Irish - American families in the 20th century

We leave for Ireland in two weeks and I'm updating the American Brennan tree to show my cousins in Ireland.  I'm searching the recently released 1940 census records as well as new databases that have shown up on ancestry in the past year (when I have mostly been busy finishing my husband's paternal family history book - which is now at the printers).

Sometimes in genealogy, you find something interesting, something you actually hadn't given any thought to, such as how circumstances in the nation might affect the marriage rate and numbers of children and grandchildren in a given family.  Recently I found some interesting data along those lines regarding my family.

My great great grandparents, Ned and Mary, came here in 1861 and had six children, five of whom married and had large families.  Mary Ann, their oldest, had 9 children.  Michael, the oldest boy, also had 9 children.  Bridget had 5.  Edward had 7, and my great grandfather John had 8.  Only Sarah remained single.  But the next generation held a different story.  Some of the children of Ned and Mary had fewer grandchildren than children. Granted, some of the records are hard to find, but one thing stands out: many of the male grandchildren of Ned and Mary never married, and a number of the female grandchildren didn't marry until they were in their forties. There was at least one nun and one priest in this group, so they obviously didn't have children, but many of the others were childless as well.

We're talking about people who were born between the late 1800s and the early 1900s. The youngest of the bunch, one of my great uncles, was born in 1917. 

So I began to ask myself why this was so. Why did so many never marry or marry so late?  And one of the clues came in the draft card registrations for the men.  While most of the young men had a job in 1918 when they registered for the WW I draft, they often listed themselves as unemployed on their WW II draft cards.  I assume this must have been because of the depression, which lasted from 1929 up until WW II.  These men, having no income, must have not been good marriage prospects.  Even if they wanted to marry, they had no means to support a wife and children.  I imagine a good number of them were depressed or despondent over this situation as well, making them poor company to women.  On the women's part, it may not have been easy to find a man with a good income.  Hence, many of them either remained at home, found employment in another town or state, and married in their forties and never had children.

It made me stop and think how the economic situation of the country can affect more than just income levels.  It can actually slow down the rates of marriage and the numbers of children born.  An it can leave a lot of people without the lifelong companionship of a spouse - which I find very sad.

Brennan-Fahey Family Update

 My great great grandfather, Ned (Edward) Brennan came to America from Ireland in 1860.  A few months later, his wife, Mary Fahey Brennan, arrived in New York and there had her first child.  Her widowed mother, Sally Finn Fahey, supposedly accompanied her on the journey. Mary Brennan's father, John Fahey, had died some years before the journey.  While I have a few names that may or may not be the parents of Ned Brennan, I have little else to tell me about his ancestors.  Since most census records prior to 1901 have been destroyed for various reasons, it is quite difficult to trace ancestry in Ireland.  So, six weeks ago I hired a research company in Ireland to see if anything could be found on my Brennan and Fahey ancestors.

Yesterday, I received the report and it was quite disappointing.  Griffith's valuation, an 1850 survey of landowners and tenants, lists an Edward Brennan leasing land in the townland of Gortnaclae, the area in which he had lived prior to emigrating.  However, there are no baptismal records for Ned Brennan in Gortnaclae, so this indicates he and his family may have come from somewhere else.  Where that might be, I have no idea.

Also, by 1858, according to the Cancelled Books, which update ownerships and land leases, Edward Brennan appears to have left the district. 

There are baptismal records for a Mary Fahey close to the area from which she came, and close to the approximate date of her birth in 1833.  The parents listed were John Fahey and Sally Finne.  John Fahy and Sally Finn or Finne had two other children, baptized in the same parish:  Patrick in 1835 and Judy in 1837.  These dates are close to the dates of the births of Mary's known siblings, who also came to America, but their names were John and Julia, not Patrick and Judy.  It is possible, of course, that Patrick's middle name was John and he went by that once he came to America, and that Judy used Julia once she arrived here.  But I can't be certain of that, so I'm not certain this is the correct family.  As for dates, Irish immigrants often were vague on their actual birthdates, whether by ignorance or design I'm not sure. 

We'll be leaving for Ireland in less than 5 weeks and hope to spend some time with a cousin there who has offered to take us to the old Brennan homestead.  Perhaps he or another family member can give me a better idea of how long the Brennan family lived there and where they might have come from before that.  At this point, that is the only remaining way for me to find more clues.