2. Thomas Crehan & Catherine Dowd

Thomas Crehan (sometimes spelt Creaghan) and Catherine Dowd (sometimes spelt Doud) were my 2nd great-grandparents (great, great). They married on the 24 February 1873 in the district of Mount Bellew, county Galway, Ireland. On the marriage record Thomas Crehan's address as given as Creeveroe Cornwall (usually called Creeveroe Davies it was leased by Matthew Cornwall) and Catherine Dowd's address is given as the very nearby village of Creeveroe Ffrench that was leased by Martin Ffrench. Thomas Crehan's father is given as Math Crehan, a farmer and Catherine Dowd's father is given as Patrick Dowd also a farmer. Their mother's names are not given. The witnesses to the marriage are Patt Crehan and Margaret Dowd.

Thomas Crehan and Catherine Dowd had the following children:

1. Matthew Creaghan, baptised 25 July 1874. Mother's surname spelt "Doud" on Matthew's birth record and the informant of the birth was Catherine Creaghan. Matthew is recorded as having died 3 September 1894, aged 20, and the the informant was James Crehan who was probably his younger brother. Matthew was murdered and was a totally innocent victim. It was never confirmed who murdered him.

2. Michael Creaghan, baptised 24 October 1879. My great-grandfather, he moved to Derbyshire, England and married Mary Walsh in 1913.

3. Patrick Crehan, born circa 1883, no birth record exists but he appears on the 1901 census in the house of his father Thomas.

4. James Creaghan, baptised 15 August 1885. Also came over to England, traveled to Ellis Island, New York, US in 1909, but returned to England as per the 1911 census and apparently died young back in Ireland due to ill health.

5. Catherine Crehan, born circa 1896 or 1897 as per census records although no actual birth record exists. She married Andrew Kelly in Creeveroe.

6. Mary Crehan, (b. ?), there is talk in the family of there being a daughter called Mary although I have found no record for her thus far.

The villages of Creeveroe Davies and Creeveroe Ffrench were part of the parish of Killian. The parish has both an old and new graveyard which are situated right next to each other. The new graveyard actually has a map on a large sign to help people locate the graves of their relatives. These are mostly no earlier than the late 19th century. The old graveyard does not have such a map and the graves are mostly from the early 19th century or 18th century. Both graveyards are packed full of Crehans. In fact I'd say it is between the Crehans and the Lohans as to which surname appears most on the graves. My thanks to my distant cousin Patrick Kenney who checked every single one of the gravestones in the old graveyard with me. However, the only grave I could confirm as a relative in my known family tree was in the new graveyard and was that of Katie Kelly (Kate) who was born Catherine Crehan, daughter of my 2nd great-grandad Thomas Crehan and sister of my great-grandad Michael Crehan. She appears as Catherine Crehan on the 1901 and 1911 census records in the house hold of Thomas Crehan, as found linked on the left. She married Andrew Kelly and when she died relatively young in 1945 he re-married. Below is a photo of the grave of Katie Kelly (nee Crehan).

According to my grandfather Patrick Crehan (1921-2016), son of Michael Crehan and grandson of Thomas Crehan, his grandfather Thomas may have travelled over to the United States at some point. A list of passengers who travelled to Ellis Island, New York includes a Thomas Crehan from Mount Bellew, Ireland aged 56 in 1904. Mount Bellew was the district where Creeveroe was and this Thomas Crehan would have been born in about 1848. If this is the same person who was my ancestor Thomas Crehan then it would mean that he was aged about 25 when he married Catherine Dowd in 1873.

The same passenger list includes a Catherine Crehan of Mount Bellew but she is aged 17 in 1903 which means she was born in about 1886 making her too young to be the Catherine Crehan (formerly Dowd) who was Thomas Crehan's wife and ten years too old to be their daughter Catherine Crehan who was born in about 1896/97. However, there is also a Katie Crehan on the passenger list who was from Creeveroe and aged 25 in 1922 which would not only match the village location for the Catherine Crehan who was the daughter of Thomas and Catherine but would also match her year of birth of 1897.

According to my grandfather, Patrick Crehan, he remembered that his grandfather Thomas Crehan came over to England when he was young, probably in the late 1920's, with Thomas hoping to get one of his grandsons to come back to Ireland and take over the farm in Creeveroe. However, Michael Crehan did not want any of his sons to go to Ireland and so the farm devolved upon Mary Doyle, the adopted daughter of Catherine Crehan b. 1896/97 and Andrew Kelly. My thanks to Mary Doyle who I visited in Creeveroe for giving me much of the information used in compiling this website.