Wedded To The Land: A Tale from West Cork

As explained on the Home Page , this book is an account of the life and times of Colonel Richard and a chronicle of his family. Since publication, several generations of the family have entered the world and much new information has come to light that was not available to the editors of the book. There are now over one thousand individual entries on the Townsend Family website and, without reading them all, it is impossible to get a comprehensive overview of the family.

This page of the website seeks to redress this by describing the fortunes of the family in Ireland between and Full details about any particular event or individual can be accessed in personal records. Following settlement of the Catholic revolt in Ireland in , Colonel Richard Townesend [ ] retired from the Army sometime before and made extensive purchases of land; in all about 8, acres. On the restoration of Charles II in he was pardoned for his allegiance to Oliver Cromwell and escaped the forfeitures placed on many Cromwellian soldiers; his purchases of land were subsequently confirmed by royal patents in , and Living for a time at Kilbrittan Castle, near Courtmacsherry, Richard finally settled at Castletownshend in about Appointed High Sheriff of Cork in , he was elected MP for Baltimore in the Irish Parliament that same year but his appearances were infrequent and he was fined for non-attendance.

From the time that he settled in Castletownshend until his death, Richard sought to consolidate his estates in County Cork and to lead the settled life of a landowner. However, those were troubled times, particularly after the accession of James II in , and Richard was frequently engaged in armed skirmishes with Irish rebels.

In they unsuccessfully besieged Castletownshend, but when they attacked again shortly afterwards Richard was forced to surrender. Colonel Richard's eldest son, John Townsend [ ], pre-deceased him so when Richard died in his estate passed to his grandson Richard FitzJohn Townsend [ ]. Sadly, Richard FitzJohn died unmarried in and the estate passed to Colonel Richard's second son, Colonel Bryan Townsend [ ], who was born in Newly appointed a Colonel of Militia, Bryan had been proscribed as a traitor under the Act of Attainder in and forced to flee the country, along with his brothers, Francis Townsend [ ] and Kingston Townsend [ ].

However, he and Francis returned shortly afterwards but Kingston never did so, having fled to Barbados where he married and died in In the years that followed this Bryan became involved in local governance; elected Sovereign of Clonakilty in and again in , he was also elected MP for the Borough of Clonakilty in the Irish Parliament in Dublin in Aged 69, he last attended a meeting of the Clonakilty Borough Council in when his sons, Samuel Townsend [ ] and Philip Townsend [ ], were elected Freemen of the Borough.

When Bryan died in he left the Castletownshend estate to his eldest son, Richard Townsend [ ], having made ample provision in his will for his younger sons, all of whom settled in County Cork — John Townsend [ ] at Skirtagh, Samuel Townsend [ ] at Whitehall, Philip Townsend [ ] at Derry and Horatio Townsend [ ] at Donoughmore and it is from these sons that the five branches of the Townsend family derive.

James Barry, USA

By this time the family was firmly established in County Cork and developments over the subsequent years are typical of many other Protestant families who settled in Ireland in the latter half of the 17th century. Living mostly in County Cork during these years, it was in these generations of the family that there was a high proportion of intermarriage with other Anglo-Irish protestant families. In particular, there were eight marriages with the Somerville family, seven with the Becher family and at least three other marriages each with ten other families: A separate page — Intermarriage and Other Families — shows just how interwoven all these families were.

This intermarriage within the family and within the Anglo-Irish protestant community created a tightly associated but rather insular society. The diary of Agnes Somerville, wife of the Reverend Horatio Townsend [ ], covers the forty-six years between and and reflects this social milieu. It contains well over one hundred entries about ninety-one members of the family from all five branches, along with notes about other Anglo-Irish families with whom they had close ties.

This close association is reflected in family correspondence and shows that throughout and within all branches of the family in Ireland there existed a network of godparents, shared schooling, business associations, family networking, common interests and membership of various societies and clubs. The records of the Royal Cork Yacht Club afford an excellent example of this. Seventeen members of the family were members — where known, the names of their yachts are shown in italics. If further evidence was needed to illustrate the closeness of the family, it can be found in the unpublished autobiography of the Reverend Edward Mansel Townsend [ ] — entitled A Protestant Auto-Biography.

His parentage is indicative of his extensive family contacts, as his mother, Marianne Oliver Townsend [ 5D16 ], came from the Derry branch of the family and his grandmother, Elizabeth Trelawney Townsend [ ], came from the Whitehall branch. Space does not permit a detailed account of his visits to Ireland in and ; suffice to say, however, he visited Castletownshend, Myross Wood, Derry and Whitehall, calling on many members of the family who lived in County Cork in the twilight years of the 19th century, as well as several associated families.

The overriding impression from the account of his travels is of a very close-knit family bonded by a common heritage. Sadly, since then, this close family association has largely dissipated through emigration. The inability to widen the marriage pool on social or religious grounds and the inability to provide a suitable dowry probably accounts for the consistently high number in each generation of those in the family who never married. Throughout the first eight generations of the family many were involved in national and local politics as well as undertaking various civic duties.

As touched on above, Colonel Richard and Colonel Bryan were the first two members of the family to be elected to the Irish parliament in Dublin. Like his father, Richard Boyle was a staunch Tory who refused to vote for measures which he felt were not in the best interests of Ireland. Not even the offer of an English peerage could bribe him into supporting Union with England, with the result that he lost the favour of his party and the Borough of Dingle was disenfranchised. Between and forty-seven members of the family were appointed magistrates; thirty-three were elected Freemen of the City of Cork; sixteen were Poor Law Guardians and seven were appointed High Sheriff for the County of Cork.

At a local level, several in the family became involved in the civic affairs of the Borough of Clonakilty. The oldest entry in the Council Book records the appointment of John Townsend [ ] as Sovereign in and this was witnessed by his brother, Cornelius Townsend [ ], who was a Freeman of the Borough. Since then, a further sixty-three Townsends have studied there and several of them from various branches of the family were students concurrently.

Between and there were only six years when a Townsend was not present at TCD and in sixty-two years of the century there were more than two members of the family 'up' at the same time. The most in attendance at the university at any one time was five in and in three of the four Townsends at TCD were named Richard! Between and there were only 19 years when the family was not represented at the university, whilst between and there was a Townsend represented there every year.

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Richard Townsend [ ], Samuel Townsend [ ] and Philip Townsend [ ] all inherited land when Colonel Bryan Townsend died and in subsequent generations these inherited estates were enlarged, either by purchase or marriage. Several deeds show that Philip Townsend bought land in the first half of the 18th century, but letters of his written in show that this expenditure put him into debt. Philip's nephew, Richard Townsend [ ], fared rather better, for when he married Elizabeth FitzGerald in she inherited her brother's substantial Kerry estate.

Ireland's most beautiful landscape - Beara, West Cork

In addition to these estates many of the junior sons in each generation owned smaller parcels of land from which it was only possible to derive a small supplement to their income. The fortunes of those seeking to derive a living from the land were varied and are well illustrated by extracts from the book Statistical Survey of Cork by the Reverend Horatio Townsend [ 5D00 ], which was first published in Discussing horticulture, he wrote that Edward Mansel Townsend [ ], the eldest son of Samuel Townsend of Whitehall,.

However, not all prospered; Cornelius Townsend [ ] of Bridgemount tried to improve his land by introducing farming methods he had observed in Sussex and Horatio referred to this as —.

By the latter end of the 19th century the family as a whole owned about 36, acres of land in County Cork; the principal owners were Jane, wife of Jonas Morris Townsend [ ] 1, acres, Geraldine Townshend [ ] 8, acres, Richard Mellifont Townsend [ ] 5, acres, John Hancock Townshend [ ] 6, acres, Horace Payne Townshend [ 5D12 ] 1, acres, Richard Horatio Townsend [ 6A10 ] 3, acres and John Crewe Townsend [ 6B04 ] 1, acres. Poor markets and other factors meant that deriving an income from land became increasingly difficult over the years, particularly after introduction of the Land Acts in the closing decades of the 19th century.

Letters written by Commander John Townsend [ ] and his wife Marianne Townsend [ 5D16 ] typify the situation faced by many in the family.

Editors Choice

John remained a day laborer his entire life. According to naturalization records, John Barry filed a declaration of intention on 1 Nov and petitioned for citizenship on 3 Nov John married Hanora Annie Madden at St. It was a May-December marriage; Hanora was more than 20 years younger than John. John and Hanora had three children: Edward worked as a glassblower. He married a woman named Emma Dunn; their descendants still live in Pittsburgh today.

Margaret married Andrew Mellet in but died of tuberculosis six months later. James died in and Anne is listed in city directories as his widow, beginning in In the census she is listed as a washerwoman, widowed, children Johanna, Edward, Mary and James. She lived with her children in a small tenement until , when they moved in with her brother. After John died in November She then relocated to another neighborhood with her own children.

She died in He died at the age of 53, leaving his widow and five of the children. Somehow, Maude and her children were not only able to survive, but to thrive. He became an army engineer, and chief safety engineer for Pittsburgh. He later owned a restaurant in Pittsburgh that had belonged to the family of his wife, Teresa Lorenz. John Barry died in in a plane crash over the Grand Canyon. His son John was a navy technician who died in Hawaii in The second son, James A Barry, worked his way through college helping to print and deliver a local newspaper.

After the war, and perhaps deeply affected by the tragic death of his baby brother, he became a respected pediatrician. James and Florence had one son James and two adopted daughters, Janice and Sheila. His son James is the author of this manuscript. Their only daughter, Margaret, married Robert Green, a Pittsburgh printer. They had three children and half a dozen grand children. He had two families.

He and his first wife, Betty, had two sons and three daughters; Joseph and his second wife, Mildred Wallace, had two daughters.

The outsiders

Joseph Barry died in She lived until the end of her life with Edward, James, Johanna and Mary, but none of them married and had children. The Barry family has many men and women who showed great courage and determination, struggling to overcome oppression and adversity and build a better life for themselves and others. In the 19th century, John, a poor farm lad, undertook the dangerous journey to the new world to create a secure life for himself and his young sister. When her husband died, Anne worked at menial jobs to support her children.

Suffering his own tragic losses, John took her and her children into his home and raised the young boys and girls as his own. One year, they descended on our village to enact a Dionysiac summer-solstice ceremony, burning a giant effigy and dancing to the beat of tasselled tambourines.

Still, despite a recent slight increase in petty larceny, the savage murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier was the first incidence of serious violence in the area, and the first crime to have international implications. In the ensuing criminal investigation, two jurisdictions and legal systems have collided, provoking debates in the Irish parliament and creating an uproar in the British and French media.

Sophie Bouniol had met Daniel Toscan du Plantier in , when she was 33 and he was Sophie had the delicate, slightly unconventional style of a Left Bank Parisienne and the birdlike elegance of Mimou. When du Plantier met her, she wanted to act; he convinced her to try a new career as a documentary producer and scriptwriter, for the cultural Channel Arte, with which he was connected.

Sophie also had a romanticised image of the Irish countryside, which she had visited briefly in her youth. Occasionally she would bring someone with her - her teenage son from her first marriage, or another member of her family - but du Plantier joined her only once, and she was listed in the local telephone directory under her maiden name. Among the locals, she had a reputation as something of a loner. For a while she even feuded with her nearest neighbour over a shared gate that she felt should stay closed.

On Friday, 20 December , Sophie landed at Cork Airport the security video shows her trundling a surprising amount of luggage and drove to her house along the winding coast road in a rented Ford Fiesta. She chatted briefly with Denis Quinlan at the Courtyard Bar, in Schull, and with Tom Brosnan, the jovial owner of the Spar supermarket, both of whom she knew well. She also went for a walk on bleak Three Castle Head and called on some friends, with whom she had a strange, melancholy conversation.

She said that, while walking, she had come upon the ruins of Dun Lough - or Black Lake - Castle, and had sensed some kind of menace. According to legend, the lake next to the castle is home to a female ghost who, if glimpsed, is supposed to be a harbinger of death. She was wearing a nightshirt, leggings, and high, brown lace-up boots, and had been bludgeoned more than a dozen times with a weapon like a poker or possibly a hatchet. A large stone or concrete building block had been dropped on her head, crushing her skull.

There was evidence of a struggle. Sophie was a small woman - only 5ft tall - but she had clearly put up a fight: Neighbours reported having heard wild cries in the night, which they had assumed were the yowls of mating foxes. The story broke in the Irish papers, with many of the details provided first by a local freelance journalist named Ian Bailey, who was working as a stringer for the Cork Examiner and had been one of the first reporters on the scene.

We knew Bailey, though he had been living in the area for only five years.

The outsiders | From the Observer | The Guardian

His size and strength made him an ideal second-row forward. In his reporting, Bailey specialised in espionage stories and gave a lot of ink to GCHQ - the intelligence agency in nearby Cheltenham.

He was always bursting with ideas for making his fame and fortune.