O baptism record, where art thou? ~ Bartholomew O’Rourke

I’ve been trying to find a birth or baptism record for Bartholomew O’Rourke. There’s lots of pointers to what year I should be looking at. From his obituary, marriage certificate, death certificate and his daughter Margaret’s birth certificate, I get a birth year range from 1842 to 1844. The most compelling piece of evidence, though, is his gravestone. According to the inscription¹, he was 79 years and 10 months (that’s being fairly precise!) when he died on 13 November 1923, which makes a likely birth date of around February 1844.

It wasn’t until I got hold of his death certificate that I finally verified his parents’ names.  I’d been told their names via a family member, but I needed to see proof. Bartholomew’s parents were Michael O’Rourke, farmer,  and Catherine O’Rourke, formerly O’Callaghan.²

According to Bartholomew’s obituary, he was from Currens, Co Kerry, and I found a Currans in Kerry on Google Maps.

View Rourke family, Co Kerry in a larger map
Luckily, parish records for Co Kerry are available online, or at least, a transcription of them. Irishgenealogy.ie‘s database includes not only the records from Kerry, but also Dublin City, Carlow and Cork.³

Currens is in the parish of Killeentierna, where I found records that mentioned several Michael Rourkes, including one with a spouse named Catherine Callaghan/Callihan/O’Callaghan.

Searching the baptism records from 14 Mar 1827 through till 05 Sep 1879, I found the following children of Michael and Catherine, and the townland where they were living:

Mary – 10 Oct 1837, Ballymacdonnell
Ellen – 24 Nov 1843, Ballymacdonnell
Johanna – 29 Mar 1846, Ballymacdonnell
Margaret – 1 Oct 1848, Ballymacdonnell
John – 15 Mar 1850, Kilfylm
Catherine – 18 Jun 1852, Ballymacdonnell
Bridget – 21 Jul 1854, Ballymacdonnell
Honora – 22 Oct 1856, Ballymacdonnell
Ellen – 24 Dec 1859, Kilfelim

Now, that looks like a mighty big gap between Mary and Ellen. It doesn’t quite fit in with the 1844 birthdate for Bartholomew, and certainly, if the children were baptised within a month or two of birth, there is no way Bartholomew could have been born that close to Ellen. Still, maybe Ellen was baptised late, and he was born after her. Or Bartholomew had lied about his age, or wasn’t even sure himself. I would definitely have expected at least one more child between the two older girls, so maybe that’s where he fits in?

Of course, this is assuming that I have the right family, but it seems likely to me, given the right area, and the right parents’ names. I’m interested to know how complete the records actually are, and if there is a particular reason my Bartholomew’s record appears missing.

There are several Bartholomew Rourkes baptised in the parish, but with different parents. My current theory is that Michael Rourke’s father was Bartholomew, and he (along with several of his brothers) named their first sons, Bartholomew. It will require a lot of work going through the parish records to even begin to prove this hypothesis. Something to add to my To Do list!

1. Old Napier Cemetery (Napier Hill, Napier, New Zealand), Bartholomew O’Rourke gravestone, Section T Headstone Ref 1207; photograph supplied by [NAME FOR PRIVATE USE], January 2011.
2. New Zealand, death certificate for Bartholomew O’Rourke; 13 Nov 1923, Napier; citing 1923/4896, Birth, Deaths & Marriages, New Zealand.
3. Dept of Tourism, Culture & Sport. “Search Church Records”. Database of transcriptions, church records for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kerry. Irish Genealogy. http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/ : accessed 13 Nov 2010.