Family history, for ordinary Irish families, is made difficult by the non-existence of civil records of births, marriages, and deaths before 1864 and the fragmentary nature of other sources. For my Conlon male line ancestry, I have been able to trace individual forbears to the mid-18th century owing to a few fortunate circumstances. Firstly there are the old headstones in the ancient cemetery of Aughrim, erected in 1796, (visible in the photo above) whose legibility has been maintained by subsequent generations. The smaller and older headstone records the death of a Bartholomew Connely in 1791 aged 56 years and was erected by his son Phelim. The larger one was erected in the 1850s by Phelim’s sons following hs death in 1853. There are no documents alluding directly to Bartholomew. However, the 1745 Census carried out by the Church of Ireland diocese of Elphin records the existence of a Thaddeus Connelly (a variant of the name) in the same townland with a son who could well be this same Bartholomew. There is no hope of going any further back. I have been instrumental in setting up a Google Drive archive as a family tree to trace the descendants of Thaddeus and Bartholomew. Each descendant has his or her own folder containing relevant photographs and copies of documents. Pre 1864 typical documentary sources are the Flax Grower’s Survey of 1796, the Tithe Applotment by the diocese of Elphin of 1825, rent records of the Pakenham-Mahon estate, reports in the Roscommon Herald in the 1830s, baptismal and marriage records from the 1830s, and Griffith’s Valuation of 1858.
The most distinguished of the Conlon descendants is Peter Joseph Conlon [1869 – 1931], whose father emigrated to New York in 1859, and who was a prominent labor activist and a vice president of the International Association of Machinists. A huge amount is known about him, both about his personal and family life and his career in the Machinists Association, and a biography of him entitled Peter J. Conlon and the Struggle for Workplace Justice is in progress.
Thomas Enda Conlon 