Q & a our team of experts offers tips and inspiration edited by claire vaughan

My great great grandad, John Francis McHugh (McKeogh), was born in 1844 in Cavan. I believe his father was James McHugh. I found John’s war records and on those he had listed Anne Reilly, his sister, as next of kin. On his marriage certificate, his address is listed as a church, and his father was either born or died in Ireland.

How can I find out more about John and his parents?

Christine Bond

According to the documents that you provided, John Francis McHugh or McKeogh was born around January 1844 in Kinally [Kinawley] parish near Swanlinbar, County Cavan, the son of James McHugh/McKeogh, a farmer, who died in Ireland before 1887. John had a sister, Anne Reilly, living in Ballyconnell, a town in the civil parish of Tomregan, adjacent to Kinawley. The civil parishes of Kinawley and Tomregan straddle the border between Cavan and Fermanagh.

Kinawley is served by two Roman Catholic parishes, Kinally and Glangevlin. The registers for Kinally date from 1835, but the church serves the Fermanagh part of the parish. Those for Glangevlin date from 1867 only, and appear to serve the Cavan half of Kinawley. If John Francis McHugh was born and baptised in Cavan in the parish of Glangevlin, his baptismal record no longer survives.

The Kinally baptismal registers are indexed at RootsIreland (roots ireland.ie) but do not record any McHugh, McKeogh, McCue children baptised to a father named James between 1839 and 1849. The marriage register for Glangevlin, however, recorded many McHugh marriages after 1867, but when checked against the civil marriage register, none recorded a father named James.

Griffith’s Valuation, a land survey and census substitute, was published for the parish of Kinawley in County Cavan in 1857. Although there were several McHugh house and land holdings enumerated, there were no occupiers named James or with the surname McKeogh. There was one household under the name Mary McHugh, in the townland of Gubnafarna, which she shared with a Thomas McHugh. Mary was most likely a widow, since it was unusual for single women to be possessed of property. It is possible, although far from certain, that Mary may have been the widow of James.

It would be worth searching Irish church and civil marriage records for the marriage of Anne McHugh/McKeogh to a man named Reilly, most