Islandeady is not an island off Galway. It is a rural parish between Castlebar and Westport in County Mayo, set among lakes and low hills in the shadow of Croagh Patrick. That distinction solves a long-standing place-name problem in this family. The civil marriage of Peter Coony and Margaret Needhan (external address omitted for offline reading) was celebrated at the Roman Catholic chapel of Islandeady on 26 February 1884. Six later birth registrations place their children at Derrycriff in the Islandeady registration district: Mary, Bridget, Thomas, Anne, Peter and Ellen, born between 1884 and 1894.
The marriage record calls Peter a labourer and both fathers labourers. Beginning with Mary’s birth later in 1884, the registers call Peter a farmer. That may mark a genuine step into a holding, a change in how the registrar described his work, or both. It does not prove that he owned land. In the west of Ireland, a “farmer” could be a tenant working a small holding whose acreage, soil and rent determined whether it could support a family. Griffith’s Valuation and its later revision books—not the occupational label alone—are the records that can test the size and tenancy of the Derrycriff holding.
The administrative geography matters. Islandeady lay in Westport Poor Law Union, the district built around Westport’s workhouse and later reused as the superintendent registration district. A Mayo County Library history of the Famine (external address omitted for offline reading) explains how Mayo was divided into unions, including Westport, to administer relief. Decades after the Famine, the union still carried a reputation for poverty: in 1887 Parliament was told of impending evictions affecting 121 Westport Union families and noted that the union had been officially classed among the distressed unions (external address omitted for offline reading).
“Congested district” was the government’s later term for western areas where many people tried to live from small, low-valued holdings while better grazing land might lie nearby. The Congested Districts Board was created in 1891 to promote economic and social development in the west; its work included enlarging uneconomic holdings and supporting agriculture and local industry. The term describes a structural problem, not proof that the Cooneys personally received assistance.
Emigration was one household response to that narrow economy. County Mayo’s population continued to fall through outward migration, and the 1901 census report (external address omitted for offline reading) repeatedly attributes local decreases to “emigration and removals.” The proposed later lives of the Derrycriff children in America are not all proved. What is proved is a remarkably stable home place: every known birth names Derrycriff. Before any ocean crossing, this family’s map begins with one Mayo townland.