, George Bushe Devenish, was born in Florida in 1897. RJD recounted the fate of the venture to George many years later:
Dear Sir -It shocked me to read in your columns the extracts from the book written by Skeffington... more Dear Sir -It shocked me to read in your columns the extracts from the book written by Skeffington Gibbons about the "Squires and Squireens of Roscommon 100 Years Ago". The writer of that book was reckless in throwing dirt on the graves of men long dead. The authors of the Skeffington Gibbons book are well known to be an unfrocked priest and a disgraced butler. Let the dead past bury its dead, and the work of these authors is unworthy of quotation. There are many men, some now in humble positions in life, who are still proud of these ancestors of theirs, which these papers insult. OLD ROSCOMMON The Roscommon Herald had informed its readers that the author of the objectionable articles "is usually supposed to be the pen name of one of the O'Conors of Belanagare, who wrote certain bitter and sarcastic things over a hundred years ago about his neighbours and friends in the Co. Roscommon", and concluded that "he was a kind of George Moore of his day". 1 After achieving a brief notoriety for The Recollections of Skeffington Gibbon, from 1796 to the Present Year, 1829, being an Epitome of the Lives and Characters of the Nobility and Gentry of Roscommon, the Genealogy of Those who are Descended from the Kings of Connaught; and a Memoir of the late Madame O'Conor Don, the writer sank back into obscurity, even his identity forgotten. 2 By 1892, Skeffington Gibbon was being glossed as a pen-name of "A. O'Kelly" (some supposed the A to be for Augustus). The above letter to the Roscommon Herald posited a pair of rackety authors, while the newspaper itself had another theory, and in 1935 The Irish Book Lover reported that "the writer of Skeffington Gibbon's Recollections was a Roscommon schoolmaster, one James O'Kelly who was a brother of Patrick O'Kelly, the author of The Eudoxologist, a poem (1812) in which he sings the praises of the gentry of the counties of Galway, Mayo and Roscommon". 3 Wikipedia today states that Skeffington Gibbon was a pseudonym, and that "no details in the book relating to his birth, childhood or ancestry have been independently proven". Some light may now be cast on aspects of his career from contemporary newspapers and a few surviving letters, which illuminate the context of his Recollections, and the workings of the Dublin book trade when the volume was published.
a consideration of ten shillings conveyed to Octavia Digby otherwise Crawford, lately of Rosepark... more a consideration of ten shillings conveyed to Octavia Digby otherwise Crawford, lately of Rosepark, County Down, but at present residing at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, England, widow, all her estate, right, title and interest as heiress at law of Dunlop Digby in the premises comprised in a lease of 10 th November 1829 between the Reverend John Cleland of Stormont, County Down, Miss Mary Crawford, Miss Octavia Crawford (now Digby) and Edmund Crawford, all of Cabin Hill, County Down, at the yearly rent of £66 sterling for 31 years and the lives of Edmund and Octavia Crawford concurrent, being the land, dwelling house, outbuildings and garden, which formed part of the farm of Rosepark, bounded on the south by the mail coach road from Newtownards to Belfast, and containing in the whole nineteen acres, two roods and ten perches Cunningham measure, in the townland of Ballymiscaw, parish of Dundonald and county of Down. 1 As recited by the memorial entered at the Registry of Deeds, the seemingly mundane transaction, like so many thousands of others, gives no hint of the circumstances that gave rise to it, but a box of solicitors' correspondence 2 illuminates the characters and their story.
The Vestry Book is held in the Representative Church Body Library, Dublin, with the catalogue ref... more The Vestry Book is held in the Representative Church Body Library, Dublin, with the catalogue reference P0737.05.1. It has a panel stamped in soft leather on the front cover, with the text shown below, and inside the front cover is written "Bound Rough Calf". The book was conserved and rebound in 2017, retaining the stamped panel.
County Roscommon Historical and Archaeological Society Journal, 2024
John Keogh, antiquarian, scholar and anglican priest, was born in Co. Limerick about 1653, the so... more John Keogh, antiquarian, scholar and anglican priest, was born in Co. Limerick about 1653, the son of Denis Keogh or MacKeogh of Castletroy. The Keoghs were a Catholic family who had been dispossessed of their plentiful estate "which they had enjoyed for above 1,700 years", as a consequence of the wars of the 1640s. Denis married a Protestant clergyman's widow, and John was raised in that religion, matriculating at Trinity College Dublin in July 1670, aged 17. He continued there for eight or nine years, according to his son, gaining "great credit and reputation for his strict morality, great abilities, and knowledge, especially in the mathematical sciences". The dates of his B.A. degree and ordination are not recorded, but he graduated M.A. in 1678. Having failed to win a college fellowship due to lack of patrons, he took the opportunity offered by Bishop Hodson of Elphin to be ordained for that diocese. According to one source, he was appointed vicar of Creeve parish in 1674, and in 1678 was presented to the living of Bumlin, Kilglass and Kilcola, and the prebend of Termonbarry. Residing thenceforth at Strokestown, he married in 1679 Avis Clopton, an English lady, with whom he had, it was said, at least 21 children. 1 Of the six who survived him, his second son, also named John (1681-1754), became chaplain to Lord Kingston at Mitchelstown, Co. Cork, and incumbent of that parish. He was the author of the Botanologia Universalis Hibernica (Cork, 1735), a catalogue of Irish plants and their virtues, Zoologia Medicinalis Hibernica (1739) and A Vindication of the Antiquities of Ireland, and a defence thereof against all the calumnies and aspersions cast on it by foreigners (1748), which included an account of his father and the family. He spelled his surname K'eogh, perhaps a reference to its derivation from the Irish Mac Eochaidh. At Strokestown John Keogh the elder devoted himself to his studies, and "had not leisure to look into the world, and pursue the riches, honours and profits of it". He kept a school, where over the years "he had near two hundred scholars, a great number of which he fitted for the college of Dublin" 2. 1 The principal sources for his biography are: his son John Keogh's Vindication of the Antiquities of Ireland (1748); Alumni Dublinenses (1924); Clergy of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh (2008); Papers of the Dublin Philosophical Society (ed. K. Theodore Hoppen, 2008). O'Donovan noted a local tradition that he had lived at Cloonslanor near Strokestown; also that Keogh consulted the planets when his first son was to be born, found their aspect inauspicious, and wanted the midwife to delay the birth to a more favourable conjunction, but to no avail, and the boy popped out. "All is wrong, says the father; he will be a rake! and so he was! and squandered all the little estate." OSL 117. The eldest son Michael Keogh (1680-1734) in fact became a minister of the established church, and served in his father's parish, though he may have been a rake as well. 2 The records of Trinity College show that Mr Keogh or Cugh of Strokestown had tutored for entry to the college in 1697 John Goldsmith of Ballyoughter, Leonard Hodson, John and Oliver King of Charlestown, all of Co. Roscommon, and William Piers of Tristernagh, Co. Westmeath. Thereafter, the Roscommon gentry favoured the new diocesan grammar school at Elphin, and the only mention of him subsequently was as tutor to Roger West in 1715, and to his own sons John and Michael Keogh, both of whom matriculated in 1705 at the mature ages of 23 and 24. (Alumni Dublinenses, 1924) 8 "Kinel Dofa, called in later ages Doohy-Hanly, extended along the Shannon from Cara na dTuath (Carranadoe Bridge) to Drumdaff in the southern extremity of the parish of Kilgefin (where Mr Digby lives)….[It] comprised all the parish of Kilglass, all Termonbarry, only one townland of Bumlin called North Yard, the east half of Lissonuffy… all the parish of of Cloontooskert, and all Kilgefin." OSL 115,116 9 "At the year 1398, Aughrim Mac Naodha, now Aughrim, is mentioned as lying in the territory Tir Briuin na Sionna… The probability is that Tir Briuin comprehended the parishes of Aughrim, Kilmore and Cloonaff…" OSL 83
Of the many thousands of Irishmen who left their country, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth ce... more Of the many thousands of Irishmen who left their country, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, to enter military service in Europe, few have left traces enough to amount to a life story. James Devenish, who rose to eminence abroad, was one of those whose memory was soon lost to his kin in Ireland, but the archives of Belgium, the Blenheim Papers in London (thanks to his fortunate, and perhaps not quite fortuitous, connection with the first Duke of Marlborough) and other sources have yielded enough material to permit this sketch, not only of his career, but of his regiment (its Musters; Pay; Clothing; and Officers) and his family. CAREER The Gazette d'Amsterdam of 17 August 1736 carried this report: Brussels, 7 August. Mr. Michael O'Connor, a young Irish gentleman recently arrived here, was presented to the archduchess by the Marquis Devenish, lieutenant-general in the Imperial armies. He had the honour of playing this evening for her serene highness and a great many of the court on a small Irish harp, which he did with such charm and skill that the archduchess, in token of her satisfaction, presented him with a fine gold medal of considerable value.
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