1749.  Opening of Kinsale Charter School by The Incorporated Society in Dublin For promoting English Protestant Schools.  20 Boys Admitted making Nets. Corporation and Local Subscriptions of £78 a Year.

Pue’s Occurrences 26 August 1749

Further Reports into Protestant Charter Schools Dunmanway and Innishannon, Co. Cork, Some Boys in Dunmanway from Clontarf, Straw Bedding, Generally Poor Conditions.

1750 English Protestant Charity Schools, Innishannon, Kinsale, Dunmanway, Co. Cork.

An account of Expenditure on Protestant Charter Schools, including, Innishannon, Ross and Dunmanway, Co. Cork, 1812-1815, 1825.

High child mortality at Innishannon Charter School, Co. Cork early 19th century and unrelated parliamentary Report on school 1813.

1748.  escape of Thomas Trendle from Constables Conyeying him from Skibbereen to Cork Jail.  Aged 26 Pock Marked, Wearing Cream Coloured Coat, Brown Waistcoat, Bandle Cloth Shirt, Brown Wig.  Ports Alerted.

Pue’s Occurrences 18 March 1749

1749.  Sittings of HIgh Court on The Munster Circuit and Sergeant Sullivan (1871-1959). The Last Sergeant of the Kingdom of Ireland Buried Glasnevin.

Of the 1749 Justices listed one is Sergeant Marshall. The Office of Sergeant was third after the Attorney General,  Solicitor General.  The last was Sergeant Sullivan who defended Roger Casement and is buried in Glasnevin.   His grave describes him as the last Sergeant of the Kingdom of Ireland which theoretically still exists,  from Norman times when the islands of Britain and Ireland shared a Sovereign.  The 1800 Act of Union was between Parliaments, the 1922 Treaty was silent on the question as was the 1937 Constitution.  The Kingdom was a common phrase pre 1914 to described the whole island of Ireland.

Pue’s Occurrences 14 February 1749

1749.  Sale by Public Cant of Lands at Maulmurreen, Parish of Killfahenabeg , Barony of East Carbery, Co. Cork in the Cause of Rev. Horatio Townsend Plaintiff and William Morris The Elder and William Morris The Younger, Defendants.

Re Townsend family, Colonel John Townsend in Australia has done a family history at the back there is a person and place index:

http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~townsend/tree/home.php

The Morris family owned the Benduff Slate Quarry in Rosscarbery and among the families they intermarried were the Evansons of Durrus.

 They may have been Quakers at one stage.

Pue’s Occurrences 18 February 1749

1831, Address to the Reverend Alleyn Evanson, at a Numerous Meeting of the Protestant and Roman Catholic Inhabitants of the Parish of Schull, West Cork, a Unanimous Address was Agreed.

Southern Reporter and Cork Commercial Courier 29 October 1831

It is interesting that the Catholic Clergy joined in the address.  In his time in Schull he is reported as attempting to secure effort to get much needed relief.  He was mostly ‘an unbefieced clergyman’ ie not practising  but acting as a land agent and a  middle man.  His clerical career was in contrast to the numerous proselytisers in the area at the time the Revs. Donovan, Schull, Tiphook, Fisher at Teampall na mBocht, Spring  at Cape Clear, Alcock and Crosthwaite in Durrus.  There are a number of accounts praising him.  In Durrus as a Magistrate he acted in concert with the various O’Donovan Magistrates to defeat an attempt by the Rev. Crosthwaite of Durrus to blacken the name of the relieving officer Mr. Galwey c 1846.

Rev. Alleyn Evanson TCD AB, (1790-1853) Pre 1828, Four-Mile-Water Court, Durrus, sitting Bantry, 1835.  Son of Nathaniel (Generosus) and Mary Townsend Baldwin (1764-1827). Ed Dr. Sullivan, Bandon, TCD aged 16.   Middle Man, Land Agent. Voted for Hutchinson 1826 election. Signed petition 1827 against Catholic Emancipation.  While a curate in Schull 1829 he stated that there were 1,200 Protestants in the Parish.  Signed public declaration to Alexander O’Driscoll on his removal as Magistrate 1835 with Lord Bantry, Simon White, John Puxley, Arthur Hutchins, Thomas Baldwin, Samuel Townsend Junior and Senior, Hugh Lawton, Thomas Somerville, Richard Townsend Senior, Rev. Alleyn Evanson, Timothy O’Donovan, Richard Townsend, Lyttleton Lyster. Freeman Bandon, 1841 election voted Longfield/Leader.  Apart from Bandon estate he was renting Church lands in West Carbery including Crookhaven and Kilcrohane from Robert Delacour who was made bankrupt in 1839.  Attending 1840 Great Meeting Bantry re Poor Law.  Probate 1853, £5 (may be nominal for conveyancing). Presentment sessions Ballydehob 1845.  Friendly with Father Ryan, Drimoleague features in an account 1836 of journey from Drimoleague written by John Windle in Dublin Penny Journal.  

Dublin Penny Journal, Journey to Durrrus 1836, from Butler’s Gift (Drimoleague), West Cork, John Windle Cork Antiquarian and Father John Ryan, Drimoleague to the Rev. Alleyn Evanson.

After death wife Harriet daughter of Henry Hardy Esq., moved to Mespil Estate, Dublin his brothers Dr. Hungerford and Dr. Henry Baldwin Evanson (1795-1867) of Cork guardians of young children. Subscriber Lewis Topographical Dictionary of Ireland  1837.   In 1835 his rent charge over lands at Brahalish Durrus was granted to Henry Baldwin Evanson, his brother entitling him to vote.  Assisting 1848 Henry J. Fawcett, Practical Instructor on Husbandry of Visit to Bantry  Either his sister or cousin Martha Evanson married Rev. John Madras, their grand daughter m 1867 Ann Marie (Millie) Curtis, Magourney she descended from Huguenot Rev. John Madras and married Daniel O’Connell’s grandson, his father was Charles O’Connell, Resident Magistrate, Bantry.

Four Mile Water House/Durrus Court Recently Restored:

Mná chaointe (Keeners) at Church of Ireland and Methodist Funerals 18th and 19th Century, West Cork:  Sir Richard Cox (1650-1733), Dunmanway, and  Some Family Recollections by James Stanley Vickery in Australia 1829-1911, of Childhood in Moloch in Parish of Durrus, 1832-6.

Is it possible that Keening is pre Christian.   There are references to Keeners being employed at Cox’s funeral in 1733 in Dunmanway.  Cox was the founder of Dunmanway and promoter of the linen industry.   For someone who was virulently anti Catholic it is also surprising that there is a praise poem dedicated to him as set out below

James Stanley Vickery writing in at the end of the 19th century  Australia 1829-1911, of his childhood Moloch in Parish of Durrus, 1832-6. He recalls his grandfather’s death and the wake going over two nights with a professional keener.  HIs grandfather was a wild man when younger, later saw the light and became a prominent early Methodist.

From his recollections:

He went around 1837 to a small private school in Bantry run by a man called Healy who was a Catholic. The new National schools had been boycotted by the Irish Protestants.  Healy had attained a proficiency in mathematics but was extremely cruel, over on of the rafters he threw a small rope and tied it under Robert’s arms and hoisted him up swinging him gently and letting him feel the holly rod to the amusement of the other boys.  His wife on seeing it stopped him and gave Healy a piece of her mind.  Healy was later convicted of cruelty in front of the magistrates.

Recollections of James Stanley Vickery as a grandchild in Molloch, Durrus, Bantry (1829-1911).Parents Died of Cholera in Skibbereen.

Cox:

http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/c/Cox_R/life.htm

There is a praise-poem to Sir Richard Cox composed by the otherwise unknown poet Cormac Ó Luinín and transcribed in the hand of Charles O’Conor (1710-1790) in a manuscript held in the library of of Clonalis House, seat of the O’Conors, in Castlereagh, Co. Roscommon. A digital copy is held on the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies website at ISO [Irish Script on Screen Project]

1832 Election.  Open Voting Location of Polling Booths By Barony in Co. Cork.

At that time the electorate was small in the low thousands for Co. Cork.  Voting was open it was not until the 1870s that the secret ballot commenced.  Newspapers covered the elections listing the votes for each count.   There was frequent litigation and election petitions as only a handful of votes could be critical in a candidate securing election. From the 1820s the fault lines of Co. Cork politics emerged as broadly Liberal/Catholic/Liberal Protestant and  Conservative/Protestant/Landed/Professional, Catholics.

In making application to register for voting in some circumstances it was necessary to avail of a rent charge.  This often fixes the ancestral areas from where a family came from. Sometimes the newspapers carry reports of these applications before the Assistant Barristers at the Quarter Sessions.

The electoral procedure was coordinated by the Clerk of the Crown (State Solicitor).

Courtesy Wikipedia:

The demand for a secret ballot was one of the six points of Chartism.^[9] Fergus O’Connor from Manch in Ballineen was one of its proponents.  The British parliament of the time refused to even consider the Chartist demands but it is notable that Lord Macaulay, in his speech of 1842, while rejecting Chartism’s six points as a whole, admitted that the secret ballot was one of the two points he could support.

The London School Board election of 1870 was the first large-scale election by secret ballot in Britain.

The secret ballot was eventually extended generally in the Ballot Act 1872, substantially reducing the cost of campaigning, and was first used on 15 August 1872 to re-elect Hugh Childers as MP for Pontefract in a ministerial by-election following his appointment as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The original ballot box, sealed in wax with a liquorice stamp, is held at Pontefract museum.^[10] The use of numbered ballots makes it possible, given access to the relevant documents, to identify who has voted for whom.

Southern Reporter and Cork Commercial Courier 22 December 1832

1835, A List of Names and Places of Abode of the Several Persons who Have Taken out Certificates for Killing Game, Agreeably to Act of parliament From the Distributor of Stamps for the County of the City of Cork March to October 1835.

Southern Reporter and Cork Commercial Courier 08 October 1835