John Fitzgerald

Life

How we know this: His marriage and several children's births are documented by original civil records; his own vital dates remain unknown. [1][2][3][4]

Work and occupation

• farmer — 1870

  Farmer

  Citation: Irish civil marriage register, John Fitzgerald and Margaret Fraher, 25 February 1870, Kildorrery, Co. Cork [2]

Where they lived

• 1870: Carrakeen, County Cork, Ireland

Use the place list first. The map below is optional.

The pins show approximate places. The line only joins them in time order; it does not prove the route travelled. 3 of the places listed above are recorded only as a county or country, so they are not pinned. Cemetery and burial places have red pins.

Historical context

These background articles explain the places, work, and events in this entry.

What we still don't know

• His birth date and birthplace
• His death date and place
• Whether the additional children named only in our family tree belonged to this household
• Any relationship to the separate Caheratrant Fitzgerald family
• [HE SIGNED, FOUR TIMES] This was established in finding 94 and had never reached this page. Written back 8 August 2026 along with the transcription of David's 1875 entry.
• [FROM THE REGISTER] He was of Carraheen at his marriage, a farmer of full age, son of Maurice Fitzgerald, farmer, and he signed his own name where his bride made her mark. Married by Danl O'Brien PP at Kildorrery, witnesses John Connell and Joanna Downey.
• [TWO NORTH CORK PARISHES, AND A MARRIAGE IN NEW JERSEY] David Fitzgerald was born on 28 March 1875, the son of a farmer married at the chapel of Kildorrery five years earlier. Catherine Condon was baptised on 20 April 1874 at Ballindangan, in the parish of Ballydeloughy, and her father's household appears at Ballindangan in Derryvillane. Kildorrery, Ballydeloughy and Derryvillane adjoin one another in north Cork, all within a few miles, and both families were in the Mitchelstown country. The two were born thirteen months apart in neighbouring parishes — and they married in Jersey City. Whether they knew each other in Cork, or whether the two families found each other again in Hudson County among a great many other Cork emigrants, is not something a record will easily settle. But they are Andrew Leahey's great-great-grandparents, and they began about five miles apart.
• Keep this Kildorrery/Cullane man separate from the John Fitzgerald born in 1859 at Caheratrant, County Kerry; no record links the two families.
• This is the full-age John Fitzgerald who married Margaret Fraher at Kildorrery on 25 February 1870 and fathered the Cullane children. He cannot be the eleven-year-old baptised in County Kerry in 1859, and no record links the two families.
• The family's registration geography is now precise. Cullane, Ballylanders sits in the Galbally registrar's district, County Limerick, inside the Mitchelstown Poor Law Union. Flemingstown, where Catherine Condon was born, is in the same Mitchelstown union. An earlier note in this archive described the Fitzgeralds and Condons as families 'twenty miles apart in different counties' — that overstated the distance. Both were inside one union, which makes the marriage an ordinary local one. Galbally had never been searched before August 2026 because it was absent from the district lists used.
• [COULD WRITE] John Fitzgerald was recorded without a mark on his marriage register of 1870 at Kildorrery, and on three of his children's birth registers, where other informants on the same pages made crosses. That is worth recording because it did not follow family or sex in these households — of the twelve people in this archive whose registers have been read, some couples both signed, some both marked, and in three of them one partner signed while the other made a mark. It tracks schooling and trade rather than anything else. What the image cannot show is the writing itself: every civil register page here is the registrar's certified copy of his own book, so the hand on it is his (finding 128).

References

1. [1] Irish civil marriage register — John Fitzgerald and Margaret Fraher, 25 February 1870, Kildorrery, County CorkBack to citation 1
2. [2] Irish civil marriage register, John Fitzgerald and Margaret Fraher, 25 February 1870, Kildorrery, Co. CorkBack to citation 2a Back to citation 2b Back to citation 2c
3. [3] Irish civil birth register, David Fitzgerald, 28 March 1875, Cullane, BallylandersBack to citation 3a Back to citation 3b
4. [4] Irish civil birth register, Richard Fitzgerald, 17 April 1872, Cullane, Ballylanders, Galbally districtBack to citation 4

See also

• Return to the Fitzgerald branch
• See this family in the full tree
• Browse all original records