Why can’t I locate a birth record for my Irish great great grandfather Denis Phelan?
QI’m looking for the birth record of my great great grandfather Denis Phelan. He may have been born in Waterford. He enlisted in the British Army on 23 January 1860 at neighbouring Kilkenny. He was in the 2nd Battalion, 20th Regiment, which I believe was the East Devonshires. He was stationed in Gravesend and in 1865 married Elizabeth Hughes (née Flello) there. He was 21, which indicates a birth year of about 1844. His father is recorded as John Phelan.
Denis died in Dum Dum, India, on 8 September 1880. Kevin Phelan
AResearch in Ireland is rarely easy but here, with Denis’ father’s name and the fact that the name is relatively uncommon, we have at least a hope of finding something.
However, other than the possibility that he was born in Waterford or Kilkenny, we don’t have any information regarding his birthplace. We would expect to get this from his Army records, but since Denis died in service and didn’t go on to receive a pension, it looks like nothing useful has survived. It might be worth checking the Depot Description Books for the 20th Regiment in The National Archives in Kew (reference WO67/12 and WO67/13) and the Effects Record Books of Deceased Soldiers (WO25/3489).
However, we have two very different ages for him. He was apparently 20 at enlistment in January 1860, yet five years later, when he got married, he was recorded as only 21. His age at death (40 in September 1880) would have been recorded by the military authorities, and would have been calculated using the information from his enlistment.
Roman Catholic parish registers tend to start later than their Church of Ireland equivalents, and most were up and running by the 1840s. Virtually all of the surviving registers have been indexed by ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk, and a search of these reveals just three promising baptisms in our target period of c1835–1845.
One of these took place in the Kilkenny parish of Owning, and relates to a Dennis Phelan born in Garryduff. But is this your man? The best way to find out is to see if you can prove that this isn’t your man. Can you find a later death/burial or marriage for him? Did he have any siblings? What can their lives tell you about his? The website www. irishgenealogy.ie/en provides free access to civil registration records.
However, it’s certainly not going to be easy, and there’s the added complication that ‘Phelan’ and ‘Whelan’ are closely connected, both arising from the Gaelic name O’Faolain. David Annal