Dolphin, of Turoe, co. Galway.

This post started very differently. Sometimes it becomes much more interesting following the female line – it’s often more difficult because things like Burke’s Landed Gentry often only list the girls by name, or just as  ” had issue, two daus.” but it can throw up some surprising results.

This started with a search for more information about Thady Grehan II (1775 – unknown) who was Peter Grehan (1749 – unknown) and Mary Roche’s eldest son. Why Thady was in the West Indies, and why his younger brother was the main beneficiary of their uncle’s will is another story.  The search led to their sister Mary who married ” Hubert Thomas Dolphin, of Turoe, co. Galway, and had issue.” and the splendidly named Dolphin family is where this all comes from.The Dolphins were one of the original Anglo-Norman families in Ireland, so by the time of Hubert and Mary Grehan’s marriage they had been in Ireland for about six hundred years. The family ” sustained great losses by confiscations and forfeitures” during the seventeenth century. But they still had land, and Hubert Thomas inherited the estates of his uncle John Dolphin, who had seven daughters. Two became nuns, and the rest all married in a very close circle.

Hubert Dolphin’s first cousin Eleanor Dolphin married Thomas Reddington, and Eleanor and Tom’s daughter Eleanor Reddington married Stephen Roche who is Mary Dolphin’s [nee Grehan] first cousin.  Another of Hubert Dolphin’s first cousins Celia Dolphin married John McDonnell and their daughter Cecilia marries into the O’Conor family. In this case to Roderic O’Conor, who is a fourth cousin of Owen O’Conor (1763 – 1831) who became the O’Conor Don in 1820 having succeeded to the title on the death of his fourth cousin Dominick O’Conor (d. 1795).  So lots of cousins marrying cousins, and some great -uncles and aunts in the picture, specifically 5x Great-Uncles and Aunts Peter Grehan, Mary Roche, and  Jane Moore, and Owen O’Conor. Owen is also Patrick Grehan I’s brother-in-law.

But it also brings us Maria O’Conor – Roderic O’Conor’s sister, her husband John Kelly, their children, and most specifically two of their grandsons Gerald and Arthur Neilan.