Mary Bridget O’/CALLAGHAN was the daughter of Timothy O’/CALLAGHAN and Margaret TAYLOR, born 21/01/1867 and baptised 27/01/1867 at St Mary’s, Cork.
George DAVIS was the son of John DAVIS and Maria ATKIN/S, baptised on 21 July1856, Ballymore parish, Wexford.
George and Mary Bridget married on 6 August 1889 at St, Mary’s cathedral, Cork city. Mary B. lived at Fair Lane and George was then a Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.) constable based in Clonmel. George was 33 years old and Mary B. was 19 years.
The marriage was witnessed by Mary B.’s younger sister Margaret ‘Babe’ O’CALLAGHAN and Patrick POLAND. Patrick Poland was a R.I.C. Constable, presumably George’s colleague.[1]
This photo of Mary B. O’Callaghan[2] was likely taken before her marriage.
George and Mary B’s first child, Maria Margaret, named after her two grandmothers, was born eight months after their marriage and died aged eight weeks suggesting she may have been premature.
Birth certificates of the couple’s first children suggest that Mary B. remained living in Cork, at her father Timothy’s house, 90 Fair Lane, while George DAVIS continued to work as a police constable in Clonmel. George was pensioned in September 1891, which is when he was free to return to Cork.
In the space of 11 months, from April 1894 to February 1895 George and Mary B. lost three children, having already lost their first-born Maria in 1890. Of these, Timothy (3 years, 8 months) and John (@ 3 months) died one month and 11 days apart. It is hard to imagine the grief of that household. The loss of infants was familiar to Mary’s father Timothy O’/CALLAGHAN and stepmother Margaret (O’Brien). Later in 1895 the first of their children to survive into adulthood was born, my grandmother Mary Bridget (later HYLAND).
Baptismal records are not publicly available after 1880 so we cannot see who witnessed the baptisms.
George Davis and Mary B O’Callaghan’s children:
George and Mary B. recorded in the 1911 Census that they had had 12 children, of whom seven survived. I have never found records for a 12th child.
The DAVIS children will be explored in later blogs.
[1]Galwegian Patrick Poland was pensioned in 1912. He died aged 63 in 1930 in Bandon.
George’s brother John was stationed in Cork at the time George and Mary B, married. George had not been John’s marriage witness when John married in Clonmel while George was stationed in Galway.
Eve ‘Fluffy’ (Glancy) O’DONOVAN, in correspondence to her Wadding second cousin in 1980, wrote that she had been unaware of the George DAVIS family until she heard about them from Fr. O’Flynn (north Cork city born local priest who was reportedly a good friend of my grandmother, keen historian and founder of The Loft – more on him later.) Eve believed the brothers had become estranged due to George’s wife but this seems likely to remain an unanswered puzzle. Eve wrote that John and George ‘aged about 15 and 16 tossed a coin to see which they would run away to: RIC or India Police.’ She did not give the source of that story.
[2] Bustles were popular in the 1870s and 1880s.
[3] I have not seen Ita’s death certificate yet.
In Search of Thomas Davis 
Interesting information, Frances. Many never seemed clear on how her mother died. She thought it was stomach cancer. Can’t say I’ve known of ear cancer before!
The big ‘C’ was such a taboo subject.
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