Patrick HYLAND was the third son of Michael HYLAND and Bridget DOOLEY. He was baptised 31 May, 1857, at Coolbanagher, near Mountmellick, then Queen’s County (County Laois). Patrick is my great grandfather.
Mary Teresa EGAN was born 25 August 1868 at 81 York St. in Cork. She was the second daughter and the fourth of ten known children of John EGAN, originally of County Tipperary, and Mary Theresa DESMOND of Cork East Riding. Mary is my great grandmother.
Patrick Hyland: R.I.C.
(For background on the Royal Irish Constabulary see my earlier post: https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/francesbird.blog/42 )
Patrick was a farmer, prior to joining the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1878, aged 21 and a half years.
Patrick’s R.I.C. record shows us he was initially a Reserve. Reserves were reportedly select men of imposing stature who formed an emergency response unit that could be despatched to anywhere in the country. They were based were based in the Phoenix Park depot in Dublin. [1] Patrick was discharged for a period as he was not vaccinated.
The Land Wars started in 1879. It would seem that Patrick was working in the Reserves during the Land Wars and thus potentially involved in evictions of tenant farmers, which may have been challenging for a young man from a tenant farming background.
Patrick transferred to Cork city in what looks to be 1880 where he met his future wife, Mary Theresa EGAN, the daughter of a retired R.I.C. man. Following their marriage, in keeping with R.I.C. requirements that a member did not serve in the area they or their wife was from, Patrick transferred on to Cork West Riding where he served in Skibbereen and Rosscarbery.
Service record
We can get some sense of Patrick’s working life from newspaper articles.
Patrick’s transfer from Skibbereen was announced in the Examiner, on Monday May 15, 1893 (page. 5).
The Examiner of Friday, March 11 1898 (page 10) recorded the Clonakilty Petty Sessions, where men had been charged with drunk and disorderly behaviour, including fighting in “public streets.”
Patrick retired from the RIC in April 1904, and presumably it was then the family returned to Cork city as they were known to be living on Commons Road, Monard by January 1905. Patrick had served 25 years, 3 months in the R.I.C. The pay from which his pension was calculated was £70 and 4 shillings giving him an annual pension of £42.2s.4d, commencing 1st May 1904.
Patrick’s pension papers describe him as 47 years, having blue eyes, a pale complexion, grey hair, and no distinctive marks. He stood at 5 foot 10 inches.
His R.I.C. Parchment Certificate of Character described Patrick’s general conduct during the period of his service as good. He had received one punishment but also a recommendation during his service. Here he was recorded as 5 foot 10 and a half inches.
Patrick received a supplemental pension of £27:7: 6 per annum for the period 1 April 1926 to 31 March 1927.
Patrick’s signature was shaky on later papers, unlike his steady hand in 1901.
Mary Teresa Egan (1868 -1924)
Mary Teresa EGAN was born 25 August 1868 at 81 York St. in Cork.
She was the second daughter and the fourth of ten known children of John EGAN, originally of County Tipperary, and Mary Theresa DESMOND of Cork East Riding.
Marriage and family
Patrick HYLAND and Mary Teresa EGAN married on 09 August 1888 at the R.C. Cathedral, Cork (north Cathedral), witnessed by Timothy Duggan[2] and Mary’s older sister Julia Egan.
They had the following children:
Residences
At the time of their marriage Mary was living on Shandon St. The first two children, Mollie (1889) and my grandfather Michael (1890), were both born at 9 Shandon St. although Patrick had been posted to Cork West Riding in 1888. Mary may have come back to her family to give birth, or may have stayed on at 9 Shandon St, after her marriage. Third child, Jack (1892), was born in Skibbereen district. Further children were born in Rosscarbery until the return to Cork city where the youngest three were born.
In the 1901 census the family were living at the R.I.C. barracks on Church Lane, in Rosscarbery. [4]
The barracks housed three families. The sergeant’s family consisted of five people, Constable Hyland’s family consisted of seven people, and the other constable’s family had two people. The barracks was next door to the priest’s house. It had stables, a coach house, a turf house and a wash house.
Patrick Hyland was an enumerator for the 1901 census. He was not home the night of the Census and thus is not recorded with his family.
Note that the oldest child, Mollie, was also not with the family in Rosscarbery. (See later post on Mary Teresa ‘Mollie’ HYLAND).
By 1905 the HYLAND family lived at 29 Commons Rd, Monard, Whitechurch District. The 1911 census records the house as having three rooms, with 2 windows to the front of the house.
The start of 1905 would have been terrible for Mary T (Egan) HYLAND. She lost daughter Agnes in an accident at the start of February and her mother died a month later. They share a plot at St. Joseph’s cemetery.
The 1911 Census records the couple as having had 11 children, with eight then surviving. Despite extensive and repeated searches of births and deaths in the civil records I have not been able to find a record of a live birth for an 11th child.
The Hyland family moved from Commons Rd. to 30 Dublin St. some time between 1911 and 1916 where surviving family lived for a further 80 years.
Later life
After Patrick’s retirement from the R.I.C. he moved into security, being named as a Watchman on the 1908 birth certificate of his daughter Bridget and the 1911 birth certificate for Rosie and the census. He was listed as a Railway hand on the 1920 marriage certificate of his son Michael.
I believe this is Patrick Hyland in his later years.
Deaths
Mary Teresa (Egan) HYLAND died Saturday 2nd February 1924, at 30 Dublin St., aged 55 years. Cause of death was ‘Morbus cordis, some months’. This is a term for unspecified heart disease.
Patrick HYLAND lived for 17 years as a widower. He died on Saturday, 18 October 1941 at 30 Dublin St., aged 79 years. His cause of death was given as senile degeneration. His daughter, Catherine (Katty), was present at his death and notified it.
A notice appeared in the Examiner on 20th October:
Patrick is buried at St. Joseph’s Cemetery, Tory Top Rd, Ballyphehane, Cork. [5]
There is no record of a will.
Patrick’s burial year is erroneously noted as 1940 in the cemetery records. Patrick is in an unmarked grave in Section 2, along with other members of the Egan and Hyland families. I searched with a cemetery custodian at length, sadly unsuccessfully (in the pouring rain) for Mary Murphy’s headstone.
Family memories
Maura, my oldest aunt, had no memory of ever seeing Mary Teresa (Egan) HYLAND. This isn’t surprising as this grandmother died when Maura was only a year old. Maura did recall Patrick saying his prayers in the parlour, and – ‘his royal highness’ – giving her half a crown. The children were only allowed in the kitchen, and not in the parlour.
My mother recalled: I remember Grandad Hyland he was white haired, sat in a chair by the fire in 30 Dublin St. He always had a big white handkerchief and he flicked the flies. He always gave us a penny or two when we went to them. He was a very quiet man. My aunt Breda only remembered Patrick as being unwell, upstairs.
[1]According to Michael Long, R.I.C. historian.
[2] Timothy Duggan was Patrick’s marriage witness. In the 1901 census a 48 year old Timothy Duggan, clerk in a butcher’s shop, originally from Queens Co. lived at 29 Fair Hill with his family. It seems likely Timothy and Patrick were old friends connected by place of origin.
[3] It took over two and a half months before Rosie’s birth was recorded. Why was this? Was she ill and not expected to survive? The baptismal record may tell us something. (Mary Teresa was aged 42, so still of child bearing age. Or could this last child have something to do with the oldest daughter, Mary Teresa – Mollie – who disappears from all records until reappearing in the UK in the 1930s?)
[4] The Rosscarbery R.I.C. barracks was later destroyed in an attack on 31st March 1921 by the Third West Cork Brigade flying column of the IRA led by Tom Barry. A sergeant and two constables were killed and eight injured.
[5] St. Joseph’s Cemetery is the cemetery where Agnes Hyland, Patrick’s daughter, is known to have been buried in 1905. It is the site of the former Cork Botanic Gardens which opened in 1808 but was de-funded 20 years later prior to being taken over for a cemetery. It reportedly contains a massive famine burial plot of more than 10,000 people.
In Search of Thomas Davis 
One thought on “Patrick HYLAND (1857 – 1941) & Mary Teresa Egan (1868 -1924)”